Human skulls are 'oldest Americans'

Human skulls are 'oldest Americans'


The skull is said to be 13,000 years old

Tests on skulls found in Mexico suggest they are almost 13,000 years old - and shed fresh light on how humans colonised the Americas.
The human skulls are the oldest tested so far from the continent, and their shape is set to inflame further a controversy over native American burial rights.



Mexico appears to have been a crossroads for people spreading across the Americas

Dr Silvia Gonzalez, Liverpool John Moores University
The skulls were analysed by a scientist from John Moores University in Liverpool, UK, with help from teams in Oxford and Mexico itself.

They came from a collection of 27 skeletons of early humans kept at the National Museum of Anthropology in Mexico City.

These were originally discovered more than 100 years ago in the area surrounding the city.

'Amazing' find

The latest radiocarbon dating techniques allow dating to be carried out on tiny quantities of bone, although the process is expensive.

Dr Silvia Gonzalez, who dated the skulls, said: "The museum knew that the remains were of significant historical value but they hadn't been scientifically dated.


Dr Silvia Gonzalez dated the skull

"I decided to analyse small bone samples from five skeletons using the latest carbon-dating techniques," she told BBC News Online.

"I think everybody was amazed at how old they were."

The earliest human remains tested prior to this had been dated at approximately 12,000 years ago.

Domestic tools dated at 14,500 years have been found in Chile - but with no associated human remains.

The latest dating is not only confirmation that humans were present in the Americas much earlier than 12,000 years ago, but also that they were not related to early native Americans.

Asian travellers

The two oldest skulls were "dolichocephalic" - that is, long and narrow-headed.

Other, more recent skulls were a different shape - short and broad, like those from native American remains.

This suggests that humans dispersed within Mexico in two distinct waves, and that a race of long and narrow-headed humans may have lived in North America prior to the American Indians.

Traditionally, American Indians were thought to have been the first to arrive on the continent, crossing from Asia on a land bridge.

Dr Gonzalez told BBC News Online: "We believe that the older race may have come from what is now Japan, via the Pacific islands and perhaps the California coast.

"Mexico appears to have been a crossroads for people spreading across the Americas.

"Our next project is to examine remains found in the Baha peninsula of California, and look at their DNA to see if they are related.

"But this discovery, although it is very significant, raises more questions than it solves."

Legal challenge

Scientific analysis of early skull finds in the US has often been halted by native American custom which assumes that any ancient remains involve their ancestors and must be handed over.

However, this evidence that another race may have pre-dated native Americans could strengthen legal challenges from researchers to force access to such remains.

Dr Gonzalez said: "My research could have implications for the ancient burial rights of North American Indians."

Dr Gonzalez has now been awarded a grant from the Mexican government and the UK's Natural Environment Research Council to continue her work for three years.

Link

Human skulls are 'oldest Americans'

The mysterious Irene Complex near Savannah

Seems to be the week for mysterious Indian settlements. Is there some
form of proof that the Maya traded this far North? I mean goods that
would suggest more than just hand to hand trading finally reaching
Georgia.

The mysterious Irene Complex near Savannah
July 21, 10:05 AM · Richard Thornton - Architecture & Design Examiner


Was it a fortified port, a religious shrine, a royal compound or all
of the above?


Look to the west from the edge of Downtown Savannah, GA and all you
will see along the Savannah River are huge derricks, massive cargo
ships and warehouses. A mysterious Native American complex on an
island adjacent to the Savannah River no longer exists. The site was
developed by the Georgia Ports Authority six decades ago.


Few, if any, of the tourists from around the world who visit Savannah
know much about its history prior to the arrival of English colonists
in 1732. The coast of Georgia and South Carolina was where Spain
focused its initial efforts to colonize North America in the
mid-1500s. Prior to that time, the coastal islands and estuaries near
Savannah were occupied by the Wahale People. The name means
“Southerners” in the Hitchiti-Creek Indian language. Probably, the
Wahale were from the Florida Peninsula originally. Having no “W” in
their alphabet, the Spanish wrote their name down as the Guale. They
appeared to the Spanish to be simple people, who lived in villages or
hamlets, and only built small burial mounds of sand and shells.


During the late 1500s virtually all of the Wahale became associated
with a chain of missions along the coast of what are now Georgia and
the southern tip of South Carolina. However, by 1732 the Wahale were
essentially extinct . . . wiped out by waves of European diseases, the
abuses of Spanish serfdom and finally repeated attacks by other Native
American groups from the interior. A few hundred fled to the vicinity
of Saint Augustine or among the Apalachee of the Florida Panhandle,
when the Spanish abandoned the Georgia coast in 1684.


Muskogean* villages, ethnically related to the Wahale, moved from the
interior of the Coastal Plain to replace the Wahale after the
survivors moved away. These peoples were known by the British as the
Yamasee. The name means “offspring of Yama” in the Hitchiti-Creek
language. Yama was a trade language associated with the area around
Mobile, AL. However, in 1715 the Yamassee rebelled against the
British because of their continued practice of Native American
slaves. The Yamassee almost destroyed the South Carolina Colony until
the “new boys on the block,” the Cherokees attacked the Yamassee from
the rear and drove them down into Florida.


A regional center for something?


Around 1000 AD, some unidentified group began constructing a complex
of buildings 21 one miles inland from the sea on a triangular island
next to the Savannah River. It was a location that humans had camped
on for thousands of years while fishing and hunting. Until roughly at
this island, the Savannah River runs fast and clear. Tidal flows slow
its movement beyond here. Of all the rivers in the Southeast, it drops
from the Southern Highlands along the shortest horizontal distance. On
one side of the island was the Savannah River, on another side a
creek, and the other a ravine created by centuries of rainwater. It
was a naturally fortified site for controlling river traffic. The
newcomers augmented the defensive nature of the site with timber
palisades. The settlers erected houses and the first stages of several
mounds. Their houses were similar to those being built about 150 miles
to the west on the Ocmulgee River.


Although the Georgia coast in recent decades has never been directly
hit by a major hurricane, the location of the Irene Complex would be a
relatively safe haven for coastal trading canoes or even sea-going
Maya merchant sailboats. Savannah was intentionally planted 16 miles
inland in order to put distance between the city and hurricane tidal
surges. The site also adjoins a major trade path that paralleled the
river all the way from the mountains to the see.


The architecture and plan of the complex at Irene continued to evolve
through the centuries. While the houses were similar to those at
Ocmulgee National Monument in Macon, GA the public architecture,
though, became something very different than was found in most of
North America at that time.


(1) The largest mound is an elongated form that is semi-circular on
one end and rectangular on the other. The rectangular end is served
by three ramps.


(2) An unusual type of pentagonal earthwork extended southward from
the main mound. This type of pentagon is also found at Zoque (Olmec)
cities in Mexico.


(3) There appears to have been a cone-shaped chokopa inside the apex
of the pentagon. In Mexico these types of buildings were folk temples
for the god, Quetzalcoatl, but among the ancestors of the Creek
Indians evolved to being community centers. Chokopa is the Chontal
Maya word for “warm place.”


(4) There was a dome shaped minor mound constructed of shells to the
west of the main mound. .


(5) To the south of the shell mound was a temple surrounded by a
shell ring.


(6) Between the shell dome and the shell ring was a paved walkway
that connected the large mound with a small plaza and a public
building.


(7) The public building at the end of the walkway was surrounded by a
timber palisade. Was this inner palisade a visual screen or a barrier
to protect the contents of the building? The building within a
palisade has the appearance of a prison, but the timber palisade may
have been meant to be a psychological barrier from the outside
world . . . much like the walls around medieval monasteries.


(8) Houses of substantial size were constructed around the west and
north periphery of the island.


(9) There was a fortified gate on the south apex of the triangle
where a narrow land bridge joined the mainland.


(10) An outer channel of the Savannah River provided the main
entrance to the complex.


(11) The inner harbor was probably where most canoes and boats landed
to unload cargo.


Alternative interpretations of the Irene Complex


Radiocarbon dating suggests that the Irene Complex was still occupied
during the 1500s when Spain was exploring and colonizing the South
Atlantic Coast. However, to date, no Spanish archive has been found
which definitely describes the complex. It was last occupied around
the year 1600, while Spain continued to maintain missions in the
region until 1684. Without eyewitness, written reports we can only
speculate what activities took place on the island. Alternative
interpretations include:


· A “royal” compound where the leaders of the province and
their retainers lived. The lack of large “capital” towns among the
Wahale, might be explained by them being subject to the authority of
whoever lived at the Irene Complex.


· A fortified port of entry where goods from the mountains and
piedmont were traded with goods from the coast and Florida. The large
building inside of an inner stockade, may have been a warehouse for
especially valuable goods.


· A regional religious shrine where priests and retainers
lived in a fortified environment to protect the site from raiders.


· A fortified port of entry that evolved into a major
religious shrine and regional capital.


Excavation of the site by WPA archaeologists & local women


The WPA hired famous archaeologist Joseph Caldwell, to supervise
excavation of the Irene Site in the late 1930s and early 1940s.
Caldwell’s work crew was almost completely composed of African-
American women. These women did an outstanding job . . . especially
considering that prior to going to work for the WPA none had any
training in archaeology. The Irene Mounds Study is still considered
one of the most accurate and thorough archaeological projects of the
mid-20th century.


*Muskogean is a generic term (like Scandinavian) for peoples related
to the Historic Period Creek Indians of Georgia, South Carolina, North
Carolina, Alabama, and SE Tennessee

http://www.examiner.com/x-40598-Architecture--Design-Examiner~y2010m7d21-The-mysterious-Irene-Complex-near-Savannah

The mysterious Irene Complex near Savannah

Russell L. Ciochon and his team are in Indonesia investigating the geological source and age of one of the world's biggest caches of Homo erectus.

News: Q&A
Notes from an excavation


Russell L. Ciochon and his team are in Indonesia investigating the
geological source and age of one of the world's biggest caches of Homo
erectus.


Miriam Frankel
Russell L. CiochonRussell L. Ciochon, who heads the team at the
Ngandong site, with a gorilla skull.Tom Jorgensen


In the early 1930s, 14 Homo erectus fossils and 25,000 vertebrate
remains were unearthed near the muddy Solo River at Ngandong in Java,
Indonesia, by a research team from the Netherlands. Some 80 years
later, this remains one of the world's largest caches of this early
human. It could also be evidence of the species' swansong. A team has
now returned to Ngandong, armed with the original Dutch survey
documents, to answer some long-standing questions about the age of the
fossils and the ancient sediment that they were buried in. Nature
talked to Russell L. Ciochon, a palaeoanthropologist at the University
of Iowa in Iowa City, while his team was digging at Ngandong.


Why is this fieldwork so important?


H. erectus from Ngandong potentially lived in the last part of the Ice
Age at the same time that Homo sapiens inhabited other parts of the
Old World, and Homo floresiensis (the 'hobbit') was still living in
caves on the Indonesian island of Flores. This was a very intriguing
period in the saga of human evolution.


According to the Dutch team who discovered them, the H. erectus
specimens were deposited by the Solo River. The fact that the present
river is so near to the deposits that contained the H. erectus
specimens could indicate that the deposits and fossils are far younger
than the oldest known H. sapiens in Africa, which would mean that the
two species actually coexisted. But attempts to date Ngandong over the
past 30 years have proved inconclusive. This is partly because we
don't know enough about the Ngandong geology and can't be sure that
the dated samples from earlier excavations came from the discovery
bed. Our team is the first to focus on the geological context of the
fossils1. This was possible because geoarchaeologist Frank Huffman
from the University of Texas at Austin obtained the long-forgotten
survey documents from the 1930s2.
Ngandong siteIndonesian team leader Yahdi Zaim (left) and Rob Scott
excavate the bone bed.O. Frank Huffman


What have you found at the site?


During our expedition, we have recovered more than 800 fossils from a
bone bed — a geological deposit with a dense collection of bones. The
excavations have provided our geological team, which includes
University of Iowa geoarchaeologist Art Bettis, with details on the
site's sediments that shed new light on how the bone bed was created.
We believe that the detailed analysis of the site's geology and the
circumstances of burial of the bone bed will provide the crucial
information to evaluate the dating and other contentious issues
surrounding the remains.


We found no stone artefacts at the site, but these are rare at most
Javan H. erectus sites. It is one of the unique features of the Java
record that remains to be explained.


What can the fossils tell us about the daily lives of these late
members of H. erectus?


Although we don't have direct evidence, we believe that H. erectus
exploited the resources in the area, probably by hunting or
scavenging. Other clues about their lives can be found by looking at
the non-human fossils, and what they can tell us about the ecology at
the time. A member of our team, Robert Scott of Rutgers University in
New Jersey, specializes in such fossils and found that they are mostly
made up of large bovids — ancestors of the Javan banteng and water
buffalo — as well as deer, Stegodon (an extinct elephant), rhinoceros,
panther, crocodiles and turtles. The large percentage of bovids and
deer could indicate that H. erectus lived in an open woodland or
grassland environment.


Also, on the basis of estimates from partial skeletons of H. erectus
from other sites, we think that the Ngandong H. erectus was probably
between 1.66 and 1.85 metres tall — similar to the average human
height in the United States today.
Solo RiverThe Solo River, which runs near the Homo erectus site.O.
Frank Huffman


What can the Ngandong excavation site tell us about the evolution and
extinction of H. erectus?


The 14 H. erectus fossils are thought to represent a late stage in the
evolution of the species. As a group, they have a significantly larger
average brain size than that found in any other H. erectus fossils.
Palaeoanthropologists don't like to use terms such as 'advanced' to
distinguish one fossil group from another, but that term would
certainly apply to the Ngandong fossils. After arriving on Java about
1.6 million years ago3, H. erectus apparently lived in 'splendid
isolation' without competition from any other human species.


It is possible that when H. sapiens eventually reached Java, it could
have competed with H. erectus for scarce island resources, leading to
the extinction of the latter. But it is more likely that some unique
geological or climatic event resulted in the extinction of Javan H.
erectus, as is the case with most species. However, it does seem that
the Ngandong group is the best evidence we have for the last
occurrence of this species worldwide.


What has been the most exciting moment of the expedition so far?


The first high point came after several excavation pits were opened.
We found boundaries of the original excavations not seen since the
1930s. This revealed untouched bone beds fitting the parameters
originally described by the Dutch team. We are reliving the days of
the discovery made nearly 80 years ago, and meeting present-day
research objectives as we unearth the past.


What is a typical day at the site like?


We've been excavating for 24 days without a break. The days blur
together and we often lose track of time. There is a routine to
systematic palaeoanthropological excavation: opening an excavation
pit, digging down to the bone bed, carefully mapping the strata as we
proceed, exposing the fossils, assigning the fossil a number, charting
its xyz coordinates, removing the fossil, and then sampling the strata
for geological analysis and dating.


ADVERTISEMENT
natureconferences


How does the Javan H. erectus compare with those from other sites in
the world and where did it actually come from?


We spend a lot of time discussing this question. The earliest H.
erectus fossils date to about 1.8 million years ago — appearing nearly
simultaneously in both East Africa and at Dmanisi in the Republic of
Georgia. So H. erectus from Africa and Georgia represent critical
comparisons for any Javan H. erectus. It is thought that the species
evolved in Africa and spread out of the continent to the Republic of
Georgia and to Java over a very short timespan — perhaps less than
100,000 years. However, the most primitive and smallest H. erectus
fossils come from Dmanisi. Anatomically, Dmanisi H. erectus shares
features with both the African and Javan H. erectus, so it may
actually be the centre of origin for the species. If you compare
Ngandong H. erectus with those from elsewhere, it is clear that the
most derived population is from Ngandong.
source

http://news-releases.uiowa.edu/2010/july/072810ciochon.html


University of Iowa News Release


July 28, 2010


Photo: Russ Ciochon (left), Frank Huffman, Yahdi Zaim and Art Bettis
stand in an excavation pit at Ngandong. Photo Credit: Maija E. Sipola.


UI anthropologist describes early human dig site in Nature News story


A University of Iowa anthropologist and his colleagues are featured in
the July 28 online edition of Nature News discussing their latest dig
to determine the geological source and precise age of the remains of
Homo erectus on the island of Java. Homo erectus is a distinct species
of early man that lived in Java between about 1.6 million and 50,000
years ago, or perhaps more recently.


Nature News is a publication of the journal Nature. A Q&A about the
dig can be found at http://www.nature.com/news/2010/100728/full/news.2010.377.html.


Russell L. Ciochon (sha-HAN), professor of the Department of
Anthropology in the University of Iowa College of Liberal Arts and
Sciences, led the large-scale excavation for Homo erectus remains at
Ngandong, Java, for 24 days during July. The interdisciplinary U.S.
team included UI associate professor of geoscience Arthur Bettis, UI
anthropology graduate student Shelby Putt of Fort Wayne, Ind., UI
geoscience graduate student Maija Sipola of Babbitt, Minn., and
research faculty from the University of Texas and Rutgers University.


What they found at the site is expected to advance scientists'
understanding of the evolution and adaptations of early Asian humans.


Ciochon said the team recovered more than 800 fossils from a bone bed
and the excavations revealed details on sediments at the site telling
how the bone bed was created.


"The site's geology and the circumstances of burial of the bone bed
will provide crucial information to evaluate the dating and other
contentious issues surrounding the Ngandong human remains," he said.


Living approximately 50,000 years ago during the last portion of the
Ice Age, Homo erectus fossils at Ngandong represent a surviving relic
population on the island of Java. Other early humans in Asia that date
to this same time range are our own species, Homo sapiens (China and
Australia), and the 'hobbit' (Homo floresiensis), an island dwarf
survivor on the isolated island of Flores, east of Java.


The excavation site itself dates to the 1930s, when Homo erectus
fossils and 25,000 vertebrate remains were first found at Ngandong
along the shores of the Solo River in Java. Although it is one of the
largest sites of Homo erectus bones, the exact age of the fossils
remains in doubt, with the result that the fossils may or may not be
evidence of one of the last occurrences of the species.


Ciochon's team returned to the site some 80 years later, along with
the original Dutch survey documents to attempt to answer some of the
questions about the age of the fossils and their geological source.


Ciochon said that it was exciting to relive history by opening the
excavation pits and observing the boundaries of the original
excavations and the untouched bone beds -- sites not seen since the
1930s.


The dig was funded by a $35,000 grant from the Wenner-Gren Foundation
for Anthropological Research, New York.

Russell L. Ciochon and his team are in Indonesia investigating the geological source and age of one of the world's biggest caches of Homo erectus.

Ancient bone find may change Filipino history Options

And that question about being able to navigate on open waters 67,000
ya arises again.

Ancient bone find may change Filipino history


By Cecil Morella (AFP) – 8 hours ago


MANILA — Archaeologists have found a foot bone that could prove the
Philippines was first settled by humans 67,000 years ago, thousands of
years earlier than previously thought, the National Museum said
Tuesday.


The bone, found in an extensive cave network, predates the 47,000-year-
old Tabon Man that is previously known as the first human to have
lived in the country, said Taj Vitales, a researcher with the museum's
archaeology section.


"This would make it the oldest human remains ever found in the
Philippines," Vitales told AFP.


Archaeologists from the University of the Philippines and the National
Museum dug up the third metatarsal bone of the right foot in 2007 in
the Callao caves near Penablanca, about 335 kilometres (210 miles)
north of Manila.


Their report on "Callao Man" was released in the latest edition of the
Journal of Human Evolution after tests in France established the
fossil's age, said professor Armand Mijares, the expedition leader.


"It broke the barriers," Mijares said, explaining that previous
evidence put the first human settlements in the Philippines and nearby
islands around Tabon Man.


"It pushed that back to nearly 70,000 years."


Cut marks on bones of deer and wild boar found around it suggest
Callao Man could have hunted and was skilled with tools, although no
cutting or other implements were found during the dig, according to
Mijares.


"This individual was small-bodied. It's difficult to say whether he
was male or female," he said.


Mijares stressed the finding that Callao Man belongs to Homo sapiens
was still only provisional. Some of the bone's features were similar
to Homo habilis and Homo floresiensis -- which are distinct species
from humans.


Existing evidence suggests that Homo sapiens, modern man, first
appeared in Africa about 200,000 years ago.


Homo habilis is considered a predecessor to Homo sapiens while Homo
floresiensis is thought to be a short, human-like species that once
existed on an Indonesian island in the Late Pleistocene stage.


To determine whether Callao Man was human, Mijares said his team
planned to secure permits to pursue further excavations in the Callao
caves and hopefully find other parts of the skeleton, tools, or
fossils of other potential humans.


Mijares said Callao Man also shared some features of today's Aetas, a
short, curly-haired and dark-skinned people who are thought to be
directly descended from the first inhabitants of the Philippines.


The discovery also suggests that raft or boat-building crafts would
have been around at that time.


"The hypothesis is that the Philippines, which is surrounded by bodies
of water, was first reached by humans aboard rafts," Vitales said.


But he said there was no consensus on whether the first settlers came
from mainland Asia, neighbouring Southeast Asian islands or elsewhere.


Archaeologists have been exploring the Callao caves system since the
1970s. "Generally caves are used as habitations and burial sites,"
Vitales said.


Tabon Man, the fossilised fragments of a skull and jawbone from three
individuals, was discovered along with stone flake tools by a National
Museum team in a cave on the western Philippine island of Palawan in
May 1962.
source

Ancient bone find may change Filipino history Options

Hand Axes on Crete

Hand axes excavated on Crete suggest hominids made sea crossings to go ‘out of Africa’
January 14, 2010 by Ray

By Bruce Bower

Human ancestors that left Africa hundreds of thousands of years ago to see the rest of the world were no landlubbers. Stone hand axes unearthed on the Mediterranean island of Crete indicate that an ancient Homo species — perhaps Homo erectus — had used rafts or other seagoing vessels to cross from northern Africa to Europe via at least some of the larger islands in between, says archaeologist Thomas Strasser of Providence College in Rhode Island.

Several hundred double-edged cutting implements discovered at nine sites in southwestern Crete date to at least 130,000 years ago and probably much earlier, Strasser reported January 7 at the annual meeting of the American Institute of Archaeology. Many of these finds closely resemble hand axes fashioned in Africa about 800,000 years ago by H. erectus, he says. H. erectus had spread from Africa to parts of Asia and Europe by at least that time.

Until now, the oldest known human settlements on Crete dated to around 9,000 years ago. Traditional theories hold that early farming groups in southern Europe and the Middle East first navigated vessels to Crete and other Mediterranean islands at that time.

“We’re just going to have to accept that, as soon as hominids left Africa, they were long-distance seafarers and rapidly spread all over the place,” Strasser says. The traditional view has been that hominids (specifically, H. erectus) left Africa via land routes that ran from the Middle East to Europe and Asia. Other researchers have controversially suggested that H. erectus navigated rafts across short stretches of sea in Indonesia around 800,000 years ago and that Neandertals crossed the Strait of Gibraltar perhaps 60,000 years ago.

Questions remain about whether African hominids used Crete as a stepping stone to reach Europe or, in a Stone Age Gilligan’s Island scenario, accidentally ended up on Crete from time to time when close-to-shore rafts were blown out to sea, remarks archaeologist Robert Tykot of the University of South Florida in Tampa. Only in the past decade have researchers established that people reached Crete before 6,000 years ago, Tykot says.

Strasser’s team cannot yet say precisely when or for what reason hominids traveled to Crete. Large sets of hand axes found on the island suggest a fairly substantial population size, downplaying the possibility of a Gilligan Island’s scenario, in Strasser’s view.

In excavations conducted near Crete’s southwestern coast during 2008 and 2009, Strasser’s team unearthed hand axes at caves and rock shelters. Most of these sites were situated in an area called Preveli Gorge, where a river has gouged through many layers of rocky sediment.

At Preveli Gorge, Stone Age artifacts were excavated from four terraces along a rocky outcrop that overlooks the Mediterranean Sea. Tectonic activity has pushed older sediment above younger sediment on Crete, so 130,000-year-old artifacts emerged from the uppermost terrace. Other terraces received age estimates of 110,000 years, 80,000 years and 45,000 years.

These minimum age estimates relied on comparisons of artifact-bearing sediment to sediment from sea cores with known ages. Geologists are now assessing whether absolute dating techniques can be applied to Crete’s Stone Age sites, Strasser says.

Intriguingly, he notes, hand axes found on Crete were made from local quartz but display a style typical of ancient African artifacts.

“Hominids adapted to whatever material was available on the island for tool making,” Strasser proposes. “There could be tools made from different types of stone in other parts of Crete.”

Strasser has conducted excavations on Crete for the past 20 years. He had been searching for relatively small implements that would have been made from chunks of chert no more than 11,000 years ago. But a current team member, archaeologist Curtis Runnels of Boston University, pointed out that Stone Age folk would likely have favored quartz for their larger implements. “Once we started looking for quartz tools, everything changed,” Strasser says.
Source

Hand Axes on Crete

Stone Age Color, Glue 'Factory' Found

Stone Age Color, Glue 'Factory' Found
The color and glue trade could have been a blossoming industry some
58,000 years ago.


By Jennifer Viegas | Thu Jun 3, 2010 07:00 AM ET


The Stone Age version of successful businessmen like Steve Jobs and
Bill Gates might have been involved in the color and glue trade.


A once-thriving 58,000-year-old ochre powder production site has just
been discovered in South Africa. The discovery offers a glimpse of
what early humans valued and used in their everyday lives.


The finding, which will be described in the Journal of Archaeological
Science, also marks the first time that any Stone Age site has yielded
evidence for ochre powder processing on cemented hearths -- an
innovation for the period. A clever caveman must have figured out that
white ash from hearths can cement and become rock hard, providing a
sturdy work surface.


"Ochre occurs in a range of colors that includes orange, red, yellow,
brown and shades of these colors," project leader Lyn Wadley told
Discovery News. "Yellow and brown ochre can be transformed to red by
heating them at temperatures as low as 250 degrees Celsius (482
degrees Fahrenheit)."


Wadley, who authored the study, is a professor in the School of
Geography, Archaeology and Environmental Studies and in the Institute
for Human Evolution at the University of the Witwatersrand. She said
ochre has been found on bone awl tools probably used for working
leather, so it is possible that the ancients sported colorful leather
clothing and other leather goods.


Red-hot leather clothing is still found in stores today, but the
probable wearers then were a far cry from today's fashion elite.


Ochre is derived from naturally tinted clay that contains mineral
oxides. In addition to coloring objects, it makes a compound adhesive
when mixed with other ingredients, such as plant gum and animal fat.


"This glue would have attached stone spear or arrowheads to hafts, or
blades to handles for cutting tools," Wadley explained.


Ochre can also be used as body paint and makeup, as a preservative and
as a medicinal component, so it could have served many different
functions during the Stone Age.


Wadley analyzed the ochre "factory" at the large Sibudu rock shelter
north of Durban in KwaZulu-Natal, South Africa. The site consisted of
four cemented hearths containing the ochre powder. The cement
workstations could have held grindstones and/or served as storage
receptacles for the powder, according to Wadley, who also excavated
about 8,000 pieces of ochre in the area.


She believes the natural material was collected just over a half a
mile away from the site, where it would have been heated and ground or
just ground directly onto coarse rocks.


Francesco d'Errico, director of research at the National Center of
Scientific Research at the University of Bordeaux, said pigment
material is found in bits and pieces at various early sites. However,
not much was known in detail before about how it was processed and
used.


Based on the nature of the cemented ash and the geology of the Sibudu
site, d'Errico believes that people 58,000 years ago intended to
produce large quantities of red pigment in a short time frame.


He now thinks ochre pigment was a "fundamental constitute of Middle
Stone Age culture, and that its production likely involved the work of
several members of the group."

SOURCE

Stone Age Color, Glue 'Factory' Found

Bird rock art could be world's oldest

Bird rock art could be world's oldest
By: Emma Young | June-3-2010


*


A ROCK PAINTING THAT appears to be of a bird that went extinct about
40,000 years ago has been discovered in northern Australia. If
confirmed, this would be the oldest rock art anywhere in the world,
pre-dating the famous Chauvet cave in southern France by some 7,000
years.


The red ochre painting was found in southwest Arnhem Land by a member
of the Jawoyn Association, which represents the local traditional
owners of the land. When Robert Gunn, an archaeologist brought in to
document rock art in the area, saw the painting he immediately thought
it looked like Genyornis, an emu-like, big-beaked, thick-legged bird
that went extinct along with other Australian megafauna between 40,000
and 50,000 years ago.


"But I bit my tongue, and sent it off to a recognised authority,
palaeontologist Peter Murray in Darwin, to see what he thought. When
he confirmed that it probably was Genyornis, it was pretty exciting,"
Robert says.


Robert thinks there are two possible interpretations: either this is
among the oldest rock paintings in the world, or Genyornis went
extinct later than anybody thinks.


Age old question


But there's no good archaeological or palaeontological evidence that
Genyornis survived longer than about 40,000 years ago, says Bruno
David, an archaeologist and rock art specialist at Monash University
in Melbourne, who has seen photos of the painting and who has worked
in the region. "If this is Genyornis, then it has to be more than
40,000 years old," he says.


Robert is now planning to record the site in much more detail, and
next year Bruno and his team will excavate the area thoroughly. A rock
fall created the exposed face on which the painting was made. By
studying buried samples from beneath the fallen rock, the team should
be able to work out the age of the rock face. If it is older than
40,000 years, this won't prove that the painting is that old, but it
will support the idea that it could be.


Some rock art specialists strongly suspect that the painting is
younger. The oldest pigment found on a rock anywhere in Australia is
28,000 years old, but the image is so covered with dust and other
rocky accretions, it's impossible to know what it looked like.


The Genyornis site is a shallow shelter and most such paintings in
Australia are thought to be less than about 5,000 years old; older
ones are thought to have been eroded away by weather. The Chauvet
artworks, in contrast, are deep inside a cave that was sealed for more
than 20,000 years. However, some of the sandstone in Arnhem Land does
have the advantage of being extremely hard and durable.


Cautious optimism


Bruno says it's important to be cautious. The features of the painted
bird match the features of the extinct Genyornis very closely, but
this might be a coincidence, he says. "It's possible that at some time
in the past, people were painting animals that didn't necessarily
match living species - or that the bird wasn't a physical bird, but an
animal that was part of the local, ancestral Jawoyn Dreaming beliefs,"
he says. And if this is the case, the painting could have been made at
any time in the past.


But either way it's exciting, he says. "If it's Genyornis, then it's
of extreme significance. If not, it's very significant because it
tells us something about the way people understood their landscapes."


LINK

Bird rock art could be world's oldest

More on Neanderthal Hybrids

"Sarah Joyce, a doctoral student who works with Jeffrey Long, analysed
614 microsatellite positions. She created an evolutionary tree to
help explain the genetic variation in the microsatellites. It turned out
that the best way to explain this variation was the occurrence of two
periods of interbreeding between humans and an archaic species, such
as Homo neanderthalensis or Homo heidelbergensis.
Using estimated rates of genetic mutation and data from the fossil
record, the researchers think that the periods of interbreeding may have
occurred around 60,000 years ago in the eastern Mediterranean and around
45,000 years ago in eastern Asia, both after the first migration of Homo
sapiens out of Africa. That would explain why Long and his team did not find
evidence of interbreeding in the modern Africans that were included in the
study." Source

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Read it Here!

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We Have Neanderthal DNA

"Some people don¹t just have a caveman mentality; they may actually
carry a little relic of the Stone Age in their DNA.


A new study of the Neandertal genome shows that humans and Neandertals
interbred. The discovery comes as a big surprise to researchers who have
been searching for genetic evidence of human-Neandertal interbreeding
for years and finding none.


About 1 percent to 4 percent of DNA in modern people from Europe and
Asia was inherited from Neandertals, researchers report in the May 7
Science. ³It¹s a small, but very real proportion of our ancestry,² says
study coauthor David Reich of the Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard in
Cambridge, Mass. Comparisons of the human and Neandertal genomes are
also revealing how humans evolved to become the sole living hominid
species on the planet.


Neandertals lived in Europe, the Middle East and western Asia until they
disappeared about 30,000 years ago. The new data indicate that humans
may not have replaced Neandertals, but assimilated them into the human
gene pool.


³Neandertals are not totally extinct; they live on in some of us,² says
Svante Pbo of the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology in
Leipzig, Germany, and leader of the Neandertal genome project."


"Scientists were surprised to find that people from China and Papua New
Guinea (places where Neandertals never lived) have just as much
Neandertal ancestry as people from France. The group did not find traces
of Neandertal heritage in the two African people studied. The result
probably means that interbreeding between Neandertals and humans took
place about 50,000 to 80,000 years ago in the Middle East as humans
began migrating out of Africa to colonize the rest of the world, Reich
says."
ScienceNews

BBC

We Have Neanderthal DNA

The Looters at Bebes Barbecue Cornbread Recipe

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