A 300-year-old murder could be solved

Workers recently came across a skeleton during the restoration of Leine Palace in the German state of Lower Saxony (Niedersachsen). The bones and remnants of clothes have been examined by doctors but they couldn’t ascertain the cause of death. 

However, this is where the young Swedish Count Philip Christoph Königsmarck is thought to have vanished without a trace in 1694.

“If the remains prove to be the young Swedish count who disappeared 322 years ago, he could have been the victim of a royal murder triggered by jealousy,” says historian Håkan Håkansson. He has studied over 300 coded love letters at Lund University in Sweden.

These show that the count and the duchess had a totally improper romantic relationship.

Unhappy marriage to a prince

The count was only 29 when he disappeared. He had a long-going romantic relationship with his childhood friend Sophia Dorothea. She was regrettably already married – and not to a historical nobody.

At the age of 16 she had married off for political reasons to a six-year-older crown prince, Georg Ludwig of Hannover. He later became King George I of the UK and Ireland.

But it was an unhappy marriage, and George and his parents were cold and reserved toward the Duchess Sophia Dorothea.

Count Philip disappeared after a nocturnal assignation with the princess.

Love letters

Count Philip and Sophia Dorothea were ardent correspondents. Over 300 letters, sent during a two-year period, still exist. The turtledoves sent an average of three letters to one another per week.

The letters were donated to the university in the early 1800s by Pontus de la Gardie, an eager collector of archive material from Swedish noble families.

These are now kept by the Lund University Library.

“It was not unusual for people to write so many letters in these times. They often wrote many letters a day,” says Håkan Håkansson, an associate professor in the history of ideas at Lund University.

Many of the letters also include numerical codes, cyphers, a feature that was not so common.

“The encrypted language was used to conceal sensitive information. But this one was decoded back in the 1800s,” he explains.

Rather innocent, but scandalous

The numeric code was very simple, with each number representing a letter in the alphabet. When the sweethearts switched from ordinary remarks to sweet nothings they simply wrote in the numeric code.

The encrypted contents were quite innocent from a modern perspective.

Prince Georg was also notoriously unfaithful, bedding down with many women. In the 17th century, as in other times, it was normal for powerful men, particularly kings, to have multiple mistresses. 

“But it was much worse, in fact scandalous, for a princess to have extramarital relations,” says Håkansson.

Although the young lovers tried to keep the contents of their letters covert, they would have needed confidants to deliver their letters. This could have been the Achilles heel of their relationship.

Speculations about the children

Sophia Dorothea and Georg Ludwig had two children, a daughter who later became the mother of Frederick the Great of Prussia, and a son who became King George II of the UK. In their day, there were rumours about that the Swedish count was the real father of these children.

“If the children were illegitimate, it would have impacted the claims of the British and the Swedish royal houses,” explains Håkansson. 

Researchers, however, have later calculated that the children were born before Sophia could have had sexual relations with the Swedish count.

Historians have also questioned whether the letters were forgeries, made by enemies to undermine the royal houses.

“But we have known for some time now that these letters are authentic,” says Håkansson.

Planning to run off

In the summer of 1694, Philip Königsmarck and Sophia Dorothea planned to run off together. But this did not pan out.

Their love affair was exposed, probably by their friend, the Countess Clara Elisabeth von Platen.

The scandal was out in the open and Count Philip just disappeared.

Sophia Dorothea was sent away and locked in the Ahlden Palace in Lüneburg, not far from Hannover. She spent 30 years there, until her death.

Contemporaries suspected that Georg Ludwig had the count assassinated, but no body was found.

DNA of relatives

Researchers would like to compare the DNA of the bones that have been found this summer with living relatives of Philip. The DNA tests will be done at Germany’s University of Göttingen.

“A relative of the Swedish count consented to help and has provided a DNA sample,” says Håkansson.

This might clear up a murder mystery that has been a cold-case for over three centuries. But Håkansson thinks it unlikely that the skeleton will turn out to be Count Philip.

“It’s evident that this unfortunate individual did not die a natural death. He was found in a palace, rather than buried in a graveyard,” says Håkansson. But he points out that there are all sorts of possibilities for this to be someone other than the Swedish count.

“There are hundreds, perhaps thousands, of persons who could have been in the palace at some time, either servants or guests. So I think this is most probably someone else,” says the Swedish historian.
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Reference:

Stranden, Anne Lise. 2016. “A 300-year-old murder could be solved”. Science Nordic. Posted: October 26, 2016. Available online: http://sciencenordic.com/300-year-old-murder-could-be-solved

Did the Lost Colony live at "Site X"? Clues point the way

Evidence is mounting that at least part of John White’s lost colony may have ended up in Bertie County.

Archaeologists have excavated 850 square feet of the tract in question and found dozens of artifacts including bale seals used to verify cloth quality; 16th-century nails; firing pans from snaphaunce guns of the day; aglets used to form tips on shirt lace strings; tenterhooks used to stretch hides; pieces of pottery jars for storing dried and salted fish; and bowl pieces like those found in Jamestown.

The findings do not prove Lost Colony residents lived there, but they certainly show they could have, said Clay Swindell, archaeologist and collections specialist at the Museum of the Albemarle in Elizabeth City. A member of the First Colony Foundation, Swindell reported last week on the recent findings and conclusions drawn from them at the North Carolina Museum of History in Raleigh. He shared them with a reporter Thursday.

The rural site south of the Chowan River bridge has been inhabited for centuries first by Native Americans, then early English settlers, Swindell said. Later it became the site of a governor’s plantation. The ground is high and dry and lies next to the river, ideal for habitation.

“It’s got lots and lots of different time periods represented,” Swindell said.

A series of events led to the discovery of Site X. In 2007, a developer planned to build a large subdivision there. As usual, the state first required a search for historically significant sites or artifacts. A team found early English pottery and signs of a Native American village. Meanwhile, the development never panned out.

In 2012, researchers looking at a map that John White drew of eastern North Carolina in the 1580s found a patch covering what looked like a fort. The map is still preserved at the British Museum in London.

The fort symbol sat at the western end of the Albemarle Sound in what is now Bertie County, matching where the English artifacts were found.

“We put two and two together,” Swindell said.

Before he left for England in 1587, John White told the colony to “remove 50 miles into the main.” That clue did not help archaeologists much at first, since a 50-mile radius from Roanoke Island covers most of northeastern North Carolina.

“No one had a good understanding where the 50 miles might be,” Swindell said.

The Bertie site lies 49.32 nautical miles (or 56.76 miles) from Roanoke Island, according to Google Earth.

Researchers are continuously discovering how the artifacts and writings may tie the Lost Colony to the Bertie site. The North Devon baluster jars used to provision ships with dried or salted fish were used in the late 1500s. The Surrey-Hampshire Border ware matches hundreds of pottery fragments found in early Jamestown, but was not used that much past the early 1600s. The explorers of the day wrote about the Chowan River and the tribes that lived there.

“That location is something they were familiar with,” Swindell said.

John White was part of all three Walter Raleigh expeditions from England to the North Carolina coast. In 1585 and 1586, he made the map preserved at the British Museum. In 1587, he returned to Roanoke Island with a group that included his daughter, Eleanor Dare, and son-in-law, Ananias Dare. Eleanor gave birth on Aug. 18 to Virginia, the first English baby born in the New World. He left the colony shortly afterward to resupply.

White could not return until three years later. By then, the colony was gone. He found the word “Croatoan” carved in a post and CRO carved into a tree. The Croatoan tribe lived around Buxton.

Years later, Jamestown leaders sent a party south to search for the colonists, but bad relations with Native Americans hindered the effort. The party never made it to the Bertie site, Swindell said. The recent discoveries do not indicate a fort as was shown on the map, but only show evidence of a smaller group of early English there.

“We have new clues,” Swindell said. “That’s all we can say, there are new clues.”
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Reference:

Hampton, Jeff. 2016. “Did the Lost Colony live at "Site X"? Clues point the way”. the Virginian Pilot: Pilot Online. Posted: July 16, 2016. Available online: http://pilotonline.com/news/local/history/more-clues-appear-showing-lost-colony-may-have-gone-to/article_ddedefad-c4ea-5e54-88a6-44b388fb8e75.html

Decade of labor reveals philosopher's guide to the galaxy (Update)

When you're trying to fathom a mangled relic of very old hi-tech, it helps to have the manufacturer's instructions.

For over a century since its discovery in an ancient shipwreck, the exact function of the Antikythera Mechanism—named after the southern Greek island off which it was found—was a tantalizing puzzle.

From a few words deciphered on the twisted, corroded fragments of bronze gears and plates, experts guessed it was an astronomical instrument. But much more remained hidden out of sight.

After more than a decade's efforts using cutting-edge scanning equipment, an international team of scientists has now read about 3,500 characters of explanatory text—a quarter of the original—in the innards of the 2,100-year-old remains. They say it was a kind of philosopher's guide to the galaxy, and perhaps the world's oldest mechanical computer.

"Now we have texts that you can actually read as ancient Greek, what we had before was like something on the radio with a lot of static," said team member Alexander Jones, a professor of the history of ancient science at New York University.

"It's a lot of detail for us because it comes from a period from which we know very little about Greek astronomy and essentially nothing about the technology, except what we gather from here," he said. "So these very small texts are a very big thing for us."

The team says the mechanism was a calendar of the sun and the moon that showed the phases of the moon, the position of the sun and the moon in the zodiac, the position of the planets, and predicted eclipses. Nothing of the sort was known to be made for well over 1,000 years.

"It was not a research tool, something that an astronomer would use to do computations, or even an astrologer to do prognostications, but something that you would use to teach about the cosmos and our place in the cosmos," Jones said. "It's like a textbook of astronomy as it was understood then, which connected the movements of the sky and the planets with the lives of the ancient Greeks and their environment."

"I would see it as more something that might be a philosopher's instructional device."

The letters—some just 1.2 millimeters (1/20 of an inch) tall—were engraved on the inside covers and visible front and back sections of the mechanism, which originally had the rough dimensions of an office box-file, was encased in wood and operated with a hand-crank.

It wasn't quite a manual, more like a long label you would get on a museum to describe a display, according to another team member, Mike Edmunds, who is an emeritus professor of astrophysics at Cardiff University.

"It's not telling you how to use it, it says 'what you see is such and such,' rather than 'turn this knob and it shows you something,'" he said Thursday, during a presentation of the team's findings in Athens.

The mechanism's fragments were raised in 1901 from a mid-1st century B.C. shipwreck, and at first seemed like a scruffy footnote to a magnificent body of finds that included bronze and marble statues, luxury glassware and ceramics.

But the sediment-encrusted, compacted lumps soon attracted scientific attention, and were studied by successive teams over the next decades. While hypotheses were made as to the functioning of the gears and the use of the machine, it was for long impossible to read more than a few hundred characters of the texts buried on the inside of a multi-layered mechanism a bit like a big clock.

About 12 years ago, Jones' and Edmunds' team started to use x-ray scanning and imaging technology to analyze the 82 surviving fragments.

"The original investigation was intended to see how the mechanism works, and that was very successful," Edmunds said.

"What we hadn't realized was that the modern techniques that were being used would allow us to read the texts much better both on the outside of the mechanism and on the inside than was done before."

It was a painstaking process, as to read each of the tiny letters, researchers had to look at dozens of scans.

Edmunds said the style of the text—formal and detailed—implied that it was designed to be much more than a rich collector's plaything.

"It takes it to me out of the realm of executive toys—an executive wouldn't pay all that money to have all that waffle—it's more serious than a toy," he said.

It was probably made in Greece between 200 and 70 B.C., although no maker's signature has been found.

The team says they have read practically all the text on the surviving fragments. Their greatest hope is that archaeologists currently revisiting the shipwreck will uncover pieces overlooked by the sponge divers who found it a century ago—or even another similar mechanism.

The commercial vessel was a giant of the ancient world—at least 40 meters (130 feet) long—and broke into two as it sank, settling on a steep underwater slope about 50 meters (164 feet) deep.

Most of the inscriptions, and at least 20 gears that worked to display the planets, are still there.
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Reference:

Paphitis, Nicholas. 2016. “Decade of labor reveals philosopher's guide to the galaxy (Update)”. Phys.org. Posted: June 9, 2016. Available online: http://phys.org/news/2016-06-decade-labor-reveals-philosopher-galaxy.html

Kennewick Man will be reburied, but quandaries around human remains won’t

A mysterious set of 9,000-year-old bones, unearthed nearly 20 years ago in Washington, is finally going home. Following bitter disputes, five Native American groups in the Pacific Northwest have come together to facilitate the reburial of an individual they know as “Ancient One.” One of the most complete prehistoric human skeletons discovered in North America, “Kennewick Man” also became the most controversial.

Two teenagers searching out a better view of a Columbia River speedboat race in 1996 were the first to spot Kennewick Man’s remains. Since then, the bones have mostly been stored away from public view, carefully preserved in museum storerooms while subject to hotly contested legal battles.

Some anthropologists were eager to scientifically test the bones hoping for clues about who the first Americans were and where they came from. But many Native Americans hesitated to support this scientific scrutiny (including tests which permanently destroy or damage the original bone), arguing it was disrespectful to their ancient ancestor. They wanted him laid to rest.

This high-profile discovery served as an important, if maddening, test case for a significant new law, the Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act (NAGPRA). It aimed to address the problematic history behind museum human remains collections. First it mandated inventories – many museums, in fact, were unaware how large their skeletal collections really were. Then, in certain cases, it called for returning skeletons and mummies to their closest descendant group. Since NAGPRA passed in 1990, the National Park Service estimates over 50,000 sets of human remains have been repatriated in the United States.

The legal framework fits well in cases where ancestry could be determined – think remains found on a specific 19th-century battlefield – but other instances became more contentious. Scientists sometimes argued that very old remains, including Kennewick Man, represented earlier migrations into the Americas by groups who might have moved on long ago. This point of view often clashed with indigenous perspectives, particularly beliefs that their ancestors have lived in specific places since the dawn of time.

Drawn against this complex background, it’s no wonder it’s taken almost two decades to bring the Kennewick Man story into better focus.

Long history of scientizing some human remains

Museums in the U.S. and Europe have collected and studied human remains for well over a century, with the practice gaining considerable momentum after the Civil War. Archaeologists, anatomists and a mishmash of amateurs – influenced by an array of emergent sciences and pseudosciences – gathered bones by the thousands, shipping them in boxes to museums in an effort to systematically study race and, gradually, human prehistory.

Museum “bone rooms,” organized to collect and study human remains, helped facilitate new scientific work in the late 19th and early 20th century. The skeletons provided better data about diseases and migration, as well as information about historic diet, with potential impact for living populations.

But building museum bone collections also represented major breaches in ethics surrounding traditional death and burial practices for many indigenous people across the Americas and around the world. For them, data gathering was simply not a priority. Instead, they sought to return their ancestors to the earth.

Considered in context, the concerns raised by many Native Americans are not particularly difficult to comprehend. For example, doing archival research for my book “Bone Rooms,” I learned of the case of several naturally mummified bodies discovered in the American Southwest in the 1870s. The dried corpses were paraded around San Francisco, before being exhibited for the public in Philadelphia and Chicago. Once the immense popularity of the exhibitions died down, the bodies were distributed to several museums across the country where they were put into storage.

Presenting human remains as purely scientific specimens and historical curiosities hurt living descendants by treating entire populations as scientific resources rather than human beings. And by focusing mainly on nonwhite groups, the practice reinforced in subtle and direct ways the scientific racism permeating the era. While some European American skeletons were collected by these museums for comparative purposes, their number was vastly outpaced by the number of Native American bodies collected during this same period.

Anthropologists and other scientists have worked to address some of these negative legacies. But the vestiges of past wrongdoings have left their mark on many museums across the country. Returning ancestral human remains, sacred artifacts and special objects considered to hold collective cultural value attempts to serve as partial redress for these problematic histories.

Kennewick Man’s odyssey

Inaccurate initial media reports muddled the Kennewick Man story. After the first anthropologist who looked at the skull proclaimed a resemblance to European Americans (specifically the actor Patrick Stewart), a New York Times headline in 1998 announced, “Old Skull Gets White Looks, Stirring Dispute.” Indeed, as the paper commented, the bogus reports leading people to believe Kennewick Man might be a white person “heightened an already bitter and muddled battle over the rights to Kennewick Man’s remains and his origins.”

Hidden away from public view, the prehistoric remains were anything but forgotten. Many indigenous people came to view Kennewick Man as a symbol for the failings of the new NAGPRA law.

Some scientists, on the other hand, made impassioned arguments that the bones did not fall under the purview of the new rules. Their extreme age meant the remains were unlikely to be a direct ancestor of any living group. Following this logic, several influential scientists argued the bones should therefore be available for scientific study. Indeed, extensive scientific tests were carried out on the skeleton.

Two years after his discovery, Kennewick Man moved to the behind-the-scenes bone rooms at the Burke Museum on the campus of the University of Washington in Seattle. The long tradition of gathering and interpreting human bones in museums made the decision seem almost natural. Still, it proved a highly problematic (and temporary) “solution” for many Native Americans who wanted the remains buried.

Last year, genetic testing finally proved something many people had suggested for some time: Kennewick Man is more closely related to Native Americans than any other living human group.

Reconciling scientific curiosity with scientific ethics

Should human remains – including the rare, ancient or abnormal bodies sometimes considered especially valuable for science – ever be made into scientific specimens without their approval or that of their descendants? If we do choose to collect and study them for science, who controls the knowledge drawn from these bodies?

These are big questions. I argue that the effort to scientize the dead brings about distinct and specific responsibilities unique to human remains collections. Careful consideration is necessary. Cultural and historical context simply cannot be ignored.

By some estimates, museums today house more than half a millionindividual Native American remains. Probably hundreds if not thousands of sets of skeletal remains will face these big questions in the coming decades.

Indicative of changing attitudes and ethical approaches to museum exhibition, recent calls to display Kennewick Man’s remains have largely been rebuked, despite potential for engaging large audiences. The prospect for new knowledge or effective popular education is tantalizing, but these objectives should never eclipse basic human and civil rights.

Two-and-a-half decades after NAGPRA, museums in the United States – including the American Museum of Natural History, Smithsonian Institution and the Cleveland Museum of Natural History – join the Burke Museum in continuing to maintain sizable human remains collections. Kennewick Man may be among the most high-profile cases of human remains going under the microscope – both in terms of the scientific study he was subject to and the intensity of the debate surrounding him – but he is certainly far from alone.

Skeletons wait patiently while the living attempt to work these problems out, but this patience is granted only because the bones have no other choice.
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Reference:

2016. “Kennewick Man will be reburied, but quandaries around human remains won’t”. The Conversation. Posted: May 19, 2016. Available online: https://theconversation.com/kennewick-man-will-be-reburied-but-quandaries-around-human-remains-wont-59219

What really happened on Easter Island?

Hundreds of iconic moai statues stand testament to the vibrant civilization that once inhabited Easter Island, but there are far fewer clues about why this civilization mysteriously vanished. Did they shortsightedly exhaust the island's resources? Were they decimated by European illnesses and slave trade? Or did stow-away rats devastate the native ecosystem? Such theories have spread widely, but recent evidence shows that the truth is not as simple as any one of these alone.

"These different interpretations may be complementary, rather than incompatible," said Dr. Valentí Rull. "In the last decade, there's been a burst in new studies, including additional research sites and novel techniques, which demand that we reconsider the climatic, ecological and cultural developments that occurred." Rull is a senior researcher of the Spanish National Research Council in Barcelona, Spain, and the lead author of an overview on the holistic reassessment of Easter Island history.

Until recently, the evidence has been limited. Prior sedimentary samples--commonly used as historical records of environmental change--were incomplete, with gaps and inconsistencies in the timeline. Furthermore, past interpretations relied heavily on pollen alone, without incorporating more faithful indicators of climate change. Due to this uncertainty, many fundamental questions remain, not only about why the culture disappeared, but also precisely when these events occurred and how this civilization developed in the first place.

Using the latest analytical methods, Rull and his collaborators are beginning to shed light on many of these questions. Complete sedimentary samples now show a continuous record of the last 3000 years, showing how droughts and wet seasons may have influenced the island's population. Sea travel depended on such weather patterns, resulting in periods of cultural exchange or isolation. Rainfall also impacted native palm forests, with droughts potentially contributing to the island's eventual deforestation. Radiocarbon dating and DNA analysis of artifacts and human remains are also showing where the inhabitants lived on the island, what they farmed and ate, and the influence of cultures beyond their Polynesian ancestors.

"These findings challenge classical collapse theories and the new picture shows a long and gradual process due to both ecological and cultural changes. In particular, the evidence suggests that there was not an island-wide abrupt ecological and cultural collapse before the European arrival in 1722," said Rull.

There is much work yet to be done before this mystery is solved, but it is clear that neither environmental nor human activities are solely responsible for the events on Easter Island. Only a combined approach that encompasses climate, ecology, and culture will fully explain how this ancient civilization went extinct.

The article is published in the open-access journal Frontiers in Ecology and Evolution.
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Reference:

EurekAlert. 2016. “What really happened on Easter Island?”. EurekAlert. Posted: April 7, 2016. Available online: http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2016-04/f-wrh040716.php

Hidden King Tut Chambers? Not So Fast, Officials Caution

Egypt's new antiquities minister, Khaled El Anany, sounded caution this morning at a press conference in Luxor over the claim that Tutankhamun's tomb holds two hidden chambers.

Egyptologist Nicholas Reeves, of the Amarna Royal Tombs Project, had proposed that two hidden chambers were lurking in the tomb of Tutankhamun and that the hidden rooms may hold the tomb of Queen Nefertiti, the stepmom of King Tutankhamun.

Radar scans conducted last year by Japanese radar technologist Hirokatsu Watanabe supposedly supported this idea. On March 17, Egypt's ministry of antiquities, led at the time by Mamdouh ‪El-Damaty, stated that Watanabe's scans "suggest the presence of two empty spaces or cavities beyond the decorated north and west walls of the burial chamber," as well as the "presence of metallic and organic substances."

The radar scans also showed what could be door lintels that indicate the presence of doorways, the antiquities minster said at the time in a statement to media.

However, radar experts not affiliated with the project disputed the results of those scans. These experts noted that the sediment layers at the Valley of the Kings, where King Tut's tomb is located, contain natural voids and rock inclusions that make it difficult for radar to distinguish between archaeological remains and natural phenomena.

Over the past two weeks, the antiquities minister at the time, ‪El-Damaty, along with Egypt's minister of

However, radar experts not affiliated with the project disputed the results of those scans. These experts noted that the sediment layers at the Valley of the Kings, where King Tut's tomb is located, contain natural voids and rock inclusions that make it difficult for radar to distinguish between archaeological remains and natural phenomena.

Over the past two weeks, the antiquities minister at the time, ‪El-Damaty, along with Egypt's minister of tourism, Hisham Zazou, were replaced in a cabinet shuffle. Yesterday, a team supported by the National Geographic Society conducted new radar scans. Those scans are being processed and analyzed; however, the new antiquities minister — El Anany — sounded a note of caution at today's press conference.

"We are not looking for hidden chambers but for the reality of the truth," El-Anany said. "We are very keen to follow the scientific procedures," he said, adding that more radar work would be performed in late April, followed by an international conference in May in which experts would review the results. Egypt's former antiquities minister, El-Damaty, was also at today's press conference and said that while the two cavities could exist, "we have to be sure 100 percent."

Even so, the Egypt's antiquities ministry said in a statement that "the preliminary results [of yesterday's scans] reached so far do not contradict with the results of the previous radar scans."

Reeves also said that the two cavities, possibly holding a tomb, could still exist.

No new radar images were released to media.

Third set of scans

For the next scan, scheduled for the end of April, another team of scientists will use a different radar-scanning method on King Tut's tomb. In the previous two scans, scientists tried to peer behind the walls of the Tutankhamun burial chamber. The new scans will take place in the hills above Tutankhamun's tomb, using radar equipment that can peer 40 meters (130 feet) below the ground to see if hidden chambers exist.

The international conference to review the results will be held in the Grand Egyptian Museum in Cairo, El Anany said. There, experts will discuss whether the two chambers exist, and if so, what could be in them and what would be the best way to access them. Scientists will not use any methods that could damage the artwork in Tutankhamun's tomb,
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Reference:

Jarus, Owen. 2016. “Hidden King Tut Chambers? Not So Fast, Officials Caution”. Live Science. Posted: April 1, 2016. Available online: http://www.livescience.com/54263-hidden-king-tut-chambers-may-not-exist.html

Ancient burial ground discovered at the Plain of Jars

Researchers are a step closer to unravelling one of the great prehistoric puzzles of South East Asia, after discovering an ancient burial ground, including human remains, at the Plain of Jars in central Laos.

The discoveries were made during excavations conducted in February 2016 and led by a team of Australian and Lao researchers including Dr Louise Shewan from the Monash Warwick Alliance and Centre for Archaeology and Ancient History, Dr Dougald O'Reilly from the Australian National University and Dr Thonglith Luangkhoth of the Lao Ministry of Information, Culture and Tourism.

The field work is part of a five-year project, funded by the Australian Research Council, aimed at uncovering the mysteries surrounding the 90-plus jar sites, including who made the jars, what they were used for and how the sites came into existence.

The sites, located in the central Lao province of Xieng Khouang, comprise large carved stone jars of varying sizes – some as big as two metres in diameter and three metres high. Initially brought to the attention of science by French researcher Madeleine Colani in the 1930s, the sites have remained largely unstudied due to the huge quantity of unexploded bombs in the area - the result of heavy bombing during the 'Secret War' in Laos in the 1970s.

The recent excavations – the first major excavations in nearly two decades - uncovered an ancient burial ground in an area known as 'Site 1', and revealed various burial methods including the internment of whole bodies, the burying of bundled bones and bundled bones placed inside ceramic vessels and then buried.

Dr Shewan, who is analysing teeth found at the burial ground, says the project has the potential to ascertain who these people were and where they lived.

"My research involves the measurement of strontium isotopes in human dental enamel to shed light on the home environment of the individual," Dr Shewan says. "Teeth mineralise at different ages, so by analsying different teeth we are able to ascertain where an individual lived during their childhood."

The results of the project will be showcased in the CAVE2 facility with support from the Monash Immersive Visualisation Platform.

"To visualise all our research findings, including excavation data, remote sensing data and drone imagery in the CAVE2 environment is going to greatly assist our analysis and interpretation and provides a unique opportunity to conduct 'virtual fieldwork' in areas that are inaccessible by foot. From the drone imagery we may also be able to identify potential occupation areas. At present there are no known occupation sites. No one knows where these people lived," Dr Shewan said.
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Reference:

Phys.org. 2016. “Ancient burial ground discovered at the Plain of Jars”. Phys.org. Posted: March 24, 2016. Available online: http://phys.org/news/2016-03-ancient-burial-ground-plain-jars.html

Uncovering the mystery of very early humans in New Mexico

Shaggy, heavy-shouldered bison have grazed the wide open spaces of the American Southwest for thousands of years. They made a tempting target for the hunters who walked the empty landscape between 9,000 and 13,000 years ago. The bison were attracted to a lush landscape west of Socorro, New Mexico where wetlands created by mountain runoff stretched across hundreds of acres. The hunters were attracted to the bison.

In 2000, archeologist Robert Dello-Russo was hired by the Energetic Materials Research and Testing Center (EMERTC) at the New Mexico Institute of Mining and Technology to survey land where they wanted to build a new observation facility for their explosives research. He contracted to look for archeological sites on the state-owned land, and found much more than anyone expected. "We found the Water Canyon Paleo-Indian site and a lot of other early Holocene sites because we were right at the edge of this big alluvial fan so there were other sites eroding out and basically, we said well if you are going to build this, you are going to have to move it some place that is not littered with archeological sites," said Dello-Russo.

EMRTC is internationally famous for the quality of its research and a welcoming spirit that brought the television show Myth Busters back repeatedly to blow up all sorts of things. The EMRTC scientists didn't realize an obscure part of their 14-square-mile field laboratory was a major archeological site.

In the years since he discovered the site at Water Canyon Dello-Russo and his colleagues have returned to the site repeatedly to explore the scope of the ancient wetlands, finding more and more evidence that the best documented earliest humans, known as Paleo-Indians on the North American continent hunted here. EMERTC has helped wherever possible, supplying water, lending a backhoe for a major excavation and generously allowing the access Dello-Russo needed.

He is now the director of the Office of Contract Archeology at the University of New Mexico. OCA operates as a division of the Maxwell Museum of Anthropology at UNM and functions as a team of professional archaeologists that can be hired to do research.

Students and OCA staff work under contract to various state and federal agencies and with private companies in need of surveys and reports on archeological sites. The work ranges from excavating artifacts to helping the U.S. National Park Service build their history exhibits to assisting pipeline companies find routes that won't damage historical treasures. Depending on the ebb and flow of contracts, Dello-Russo hires dozens of students to work in the field and in the laboratory.

At Water Canyon Dello-Russo and his collaborators have found spear and/or atlatl (throwing stick) points from the Clovis people, who hunted here more than 13,000 years ago, from the Folsom people who hunted here more than 12,000 years ago, from the Cody Complex hunters who butchered bison and left the bones around 10,800 years ago, and from the late Paleo-Indian people who hunted across this landscape around 9,200 years ago, and also left bones from butchered bison. Dello-Russo and his collaborators have also found gypsum points from the Middle to Late Archaic people.

They don't yet know precisely how many generations of hunters found prey at this spot. As a historical comparison, the Paleo-Indian hunters roamed the landscape between 12,000 and 8,000 years before the Ancestral Native Americans built Chaco Canyon, another famous archeological site in the state. It's still a mystery whether the hunters stayed for some time at Water Canyon, or whether they killed and ate bison and moved on, although current evidence suggests the later.

Blackwater Draw or the Clovis Site, in eastern New Mexico is the first site in the state where it could be documented that generations of Paleo-Indian hunters successfully hunted and killed their prey at one place on the landscape, and then returned to the place again and again. Water Canyon, west of Socorro appears to be the second.

One possibility this particular archaeological site may offer is the opportunity to understand how bison evolved. "There is this evolutionary trajectory from the late Pleistocene where bison go from being Bison antiques, which is a species that was 10 to 20 percent larger than modern day bison, to the Holocene when they became the smaller, modern bison or Bison bison," said Dello-Russo.

The bones from the two known bison bone beds at the site are different ages and potentially different sizes. Dello-Russo says they still have to answer the question about whether they are seeing different species of bison or whether they are seeing differences in gender or age in the bison remains. It's the kind of puzzle that fascinates archaeologists, and students in the University of New Mexico Anthropology Department will hopefully have the opportunity to help put the pieces together.

Last summer Dello-Russo conducted a field school for undergraduate archaeology students at the site. The students learned how to document and catalog what they excavated, and heard from visiting experts about a wide range of related topics, including the finer points of how to trace the stone in tools found at Water Canyon back to a prehistoric stone quarry from which it came. Dello-Russo is searching now for graduate students to take back to Water Canyon to learn more about those quarries.

Preserved prehistoric vegetation as an archeological treasure

Dello-Russo also found something at the Water Canyon site called a "black mat" – a buried, but intact layer of sediment with a high degree of organic matter that represents the remains of the prehistoric wetland. It includes decomposed plants, pollen, snails and other wetland related materials.

Over the centuries, the landscape became dryer and sediment slowly covered the former wetlands. The scope of the black mat wasn't immediately obvious, but it is clear now that it covers hundreds of acres.

The black mat tells the story of the landscape and the climate that brought the bison to this spot. "Today this land is what's called a juniper savannah. A very dry grassland. It gets about 8 inches of rain a year, maybe," Dello-Russo said. "Back then they probably got triple that amount of moisture. There was probably standing water in some places, flowing in other places. The vegetation included things that we don't have there today, such as versions of maple trees and birch, cherry. We used to think it was like a forest of actual trees, but we are beginning to think it was a more shrub-like environment."
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Reference:

Wentworth, Karen. 2016. “Uncovering the mystery of very early humans in New Mexico”. Phys.org. Posted: March 18, 2016. Available online: http://phys.org/news/2016-03-uncovering-mystery-early-humans-mexico.html

Why Did Ancient Europeans Just Disappear 14,500 Years Ago?

Some of Europe's earliest inhabitants mysteriously vanished toward the end of the last ice age and were largely replaced by others, a new genetic analysis finds.

The finds come from an analysis of dozens of ancient fossil remains collected across Europe.

The genetic turnover was likely the result of a rapidly changing climate, which the earlier inhabitants of Europe couldn't adapt to quickly enough, said the study's co-author, Cosimo Posth, an archaeogenetics doctoral candidate at the University of Tübingen in Germany.

The temperature change around that time was "enormous compared to the climactic changes that are happening in our century," Posth told Live Science. "You have to imagine that also the environment changed pretty drastically."

A twisted family tree

Europe has a long and tangled genetic legacy. Genetic studies have revealed that the first modern humans who poured out of Africa, somewhere between 40,000 and 70,000 years ago, soon got busy mating with local Neanderthals. At the beginning of the agricultural revolution, between 10,000 and 12,000 years ago, farmers from the Middle East swept across Europe, gradually replacing the native hunter-gatherers. Around 5,000 years ago, nomadic horsemen called the Yamnaya emerged from the steppes of Ukraine and intermingled with the native population. In addition, another lost group of ancient Europeans mysteriously vanished about 4,500 years ago, a 2013 study in the journal Nature Communications found.

But relatively little was known about human occupation of Europe between the first out-of-Africa event and the end of the last ice age, around 11,000 years ago. During some of that time, the vast Weichselian Ice Sheet covered much of northern Europe, while glaciers in the Pyrenees and the Alps blocked east-west passage across the continent.

Lost lineages

To get a better picture of Europe's genetic legacy during this cold snap, Posth and his colleagues analyzed mitochondrial DNA — genetic material passed on from mother to daughter — from the remains of 55 different human fossils between 35,000 and 7,000 years old, coming from across the continent, from Spain to Russia. Based on mutations, or changes in this mitochondrial DNA, geneticists have identified large genetic populations, or super-haplogroups, that share distant common ancestors.

"Basically all modern humans outside of Africa, from Europe to the tip of South America, they belong to these two super-haplogroups that are M or N," Posth said. Nowadays, everyone of European descent has the N mitochondrial haplotype, while the M subtype is common throughout Asia and Australasia.

The team found that in ancient people, the M haplogroup predominated until about 14,500 years ago, when it mysteriously and suddenly vanished. The M haplotype carried by the ancient Europeans, which no longer exists in Europe today, shared a common ancestor with modern-day M-haplotype carriers around 50,000 years ago.

The genetic analysis also revealed that Europeans, Asians and Australasians may descend from a group of humans who emerged from Africa and rapidly dispersed throughout the continent no earlier than 55,000 years ago, the researchers reported Feb. 4 in the  journal Current Biology.

Time of upheaval

The team suspects this upheaval may have been caused by wild climate swings.

At the peak of the ice age, around 19,000 to 22,000 years ago, people hunkered down in climactic "refugia," or ice-free regions of Europe, such as modern-day Spain, the Balkans and southern Italy, Posth said. While holdouts survived in a few places farther north, their populations shrank dramatically.

Then around 14,500 years ago, the temperature spiked significantly, the tundra gave way to forest and many iconic beasts, such as woolly mammoths and saber-toothed tigers, disappeared from Eurasia, he said.

For whatever reason, the already small populations belonging to the M haplogroup were not able to survive these changes in their habitat, and a new population, carrying the N subtype, replaced the M-group ice-age holdout, the researchers speculate.

Exactly where these replacements came from is still a mystery. But one possibility is that the newer generation of Europeans hailed from southern European refugia that were connected to the rest of Europe once the ice receded, Posth speculated. Emigrants from southern Europe would also have been better adapted to the warming conditions in central Europe, he added.
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Reference:

Ghose, Tia. 2016. “Why Did Ancient Europeans Just Disappear 14,500 Years Ago?”. Live Science. Posted: March 1, 2016. Available online: http://www.livescience.com/53883-ancient-europeans-vanished-after-ice-age.html

Did This Extinct Human Species Commit Homicide?

“Fossil First: Ancient Human Relative May Have Buried Its Dead” (Reuters). “Why Did Homo naledi Bury Its Dead?” (NOVA Next). These are just two of the many hyped headlines that appeared last September in response to a paper purporting the discovery, in a cave in South Africa, of a new species by paleoanthropologist Lee R. Berger of the University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg. There were reasons for skepticism from the get-go.

The age of the fossils is undetermined, and it is not yet known where in the hominin lineage the fossils fit. Their hands, wrists and feet are similar to small modern humans, and their brain volume is closer to that of the small-brained australopithecines, like Lucy. Researchers are debating whether these and other traits constitute a new species or a variation on an existing species. Instead of publishing in Science orNature, the prestigious journals in which major new fossil human finds are typically announced, the authors unveiled their discovery in eLIFE (elifesciences.org/content/4/e09561), an open-access online journal that fast-tracks the peer-review process. And instead of meticulously sorting through the 1,550 fossils (belonging to at least 15 individuals) for many years, as is common in paleoanthropology, the analysis was published a mere year and a half after their discovery in November 2013 and March 2014.

What triggered my skepticism, however, was the scientists' conjecture that the site represents an example of “deliberate body disposal,” which, as the media read between the lines, implies an intentional burial procedure. This, they concluded was the likeliest explanation compared with four other hypotheses.

Occupation. There is no debris in the chamber, which is so dark that habitation would have required artificial light, for which there is no evidence, and the cave is nearly inaccessible and appears never to have had easy access. Water transport. Caves that have been inundated show sedimentological layers of coarse-grained material, which is lacking in the Dinaledi Chamber, where the specimens were uncovered.Predators. There are no signs of predation on the skeletal remains and no fossils from predators. Death trap. The sedimentary remains indicate that the fossils were deposited over a span of time, so that rules out a single calamitous event, and the near unreachability of the chamber makes attritional individual entry and death unlikely.

Finally, the ages of the 13 individuals so identified—three infants, three young juveniles, one old juvenile, one subadult, four young adults and one old adult—are unlike those of other cave deposits for which cause of death and deposition have been determined. It's a riddle, wrapped in sediment, inside a grotto.

While the authors had given it consideration, I believe they are downplaying an all too common cause of death in our ancestors—homicide in the form of war, murder or sacrifice. Lawrence H. Keeley, inWar Before Civilization (1996), and Steven A. LeBlanc, in Constant Battles (2003), review hundreds of archaeological studies showing that significant percentages of ancestral people died violently. In his 2011 book The Better Angels of Our Nature, Steven Pinker aggregates a data set of 21 archaeological sites to show a violent death rate of about 15 percent. In a 2013 paper in the journal Science, Douglas P. Fry and Patrik Söderberg dispute the theory that war was prevalent in ancient humans by claiming that of the 148 episodes of violence in 21 mobile foraging bands, more than half “were perpetrated by lone individuals, and almost two-thirds resulted from accidents, interfamilial disputes, within-group executions, or interpersonal motives such as competition over a particular woman.”

Whatever you call it—war or murder—it is violent death nonetheless, and further examination of the Homo naledi fossils should again consider violence (war or murder for the adults, sacrifice for the juveniles) as a plausible cause of death and deposition in the cave. Recall that after 5,000-year-old Ötzi the Iceman was discovered in a melting glacier in the Ötztal Alps in the Tyrol in 1991, it took a decade before archaeologists determined that he died violently, after he killed at least two other people in what appears to have been a clash between hunting parties. It's a side of our nature we are reluctant to admit, but consider it we must when confronted with dead bodies in dark places.
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Reference:

Shermer, Michael. 2016. “Did This Extinct Human Species Commit Homicide?”. Scientific American Magazine. Posted: January 1, 2016. Available online: http://www.scientificamerican.com/article/did-this-extinct-human-species-commit-homicide1/

Archaeologists aim to unravel the mystery of the Rhynie Man

When a farmer ploughing an Aberdeenshire field in 1978 uncovered a six-foot high Pictish stone carved with a distinctive figure carrying an axe, it quickly earned the name the 'Rhynie Man', coined from the village in which it was found.

But in the decades since its discovery, little more is known about the Pictish figure, who he was or why he was created. Now a team of archaeologists from the University of Aberdeen are leading a dig which they hope will yield answers to the mystery of Aberdeenshire’s ‘oldest man’.

Believed to date from the fifth or sixth century, the Rhynie Man carries an axe upon his shoulder, has a large pointed nose and wears a headdress.

Dr Gordon Noble, a Senior Lecturer in archaeology at the University of Aberdeen, said their excavations would focus on the area around where the Rhynie Man was first found by local farmer Kevin Alston at Barflat and around the Craw Stane, another Pictish standing stone.

He said: “We did significant work at Rhynie in 2011/12 and identified that the area was a high-status and possibly even royal Pictish site.

“We found many long distance connections such as pottery from the Mediterranean, glass from France and Anglo-Saxon metal work with evidence to suggest that intricate metalwork was produced on site.

“Over the years many theories have been put forward about the Rhynie Man. However, we don’t have a huge amount of archaeology to back any of these up so we want to explore the area in which he was found in much greater detail to yield clues about how and why he was created, and what the carved imagery might mean.”

Excavations will continue throughout the week and on Saturday August 22 and 29 the archaeology team will take part in public open days showcasing previous finds at Rhynie and some of their initial thoughts on the current dig.

Dr Noble added: “From the evidence we have already, it looks like the Rhynie man stood somewhere near the entrance to the fort.

“We want to try and identify exactly where he was standing as this will give us a better idea how he fits into the high status site and what his role may have been.

“The Rhynie Man carries an axe of a form that has been linked to animal sacrifice and we hope to discover more evidence that might support the theory that he was created as part of ceremonies and rituals for high-status events, perhaps even those for early Pictish royal lineages.

“This may also help us to better understand the imagery used and why the Rhynie Man is depicted in this way. Standing at more than six-feet high the stone must have been an impressive sight to anyone coming to Rhynie some 1500 years ago.” Aberdeenshire Council Archaeologist, Bruce Mann, said: “The ongoing work is not only helping us to reveal more about this little understood period of history, but is proving to be a fantastic opportunity for people to actively learn about part of the rich history of Aberdeenshire.

“One day we will understand not only ‘who’ the Rhynie Man was, but also what part the Picts played in the early development of the village. It’s a very exciting time for the community, and I hope everyone enjoys visiting both the dig and the local area.” To help the public understand more about the Rhynie Man and Rhynie’s Pictish standing stones, the open day on Saturday August 22 will also feature stone carving with Monikie Rock Art, a Pictish pop-up café with ‘Rhynie Woman’, an artist collective that aims to raise awareness of the local landscape. On Saturday August 29, there will be a further open day to showcase what has been found in 2015 with site tours, activities on site for children and the Pictish café with Rhynie Woman will run once again.

Both days will run from 10-5pm. Visitors can park in the village and walk up to the Craw Stane field on the south of the village. Or they can park in the churchyard and walk up from there. 
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Reference:

University of Aberdeen News. 2015. “Archaeologists aim to unravel the mystery of the Rhynie Man”. University of Aberdeen News. Posted: August 20, 2015. Available online: http://www.abdn.ac.uk/news/8083/

Was Sardinia home to the mythical civilisation of Atlantis?

A comet plunging into the sea could have triggered a tidal wave that devastated bronze age settlements on the island, say scientists

Homer talks of Poseidon lashing out, Plato refers to a massive marine disaster. What happened on Sardinia in the second millennium BC? What dramatic event swept away the Tyrrhenian civilisation and the “tower builders” cited by Strabo and the poet Hesiod in antiquity? Was it an earthquake or a tidal wave? A comet? Was it punishment meted out by Zeus, as Plato suggests in Critias, acting pitilessly to improve the behaviour of these people who had been spoiled by living in a land where it was always spring? Certainly they occupied a beautiful, fertile island, endowed with all sorts of metal, both hard and malleable, such as zinc, lead and silver.

Writer and journalist Sergio Frau, one of the founders of Italian daily La Repubblica, has been investigating the subject for more than 10 years, drawing on the texts of the ancients. A dozen or so Italian scientists joined him when he visited Sardinia in early June. They included historian Mario Lombardo; archaeologist Maria Teresa Giannotta; Claudio Giardino, a specialist in ancient metallurgy; cartographer Andrea Cantile; archivist Massimo Faraglia; and Stefano Tinti, a geophysicist and expert on tidal waves.

The aim was to air hypotheses just before an exhibition entitled Big Wave: The Mythical Island of Sardinia opened at the museum in Sardara. Le Monde followed them through the fragrant brush, heavy with the smell of myrtle, artemisia, rock rose and rosemary, seeking out the shade of twisted old olive trees and cork oaks, climbing to hilltop where the remains of ancient megalithic edifices found in Sardinia lie hidden.

Sardinia might be Plato’s island of Atlas, or in other words Atlantis, which the Greek philosopher placed beyond the pillars of Hercules, the strait between Sicily and Tunisia. Herodotus and Aristotle shared this view, which contradicts the idea that the term refers to the strait of Gibraltar, as was commonly supposed from the third century BC onwards. Frau, too, holds this conviction. Seen from the air the southern end of the island resembles “a marine Pompeii submerged by mud”, he says. Digging into this mud turns up ceramics, cups, pots, oil lamps, sharpening stones, metal implements, knives, chisels, needles and arrow tips, all mixed up, as if the people had been forced to drop everything and run. These remarkable archaeological finds attracted very little attention until the mid-20th century. For good reason, though. For about 3,000 years the island seemed to be under a curse, a prey to malaria until 1946-50 when the Rockefeller Foundation experimented with the use of DDT for eradicating the mosquitoes that carried the disease. We now know that thousands of nuraghi – megalithic fortresses with a central tower – are scattered all over the island. They date from the middle of the bronze age, between the 16th and 12th century BC. In Medio Campidano province, in the south, they have vanished under piles of earth covered in vegetation. Only the ones on high ground, over 500 metres, have been spared. In the past 20 years the number of registered structures has risen from 9,000 to 20,000.

There are 20 structures of this kind on the basalt plateau of Giara, the core of a volcano that now rises to about 600 metres above sea level, extending over 42 sq km. It is home to small wild horses with long manes. The towers seem to stand guard over the plain below. “In the mid-bronze age the plateau was used for winter pasture,” says Francesco Casu, a local guide. “Each tower belonged to a clan which owned the surrounding fields.” In the lowlands the nuraghi resemble pyramid-shaped hillocks. The most complex example is Su Nuraxi, at Barumini. Archaeologist Giovanni Lilliu uncovered this massive building in 1950. Some time before his death, aged 98, in 2012, he explained to Frau how he had been intrigued by a cavity everyone called the well, set on a small hump of earth and pebbles. But no one had the faintest inkling such a treasure was hidden inside.

The Barumini site, which was added to the Unesco world heritage list in 1997, is a spectacular achievement. To reach the central fortress we pass through a labyrinth of circular walls, corresponding to the houses of a later hamlet. The most striking feature is the way the huge basalt blocks forming the central tower fit together. The tower is conical, with a floor of polished pebbles, and covered by a Mycenaean-style dome. It dates from the 16th century BC – according to the fossilised olive branches found inside. Four turrets, dating from the 12th century BC, surround the main tower. They are connected by underground passages, testimony to the skill of its architects. A storage cavity keeps food at a constant temperature of 12C all year round.

Were these towers built as defence against some enemy, to house local lords, or indeed for signalling?

Some historians suggest that messages passed from one nuraghe to the next may have served to broadcast news of the fall of Troy. If you can see one, you can generally spot four or five others. But as there is nothing in writing, their original function remains a mystery. All we know is that when they were reused, during the iron age (circa 10th century BC), it was for worshipping the moon. Further research has focused on Su Mulinu, near Villanovafranca, 50km north of Cagliari, as part of the Great Tyrrhenian Itinerary, a Franco-Italian heritage trail. A dig has uncovered a large bastion, on a clover-leaf plan, dating from 1400BC. It bears the visible scars of a fire, which occurred in about 1000. A limestone altar, itself shaped like a nuraghe, stands in the ninth-century-BC sanctuary. It is decorated with a crescent moon, a symbol of the mother goddess. From the sludge that covered the structure the archaeologists extracted gold, silver, amber and rock crystal jewellery, as well as hundreds of terracotta oil lamps thought to be offerings to the light of the sun, celebrated at the summer solstice until the second century. These finds are on view in a nearby museum.

The question remains as to what fearful catastrophe, circa 1175BC, plunged Sardinia into a “dark age”. Some islanders took refuge on high ground, others fled to Etruria (now central Italy). In his Life of Romulus, written in the second century, Plutarch maintains that the Etruscans had colonised Sardinia.

Along the coast of Italy Etruscan burial grounds have yielded up countless bronze figurines, Sardinian ex-votos featuring soldiers, with horned helmets and round shields, and models of nuraghi. If a tidal wave did occur, it might explain the large Campidano plain, which cuts across the southern part of the island from Cagliari to the Phoenician port of Tharros, on the west coast. In the Old Testament Ezekiel writes: “What city is like Tyrus, like the destroyed in the midst of the sea? […] In the time when thou shalt be broken by the seas in the depths of the waters […] All the inhabitants of the isles shall be astonished at thee …”

Frau quotes an inscription in the mortuary temple of Ramesses III (1184-1153BC) at Medinet Habu, Upper Egypt. It tells of how foreigners from the north saw the earthquake. Then the waters engulfed their land, the sea god Nun having stirred and sent a huge wave to swallow up towns and villages. The foreigners were probably Sardinian mercenaries employed by the pharaoh. So was this just a mythical event or a real disaster? The issue attracted a large number of local people in June, who crammed into the chapel of Santa Anastasia in Sardara, even spilling over into the street outside, to listen to the scientists. The conference was illustrated by plenty of photographs. After listening open-mouthed for two hours solid the audience broke into a storm of applause worthy of the first night of an opera.

Professor Tinti explained that until the 1980s no one was aware that tidal waves had occurred in the Mediterranean. But since 2004 scientists have identified 350 events of this type over a 2,500-year period. “The earthquake in Algeria in 2003, which killed 2,000 people, triggered a shockwave that reached the Balearics and Sardinia an hour later,” he said. “So what would have been required in our case?” he then asked. “We’re talking about a huge volume of water, some 500 metres high [the elevation up to which the nuraghi were affected]. Only a comet could do that, if the impact occurred very close to the coast and in a very specific direction,” he asserted. An event of this sort may have occurred near Cagliari, with the resulting wave devastating the plain of Campidano.

“One of the merits of the research carried out by Sergio Frau is to have shown that the nuraghe civilisation was one of the focal points of the ancient world, in terms of both geography and outlook,” says Azzedine Beschaouch, former head of the Unesco world heritage centre. “Now we need to give scientific, historical, cultural, political and emotional substance to a still mysterious past.”

“A falling comet strikes the sea at a speed of 20km a second,” Tinti adds. “It takes less than a second for the wave to propagate, with a four or fivefold increase in size.” He is convinced that his theory is right. It remains to be seen whether evidence of its impact can be found underwater, perhaps even fragments of the projectile.

To this day the people of Sardinia are wary of the coast. As the Sardinian singer Clara Murtas puts it: “The sea, we do not name it, we shun it.”
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Reference:

Evin, Florence. 2015. “Was Sardinia home to the mythical civilisation of Atlantis?”. The Guardian. Posted: August 15, 2015. Available online: http://www.theguardian.com/science/2015/aug/15/bronze-age-sardinia-archaeology-atlantis

New clues to the fate of America's Lost Colony

Archaeologists from the University of Bristol have uncovered artefacts that they believe may help solve the long-running mystery of the fate of the first English colonists in North America. Excavations on the Island of Hatteras (North Carolina) have discovered a number of artefacts, dated to late 16th century, which point to the possibility that the colonists assimilated into the local Native American tribe. It is hoped these early findings could solve one of America's greatest historical mysteries.

Between 1584 and 1587, a number of expeditions were sent out from England to establish the first English colony in the New World. Under the leadership of Sir Walter Raleigh, the new lands were christened Virginia, and a permanent colony was established in 1587, that included over a 100 men, women and children. An expedition to locate the colony on Roanoke Island in 1590 discovered the settlement, but found it abandoned. The only clue to their whereabouts were the initials CRO carved on a tree and CROATOAN carved on a wooden post.

With English settlement at Jamestown in 1607, there were reports that the colonists had moved inland, and some had been killed by the local Indians, but otherwise their fate remained unknown.

The University of Bristol's research, working with the local community archaeology society, has been focused on the island of Croatoan, now called Hatteras. Here a significant number of native American sites have been located, through the 16th and 17th centuries. At one particular location, a number of dated artefacts have been uncovered that point to both the presence and the survival of descendants of the Lost Colony into the mid-17th century. Some of these artefacts were found in late 16th century levels, and include German stoneware and copper ingots. One diagnostic find was a Nuremberg counter, of identical form to those found on Roanoke Island. Nearby in midden levels, were found a rapier handle, a writing lead pencil and a writing slate. Excavations in the 1990's at this same site discovered an Elizabethan gold ring and a snaphaunce (musket mechanism) of c. 1580-1600. These midden levels date to the mid-17th century, and suggest that some of these precious artefacts were curated over a period of time before being discarded.

Professor Mark Horton, Professor of Archaeology at the University of Bristol and the director of the excavations with the Croatoan Archaeological Society, said: "These are still just clues, we have no smoking-gun proof that the colonists survived into the 17th century, but the discovery of so many high-status objects in one place does suggest that possibility - the colonists moved into the local Native American community and became assimilated."

Scott Dawson, the president of the Croatoan Archaeological Society, which has been sponsoring the project, said: "We have always thought that the colonists survived on Hatteras Island, and it is very exciting that the archaeological evidence is now beginning to support this idea."

The excavation work will continue in 2016, and it is hoped that a full report on the finds and their detailed analysis will be published shortly after.
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Reference:

Phys.org. 2015. “New clues to the fate of America's Lost Colony”. Phys.org. Posted: August 13, 2015. Available online: http://phys.org/news/2015-08-clues-fate-america-lost-colony.html

Gruesome Find: 100 Bodies Stuffed into Ancient House

The remains of 97 human bodies have been found stuffed into a small 5,000-year-old house in a prehistoric village in northeast China, researchers report in two separate studies.

The bodies of juveniles, young adults and middle-age adults were packed together in the house — smaller than a modern-day squash court — before it burnt down. Anthropologists who studied the remains say a "prehistoric disaster," possibly an epidemic of some sort, killed these people.

The site, whose modern-day name is "Hamin Mangha," dates back to a time before writing was used in the area, when people lived in relatively small settlements, growing crops and hunting for food. The village contains the remains of pottery, grinding instruments, arrows and spearheads, providing information on their way of life.

"Hamin Mangha site is the largest and best-preserved prehistoric settlement site found to date in northeast China," a team of archaeologists wrote in a translated report published in the most recent edition of the journal Chinese Archaeology (the original report appeared in Chinese in the journal Kaogu). In one field season, between April and November 2011, the researchers found the foundations of 29 houses, most of which are simple one-room structures containing a hearth and doorway. The house with the bodies, dubbed "F40," was just 210 square feet (about 20 square meters). "On the floor, numerous human skeletons are disorderly scattered," the archaeologists wrote.

Photos taken by the archaeologists convey the prehistoric scene better than words do. "The skeletons in the northwest are relatively complete, while those in the east often [have] only skulls, with limb bones scarcely remaining," the archaeologists wrote. "But in the south, limb bones were discovered in a mess, forming two or three layers."

At some point the structure burnt down. The fire likely caused wooden beams of the roof to collapse, leaving parts of skulls and limb bones not only charred but also deformed in some way, the archaeologists wrote.  

The remains were never buried and were left behind for archaeologists to discover 5,000 years later.

What happened?

An anthropological team at Jilin University in China is studying the prehistoric remains, trying to determine what happened to these people. The team has published a second study, in Chinese, in the Jilin University Journal – Social Sciences edition, on their finds. (A brief English-language summary of their results is available on the American Association of Physical Anthropologists website.)

The Jilin team found that the people in that house died as the result of a "prehistoric disaster" that resulted in dead bodies being stuffed into the house.  

The dead came in faster than they could be buried. "The human bone accumulation in F40 was formed because ancient humans put remains into the house successively and stacked centrally," wrote team leaders Ya Wei Zhou and Hong Zhu in the study.

The team found that about half of the individuals were between 19 and 35 years of age. No remains of older adults were found.

The ages of the victims at Hamin Mangha are similar to those found in another prehistoric mass burial, which was previously unearthed in modern-day Miaozigou in northeast China, the researchers noted.

"This similarity may indicate that the cause of the Hamin Mangha site was similar to that of the Miaozigou sites. That is, they both possibly relate to an outbreak of an acute infectious disease," wrote Zhou and Zhu.

If it was a disease, it killed off people from all age groups quickly, leaving no time for survivors to properly bury the deceased. The scientists did not speculate as to what disease it may have been.

The excavation was carried out by researchers from the Inner Mongolian Institute of Cultural Relics and Archaeology and the Research Center for Chinese Frontier Archaeology of Jilin University.
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Reference:

Jarus, Owen. 2015. “Gruesome Find: 100 Bodies Stuffed into Ancient House”. Live Science. Posted: July 27, 2015. Available online: http://www.livescience.com/51662-100-bodies-found-prehistoric-house.html

Burned Bones in Alexander the Great Family Tomb Give Up Few Secrets

It's a mystery worthy of Sherlock Holmes, with a backstory that puts "Game of Thrones" to shame: Who was laid to rest in a lavish, gold-filled Macedonian tomb near Vergina, Greece? The tomb, discovered in 1977, might be the final resting place of Philip II of Macedon, conqueror of Greece and father of Alexander the Great, who would push his father's empire to the edge of India. 

Or, it might be the grave of the distinctly less impressive Philip III Arrhidaios (also written as Arrhidaeus), the half brother of, and figurehead successor to, Alexander the Great. 

The latest volley in the debate over which Philip occupies the tomb makes a case for the illustrious Philip II, arguing that the woman found interred alongside the much-debated male body was too old to have been the younger Philip's wife. But this new research seems unlikely to resolve the great Macedonian tomb mystery.

A complicated history

Archaeologists discovered the contentious tomb in 1977. Amid paintings and pottery was a gold sarcophagus containing a man's cremated bones. Nearby were the even-more-fragmentary burned bones of a woman. 

The tomb's discoverers declared the man was Philip II, who took the throne of Macedonia in 359 B.C. as regent for his infant nephew. Displaying the kind of initiative that defined the Macedonian royal family, Philip II quickly took the throne for himself and started conquering his neighbors. 

This went well until 336 B.C., when one of Philip II's bodyguards assassinated him as he walked into a theater in the Macedonian capital of Aegae. It's not entirely clear why the king was murdered; ancient historians told various tales, including one in which the murderer was a former male lover of Philip who had hounded another of Philip's male lovers to suicide and then was himself subjected to sexual assault by one of Philip's in-laws as revenge for that suicide. Some argued that Philip's fourth wife, Olympias, who was rumored by the historian Plutarch to sleep with snakes, had something to do with it. 

Regardless of whether Olympias was that diabolical, she certainly knew how to play politics — with bloody results. The queen moved quickly to put her own son, Alexander, on the throne. She arranged for Philip's two children by another wife, Cleopatra Eurydice, to be killed; Cleopatra Eurydice committed suicide by force soon after. Archaeologists who argue that the tomb at Vergina contains Philip II's bones have argued that the female remains found in the tomb belong to Cleopatra Eurydice.

But not everyone believed the bones matched those of Philip II. In 1981, a further examination of the remains led to claims that the body instead belonged to Philip III Arrhidaios. After Alexander the Great died in 323 B.C. (under mysterious circumstances, naturally), Philip III Arrhidaios took the throne as a figurehead, with his niece and wife Eurydice (not the same person as his father’s seventh wife) as queen. Ancient historians described Philip III Arrhidaios as mentally unfit. Plutarch blamed Olympias for the mental issues, claiming she'd tried to poison Arrhidaios as a child, but Plutarch clearly was not Olympias' biggest fan, and modern historians are skeptical. 

Eurydice, however, was a force to be reckoned with. Her attempts to grab real power put her on a collision course with Olympias and her allies. In 317 B.C., during a war over secession, Olympias' forces defeated the king and queen — Philip III Arrhidaios and Eurydice. He was executed, and she was forced to commit suicide. As if that weren't enough indignity, their bodies were dug up more than a year later and cremated for a royal funeral meant to shore up legitimacy for the next king.  

Archaeological arguments

Much of the debate around whether the tomb belongs to Philip II or Philip III Arrhidaios has focused on the burned bones. In the 1980s, Jonathan Musgrave, an anatomist at the University of Bristol in the United Kingdom, created a facial reconstruction of the skull and argued that a notch in the bone over one eye matched historical descriptions of one of Philip II's battle wounds. In 2000, Greek paleoanthropologist Antonis Bartsiokas published a paper in the journal Science arguing that the bone notch and other features Musgrave had highlighted were simply incidental to cremation. (Musgrave does not agree.) 

Another line of debate questions whether the bones show signs of warping, which occurs when flesh-covered bodies are cremated. If the bones of Philip III Arrhidaios were dug up and cremated months after the king's death, they might show less warping, or at least a different warping pattern compared with what would be found if the bones were cremated immediately. 

Much of this argument falls by the wayside in the new paper, recently accepted for publication by the International Journal of Osteoarchaeology. The researchers, led by Theodore Antikas of Aristotle University in Greece, conducted a five-year forensic study of the bones, including computed tomography (CT) scans. 

The researchers argue that the bones of the man and the woman were, in fact, cremated with the flesh still on; however, because Philip III Arrhidaios was not in the ground long enough to become completely skeletal before exhumation, this does little to distinguish the two men. 

The new study likewise fails to find any evidence of an eye wound in the male skull, though the researchers did find a healing wound in the hand that might match one of Philip II's battle injuries. The male body also had growths called Schmorl's nodes on his lower vertebrae, a telltale sign of bone stress from horseback riding. 

With no smoking guns to identify the male skeleton, the team turned to the female bones. Here, they argue, was a 30- to 34-year-old woman, also a horseback rider, who had a fractured leg bone that would have caused her left leg to be shorter than her right. Tellingly, a set of leg armor, or greaves, found in the tomb appears to be made to fit someone with a shortened left leg, Antikas wrote. This suggests the tomb artifacts, including a quiver holding 74 arrowheads, belonged to the woman buried in the tomb, pointing to her identity as a Scythian princess married to Philip II in 339 B.C. Scythia was a kingdom comprising what is now Central Asia and parts of Eastern Europe.

"The gorytus, arrowheads, spears and everything in the antechamber belong to a Scythian warrior woman and NOT to Philip or any other woman but the seventh wife/concubine, namely the daughter of King Ateas," Antikas wrote in an email to Live Science. (A gorytus is a case for bows and arrows.) Antikas declined to comment on other aspects of the study. If he’s right, however, the woman in the tomb is not the Macedonian Cleopatra Eurydice, but another, foreign bride of Philip II’s. 

Bone backlash

But the move toward identifying the tomb's occupants based on the female skeleton rather than the male one brings its own controversy. 

"Frankly, I am disappointed that the International Journal of Osteoarchaeology has published this article," said Maria Liston, an anthropologist at the University of Waterloo in Ontario who studiescremated remains in Greece. "I don't think it makes a substantive contribution to this debate, and it certainly does not refute the position of those who say the skeleton is not Philip II."

Among the problems with the new research, Liston said, is an overconfident approach to aging the skeletons. The researchers looked at the pubic symphysis, the cartilage-padded joint of the pubic bone, to peg the woman's age at between 30 and 34 years. But the method they used can't possibly determine age to that level of precision, Liston said. Rather, it can pinpoint the woman's age only to between 21 and 53 years old, she said. 

The researchers also found that the sternal end of the clavicle, the end near the breastbone, was fused. But that fusion blows their case out of the water, Liston said, because the bones begin to fuse by 19 or 20 years old and are usually done fusing within a few years, and are always fused entirely by age 29. 

"It can't be the age they're saying," Liston told Live Science. If the woman was younger than 29, as the clavicle fusion suggests, she could well be Philip III Arrhidaios' wife Eurydice, who was only about 20 when she died. 

Even the broken leg doesn't seal the case, Liston said. She's not convinced the asymmetrical greaves are made for someone with legs of two different lengths — one may simply have a lengthened flange that flared over the ankle, providing the leading leg with an extra bit of protection. Thus, the greaves may not belong to the woman in the tomb at all. 

Other archaeologists contacted by Live Science declined to comment, citing the preliminary nature of the paper (the journal has not yet released a final version of the publication) or unfamiliarity with the burial context. The tombs at Vergina are an important cultural and tourist site in Greece and a UNESCO World Heritage Site, which raises the stakes of what would otherwise be a largely academic debate. The museum at Aigai, which oversees the tombs, refers to the tomb as Philip II's without caveat, as does UNESCO. But among archaeologists, nothing is settled. 

"We're never going to build a case that it's Philip II or Philip III that we could go into court and say, 'We have a positive ID,'" Liston said. She understands the draw of giving the skeleton a name, however. 

"I'm as subject as anyone to the thrill of touching the past," she said. But whether the skeleton is Philip II or Philip III, she said, it's rare and exciting to be able to identify so closely a set of bones from more than 2,000 years ago — and either way, the tomb's occupant was a Macedonian royal.  

"Frankly, to me, whoever it is, it's really cool," Liston said. 
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Reference:

Pappas, Stephanie. 2015. “Burned Bones in Alexander the Great Family Tomb Give Up Few Secrets”. Live Science. Posted: June 11, 2015. Available online: http://www.livescience.com/51172-alexander-the-great-family-tomb-mystery.html

Bones with names: Long-dead bodies archaeologists have identified

Historians record biographies of the rich and famous: kings, queens, emperors and knights. Archaeologists, more often than not, dig up common people, who remain stubbornly anonymous in death.

Occasionally, however, the written record and the archaeological record collide. In rare situations, researchers are actually able to identify a collection of bones as a person in the historical record. Many of these identifiable, or "individualized," remains belonged to royalty or other high-profile people, the sort who tend to be buried in lavish graves stamped with their names.

The bodies of royalty are not necessarily more important to archaeologists, who can learn much about diet and lifestyle by examining the bones of commoners. But there's something thrilling about uncovering this concrete evidence of the past. Read on for seven skeletons that have regained their rightful names, and three more that are tantalizingly close.

1. Richard III

The last Plantagenet king of England set off an international fervor in 2013, when archaeologists announced the discovery of his bones under a parking lot in Leicester. The king, who died in 1485 at the Battle of Bosworth Field, had been scrunched into a hastily dug grave. Researchers identified him by his battle wounds, which matched those the king was reported to have sustained during and after his death, and by his DNA, thanks to a pair of living descendants via his sister's line. 

After the analysis of his remains, Richard III finally got a royal burial at Leicester Cathedral on March 26, 2015 — 530 years after his death.

2. King Tut

The older a skeleton, the less likely historical records survive to identify it. Fortunately, the ancient Egyptians and their carefully prepared mummies provide an exception to this rule. Although the boy king Tutankhamun died in approximately 1323 B.C., his identification was in no doubt after Howard Carter and George Herbert discovered his gold-laden tomb in 1922.

Tut's mummy revealed him to be a slight young man with a clubfoot. Having a positive ID on the young king is enabling researchers to tie together the dynastic family tree using DNA. In 2010, researchers announced they'd identified mummies belonging to Tutankhamun's father, mother and grandmother. 

3. Queen Eadgyth

In 2008, German archaeologists opened a tomb in the Magdeburg Cathedral, expecting it to be empty. To their surprise, they found a lead sarcophagus inscribed with the words "EDIT REGINE CINERES HIC SARCOPHGVS HABET." This translates to: "The remains of Queen Eadgyth are in this sarcophagus."

Slam dunk identification, right? Not so fast. Archaeologists knew that the bones of the Saxon queen Eadgyth, who died in 946 A.D., had been moved at least three times. They could have easily been lost and replaced. 

So scientists set to analyzing the bones. They extracted isotopes, variations of certain molecules, from the skeleton's teeth. Isotopes are integrated into the body through the diet, so they can pinpoint what an individual ate during their lives. 

The tooth isotopes pointed to a childhood in Wessex, England, matching the historical record of Queen Eadgyth. She also ate a high-protein diet and her skeleton bore signs of horseback riding, the archaeologists discovered, befitting her royal status.

4. Xin Zhui

One of the best-preserved bodies ever discovered by archaeologists belonged to Xin Zhui, also known as Lady Dai. Xin Zhui was the wife of the Marquis of Dai during the third century B.C., and when she died around the age of 50 in what is now Hunan, China, she was buried in style. Her tomb was full of her belongings, including cosmetic boxes, musical instruments, painted silk and tablets about health and medicine.

Tucked away in four nested pine boxes, Xin Zhui was so well-preserved upon her discovery in the 1970s that her skin was still moist and her limbs pliable. Her body is now kept in a preserved state at the Hunan Provincial Museum. 

5. Ramesses I

The tomb of the first ruler of Egypt's 19th dynasty, Ramesses I, was discovered in 1817. Unfortunately, Ramesses I wasn't in it.

Years later, in 1881, a family of Egyptian goat-herders-turned-tomb-robbers revealed to archaeologists where they'd been getting the items they'd been selling on the black market for years: a cliff-side tomb above Deir el-Bahri, a mortuary complex across the Nile from the city of Luxor.

The tomb acted as a cache for royal mummiesremoved during the looting of tombs elsewhere, according to the Michael C. Carlos Museum at Emory University. Inside was a coffin inscribed with the name of Ramesses I — but inside that was nothing but loose bandages. So where was Ramesses?

Canada, as it turned out. Yes, the founder of Egypt's 19th dynasty and grandfather of the famed Ramesses the Great was acting as a sideshow exhibit for tourists at the Niagara Falls Museum and Daredevil Hall of Fame. At the time, purchasing mummies from Egypt was as easy as walking down the right alley to find a street merchant selling looted tomb goods. The body of Ramesses I ended up in this trade. When the Niagara Falls Museum sold off its collections in 1999, Emory raised the money to purchase the suspected Ramesses I mummy in less than two weeks. Researchers there used computed tomography (CT) scans, facial reconstructions and detailed study of the mummification techniques to confirm that the roaming mummy was indeed the lost pharaoh. (The mummy was returned to Egypt in 2003.) 

6. Ramesses III

Talk about a cold case: Ramesses III, the second pharaoh of Egypt's 20th dynasty, died in 1155 B.C. In 2012, researchers solved his murder.

Historical records, penned on papyrus, told of a palace plot to murder Ramesses III, but no one knew if that plot had succeeded. A CT scan of the pharaoh's mummy suggested that it did: Ramesses III's throat had been slit. The cut would have severed the trachea, esophagus and major blood vessels to the head, killing him quickly, the researchers reported in the British Medical Journal.

During his mummification, priests placed a healing amulet in the neck wound and bound it tightly with bandages. 

7. Copernicus

The first astronomer to realize that the Earth revolves around the sun, not the other way around, was buried in an unmarked grave in a Polish cathedral in 1543. But in 2009, Swedish and Polish researchers announced in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences that they'd positively identified the remains of Nicolaus Copernicus.

The identification took some doing. First, researchers created a facial reconstruction of a skull of a man of the proper age found under the church floor in 2005. The results were promising — a mug that looked quite similar to contemporary paintings of Copernicus.

Next, the researchers turned to a few shed hairs found stuck in the bindings of a calendar owned by Copernicus. DNA testing revealed that two of the hairs matched the suspected Copernicus bones. 

8. A Viking king?

Not everyone in history is considerate enough to leave DNA-bearing hair behind. In most cases, researchers have to take their best guess at an identification.

One such case is the discovery of a young man's skeleton buried near Auldhame in Scotland. The skeleton, which dated back to the 10th century, was found surrounded by expensive goods, including a Viking belt. This suggests that he was a high-status individual — perhaps even the Viking King Olaf Guthfrithsson himself.

King Olaf died in A.D. 941. Shortly before his death, the king attacked Auldhame and the nearby hamlet of Tyninghame. The location of the grave, combined with the goods inside it, suggests that skeleton could be Olaf himself. Unfortunately, archaeologists said, the evidence is only circumstantial, and with no living relatives for DNA comparison, the identification will remain speculative. 

9. An unknown soldier?

After the Battle of Waterloo in 1815, the mass graves of fallen soldiers were raided for bones, which were ground up and used to fertilize fields in what is now Belgium. As a result, few full skeletons from the battle have been found.

But in 2012, a construction crew discovered the complete skeleton of a Waterloo casualty. The musket ball that killed the man was still lodged in his ribcage. Nearby were 20 coins, a spoon and a piece of wood engraved "CB," according to The Independent.

It wasn't enough to identify the man. That is, until archaeologists noticed the traces of an "F" before the "CB" and a military historian named Gareth Glover took up the case. By cross-referencing records of German soldiers who fought in the battle, Glover was able to determine that only one German with those initials had died: a 23 year-old named Friedrich Brandt.  

As of June 2015, the body identified as Brandt was on display at the Lion's Mound Museum & Visitor Centre in Belgium. 

10. Which Philip?

When archaeologists cracked open an ancient Macedonian tomb near Vergina, Greece, in 1977, they also cracked open a mystery that rages to this day. The date of the tomb, and its lavish contents, strongly suggest the male and female skeletons inside were relatives of Alexander the Great. But which relatives? The debate boils down to two camps: those who believe the male tomb occupant to be Philip II, the father of Alexander who set the stage for his son's unprecedented conquests, and those who believe the skeleton belongs to Philip III Arrhidaios, Alexander's less-illustrious half-brother who ruled as a figurehead briefly after Alexander's death. (The female skeleton is presumed to be the wife, or one of the wives, of these men.)

Examinations of the bones have yet to yield any firm proof either way. Archaeologists argue over whether the bodies were cremated right after death, or later — Philip III was buried for more than a year before being exhumed for a royal cremation and funeral. They also bicker over whether the bones show signs of Philip II's known battle wounds. Ultimately, the bodies may not even provide the final clues, said Maria Liston, an anthropologist at the University of Waterloo who studies cremated remains.

"It's going to have to be, in the end, based a little bit at looking at the bones, but honestly on the dates of the pottery [in the tomb] and things like that," Liston told Live Science.
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Reference:

Pappas, Stephanie. 2015. “Bones with names: Long-dead bodies archaeologists have identified”. Live Science. Posted: Available online: http://www.livescience.com/51140-skeletons-with-names.html

CSI Stone Age: was 430,000-year-old hominin murdered?

It's the coldest of cold cases: a forensic analysis suggests that an ancient human who lived 430,000 years ago died as the result of a deliberate attack by a right-handed assailant armed with a spear or hand axe. The crime is the earliest evidence of human-on-human violence in the fossil record – and the way the body was found strongly suggests that hominins were engaging in funerary rituals hundreds of thousands of years before our species evolved.

No fewer than 28 hominin skeletons have been recovered from the Sima de los Huesos site in the Atapuerca mountains of northern Spain. An analysis of DNA pulled from one skeleton suggests the tribe may be ancestral to both the Neanderthals and their east Eurasian contemporaries, the mysterious Denisovans

Holes in the head

One of the skulls is interesting for another reason: it has two large holes on the left side of the forehead. Nohemi Sala from Complutense University of Madrid, Spain and her colleagues used forensic techniques to work out how the holes formed. The skull is in 52 pieces, but while most of those fragments have edges that are perpendicular to the surface of the skull – typical of the way dry bone fractures long after death – the edges of the holes in the forehead were oblique in a way that's more consistent with a fresh bone fracture. What's more, both holes were roughly the same size and shape – and both had a distinctive "notch" at a similar location in their outlines. That suggests the holes were injuries sustained close to the hominin's time of death and involving repeated blows from the same object.

"We are pretty sure that these are not circumstantial injuries," says Sala. "Since either of these wounds would likely have been lethal, penetrating the brain, the presence of multiple wounds implies a deliberate act."

The attacker was probably right-handed, judging by the fact that the injuries were to the left side of the face. The weapon may have been a wooden spear, a stone spear tip or a stone hand axe, says Sala.

Ancient funeral

It's "completely compelling", says Debra Martin at the University of Nevada in Las Vegas. "I suspect the farther we push back and find straight up forensic evidence such as these authors have, we will find that violence is culturally mediated and has been with us as long as culture itself has been with us." The find may also help settle a long-standing debate over exactly how so many hominin skeletons came to be preserved together. One idea is that, over time, a number of unlucky individuals fell down the vertical shaft by mistake. An alternative viewpoint is that the dead were deliberately thrown into the pit as part of an early funeral ritual.

The new analysis strongly favours the second view. It's clear that this individual was dead before he or she ended up in the pit, so they can hardly have stumbled into the hole by mistake. "The only possible manner by which a deceased individual could have arrived at the site is if its cadaver were dropped down the shaft by other hominins," says Sala. "Middle Pleistocene hominins were already engaging in funerary behaviour."
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Reference:

Barras, Colin. 2015. “CSI Stone Age: was 430,000-year-old hominin murdered?”. New Scientist. Posted: May 27, 2015. Available online: http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn27611-csi-stone-age-was-430000yearold-hominin-murdered.html

Ancient archeological mystery solved: Cooling temps led to farming disaster, collapse of civilization

Climate change may be responsible for the abrupt collapse of civilization on the fringes of the Tibetan Plateau around 2000 B.C.

WSU archaeologist Jade D'Alpoim Guedes and an international team of researchers found that cooling global temperatures at the end of the Holocene Climatic Optimum, a 4,000 year period of warm weather, would have made it impossible for ancient people on the Tibetan Plateau to cultivate millet, their primary food source.

Guedes' team's research recently was published online in theProceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. Her results provide the first convincing explanation for why the area's original inhabitants either left or so abruptly changed their lifestyles.

They also help explain the success of farmers who practiced wheat and barley agriculture in the region 300 years later.

Unlike millet, wheat and barley have high frost tolerance and a low heat requirement, making them ideally suited for the high altitudes and cold weather of eastern Tibet. Guedes argues this made the two crops an important facet of subsistence immediately after their introduction around 1700 B.C.

"Wheat and barley came in at the opportune moment, right when millets were losing their ability to be grown on the Tibetan Plateau," Guedes said. "It was a really exciting pattern to notice. The introduction of wheat and barley really enabled Tibetan culture to take the form it has today, and their unique growth patterns may have played a crucial rule in the spread of these crops as staples across the vast region of East Asia."

One offshoot of the research: The ancient millet seeds that fell out of cultivation on the Tibetan Plateau as the climate got colder might soon be useful again as the climate warms up.

"Right now, these millets have almost become forgotten crops," Guedes said. "But due to their heat tolerance and high nutritional value, they may be once again be useful resources for a warmer future."

An archaeological enigma

At Ashaonao, Haimenkou, and other archeological sites in the Tibetan highlands, researchers for years had noticed a growing trend. An abundance of ancient wheat and barley seeds found at the sites suggested the crops rapidly replaced millet as the staple food source of the region during the second millennium BCE.

The findings were puzzling considering that the scientific consensus of the time was the region's climate would have actually favored millet, due to its shorter growing season, over wheat or barley.

The conundrum intrigued Guedes so she dove into the agronomy literature to investigate. She found agronomists tended to use a different measurement than archaeologists to determine whether crops can grow in cold, high altitude environments like the Tibetan Plateau. They used total growing degree days or the accumulated amount of heat plants need over their lifetime rather than the length of a growing season.

"My colleagues and I created a new model based off what we found in the literature," Guedes said. "It revealed that global cooling would have made it impossible to grow millet in the Eastern Tibetan Highlands at this time but would have been amenable to growing wheat and barley. Our work turned over previous assumptions and explained why millet is no longer a staple crop in the area after 2000 BCE."

Guedes' work points to climate cooling as the culprit behind the collapse of early civilization on the Tibetan Plateau. Ironically, the region is today one of the areas experiencing the most rapid climate warming on the planet. There are some areas in the southeastern plateau where temperatures are 6 degrees Celsius higher than they were 200 years ago.

Rapid temperature increase is making it difficult for the region's inhabitants to raise and breed yaks, a staple form of subsistence in the central Asian highlands, and grow cold weather crops, once again endangering their survival.

"So now we have a complete reversal and climate warming is having a big impact on the livelihood of smaller farmers on the Tibetan Plateau," Guedes said.
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Reference:

Science Daily. 2015. “Ancient archeological mystery solved: Cooling temps led to farming disaster, collapse of civilization”. Science Daily. Posted: April 29, 2015. Available online: http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2015/04/150429090110.htm