Month: June 2016

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Bison Fossils Shed Light on 'Ice Free Corridor' Migration

Bison skull

Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, their study argues that the corridor was fully open by around 13,000 years ago. The results suggest that although the corridor could account for the later movement of humans and animals, both northward and southward, it couldn’t explain the initial dispersal of humans from Alaska into the rest of North America. Around 15,000 years ago the first humans migrated southwards from the furthest reaches of North America, colonising the rest of the continent. In the 1970s, geological evidence was taken as proof that this initial movement was facilitated by the ice free corridor through the Rocky Mountains. More recent research suggested that the Cordilleran and Laurentide ice sheets merged together at the peak of the last Ice Age, closing the corridor before humans made their initial migration. It was a revelation which pointed to a Pacific coast route for humans into southern North America, yet the Rocky Mountain corridor has long remained a source of interest. “The opening of the corridor provided new opportunities for migration and the exchange of ideas between people living north and south of the ice sheets,” said Peter Heintzman, a postdoctoral researcher at UC Santa Cruz and lead author of the study. Previous work by one of the co-authors of the study, Ben Shapiro, had shown that the bison populations north and south of the ice sheets were distinct by the time the corridor opened. This meant that through genetic analysis it was possible for scientists to track the movement of both northern and southern bison through the corridor. “The radiocarbon dates told us how old the fossils were, but the key thing was the genetic analysis, because that told us when bison from the northern and southern populations were able to meet within the corridor,” explained Heintzman. From the genetic analysis, it became clear that the southern bison started moving northward around 13,400 years ago, suggesting the southern part of the corridor had opened first. The corridor became fully open by around 13,000 years ago, allowing the northern bison to migrate southward and shown in the first signs of population overlap within the corridor. As for human migration through the corridor, Shapiro suggests it was mostly from south to north. Sites from the Clovis culture were abundant south of the corridor by around 13,000 years ago, but declined from south to north in the corridor region. “When the corridor opened, people were already living south of there. And because those people were bison hunters, we can assume they would have followed the bison as they moved north into the corridor,” Shapiro said. Image courtesy of Government of Yukon]]>

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Salem Hangs its First Witch

Bridget Bishop (1)

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WW-1 Era Underground Bunker Brought to Light

Belgian defence in Antwerp

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'Hobbit' Ancestor Found in Indonesia

Dr. Adam Brumm

Homo floresiensis, a mysterious, pygmy like human species, were first found on the island of Flores, Indonesia, in 2003. The unusual creatures have been nicknamed hobbits, in reference to their similarities to the characters from J.R.R Tolkien’s popular fantasy books. The first specimen, discovered in the Liang Bua cave on Flores, was surrounded by stone tools and animal remains. Thirty years old at the time of death, the female H.floresiensis would have been about 3.5 foot (1.06 metres) tall. Subsequent discoveries of jaw and skeletal remains from eight similarly diminuitive individuals led scientists to conclude in a 2009 study that the initial discovery had not been an anomaly. Exactly when H.floresiensis actually lived is far from clear, but a 2005 paper in Nature suggested they could have been around as far back as 95,000 years ago until as recently as 12,000 years ago. Now, remains of hominins that were roughly the same size as H.floresiensis but ten times older, have been excavated from Mata Menge, a site in open grasslands 70 km east of Liang Bua, Indonesia. Several isolated hominin teeth, as well as a fragment of lower jaw, were found in a layer of sandstone which had been deposited around 700,000 years ago next to a lakeside stream. The findings are reported in the journal Nature. “We have unearthed fossils from at least three individuals, including two children, along with stone tools that are almost identical to those made by the much younger Homo floresiensis,” said Dr. Adam Brumm from Griffiths University, who was involved in the excavations. Along with colleagues from the Geology Museum and Geological Survey Institute in Bandung, Indonesia, Dr. Brumm has been carrying out excavation work at Mata Menge since 2004. “There is a striking similarity in size and form between the Mata Menge hominins and the Liang Bua hobbit, which is surprising given the former are at least several hundred millennia older.” Dr. Brumm explained in a press release from Griffiths University. “This suggests the Mata Menge individuals belonged to a population of ancient hobbit-like hominins that gave rise to Homo floresiensis. They may even have been a very early form of hobbits, which would mean this species existed for far longer than anyone had anticipated.” Since the initial discovery in 2003, scientists have struggled to explain where H.floresiensis fit into the human family tree. Although broadly agreed that the ‘hobbits’ evolved from an archaic branch of hominins that existed prior to the emergence of our own species in Africa some 200,000 years ago, exactly which hominin group spawned them has divided opinion. One hypothesis is that H.floresiensis descended from Asian Homo erectus, also known as Java man, an early hominin that reached the island of Java 1.5 million years ago. The hypothesis suggests that a group of these ‘Java men’, which were similar in size to a modern human, somehow became stranded on Flores and gradually reduced in body size. The other hypothesis is that H.floresiensis came from an even more ancient ancestor, such as Homo habilis, or perhaps even an ape like hominin forerunner. The Mata Menge discoveries seem to add considerable support to the first theory. “While only a handful of fossils has been found at Mata Menge so far, characteristic features of the teeth strongly imply an ancestral relationship with Homo erectus,” Dr. Brumm said. “This lends weight to the theory that the hobbit was a dwarfed version of the famous Java Man, which somehow got marooned on the island. The fact that they were found with fossils of extinct pygmy elephants (Stegodon) and giant rats also supports the idea of an isolated group of Homo erectus undergoing a dramatic evolutionary change owing to the Island Rule.” These conclusions are far from conclusive of course. Brumm and colleagues are hopeful however, that more skeletal remains will be excavated from Mata Menge, which could provide further insights into H.floresiensis‘ history. “Mata Menge is a goldmine,” said Dr Brumm. “I expect that further excavations at this site will eventually yield a hominin skull, which will finally allow us to put a face and a name to the hobbit’s ancestor. Then we will know how this experiment in human evolution got started”.]]>

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Earliest Evidence of European Fire Building Found in Spain

Midsummer Bonfire

Homo heidelbergensis, a direct ancestor of Neanderthal Man, Homo neanderthalensis. Like other sites that show signs of early fire building, hominids at Black Cave left behind a variety of stone tools, indicating they possessed the technical skills needed for selecting the right material for striking sparks. Paleontologist Michael Walker with the University of Murcia explained in Science News that it’s unlikely a brush fire near the cave’s entrance could have sent sparks inside to ignite fires that were found between five and seven meters in, adding that dry brush wasn’t likely to be near the cave to begin with, given that 800,000 years ago the area bordered a swamp and a river. Other researchers told Science News they suspect the Cueva Negra’s artifacts are actually not as old as the report indicates, because it’s difficult to say where the artifacts originally were in relation to several different reversals of the planets magnetic field which are preserved in the sediment layers found in the cave. A 2011 study, published in the Journal of Archaeological Science, set an age limit for the tools made by the Homo species in Europe at no more than 600,000 years ago. Even at 600,000 years old though, the findings at the cave would still be the earliest evidence of fire making in Europe. The systematic excavation of the cave was started in 1990 and until 2004 researchers considered the site to be from the late Pleistocene era, however, rodent fossils were discovered from a species that became extinct 500,000 years ago. Other animal fossils include megaceroides (giant deer), wild boar, bison, hyena, turtles and rabbits, in addition to 60 different species of birds. ]]>

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Asian Metals Arrived in Alaska Long Before European Contact

Beringia - Present Day

Journal of Archaeological Science, the new findings have the potential to drastically rewrite the history of North America and trade between continents. The artifacts in question, examples of smelted alloys, were found on Alaska’s northwestern coast, at Cape Espenberg. The site, on the Seaward Peninsula, was inhabited by the Thule people, an Arctic culture which originated on the Alaskan coast in around 900 CE and spread as far as Greenland. A society whose existence was built around hunting, Thule houses were built from whale bones, skin and sod. Previous archaeological finds and oral histories have long given clues that objects from Eurasia reached prehistoric North America, but concrete proof had not been found until now. H. Kory Cooper, an associate professor of anthropology at Purdue University, led the metallurgical analysis of the artifacts. “We believe these smelted alloys were made somewhere in Eurasia and traded to Siberia and then traded across the Bering Strait to ancestral Inuits people, also known as Thule culture, in Alaska. Locally available metal in parts of the Arctic, such as native metal, copper and meteoritic and telluric iron were used by ancient Inuit people for tools and to sometimes indicate status”, he explained in a press release from the university. “Two of the Cape Espenberg items that were found – a bead and a buckle — are heavily leaded bronze artifacts. Both are from a house at the site dating to the Late Prehistoric Period, around 1100-1300 AD, which is before sustained European contact in the late 18th century.” Fieldwork for the study was led by Owen K. Mason and John F. Hoffecker, both from the Institute of Arctic and Alpine Research at the University of Colorado, Boulder. Between 2009 and 2011 they excavated a host of artifacts, including six objects made from metal. Both the belt buckle and the bead were made from leaded bronze – an alloy of copper, tin and lead. They were a lucky find, with metal artifacts rarely found at dig sites due to poor preservation. The fragmented leather belt strap was dated to between 500 and 800 years old, although the metal component could be significantly older. “The belt buckle also is considered an industrial product and is an unprecedented find for this time,” Cooper said. “It resembles a buckle used as part of a horse harness that would have been used in north-central China during the first six centuries before the Common Era.” Cooper and colleagues’ study adds to the growing body of knowledge about prehistoric North America, and the remarkably diverse and complicated cultures that lived and thrived there long before Europeans arrived and changed the continent forever. “This will cause other people to think about the Arctic differently. Some have presented the Arctic and Subarctic regions as backwater areas with no technological innovation because there was a very small population at the time.” Cooper said. “That doesn’t mean interesting things weren’t happening, and this shows that locals were not only using locally available metals but were also obtaining metals from elsewhere.” ]]>

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Neanderthal Mutations Could Still be Affecting Humans

Sapiens Neanderthal comparison

GENETICS. Harmful mutations present in the genome of Neanderthals made them up to 40% less fit reproductively than modern humans, according to the study. Although most of the effects have since been lost to time, these mutations likely passed to non-African humans when they interbred with Neanderthals. It is suggested that the mutations could still be affecting the fitness of some populations today. The study was led by Kelley Harris of Stanford University, along with her colleague Rasmus Nielse, from the University of California Berkley and Copenhagen University. “Neanderthals are fascinating to geneticists because they provide an opportunity to study what happens when two groups of humans evolve independently for a long time–and then come back together,” Harris explained. “Our results suggest that inheriting Neanderthal DNA came at a cost.” It is now widely accepted that modern humans interbred with Neanderthals, our closest extinct genetic relatives, with between 2% and 4% of genetic material in modern, non-African human populations having a Neanderthal origin. A study published earlier this year suggested that anything from the risk of depression to nicotine addiction could be connected to the mixing of human and Neanderthal genomes. Due to their smaller, more concentrated population, inbreeding was much more common among Neanderthals than modern humans, leading to their decreased genetic diversity. Harris and Nielsen were particularly fascinated by the fact that the Neanderthal genetic contribution to the modern human genome is uneven, but not random. Neanderthal sequences tend to be concentrated in certain areas, but totally absent elsewhere. “Whenever geneticists find a non-random arrangement like that, we look for the evolutionary forces that caused it,” Harris remarked. They hypothesised that the explanation could be found in natural selection. In small populations, like the Neanderthals, natural selection is less effective, allowing mutations to persist and have a larger influence. If such a mutation is introduced back into a larger population (such as modern humans) however, it’s quickly lost in the march of natural selection. To understand this process, Harris and Nielsen used computer programs to simulate mutation accumulation during Neanderthal evolution and estimate how humans were affected by the influx of Neanderthal genetic variants. They concluded that Neanderthals would have carried many mild, harmful mutations, combining to make them 40% less fit than humans in evolutionary terms. Their results also suggest that humans and Neanderthals had actually interbred much more freely and frequently than previously believed. The findings suggest that thousands of years ago, when both humans and Neanderthals inhabited the earth, closer to 10% of non-African humans’ genomes would have been Neanderthal. Shockingly, Harris and Nielsen suggest that a fraction of the harmful Neanderthal genetic mutations could still be present in modern human populations. They estimate the result could be a 1% lower reproductive fitness in modern day non-Africans. For more information: www.genetics.org]]>

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Proof That Aboriginal Australians Were the First

Mungo man

Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, the authors of the study argue they have found conclusive evidence that Aboriginal people were the first to inhabit the continent. The findings refute a controversial study that claimed a now extinct group of modern humans had been the first to set foot on Australia. The earlier study recovered DNA lineages from the ‘oldest known Australian’, Mungo Man. It concluded that Mungo Man represented a human lineage which must have lived on the Australian continent before the arrival of Aboriginal people. By applying new DNA sequencing methods to re-analyse the same set of remains, the scientists from Griffith University’s Research Centre for Human Evolution (RCHE) claim that the original DNA study of Mungo Man drew incorrect conclusions about his lineage. Mungo Man (LM3) is one of three sets of remains discovered at the Lake Mungo site in New South Wales, Australia. First unearthed in February 1974, Mungo Man is believed to have been around fifty years old at the time of his death. It appears the early hunter-gatherer was buried with care, laid on his back with his hands crossed in his lap, and sprinkled in red ochre, in one of the earliest examples of such a ritual. His bones showed signs of severe arthritis, especially in the right elbow, suggesting he would not have been able to move his right arm in the time leading up to his death. Dated to around 42,000 years old, the remains caused a drastic rethink about the history of Australia’s population. Previously, it was assumed that the first humans had arrived on the continent around 20,000 years ago. Professor Lambert from RHCE highlighted the inconsistencies in the earlier study. “The sample from Mungo Man which we retested contained sequences from five different European people suggesting that these all represent contamination,” he said in a press release. “At the same time we re-analysed more than 20 of the other ancient people from Willandra (the reserve where Lake Mungo is located). We were successful in recovering the genomic sequence of one of the early inhabitants of Lake Mungo, a man buried very close to the location where Mungo Man was originally interred.” he went on to explain. “By going back and reanalysing the samples with more advanced technology, we have found compelling support for the argument that Aboriginal Australians were the first inhabitants of Australia.” Lambert and colleagues’ study shows that advanced technology is capable of extracting valuable data from Aboriginal Australian remains, offering potentially enlightening insights into the history of Australia’s first inhabitants. “We now know that meaningful genetic information can be recovered from ancient Aboriginal Australian remains,” he said. “This represents the first time researchers have recovered an ancient mitochondrial genome sequence from an Aboriginal person who lived before the arrival of the Europeans.” Image courtesy of Wikimedia Commons user James Maurice Bowler]]>

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Huge Earthquake Destroys Port Royal

Port Royal Earthquake (1)

HMS Swan, out of the sea, and deposited it on a building in the city. The geology of Port Royal only added to the scale of the damage wrought by the earthquake. Much of the town had been built on tightly packed soil rather than bedrock. During the quake, this soil was shaken loose and almost turned completely liquid. Buildings sank into the ground, and many of those that had survived the initial earthquake and subsequent tsunami were nonetheless rendered uninhabitable, including two forts. One particularly morbid consequence of this loose soil saw corpses from the city’s cemetery dislodged from their graves and floating in the harbour. By the end of the event, two thirds of the city had been annihilated. Thousands of people had been killed, while aftershocks rocked the island for days after. A lively, bustling city and centre of trade in the Caribbean, Port Royal also had the dubious accolade of being referred to as the “the most wicked and sinful city in the world.” During the seventeenth century, it was considered a dangerous place, home to pirates, smugglers and debauchery. It was said at the time that a quarter of the buildings in the city were either a brothel or a bar. Located away from the Jamaican mainland, it became the perfect hiding place for the real life Pirates of the Caribbean, allowing them to prey on shipping before escaping into the bustle of the busy city. Remarkably however, the city also served as a base for the British Royal Navy in the seventeenth century. For the clergy of the seventeenth century, the shocking disaster which befell Port Royal was seen as divine retribution for the city’s vices, a biblical punishment for a city considered sinful on a biblical scale. Some historians however, suggest that the size of the cataclysm that befell Port Royal actually distorted the history of the city. The sins of the island were exaggerated after 1692, to match the narrative of the earthquake being a punishment from God. Port Royal was never again settled to the same extent it had been before the 1692 earthquake, the damage caused deterred people from returning, meaning it is now the site of a just a small fishing village. ]]>

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Ancient Maya Observatory Tracked More than Sun

Obsertario Maya

Excelsior, a Mexico City-based newspaper, Quintal Suaste remarked that the building would have seen the exclusive use of the elite of Maya civilization, most notably the community’s astronomer-priests. Like other Maya buildings that were built to match the path of the sun, this observatory has doors within it that align with both the rising and setting sun on the date of the spring and autumnal equinoxes. Additionally, when the midday sun strikes the semicircular building it casts no shadow – another intentional design element of the structure. Meanwhile, the southern edge of the observatory has been shown to align with the northernmost position that Venus reaches in the night sky. After the sun and the moon, the planet is the brightest observable object in the sky; Venus held a special place among Acanceh’s astronomer-priests. According to Quintal Suaste, the Maya had the ability to track the planet through its 584-day cycle thanks to the observatory. Direct evidence of this behavior was corroborated by the text within three codices discovered at the site. These findings were able to further support the idea that Venus was an integral cultural icon amongst the Maya, according to Orlando Casares Contreras, another researcher that also spoke to Excelsior. The Central American civilization was vast, stretching from southern Mexico to Honduras during its peak. Venus had a special place in Maya theology and in their mythological pantheon, known as Noh Ek, or “The Great Star”, among the faithful. Venus was also known as Xux Ek, “the Wasp Star”, according to some texts. There are some indications that Venus might have been known by a specific name depending on where it appeared in the sky during its cycle, as it would appear as a morning star during part of its cycle and an evening star during another part of its cycle. Image courtesy of Wikimedia Commons user: Luigiflas]]>