Green Group discussion
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Humans in Prehistory and Medieval History
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https://gizmodo.com/ice-age-cave-bear...
"Reindeer herders working on Bolshoy Lyakhovsky Island in arctic Russia have stumbled upon an incredibly well-preserved cave bear, in what scientists say is a discovery of “world importance.”
When it comes to studying extinct cave bears, paleontologists have traditionally dealt with scattered bones and the odd skull. That’s why this new discovery is so important, as the body of the adult cave bear is “completely preserved” with “all internal organs in place including even its nose,” as scientist Lena Grigorieva explained in a North-Eastern Federal University (NEFU) press release describing the specimen. The finds are of “great importance for the whole world,” she added."
And:
"During the Pleistocene, lions lived across much of the Northern Hemisphere, including in Siberia. The northernmost of these beasts, dubbed “cave lions,” lived far outside the conventional geographic range of lions today. Paleontologists have questioned the origin of cave lions for years, wondering if they were modern lions that ventured way up north or if they represented an entirely different species.
A new paper in Scientific Reports appears to have settled this debate. By analyzing and comparing dozens of gene sequences and sketching an evolutionary family tree of these ancient felines, scientists from the Centre for Palaeogenetics at Stockholm University have shown that lions and cave lions were distinct species. What’s more, the cave lions branched off into two subtly different lineages, having split into a group that lived in Siberia and a group that lived further west in Europe, according to the new research, co-authored by evolutionary geneticist Love Dalén.
In total, the researchers analyzed 31 mitochondrial genome sequences, including DNA taken from an exquisitely preserved cave lion cub found two years ago in Siberia. The cub, dated to 28,000 years old, is one of the best-preserved animals ever found from the last ice age."
https://gizmodo.com/ancient-dna-from-...
Looks like a bear worthy of great reverence
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The number of such finds is increasing. Either the rate of permafrost thaw has increased or the Siberians have cottoned on that eating a mammoth or cave bear doesn't pay as well as telling scientists about their find.
Or both.
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Based on a further analysis of 27 individuals at burial sites with similar tools, a team led by Randall Haas at the University of California, Davis, concluded that between 30-50% of hunters in the Americas during this period may have been women.
The paper, published in the journal Science Advances, contradicts the prevalent notion that in hunter-gatherer societies, the hunters were mainly men and the gatherers were mainly women. "
https://www.rte.ie/news/newslens/2020...
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https://gizmodo.com/9-000-year-old-bu...
AdBlock Plus is blocking 35 ads on that page... just saying.
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https://phys.org/news/2020-11-painsta...
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"Yet until now, no one had any idea what people were doing at the coast during glacial periods in southern Africa. Our records finally start to fill in these longstanding gaps and reveal a rich, but not exclusive, focus on the sea. Interestingly, we think it may have been the centralized location between land and sea and their plant and animal resources that attracted people and supported them amid repeated climatic and environmental variability."
To date this evidence, P5 researchers collaborated with South Africa's iThemba LABS and researchers at the Centre for Archaeological Science of the University of Wollongong to develop one of the highest-resolution chronologies at a southern Africa Late Pleistocene site, showing persistent human occupation and coastal resource use at Waterfall Bluff from 35,000 years ago to 10,000 years ago. This evidence, in the form of marine fish and shellfish remains, shows that prehistoric people repeatedly sought out dense and predictable seafoods.
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"Importantly, this study showed that people who lived at Waterfall Bluff collected wood from coastal vegetation communities during both glacial and interglacial phases. It is another link to the coastline for the people living at Waterfall Bluff during the Last Glacial Maximum. In fact, the exceptional quality of the archaeological and paleoenvironmental records demonstrates that those hunter-gatherers targeted different, but specific, coastal ecological niches all the while collecting terrestrial plant and animal resources from throughout the broader landscape and maintaining links to highland locales inland."
https://phys.org/news/2020-11-ancient...
More information: Erich C. Fisher et al, Coastal occupation and foraging during the last glacial maximum and early Holocene at Waterfall Bluff, eastern Pondoland, South Africa, Quaternary Research (2020). DOI: 10.1017/qua.2020.26
Irene Esteban et al. Coastal palaeoenvironments and hunter-gatherer plant-use at Waterfall Bluff rock shelter in Mpondoland (South Africa) from MIS 3 to the Early Holocene, Quaternary Science Reviews (2020). DOI: 10.1016/j.quascirev.2020.106664
Journal information: Quaternary Science Reviews
Provided by Arizona State University
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The finds are documented in a study published on Tuesday in Holocene. Researchers have been working the site, known a Langfonne, for years. The area is home to ice patches, which are stagnant swaths of ice that can cradle valuable human history in their frozen bosoms. (Glaciers, in comparison, move and are much more likely to grind their contents into oblivion.) As the patches have receded, that history is revealed.
Once out of the ice patch, the ravages of the high alpine environment can quickly degrade artifacts, so researchers have been painstakingly scouring the area over multiple summers to build out their dataset and collect radar images of ice thickness.
"That dataset is voluminous. The team of scientists from Norwegian and British universities and the local Innlandet County Council document 68 arrows and five arrowheads in the new paper, as well as 290 animal remains, making it the largest paleozoological discovery in the region. In a blog post about the new paper, lead researcher Lars Holger Pilø described the finds as a “bonanza” and said that the team refers to the location as the “secret arrow site.” In addition to arrows, the team also found “scaring sticks” used to drive reindeer into locations more opportune for hunters to take a shot. All the artifacts were mapped and radiocarbon dated, providing a comprehensive view of how the site was used.
The oldest artifacts date back roughly 6,000 years, which Pilø wrote is older than “finds from any other ice site in Northern Europe ...
"In addition to watching the ground, the scientists also observed how reindeer behaved on the site. The ice patch is still a popular summer hangout for now-domesticated reindeer, owing to the cooler temperatures and lack of flies. Seeing the reindeer move allowed researchers to refine their story of hunting at the site.
“The thing is: The reindeer do not know that they are domesticated. They behave much like reindeer did in the past,” Pilø said. “We could observe that where they entered and exited the ice, there were hunting blinds (small stone-built walls) where the ancient hunters could hide, showing the continuation of the use of the landscape.”"
https://earther.gizmodo.com/a-trove-o...
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The researchers also counted body feathers from the pelts of wild turkeys purchased from ethically and legally compliant dealers in Idaho to get an estimate of how many turkeys would have been needed to provide feathers for the blanket. Their efforts show it would have taken feathers from between four to 10 turkeys to make the blanket, depending on the length of feathers selected."
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"Another interesting finding of the study was the turkey feathers used by the ancestral Pueblo people to make garments were most likely painlessly harvested from live birds during natural molting periods. This would have allowed sustainable collection of feathers several times a year over a bird's lifetime, which could have exceeded 10 years. Archeological evidence indicates turkeys were generally not used as a food source from the time of their domestication in the early centuries C.E. until the 1100s and 1200s C.E., when the supply of wild game in the region had become depleted by over-hunting."
https://phys.org/news/2020-11-ancient...
More information: William D. Lipe et al, Staying warm in the upland southwest: A "supply side" view of turkey feather blanket production, Journal of Archaeological Science: Reports (2020). DOI: 10.1016/j.jasrep.2020.102604
Provided by Washington State University
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https://phys.org/news/2020-12-newly-a...
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https://phys.org/news/2020-12-theory-...
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https://phys.org/news/2020-12-oceans-...
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In 1976-1977 Mr Severin successfully completed the epic Brendan Voyage, a 7,200km Atlantic crossing from Cuas an Bhodaigh (Brandon Creek) in Co Kerry to Newfoundland.
In doing so Mr Severin and his crew proved that the legendary sixth century voyage of St Brendan, as depicted in the Navigatio Sancti Brendani, was possible.
Tim Severin undertook the ambitious voyage in a 36-foot hide-covered currach which had been built by hand using traditional materials and methods. His route took him north to the Scottish Hebrides, the Faroe Islands, Iceland, rounding Greenland before making landfall on Peckford Island, Newfoundland."
https://www.rte.ie/news/2020/1219/118...
RIP, Tim Severin.
It seems to me that going back in time, say 20,000 years ago, or more, that it was a person's talent that determined the job they did. This meant men, women, or children could have had the same job. The reason for this would be that it was almost impossible, if not impossible to fake a job. If a person wasn't qualified to hunt, they didn't hunt, period. The same for gathering, if some one couldn't learn, and kept bringing back useless, or even poisonous things, I don't think they kept that job.As urbanization at the nomadic level became more prevalent, the ability to fake a job by relying on the works of others probably became easier. Even if a person who didn't do the work was heading up a group of people working, their ability to hold that position was probably based on strength, which in itself was an important "talent" back then.
Life was basically a road show for nomadic people. Any one who has done any commercial or entertainment enterprises on the road knows that the wheels will come off the wagon almost immediately if people don't know how to do their jobs, or know how to do the many jobs that need to be done to keep the show on the road.
As we got closer to current times, permanent housing, rudimentary farming by harvesting what grows naturally and annually, the establishment of trade routes, it probably became possible to hold a position of management by trickery, manipulation, sleight of hand, besides knowing all there was about the subject being managed.
It could have been a different story for people living in areas that were lush with easily obtainable natural resources. Living on the beach in a warm climate was probably a lot easier than living a nomadic life in a colder climate, or maybe even a warm climate. I don't know when the first fish nets or fish hooks were made, but those tools weren't really needed at the beach.
Twice a day the tide went out. Which meant that twice a day, every day, the supermarket was open for business. If you have spent any time prowling around the areas where the tide has gone out, out there in the mud and tide pools, you can find two kinds of animals. Those that live in the mud, in plant reefs, under rocks, all the time, and those that got trapped by the tide in tidal pools. In this situation, and maybe to a lesser extent, in areas where food grew all the time, such as berries, nuts, tubulars, fruit, vegetables, anything that was harvested at a rate less than it replenished itself, it would have been possible to organize a type of urbanized living where jobs could be held by social position instead of by actually being able to do the job.
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https://www.ecowatch.com/prehistoric-...
To me, in the second photo, it looks like the wildlife is separated by a flowing young-stage river from the cultivated area and kept animals. They are fenced off with fences woven from sticks from the built square structures, which are probably homes, to the right.
Some of the dotted squares look like cultivated fields, the squares filled in with jags more like lakes with waves.
I don't see the mastodon in this set of pictures, nor the ground sloth. Well drawn ratites though - tall birds.
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Extremely interesting pictures. I would like to see more about the pictures, the timing of their being drawn. Says it could have take hundreds or thousands of years to draw up the tens of thousands of pictures.One picture with the cliff face filled from top to bottom, at least the way it was photographed shows row after row of pictures, very long rows and they seem to be pretty straight. I am guessing some kind of scaffolding to get the apparent alignment for so many pictures, but if it took hundreds of years, the scaffolding would have to be continually rebuilt, for that there should be post holes in the ground. The scaffolding could have been suspended by vines, but that seems unlikely for the length of the rows. A smaller scaffolding being continually moved perhaps.
More likely, dirt was piled up against the cliff face, leveled off at the top, people filled up the space with pictures, then 3 feet of dirt was taken off the top, leveled again, then another round of picture drawing. That was repeated until they reached the bottom.
http://www.sci-news.com/archaeology/i...
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https://phys.org/news/2020-12-mallard...
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A post by author Kenneth J. Stein about Ancient Egypt and what people ate.
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https://gizmodo.com/cave-painting-of-...
"A pig painting inside an Indonesian cave has been dated to 43,900 years old, making it among the oldest—if not the oldest—known figurative art piece in the archaeological record.
The painting was found at the Leang Tedongnge cave site on Indonesia’s Sulawesi island. The artwork appears to depict a confrontation or some sort of social interaction, between three Sulawesi warty pigs (Sus celebensis). These short-legged pigs, with their characteristic warty faces, are still around today, and during the Pleistocene they represented an important prey animal for the early humans who lived in this part of the world. That early humans living on the island would depict these creatures on their cave walls is an indication of their cultural, social, and existential importance."
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https://phys.org/news/2021-01-inequal...
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https://phys.org/news/2021-01-pace-pr...
"Dr. Bermúdez-Otero explained: "In our model each language has a collection of properties or features and some of those features are what we describe as 'hot' or 'cold'.
"So, if a language puts the object before the verb, then it is relatively likely to get stuck with that order for a long period of time—so that's a 'cold' feature. In contrast, markers like the English article 'the' come and go a lot faster: they may be here in one historical period, and be gone in the next. In that sense, definite articles are 'hot' features.
"The striking thing is that languages with 'cold' properties tend to form big clumps, whereas languages with 'hot' properties tend to be more scattered geographically."
This method therefore works like a thermometer, enabling researchers to retrospectively tell whether one linguistic property is more prone to change in historical time than another. This modelling could also provide a similar benchmark for the pace of change in other social behaviours or practices over time and space.
"For example, suppose that you have a map showing the spatial distribution of some variable cultural practice for which you don't have any historical records—this could be be anything, like different rules on marriage or on the inheritance of possessions," added Dr. Bermúdez-Otero."
More information: Henri Kauhanen et al, Geospatial distributions reflect temperatures of linguistic features, Science Advances (2021). DOI: 10.1126/sciadv.abe6540
Journal information: Science Advances
Provided by University of Manchester
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https://www.goodreads.com/author_blog...
She has adapted archaeological and linguistic research into prehistoric fiction.
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As a commenter says, playing it (there is a gorgeous sound clip) may awaken the Kraken.
https://gizmodo.com/after-17-000-year...
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"We correlate the increase in human brain volume with the need to become smarter hunters," explains Dr. Ben-Dor. For example, the need to hunt dozens of gazelles instead of one elephant generated prolonged evolutionary pressure on the brain functions of humans, who were now using up much more energy in both movement and thought processes. "
https://phys.org/news/2021-03-human-b...
More information: Miki Ben-Dor et al, Prey Size Decline as a Unifying Ecological Selecting Agent in Pleistocene Human Evolution, Quaternary (2021). DOI: 10.3390/quat4010007
Provided by Tel-Aviv University
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"Our study is both multidisciplinary and interdisciplinary. We propose a picture that is unprecedented in its inclusiveness and breadth, which clearly shows that humans were initially apex predators, who specialized in hunting large animals. As Darwin discovered, the adaptation of species to obtaining and digesting their food is the main source of evolutionary changes, and thus the claim that humans were apex predators throughout most of their development may provide a broad basis for fundamental insights on the biological and cultural evolution of humans.""
https://phys.org/news/2021-04-humans-...
More information: Miki Ben‐Dor et al, The evolution of the human trophic level during the Pleistocene, American Journal of Physical Anthropology (2021). DOI: 10.1002/ajpa.24247
Journal information: American Journal of Physical Anthropology
Provided by Tel-Aviv University
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https://www.rte.ie/news/2021/0416/121...
"It is believed the tomb may date to the Bronze Age (2000BC-500BC), but it could be even earlier as it displays a number of highly unusual features."
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https://www.rte.ie/news/leinster/2021...
"Reacting to the official confirmation, Mr Murphy said: "It's incredible to think that the Boyne logboats have been sitting in the bed of the river for centuries, and perhaps millennia, waiting for that serendipitous day when a combination of low tide, sparse rainfall and the wonderful technology of drones to be seen again."
He added: "We don't yet know the age of the dugout boats that I found, but it is believed they are medieval or post-medieval.""
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"The word lox was one of the clues that eventually led linguists to discover who the Proto-Indo-Europeans were, and where they lived. The fact that those distantly related Indo-European languages had almost the same pronunciation of a single word meant that the word—and the concept behind it—had most likely existed in the Proto-Indo-European language. “If they had a word for it, they must have lived in a place where there was salmon,” explains Guy. “Salmon is a fish that lives in the ocean, reproduces in fresh water and swims up to rivers to lay eggs and mate. There are only a few places on the planet where that happens.”
In reconstructed Indo-European, there were words for bear, honey, oak tree, and snow, and, which is also important, no words for palm tree, elephant, lion, or zebra. Based on evidence like that, linguists reconstructed what their homeland was. The only possible geographic location turned out to be in a narrow band between Eastern Europe and the Black Sea where animals, trees, and insects matched the ancient Indo-European words.
In the 1950s, archaeological discoveries backed up this theory with remnants of an ancient culture that existed in that region from 6,000 to 8,000 years ago. Those people used to build kurgans, burial mountains, that archaeologists excavated to study cultural remains. In that process, scholars not only learned more about the Proto-Indo-Europeans but also why they were able to migrate across Europe and Asia.
In turned out that, in the past, the grassy plains of steppe that run from Western China to the Black Sea had large herds of wild horses. Early humans hunted them for food, but the Proto-Indo-Europeans were probably the first people who domesticated the ancestors of modern-day domestic horses. That brought them an enormous advantage, allowing them to move a lot faster than any other human group. Then, they adopted—or, less likely, invented—wheeled vehicles and attached these to horses. “That’s probably the moment when they suddenly managed to expand into the Middle East, into India, and across Europe,” says Guy. “Within the next thousands of years, they expanded like no other human group that we know about in history. Because [now] they had mobility, which nobody else had.”"
https://getpocket.com/explore/item/th...
Referenced in the article:
The Power of Babel: A Natural History of Language
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https://phys.org/news/2021-08-mathema...
"Back in 2017, the team speculated about the purpose of the Plimpton 322, hypothesizing that it was likely to have had some practical purpose, possibly used to construct palaces and temples, build canals or survey fields.
"With this new tablet, we can actually see for the first time why they were interested in geometry: to lay down precise land boundaries," Dr. Mansfield says.
"This is from a period where land is starting to become private—people started thinking about land in terms of 'my land and your land', wanting to establish a proper boundary to have positive neighborly relationships. And this is what this tablet immediately says. It's a field being split, and new boundaries are made."
There are even clues hidden on other tablets from that time period about the stories behind these boundaries.
"Another tablet refers to a dispute between Sin-bel-apli—a prominent individual mentioned on many tablets including Si.427—and a wealthy female landowner," Dr. Mansfield says.
"The dispute is over valuable date palms on the border between their two properties. The local administrator agrees to send out a surveyor to resolve the dispute. It is easy to see how accuracy was important in resolving disputes between such powerful individuals."
Dr. Mansfield says the way these boundaries are made reveals real geometric understanding.
"Nobody expected that the Babylonians were using Pythagorean triples in this way," Dr. Mansfield says. "It is more akin to pure mathematics, inspired by the practical problems of the time.""
https://phys.org/news/2021-08-mathema...
More information: Daniel F. Mansfield, Plimpton 322: A Study of Rectangles, Foundations of Science (2021). DOI: 10.1007/s10699-021-09806-0
Provided by University of New South Wales
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https://phys.org/news/2021-08-ice-hig...
https://secretsoftheice.com/news/2018...
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"An 800-year-old vest of chain mail, known as a hauberk, has been discovered in Co Longford.
The historical artefact was discovered at an unknown location in the county.
It is currently being held by local tourist attraction, Granard Knights & Conquests, before it goes to the National Museum of Ireland.
It lay in a shed until this week when the person who found it attended a Norman People event at Granard Knights & Conquests as part of National Heritage Week.
After seeing a replica of chain mail at the event last weekend, a member of the public came forward stating they had discovered something similar.
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"Mr D'Arcy explained that, while the artefact was not discovered in Granard or at Granard Motte, it was dug up from a drain in an area close by.
"We think it's related to the Motte because chain mail is expensive," he explained.
"Yesterday I was in the National Museum and declared it an artefact because it's the property of the State and they're going to come and look after it for us."
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"The hauberk dates to approximately 1172 when the Normans arrived in Longford, linking in with the story of Richard De Tuite and the construction of the timber-frame castle on the motte in 1199.
To discover a hauberk in such good condition and intact is rare.
"We have the entire hauberk," said Mr D'Arcy who, when he first heard of the artefact, thought it would be just a fragment of chain mail.
"To have the original thing here is just beyond belief and particularly during Heritage Week.""
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"An amateur archeologist has found 22 gold objects with sixth century symbols that could yield new details about pre-Viking peoples in Denmark, the museum that will house the treasure has said.
Some of the objects have runic motifs and inscriptions which may refer to the rulers of the time, but also recall Norse mythology, Mads Ravn, director of research at the Vejle museums in western Denmark, told AFP.
"It is the symbols on the items that makes them unique, more than the quantity found," according to Dr Ravn, who said the treasure weighed about one kilogram.
One piece even refers to the Roman emperor Constantine from the early 4th century, said Dr Ravn.
"The find consists of a lot of gold items, including a medallion the size of a saucer," he added.
According to initial examinations, the treasure could have been buried as an offering to the gods at a chaotic time when the climate in northern Europe dramatically turned colder after a volcanic eruption in Iceland in 536 sent ash clouds into the sky."
Looking at the lovely work, we can see why the ancients liked gold so much.
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On golf course. Commenter says that's not an axe, that's a putter.
https://gizmodo.com/striking-bronze-a...
The 4,000 year oak will be analysed for more exact ageing and a weather report.
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https://phys.org/news/2021-09-ancient...
"Twelve newly sequenced ancient Japanese genomes show that modern day populations do indeed show the genetic signatures of early indigenous Jomon hunter-gatherer-fishers and immigrant Yayoi farmers—but also add a third genetic component that is linked to the Kofun peoples, whose culture spread in Japan between the 3rd and 7th centuries.
Rapid cultural transformations
The Japanese archipelago has been occupied by humans for at least 38,000 years but Japan underwent rapid transformations only in the last 3,000 years, first from foraging to wet-rice farming, and then to a technologically advanced imperial state.
The previous, long-standing hypothesis suggested that mainland Japanese populations derive dual-ancestry from the indigenous Jomon hunter-gatherer-fishers, who inhabited the Japanese archipelago from around 16,000 to 3,000 years ago, and later Yayoi farmers, who migrated from the Asian continent and lived in Japan from around 900 BC to 300 AD.
But the 12 newly sequenced ancient Japanese genomes—which came from the bones of people living in pre- and post-farming periods—also identify a later influx of East Asian ancestry during the imperial Kofun period, which lasted from around 300 to 700 AD and which saw the emergence of political centralisation in Japan."
More information: "Ancient genomics reveals tripartite origins of Japanese populations," Science Advances (2021). www.science.org/doi/10.1126/sciadv.ab...
Journal information: Science Advances
Provided by Trinity College Dublin
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"The artifacts were found in sites known to archaeologists as shell middens during field trips by Flinders and Griffith University scientists, in collaboration with the River Murray and Mallee Aboriginal Corporation and the Ngarrindjeri Aboriginal Corporation.
Two of the modified freshwater mussel shells are perforated, with the other is serrated. The authors say the finely serrated shell is a very rare artifact with few close Australian examples known to exist.
The discoveries range in age from around 6000 to 600 years old and more than double the known examples of such artifacts from this region.
Professor Amy Roberts at Flinders University, the lead author on the paper, says that whilst midden sites are a common type in many parts of the country, shell artifacts are rarely identified within them."
https://phys.org/news/2021-09-rare-ar...
More information: Amy Roberts et al, Aboriginal serrated and perforated shell artefacts from the Murray River, South Australia, Archaeology in Oceania (2021). DOI: 10.1002/arco.5250
Provided by Flinders University
"Details of the Murrawong bone point, dated between c. 5,300-3,800 years old, has have been described by Flinders University, Griffith University and other experts in a new paper in Australian Archaeology.
Probably made from a macropod (kangaroo or wallaby) bone, the point was likely used for piercing soft materials—for example, used as a pin on a cloak made of possum furs—or possibly as a projectile point, say the research leaders Dr. Christopher Wilson and Professor Amy Roberts from Flinders University Archaeology.
While stone artifacts and shell middens are commonly found on the surface, bone objects are mostly uncovered during excavations. The last similar one was uncovered in the Lower Murray River Gorge was in the 1970s."
https://phys.org/news/2021-03-rare-bo...
More information: C. Wilson et al, Analysis and contextualisation of a Holocene bone point from Murrawong (Glen Lossie), Lower Murray River Gorge, South Australia, (2021), Australian Archaeology, DOI: 10.1080/03122417.2021.1886893
Provided by Flinders University
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https://gizmodo.com/a-human-toddler-a...
"Someone—maybe an adolescent, maybe someone older—rushed across the edge of Lake Otero, slipping as they walked but moving steadily ahead. Evidence suggests this person was carrying a child approximately 3 years old, setting the child down for just a moment in at least three separate places along the journey before continuing on.
While this person was gone, an enormous proboscidean—a Columbian mammoth or a mastodon—lumbered across that path, stepping on a couple of the footprints. In fact, potentially three proboscideans moved across that landscape, cutting across the tracks left by the human.
Time is hard to determine, but at another point, a giant ground sloth happened to be making its way near Lake Otero as well. Its tracks indicate a decided awareness of the human—a change in behavior—where it may have lifted up on two feet to smell the air, ascertain its own safety, and determine what lay ahead, before quickly changing direction and moving away."
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science...
December 2020.
"This paper, published in Science, suggests people lived there approximately 23,000 years ago—10,000 years before accepted dates of North American human occupation.
Within the layers of sediment, the researchers discovered a number of prints that they largely attribute, based on size, to teenagers and children. Only a few footprints seem to have the dimensions of an adult foot. None of the prints indicate they were moving exceptionally fast or particularly slowly. The authors propose that, if they were anything like some societies today, the teens may have been doing chores with the younger children in tow, playing around them. In a few layers, there are proboscidean prints and a dire wolf print.
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"Dating human presence is fraught with controversy. From the dating methods themselves to the artifacts associated with a site, there are many reasons scientists might challenge new research. But the authors involved in this paper believe their conclusions are solid, particularly because eight layers of unquestionably human footprints in the sediment are hard to contest. Multiple lines of evidence support their dates, the most significant of which come from ancient seeds.
The trench revealed layers of seeds—tiny, delicate remnants from the aquatic grass, Ruppia cirrhosa—still attached to their stems, and even one footprint in which the crushed grass seeds are embedded within it, offering further evidence that the plants and humans were contemporaneous.
Seeds have specific ways of moving through ground. They can move up through the soil or down, depending upon a number of environmental factors. So a few seeds here and there may not be a reliable way to determine age. Clumps of seeds, however, are a different story. And in the case of this specific plant, where separating the delicate stem from the tiny seed wouldn’t take much, the fact that they were found largely attached means that they didn’t move. It therefore meant the team could radiocarbon date these seeds.
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"Making sure the dates were correct was another, because aquatic plants are notorious for producing ages significantly older than they may actually be. This is due to carbon within the water the plants ingest. The depths of large lakes, for instance, tend to have older carbon, because there isn’t a lot of exchange with the surrounding atmosphere. It’s a well-known phenomenon referred to as the hard-water or reservoir effect, "
https://gizmodo.com/footprints-sugges...
https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/s...
September 2021.
Perhaps one reason why no signs of people were found in North America past 10 to 12 thousand years ago, is that the people lived with the land and only used natural items which would decompose along with everything else and leave no trace. Lots of Indian tribes left few permanent marks on the land because of how they interacted with the Natural World. The natural existence of the Natural World was part of their existence. Places were people were fighting the land, rebuilding the land, seemed to put more of a detectable dent in the world which could be seen at later times. The footsteps that showed people were in America 20,000 years ago were probably only inches thick. A very thin layer with very little in it that didn't naturally occur there.
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New Guinea was at one time attached to Australia via landbridge, so cassowaries and the emu are related.
https://phys.org/news/2021-09-late-pl...
"As early as 18,000 years ago, humans in New Guinea may have collected cassowary eggs near maturity and then raised the birds to adulthood, according to an international team of scientists, who used eggshells to determine the developmental stage of the ancient embryos/chicks when the eggs cracked.
"This behavior that we are seeing is coming thousands of years before domestication of the chicken," said Kristina Douglass, assistant professor of anthropology and African studies, Penn State. "And this is not some small fowl, it is a huge, ornery, flightless bird that can eviscerate you. Most likely the dwarf variety that weighs 20 kilos (44 pounds)."
The researchers report today (Sept. 27) in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences that "the data presented here may represent the earliest indication of human management of the breeding of an avian taxon anywhere in the world, preceding the early domestication of chicken and geese by several millennia."
...
"They took four samples from each of these eggs for a total of 504 shell samples, each having a specific age. They created high-resolution, 3D images of the shell samples. By inspecting the inside of these eggs, the researcher created a statistical assessment of what the eggs looked like during stages of incubation. The researchers then tested their model with modern ostrich and emu eggs of known age.
The insides of the eggshells change through development because the developing chicks get calcium from the eggshell. Pits begin to appear in the middle of development.
"It is time dependent, but a little more complicated," said Douglass. "We used a combination of 3D imaging, modeling and morphological descriptions."
The researchers then turned to legacy shell collections from two sites in New Guinea—Yuku and Kiowa. They applied their approach to more than 1,000 fragments of these 18,000- to 6,000-year-old eggs.
"What we found was that a large majority of the eggshells were harvested during late stages," said Douglass. "The eggshells look very late; the pattern is not random. They were either into eating baluts or they are hatching chicks."
A balut is a nearly developed embryo chick usually boiled and eaten as street food in parts of Asia."
More information: Late Pleistocene/Early Holocene sites in the montane forests of New Guinea yield early record of cassowary hunting and egg harvesting, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (2021). DOI: 10.1073/pnas.2100117118
Journal information: Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences , Journal of Archaeological Science
Provided by Pennsylvania State University
Mod
https://gizmodo.com/missing-ski-found...
"A recovery team was quickly assembled, but nature had other plans. A “storm descended on our high mountains before we were able to return with proper equipment and a larger team,” Pilø wrote. “Along with it came snowfall—just what we wanted to avoid.” The team had to wait and hope that the snow didn’t bury the ski beyond reach. Doing “fieldwork in the high mountains in late September is marginal business,” he added.
On September 26, the team—equipped with ice axes, gas coolers, and packing materials—conducted an arduous three-hour ascent to the location. They arrived to a fresh blanket of snow, with the ski nowhere to be seen. Using the GPS coordinates and photos, they managed to find it buried beneath 12 inches (30 cm) of freshly fallen snow. After clearing the snow away, they found that the ice “still held an iron grip on the back of the ski,” Pilø wrote.
Using an axe, a team member carefully chipped away at the ice surrounding the relic. Warm water was then used to dislodge the ski from the ice beneath it. Pilø said the “moment of truth” came when the archaeologists flipped the ski over and the binding appeared, revealing the “same type of binding as on the ski found in 2014,” This meant that the team had found the missing ski, and that they could reunite the pair after 1,300 years.
“The new ski is even better preserved than the first one,” said Pilø. “It is an unbelievable find.”"
Mod
https://www.rte.ie/news/newslens/2021...
"Israeli archaeologists have uncovered a Byzantine-era, industrial-scale wine complex which produced some two million litres of the drink annually and was the world's "largest" such centre at the time.
The facility in Yavne, south of Tel Aviv that was a Jewish settlement during biblical times and a key city after the destruction of Jerusalem in 70 AD, is comprised of five wine presses sprawling over a square kilometre.
The 1,500-year-old site covers warehouses for ageing and marketing the wine, kilns for preparing the clay amphorae used to store the wine and "tens of thousands of fragments and intact earthen jars", the Israel Antiquities Authority (IAA) said of the "sophisticated" site.
...
"Fermenting grape juice into wine was a proven way in antiquity to avoid illness from contaminated drinking water.
The dig, which lasted two years, revealed Persian-era wine presses aged 2,300 years old at the same site."
Mod
https://phys.org/news/2021-10-team-ev...
"One notable sign of pre-European human activity derived from a 8,000-year-old charcoal record collected from a column of peat on New Island, located in the southwestern edge of the territory. According to researchers, the record showed signs of a marked increase in fire activity in 150 C.E., then abrupt and significant spikes in 1410 C.E., and 1770 C.E., the latter of which corresponds with initial European settlement.
Researchers also gathered sea lion and penguin samples on New Island near the site where a landowner discovered a stone projectile point that is consistent with the technology Indigenous South Americans have used for the past 1,000 years. The bones were heaped in discrete piles at one site. Hamley says the location, volume and type of bones indicated that the mounds were likely assembled by humans.
Most of the evidence Hamley and her colleagues collected indicated that Indigenous South Americans likely traveled to the Falkland Islands between 1275 C.E. and 1420 C.E. Arrival dates prior to 1275 C.E., however, cannot be ruled out because some evidence dates back even earlier, according to researchers. For example, the team found a tooth from an extinct Falkland Islands fox called the warrah with a radiocarbon date of 3450 B.C.E., the oldest for the species."
People seem to have come here just for seasonal hunting or even accidentally during a storm and later returned to the main land. The significance of the warrah is that the foxes had to find their way to these islands. Their introduction would have meant danger to seabirds including penguins.
"Hamley's most recent study builds on her research into the warrah (Dusicyon australis), an extinct species of fox. The warrah was the only native and terrestrial mammal to reside on the Falkland Islands at the time of European arrival. Subsequent hunting wiped the species out in 1856, making it the first extinct canid in the historic record, Hamley says.
For years, various scholars, including Charles Darwin, have debated the warrah's origins and how it came to the islands. Hamley hypothesizes that humans may have introduced the species to the archipelago prior to European settlement. Many previously rejected the theory based on a prior lack of scientific evidence, but the latest findings from Hamley's team reopens that possibility, she says. Indigenous South Americans may have domesticated warrah as they have with other foxes and canids, and brought them to the islands during their voyages and short-term stays."
More information: Kit M. Hamley et al, Evidence of prehistoric human activity in the Falkland Islands, Science Advances (2021). DOI: 10.1126/sciadv.abh3803. www.science.org/doi/10.1126/sciadv.ab...
Journal information: Science Advances
Provided by University of Maine
Mod
https://phys.org/news/2021-11-dna-ana...
"Working with the Tsleil-Waututh Nation and using new palaeogenetic analytical techniques developed in SFU Archaeology's ancient DNA lab, directed by professor Dongya Yang, the results of a new collaborative study featured in Scientific Reports provides strong evidence that prior to European colonization, Coast Salish people were managing chum salmon by selectively harvesting males.
Selectively harvesting male salmon increases the overall size of the harvest, as male salmon are bigger than female salmon. It also helps ensure successful spawning as one male can mate with several females. This allows fisheries to maximize the size of their harvest without negatively impacting future returns.
"This management practice is also described in Coast Salish knowledge and, through archaeology, we were able to extend the time depth of this practice by 2,000 years," says Thomas Royle, a postdoctoral fellow working in the lab.
The research team applied the new palaeogenetic methods to archaeological salmon vertebrae to identify the sex of each sample, finding evidence to corroborate Coast Salish traditional knowledge that has been shared for centuries."
More information: Jesse Morin et al, Indigenous sex-selective salmon harvesting demonstrates pre-contact marine resource management in Burrard Inlet, British Columbia, Canada, Scientific Reports (2021). DOI: 10.1038/s41598-021-00154-4
Journal information: Scientific Reports
Provided by Simon Fraser University
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The land destroyed by the eruption is considered to have been Plato's fabled Atlantis.
Ice cores and sediments as well as archaeological evidence, backed up by tree ring studies, provided solid evidence for ash falls, tsunamis and bitter cold years.
But there were no tsunami victim remains - until now.
I've always found this a fascinating case of related sciences and what they told us about how people adapted and lived. Now we are learning more detail. For a start, these people built walls that stood up to a tsunami.
https://phys.org/news/2021-12-skeleto...
"An international team of researchers has found and excavated the remains of a young man killed approximately 3,600 years ago by a tsunami created by the eruption of Thera—a volcano located on what is now the island of Santorini. In their paper published in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, the group describes how the remains were found and how they were identified as belonging to a victim of the Thera tsunami.
...
"The remains of the young man were found at a dig site known as Çeşme-Bağlararası. It sits along a shoreline on Çeşme Bay in western Turkey. The dig site has been yielding Late Bronze Age artifacts for several years but it was only recently that the digging uncovered evidence of a tsunami—layers of ash and debris that were prevented from being washed back into the sea by a retaining wall. In addition to the remains of the young man, the researchers also found the remains of a dog. The evidence also showed that the area had been struck by several tsunamis related to the Thera eruption."
More information: "Volcanic ash, victims, and tsunami debris from the Late Bronze Age Thera eruption discovered at Çeşme-Bağlararası (Turkey)," PNAS (2021). DOI:
10.1073/pnas.2114213118 www.pnas.org/content/119/1/e2114213118
Journal information: Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences
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Books mentioned in this topic
The Silver Pigs (other topics)Mercator: The Man Who Mapped the Planet (other topics)
Slave Girl (other topics)
The Histories (other topics)
The Donkey's Crusade (other topics)
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Authors mentioned in this topic
Nicholas Crane (other topics)Cat Bohannon (other topics)
Kaye George (other topics)
Kathleen Flanagan Rollins (other topics)
Ursula K. Le Guin (other topics)
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The folks of the day made ceremonial offerings - perhaps to cement a trade deal or wedding, or to assure a good summer, or give thanks or remember the dead.
"A llama carved from a spondylus shell and a cylindrical laminated gold foil object were the contents of a carved stone box—an offering—found at the bottom of Lake Titicaca, according to researchers from Penn State and the Université libre de Bruxelles, Belgium. The offering, found near an island in the lake, was not located where others had found offerings in the past."
This is the prettiest llama, but it's shown too small to see detail. Professional divers are carrying out the work now.
"One indication that these boxes contain artifacts valuable enough for offerings, beside the gold foil, is the spondylus shell llama. The closest location where the Inca could obtain this spiny oyster shell was in warm coastal ocean waters off the coast of Ecuador."
A previous story from 2013 at the main site of offerings:
"A team of Belgian and Bolivian archaeologists has found more than 2,000 pieces of ceramic, gems and gold objects at an apparent ceremonial site beneath the waters of Lake Titicaca.
The most impressive of the items, some said to date back a millennium, are well-preserved puma heads carved of stone, while pieces of gold leaf were hammered into other anthropomorphic forms."
"Delaere said divers found the objects more than 20 feet (7 meters) underwater off the Island of the Sun. Also uncovered in the lake that borders Bolivia and Peru were the rudder and anchor of a pre-Columbian boat, he said.
Lake Titicaca, at more than 12,000 feet above sea level, was sacred for the Incas and Tiwanakus."
https://phys.org/news/2013-10-bolivia...