Tuesday, December 21, 2010

The Nabataean kingdom

The Nabataean kingdom was one of the wealthiest of the Client States which were a prominent feature on the Roman frontiers, especially in the east. Its capital at Petra is famous for its spectacular civic buildings and tombs. It was annexed by Trajan who created the new province of Arabia.

The Nabataeans were early nomadic Arabs who traveled across the deserts of Arabia for trade. Although not as well known as other ancient civilizations, the Nabataeans were trade savvy and developed ingenious hydraulic engineering systems, some remains of which can be seen in Petra today. These two elements combined enabled the Nabataeans to control important trade routes. They not only operated from Petra – the region that in the bible is called Edom – but also throughout Moab and other regions from southern Syria to the western Sinai. By the fourth century B.C. the Nabataeans controlled the spice and incense trade from Arabia to Mesopotamia.

Their efficient water storage techniques, which included hidden underground cisterns strategically located along their trade routes, allowed the Nabataeans to cross vast expanses of desert, brining frankincense and spices from Arabia and from the East to the Mediterranean. Thus Petra flourished in the first centuries B.C. and A.D., despite the extremely arid environment, by the engineering of a sophisticated hydrological system. The system brought water in channels and clay pipes from springs near Petra, notably from Ain Musa which is located in present-day Wadi Musa. The system also harvested the meager yearly rainfall and mitigated the effects of the rare downpours that would otherwise have produced destructive flash floods.

In continually seeking to improve their position in a trading network that included Greece, Persia, Rome, India, and Arabia and that stretched ultimately to China, the Nabataeans provided a conduit for goods and ideas among these groups. The architecture of Petra that survives today testifies to the exchange of cultural traits that occurred on a global scale even in ancient times. Tombs and buildings display Assyrian, Egyptian, Hellenistic, Babylonian, and Roman characteristics incorporated into a Nabataean style that, especially in its earlier expressions, owes much to the architectural tradition of the East.

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No evidence for Clovis catastrophe, archaeologists say

Distinctive spearpoints made by the so-called Clovis culture have been found at sites throughout the contiguous United States, as well as in Mexico and Central America.

New radiocarbon dating of spearpoints from all known Clovis sites has significantly shortened the time frame in which Clovis people could have spread to South America, suggesting the culture could not have been the first humans to arrive in the New World.

Photograph courtesy the Center for the Study of the First Americans, Texas A&M University/

New research challenges the controversial theory that an ancient comet impact devastated the Clovis people, one of the earliest known cultures to inhabit North America.

Writing in the October issue of Current Anthropology, archaeologists Vance Holliday (University of Arizona) and David Meltzer (Southern Methodist University) argue that there is nothing in the archaeological record to suggest an abrupt collapse of Clovis populations. “Whether or not the proposed extraterrestrial impact occurred is a matter for empirical testing in the geological record,” the researchers write. “Insofar as concerns the archaeological record, an extraterrestrial impact is an unnecessary solution for an archaeological problem that does not exist.”

The comet theory first emerged in 2007 when a team of scientists announced evidence of a large extraterrestrial impact that occurred about 12,900 years ago. The impact was said to have caused a sudden cooling of the North American climate, killing off mammoths and other megafauna. It could also explain the apparent disappearance of the Clovis people, whose characteristic spear points vanish from the archaeological record shortly after the supposed impact.

As evidence for the rapid Clovis depopulation, comet theorists point out that very few Clovis archaeological sites show evidence of human occupation after the Clovis. At the few sites that do, Clovis and post-Clovis artifacts are separated by archaeologically sterile layers of sediments, indicating a time gap between the civilizations. In fact, comet theorists argue, there seems to be a dead zone in the human archaeological record in North America beginning with the comet impact and lasting about 500 years.

But Holliday and Meltzer dispute those claims. They argue that a lack of later human occupation at Clovis sites is no reason to assume a population collapse. “Single-occupation Paleoindian sites—Clovis or post-Clovis—are the norm,” Holliday said. That’s because many Paleoindian sites are hunting kill sites, and it would be highly unlikely for kills to be made repeatedly in the exact same spot.

“So there is nothing surprising about a Clovis occupation with no other Paleoindian zone above it, and it is no reason to infer a disaster,” Holliday said.

In addition, Holliday and Meltzer compiled radiocarbon dates of 44 archaeological sites from across the U.S. and found no evidence of a post-comet gap. “Chronological gaps appear in the sequence only if one ignores standard deviations (a statistically inappropriate procedure), and doing so creates gaps not just around [12,900 years ago] but also at many later points in time,” they write.

Sterile layers separating occupation zones at some sites are easily explained by shifting settlement patterns and local geological processes, the researchers say. The separation should not be taken as evidence of an actual time gap between Clovis and post-Clovis cultures.

Holliday and Meltzer believe that the disappearance of Clovis spear points is more likely the result of a cultural choice rather than a population collapse. “There is no compelling data to indicate that North American Paleoindians had to cope with or were affected by a catastrophe, extraterrestrial or otherwise, in the terminal Pleistocene,” they conclude.

Vance T. Holliday and David J. Meltzer, “The 12.9-ka ET Impact Hypothesis and North American Paleoindians.” Current Anthropology 51:5 (October 2010)

"Lost" Amazon Complex Found; Shapes Seen by Satellite

The crop circles of Santa Teresinha, Brazil, are seen in an undated photograph.

John Roach
for National Geographic News
January 4, 2010
Hundreds of circles, squares, and other geometric shapes once hidden by forest hint at a previously unknown ancient society that flourished in the Amazon, a new study says.

Satellite images of the upper Amazon Basin taken since 1999 have revealed more than 200 geometric earthworks spanning a distance greater than 155 miles (250 kilometers).


Now researchers estimate that nearly ten times as many such structures—of unknown purpose—may exist undetected under the Amazon's forest cover.

At least one of the sites has been dated to around A.D. 1283, although others may date as far back as A.D. 200 to 300, said study co-author Denise Schaan, an anthropologist at the Federal University of Pará in Belém, Brazil.

The discovery adds to evidence that the hinterlands of the Amazon once teemed with complex societies, which were largely wiped out by diseases brought to South America by European colonists in the 15th and 16th centuries, Schaan said.

Since these vanished societies had gone unrecorded, previous research had suggested that soils in the upper Amazon were too poor to support the extensive agriculture needed for such large, permanent settlements.

"We found that this picture is wrong," Schaan said. "And there is a lot more to discover in these places."

Wide-reaching Culture

The newfound shapes are created by a series of trenches about 36 feet (11 meters) wide and several feet deep, with adjacent banks up to 3 feet (1 meter) tall. Straight roads connect many of the earthworks.

Preliminary excavations at one of the sites in 2008 revealed that some of the earthworks were surrounded by low mounds containing domestic ceramics, charcoal, grinding-stone fragments, and other evidence of habitation.

But who built the structures and what functions they served remains a mystery. Ideas range from defensive buildings to ceremonial centers and homes, the study authors say.

It's also possible the structures served different purposes over time, noted William Woods, a geographer and anthropologist at the University of Kansas in Lawrence who was not involved in the research.

"For example," he said, "in Lawrence there's a Masonic temple—it is now a bar. There was a bank—it is now a restaurant called Tellers. These things happen."

What most surprised the research team is that the earthworks appear in both the region's floodplains and the uplands.

In general, the Amazon's fertile floodplains have been popular sites for ancient civilizations, while the sparser uplands have been thought to be largely devoid of people, the researchers say.

What's more, the earthworks in both regions are of a similar style, suggesting they were built by the same society.

"In Amazonian archaeology you always have this idea that you find different peoples in different ecosystems," study co-author Schaan said.

"And so it was kind of odd to have a culture that would take advantage of different ecosystems and expand over such a large region."

"Astounding" Population

The uplands sites appear to have been home to as many as 60,000 people, Schaan and her colleagues suggest in their paper, published this month in the journal Antiquity.

That figure is based on estimates of the social organization and labor that would have been required to build the structures hinted at by the remaining earthworks.

According to the University of Kansas' Woods, the population estimate is reasonable, albeit rough, since so little is known about these complexes.

Answers may emerge as researchers continue to excavate the newfound shapes in the coming years.

But Woods is impressed by the possibility that so many people might have once lived in a region long thought uninhabited.

"Traditionally, if you would have asked an anthropologist or archaeologist how many people lived [in these Amazon uplands], they'd say almost zero," he said.

"And so this is astounding that there is 60,000 people making a go of it where there aren't supposed to be any."

Huge Pre-Stonehenge Complex Found via "Crop Circles"

Etched into crops, the outlines of Bronze Age burial mounds surround a roughly 190-foot (57-meter) circular Stone Age temple site about 15 miles (24 kilometers) from Stonehenge in southern England in an undated aerial photo.

Discovered during a routine aerial survey by English Heritage, the U.K. government's historic-preservation agency, the "crop circles"—actually crop marks—are the results of buried archaeological structures interfering with plant growth. True crop circles are vast designs created by flattening crops.

The features are part of a newfound 500-acre (200-hectare) prehistoric ceremonial site which was unknown until the aerial survey, archaeologists announced in June 2009.

Photograph by Damian Grady/English Heritage
James Owen in London
for National Geographic News

June 15, 2009
Given away by strange, crop circle-like formations seen from the air, a huge prehistoric ceremonial complex discovered in southern England has taken archaeologists by surprise.

A thousand years older than nearby Stonehenge, the site includes the remains of wooden temples and two massive, 6,000-year-old tombs that are among "Britain's first architecture," according to archaeologist Helen Wickstead, leader of the Damerham Archaeology Project.

For such a site to have lain hidden for so long is "completely amazing," said Wickstead, of Kingston University in London.

Archaeologist Joshua Pollard, who was not involved in the find, agreed. The discovery is "remarkable," he said, given the decades of intense archaeological attention to the greater Stonehenge region.

"I think everybody assumed such monument complexes were known about or had already been discovered," added Pollard, a co-leader of the Stonehenge Riverside Project, which is funded in part by the National Geographic Society. (The National Geographic Society owns National Geographic News.)

Six-Thousand-Year-Old Tombs

At the 500-acre (200-hectare) site, outlines of the structures were spotted "etched" into farmland near the village of Damerham, some 15 miles (24 kilometers) from Stonehenge (Damerham map).

(Related: "Stonehenge Settlement Found: Builders' Homes, 'Cult Houses.'")

Discovered during a routine aerial survey by English Heritage, the U.K. government's historic-preservation agency, the "crop circles" are the results of buried archaeological structures interfering with plant growth. True crop circles are vast designs created by flattening crops.

The central features are two great tombs topped by massive mounds—made shorter by centuries of plowing—called long barrows. The larger of the two tombs is 70 meters (230 feet) long.

Estimated at 6,000 years old, based on the dates of similar tombs around the United Kingdom, the long barrows are also the oldest elements of the complex.

Such oblong burial mounds are very rare finds, and are the country's earliest known architectural form, Wickstead said. The last full-scale long barrow excavation was in the 1950s, she added.

The Damerham tombs have yet to be excavated, but experts say the long barrows likely contain chambers—probably carved into chalk bedrock and reinforced with wood—filled with human bones associated with ancestor worship.

(Related: "Stonehenge Was Cemetery First and Foremost, Study Says.")

During the late Stone Age, it's believed, people in the region left their dead in the open to be picked clean by birds and other animals.

Skulls and other bones of people who were for some reason deemed significant were later placed inside the burial mounds, Wickstead explained.

"These are bone houses, in a way," she said. "Instead of whole bodies, [the tombs contain] parts of ancestors."

Later Monuments, Long Occupation

Other finds suggest the site remained an important focus for prehistoric farming communities well into the Bronze Age (roughly 2000 to 700 B.C. in Britain).

Near the tombs are two large, round, ditch-encircled structures—the largest circular enclosure being about 190 feet (57 meters) wide.

Nonintrusive electromagnetic surveys show signs of postholes, suggesting rings of upright timber once stood within the circles—further evidence of the Damerham site's ceremonial or sacred role.

Pollard, of the University of Bristol, likened the features to smaller versions of Woodhenge, a timber-circle temple at the Stonehenge World Heritage site.

(See "Stonehenge Didn't Stand Alone, Excavations Show.")

Damerham also includes a highly unusual, and so far baffling, U-shaped enclosure with postholes dated to the Bronze Age, project leader Wickstead said.

The circled outlines of 26 Bronze Age burial mounds also dot the site, which is littered with stone flint tools and shattered examples of the earliest known type of pottery in Britain.

Evidence of prehistoric agricultural fields suggest the area was at least partly cultivated by the time the Romans invaded Britain in the first century A.D., generally considered to be the end of the regions' prehistoric period.

Riches Beneath Ravaged Surface?

The actual barrows and mounds near Damerham have been diminished by centuries of plowing, but that, ironically, may make them much more valuable archaeologically, according to Pollard, of the University of Bristol.

The mounds would have been irresistible advertisements for tomb raiders, who in the 18th and 19th centuries targeted Bronze Age burials for their ornate grave goods.

And "even if the mounds are gone, you are still going to have primary burials [as opposed to those later added on top] which will have been dug into the chalk, so are going to survive," Pollard added.

The contents of the Stone Age long barrows should likewise have survived, he said. "I think there's good reason to assume you might have the main wooden mortuary chambers with burial deposits," he said.

Redrawing the Map

An administrative oversight may also be partly responsible for the site remaining hidden—and assumedly pristine, at least underground—project leader Wickstead said.

When prehistoric sites in the area were being mapped and documented in the 1890s, a county-border change placed Damerham within Hampshire rather than Stonehenge's Wiltshire, she said.

"Perhaps people in Hampshire thought [the monuments] were someone else's problem."

This lucky conjunction of plowing and politics obscured Damerham's prehistoric heritage until now.

The site shows that "a lot of the ceremonial activity isn't necessarily located in these big centers," such as Stonehenge, Pollard said. "But there are other locations where people are congregating and constructing ceremonial monuments."

CITADEL OF JERUSALEM

View of the citadel of Jerusalem. The ancient city of Jerusalem (in Arabian Al-Quds and in Hebrew Yerushalaim, meaning city of peace) was built on two hills separated by the river Cedron. The city was founded in the 3rd millennium BC and entered history with the Jewish people by the time of King David (1004-965 BC) and King Solomon, the latter of whom built the temple and the royal palace. The Jewish kingdom was divided in 928 BC and Jerusalem became the capital of the realm ofjudah, with fortifications built by Hezekias in 701 BC. Jerusalem was devastated by the Babylonians in 586 BC, and the temple of Solomon was destroyed. After captivity in Babylon, the Jews returned to Jerusalem and rebuilt the temple and fortifications (520-445 BC). After the Greek domination (332-37 BC) and the reign of King Herod, the city was taken by the Romans in 63 BC. Already a holy place in the Jewish faith, Jerusalem as the site of Christ’s death attracted Christian pilgrims as early as the 2nd century AD. The Roman occupation lasted until 324 AD.

Jerusalem was then occupied by the Arabs in 638 and became an Islamic holy place; the mosque El-Aqsa was erected there in 691. After the first Crusade, Jerusalem became the capital of the Frankish realm Beyond the Sea in 1099, and remained so until 1187 when the city was retaken by sultan Saladin. The fall of Saint-Jeand’Acre in 1291 marked the end of the Crusades in Palestine.

Lost Civilization Under Persian Gulf?


A once fertile landmass now submerged beneath the Persian Gulf may have been home to some of the earliest human populations outside Africa, according to an article published in Current Anthropology.

Jeffrey Rose, an archaeologist and researcher with the University of Birmingham in the U.K., says that the area in and around this "Persian Gulf Oasis" may have been host to humans for over 100,000 years before it was swallowed up by the Indian Ocean around 8,000 years ago. Rose's hypothesis introduces a "new and substantial cast of characters" to the human history of the Near East, and suggests that humans may have established permanent settlements in the region thousands of years before current migration models suppose.
In recent years, archaeologists have turned up evidence of a wave of human settlements along the shores of the Gulf dating to about 7,500 years ago. "Where before there had been but a handful of scattered hunting camps, suddenly, over 60 new archaeological sites appear virtually overnight," Rose said. "These settlements boast well-built, permanent stone houses, long-distance trade networks, elaborately decorated pottery, domesticated animals, and even evidence for one of the oldest boats in the world."

But how could such highly developed settlements pop up so quickly, with no precursor populations to be found in the archaeological record? Rose believes that evidence of those preceding populations is missing because it's under the Gulf.

"Perhaps it is no coincidence that the founding of such remarkably well developed communities along the shoreline corresponds with the flooding of the Persian Gulf basin around 8,000 years ago," Rose said. "These new colonists may have come from the heart of the Gulf, displaced by rising water levels that plunged the once fertile landscape beneath the waters of the Indian Ocean."

Historical sea level data show that, prior to the flood, the Gulf basin would have been above water beginning about 75,000 years ago. And it would have been an ideal refuge from the harsh deserts surrounding it, with fresh water supplied by the Tigris, Euphrates, Karun, and Wadi Baton Rivers, as well as by underground springs. When conditions were at their driest in the surrounding hinterlands, the Gulf Oasis would have been at its largest in terms of exposed land area. At its peak, the exposed basin would have been about the size of Great Britain, Rose says.

Evidence is also emerging that modern humans could have been in the region even before the oasis was above water. Recently discovered archaeological sites in Yemen and Oman have yielded a stone tool style that is distinct from the East African tradition. That raises the possibility that humans were established on the southern part of the Arabian Peninsula beginning as far back as 100,000 years ago or more, Rose says. That is far earlier than the estimates generated by several recent migration models, which place the first successful migration into Arabia between 50,000 and 70,000 years ago.

The Gulf Oasis would have been available to these early migrants, and would have provided "a sanctuary throughout the Ice Ages when much of the region was rendered uninhabitable due to hyperaridity," Rose said. "The presence of human groups in the oasis fundamentally alters our understanding of human emergence and cultural evolution in the ancient Near East."

It also hints that vital pieces of the human evolutionary puzzle may be hidden in the depths of the Persian Gulf.
Jeffrey I. Rose, “New Light on Human Prehistory in the Arabo-Persian Gulf Oasis.” Current Anthropology 51:6 (December 2010).

Saturday, December 18, 2010

Temple at Tarxien

Sir Themistocles Zammit’s excavations at Tarxien, the most complex of the Maltese temples, produced significant information regarding the cult practices associated with these buildings. At Tarxien it seems that the interior shrines were true altars. In the recess in the base of one of them Sir Themistocles found a flint knife and, together with charred bones of sheep and cattle, some shells and pottery. Large stone basins were found in the temples and traces of burning on the floors suggest that the sacrifices may have been performed there. The divinity of Tarxien is surely represented by an over life-size statue of a woman preserved only in its lower part with oddly bulbous legs. The figure wore a fleece skirt. Smaller figures are preserved in their entirety. Representations of phalloi (male organs) and vegetation, as well as the sheep, cattle and pig already mentioned, show that the cult of the goddess had a definite fertility aspect. There are numerous figurines of women including some asleep on couches.

Some information about the layout of the furnishings survived in the temples of Tarxien, which were excavated between 1915 and 1919. The lower half of an enormous statue of a “fat lady” was found in the temple precinct. Next to it is an altar within which the remains of food were found. The altar faced the carved figures of animals that may have represented sacrifices. Deeper within the recesses of the temple, excavators found the images of people who may have been priests, caches of precious pendants and even architectural models of the temples themselves.

Inside the caves the Tarxien builders leveled the earlier burials to provide a fresh (albeit bone-riddled) surface for the installation of stone monuments. The niches and smaller caverns were subdivided with pairs of upright stones and rough walls, which created additional, enclosed places for burials. At the center of the main cavern, the Maltese builders set up megalithic slabs in a semicircle, at the heart of which was a huge carved stone bowl. The stonework surrounding this bowl was elegant, and there is evidence that some of it included animal figures and pitted patterns. The builders did not apply red ocher as liberally as their predecessors did, and they painted only a few of the nearby slabs. Available supplies were made to stretch further.

Bodies were buried in the compartments around this central shrine. One noteworthy burial site was a natural cavity in the cave floor where hundreds of bodies were laid to rest. At first sight, the remains seemed incomplete and in confusion. Our further work has shown, however, that the bones from many bodies had been carefully sorted and stacked by type: skulls in one place, femurs in another and so on. This pattern suggests that as part of the burial ritual, old bodies being removed from compartments were disarticulated.
The prehistoric Maltese of the Tarxien period seem to have invested most of their artisanship and craft into cult objects that were more than mere grave gifts. For example, a ceramic strainer and a unique stone sculpture were unearthed from near the stone bowl in the megalithic shrine. The strainer was probably meant to be used with the bowl, perhaps for straining out unwanted objects or for sprinkling liquids onto bodies.

The sculpture shows a beautifully carved and painted pair of obese figures. They are seated on an intricately carved bed, daubed with red ocher, that shows woven struts on the underside and curvilinear designs on the upper. The fat figures are not explicitly male or female. They wear the familiar pleated skirts, painted black, of the finest Maltese cult figures. The head of one figure sports a haircut that includes a pigtail at the back. The other’s head is missing. Both figures hold objects on their laps: one a tiny dressed person (who may be a baby), the other a cup.

Aside from the sculpture’s fine craftsmanship, it is astonishing because the portrayal of several humans together is almost unknown from that period in Europe: even individual figures, other than the fat ladies, are uncommon. A few artifacts with features that are reminiscent of this sculpture have been found elsewhere in ancient Malta, such as the fragments of carved beds and the terra-cotta Sleeping Lady of the Hypogeum. Nevertheless, this discovery is one of the earliest and most thought-provoking groups of sculpture from European prehistory.

Fertile Crescent farmers took DNA to Germany

Artistic impression of a neolithic farmer in Central Europe. Held in the State Museum of Prehistory in Halle, Saxony-Anhalt, Germany (Source: Karol Schauer/PLoS)
DNA evidence suggests that immigrants from the Ancient Near East brought farming to Europe, and spread the practice to the region's hunter-gatherer communities, according to Australian-led research.

A genetic study of ancient DNA, published in PLoS Biology today, adds crucial information to the long-running debate about how farming was introduced to Europe's nomadic hunter-gatherer societies almost 8000 years ago.

An international research team, led by University of Adelaide experts, compared ancient DNA from the remains of Early Neolithic farmers at a burial site in central Germany with a large genetic database of European and Eurasian populations.

They found that these early farmers had a unique and characteristic genetic signature, suggesting "significant demographic input from the Near East during the onset of farming".

Sometimes referred to as the Fertile Crescent, the Near East would include modern-day Iraq, Jordan, Syria and Lebanon, says study leader Dr Wolfgang Haak, genographic project senior research associate at the Australian Centre for Ancient DNA at the University of Adelaide.

The revolutionary element of this study was the addition of ancient DNA , explains Professor Alan Cooper, director of the Centre for Ancient DNA, as previously researchers could only use genetic data from modern populations to examine this question.

"We have never had a detailed genetic view of one of these early farming populations - there's been a lot of inference around it... but it's all been guesswork" he says.
Migration from Anatolia and near East

Using the new high-precision ancient DNA analysis, researchers were also able to determine a possible migration route the farmers took from the Near East and Anatolia into Central Europe.

Farming first originated about 11,000 years ago in the Near East and then spread across Europe during the Neolithic period, the researchers explain.

"Whether it was mediated by incoming farmers or driven by the transmission of innovative ideas and techniques remains a subject of continuing debate in archaeology, anthropology, and human population genetics," they write in PLoS Biology.

"[This] really answers this long-running debate about whether people picked up ideas or picked up and moved", says Cooper.

Haak says these latest findings might not completely settle the debate on the origins of farming in Europe, but they would "push it in a certain direction".

Haak is keen to see other research teams build on this proof of concept study, building a picture about this transitional period in other regions and helping to put the pieces of the jigsaw together globally.

Meanwhile, Haak and colleagues at the Australian Centre for Ancient DNA want to discover how communities in this region in central Germany evolved over the next 3000 to 4000 years leading up to the Bronze Age.

"The early farmers are still quite different to modern day populations from the same region," he says, "so that means something must have happened after that."

The project involved researchers from the University of Mainz and State Heritage Museum in Halle, Germany, the Russian Academy of Sciences and members of the National Geographic Society's Genographic Project.
Rebecca Jenkins
ABC

Early human ate young Neanderthal: study

The research strengthens the argument that competition from modern humans contributed to Neanderthal extinction, say researchers (Source: NASA/JPL)
Jennifer Viegas
Discovery News
Sometime between 28,000 and 30,000 years ago, an anatomically modern human in what is now France may have eaten a Neanderthal child, according to a new study.
It is the first study to suggest Europe's first humans had a violent relationship with their muscular, big-headed hominid ancestors.
The evidence, which includes teeth and a carefully butchered jawbone from a site called Les Rois in southwestern France, could represent the world's first known biological proof for direct contact between the two human groups.
The research, published in the Journal of Anthropological Science, also adds to the growing body of evidence that Europe's first modern humans, who comprised the Aurignacian culture, used human bones and teeth for adornment and possible symbolic meaning.

Matching cut marks

"Four Aurignacian sites, including Les Rois, have yielded perforated human teeth, which confirms the interest in using human bone, and teeth in particular, by Aurignacians, for symbolic purposes," say Fernando Rozzi and his team, which also identified butchered reindeer bones excavated at the site.
Cut marks on the reindeer bones likely produced by the humans' flint tools matched those found on the Neanderthal jawbone.
A recreation of ancient butchering techniques by the scientists indicates the marks "may have resulted from slicing through the geniohyoid muscle (a narrow muscle at the bottom of the oral cavity) to remove the tongue," says Rozzi, a researcher at Paris's National Center for Scientific Research.
Marrow from the bones appears to have also been consumed.
It remains unclear, however, if a modern human killed the Neanderthal youngster outright, or if the parts were scavenged from an already dead body.
An alternative hypothesis is that the Neanderthal jawbone actually belonged to a modern human with Neanderthal characteristics, which would suggest these two human groups made love and not war.
British anthropologist Chris Stringer of the Natural History Museum, London, believes the new study is "very important."
Although Stringer doesn't think it proves we hunted Neanderthals to death, he says the research strengthens the argument that competition from modern humans "contributed to Neanderthal extinction."

Big game hunters

But, Neanderthals weren't always at the losing end of battles.
In another new study, for the Netherlands Organization for Scientific Research, researchers found that Neanderthals were big game hunters who directly competed with hyenas. Both had a similar diet and occupied the same carnivore position on the early European food chain.
Hyenas and Neanderthals also appear to have eaten each other, but project leader Dr Gerrit Dusseldorp of the University of Witwatersrand in South Africa, says Neanderthals were superior hunters due to their greater intelligence, communication skills and ability to cooperate.
Dusseldorp indicates that, per Rozzi's study, it's possible modern humans butchered Neanderthals.
But he believes Neanderthal reliance on large prey, such as rhinos, brown bear, bison bulls and horses, may have played a bigger factor in their demise, since large animal shortages could have left them hungry.
Modern humans, in contrast, are thought to have fished and hunted smaller, yet more plentiful, prey, like rabbits and birds.
"After environmental crises, modern humans may then have recovered more quickly than Neanderthals, and may have started usurping territories that before the environmental crisis were occupied by Neanderthals," says Dusseldorp.

Big finger gives away naughty Neanderthals

Neanderthals outperformed their human counterparts when it cae to sexual relations (Source: erix/Flickr)

Neanderthals may have been underdeveloped mentally compared to modern humans, but in one respect they outperformed us: In the number of sex partners.
That's the conclusion of a study published by the Proceedings of the Royal Society B, which suggests finger length can indicate promiscuity among hominins, as the ancient family of humans is known.
Researchers led by Emma Nelson of Liverpool University, northwestern England, looked at fossilised fingers from four hominin species.
They comprised Ardipithecus ramidus, a hominid who lived around 4.4 million years ago; Australopithecus afarensis around three to four million years ago; Neanderthals, who disappeared around 28,000 years ago; and a fossil of an early Homo sapiens, as anatomically modern humans are known, from around 90,000 years ago.
Nelson's theory is based on the ratio between the length of the index finger and that of the ring finger.

Competitiveness and promiscuity

Previous research by her group concluded that exposure in the womb to key sex hormones known as androgens, which includes testosterone, affects finger length - and future behaviour.
High levels of in-utero androgens increase the length of the fourth finger in relation to the second finger, which thus lowers the ratio.
They are also linked with competitiveness and promiscuity, according to this work.
So how did the primates line up?
A low finger ratio showed Ardipithecus ramidus was likely to "play the field", while a high finger ratio indicated Australopithecus afarensis was more likely to stay at home.
Meanwhile, low ratios from the Neanderthal and the early human "suggest that both groups may have been more promiscuous than most living human populations," say the authors.
The scientists admit that their approach is novel, and further evidence is needed to shed light on the social behaviour of ancient humans.
"Although finger ratios provide some really exciting suggestions about hominin behaviour, we do accept that the evidence is limited and to confirm these findings we really need more fossils," says Nelson.
The study's conclusions add a new element of debate over human lineage. More promiscuous species of hominins would theoretically have an advantage over monogamous ones, both in terms of more offspring and a more varied gene pool.

Neanderthals sang like sopranos

Jennifer Viegas
Discovery News

Neanderthals had strong, yet high-pitched, voices that the stocky hominins used for both singing and speaking, says a UK researcher.
The theory suggests that Neanderthals, who once lived in Europe from around 200,000 to 35,000 BC, were intelligent and socially complex.
It also indicates that although Neanderthals were likely to have represented a unique species, they had more in common with modern humans than previously thought.
Stephen Mithen, a professor of archaeology at the University of Reading, made the determination after studying the skeletal remains of Neanderthals.
His work coincides with last week's release of the first complete, articulated Neanderthal skeleton.
Information about the new skeleton is published in the current issue of the journal The Anatomical Record Part B: The New Anatomist.
Mithen compared related skeletal Neanderthal data with that of monkeys and other members of the ape family, including modern humans.
In a recent University College London seminar, Mithen explained that Neanderthal anatomy suggests the early hominins had the physical ability to communicate with pitch and melody.
He believes they probably used these abilities in a form of communication that was half spoken and half sung.
Mithen says he hopes people who are interested in his research will read his upcoming book The singing Neanderthal: the origin of language, music, body and mind, which will be published in June.
A head and neck for singing?
Jeffrey Laitman is professor and director of anatomy and functional morphology, as well as otolaryngology, the study of the ear, nose, and throats, at the Mount Sinai School of Medicine in New York.
He is also an expert on Neanderthals, particularly in terms of analysing their head and neck regions.
"My curiosity is peaked by Mithen's theory that Neanderthals sang and had feminine-toned voices. But I think these attributes would be difficult to prove even with the recent Neanderthal reconstruction," Laitman says.
"No Neanderthal larynx exists because the tissue does not fossilise. We have to reconstruct it."
Laitman says he and other researchers often use existing portions of Neanderthal, and other early hominin skulls to build the voice box area.
Through such work, he has learned that Neanderthals, Australopithecines and other prehistoric hominins had a larynx positioned high in the throat.
"The structure is comparable to what we see in monkeys and apes today," Laitman says. "Apes do have language and culture, but the sounds they make are more limited than those produced by humans."
Due to the Neanderthal's impressive brain size, which was larger than the grey matter of most modern humans, Laitman emphatically believes they had linguistic abilities.
"They were not mute brutes just because they were not exactly like us," he says. "Neanderthals probably made different sounds because, in part, they could not have used all of the vowels we do. For example, they could not have said 'ooh', 'ahh' or 'eee'."
Since Neanderthals had distinctive nasal, ear and sinus anatomical features, Laitman believes they were specialised for respiration, which would have given them a 'nasally' voice.
It is unclear why the larynx of modern humans dropped lower in the throat around a million and a half years ago.
Laitman thinks the change might have been linked to desired extra air intake through the mouth for short-burst running.
A sing-song debate
Associate Professor Janet Monge, an anthropologist at the University of Pennsylvania Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology and another Neanderthal expert, is sceptical about the new singing Neanderthal theory.
"[But] if we sing, then I am sure that all very modern looking ancient humans could too," she says.
She says that language and singing do not use the same neurosubstrates, so she questions how a link could be made between the two, especially since in humans, language can be melodious and high-pitched without literally moving into full song.
But Monge adds, "Certainly linking language to Neanderthals makes them more like modern humans."
Laitman believes Neanderthals were a separate species that modern humans actually helped to kill off.
"Their ear, nose, and throat anatomy would have made them very susceptible to respiratory infections and to middle ear infections," he says.
"We know they traded and were in contact with modern humans, so Neanderthals would have been in harm's way for germs.
"In the days before cures like penicillin, illness could have flown through their populations very quickly and contributed to their demise."

Prehistoric Julia Roberts found

Jennifer Viegas
Discovery News
Bulgarian archaeologists have found what they claim is Europe's oldest skeleton, which they have named "Julia Roberts" because the woman was a "rare beauty" with a nearly flawless set of teeth.
The archaeologists reported their findings in the Sofia News Agency and Bulgaria's Standart News newspaper.
If radiocarbon analysis, scheduled to take place in Germany, confirms the skeleton's suspected age of 9,000 years old, the find will predate all other human remains discovered in the Balkans by several centuries. The female skeleton will represent the first agricultural civilisation in the region.
A team of archaeologist led by Dr Georgi Ganetsovski, director of the prehistory department of the Vraca District Museum, excavated her remains near the village of Ohoden in the Vrasa district of northwest Bulgaria. In the past few days, another dig at nearby Moguila village in the district of Yambol yielded several 3,000-year-old skeletons of unusual height for the time, over 6 feet 6 inches.
The remains of the tall individuals were found curled up in a foetal position, which was believed to lead to immortality.
Researchers say all of the skeletons, including the Stone Age Julia, were Thracian, a race that originated at the Black Sea steppe and was praised by Homer. The Greek epic poet wrote that the Thracians took part in the Trojan War "with the most handsome and well-built horses, whiter than snow and fleet as deer."
The ancient female skeleton, which like a real movie star had a less glamorous name - Prehistoric Todorka - before becoming "Julia," died as a young woman at what appears to have been an ancient farming community.
"This woman skeleton is five centuries older than those that were found in the Balkans and belongs to the first generation of farmers that inhabited the region," said Ganetsovski.
Charred wheat grains, cattle bones and flint tools were found at the same site, along with a well-preserved dwelling that contained a cellar. The early farmers dug the residence into the ground so that half of it would have been subterranean.
Ganetsovski said that Prehistoric Julia had Mediterranean features and would have possessed a dazzling smile due to her near-perfect, straight, white teeth, which were almost unheard of in ancient times because of poor dental care and gritty diets that wore down enamel.
"She was a rare beauty and could have competed with today's Hollywood stars with her perfect set of teeth," Ganetsovski said. "She is a Stone Age Julia Roberts. She would have had a perfect smile - it really is a puzzle."
The archaeologist suspects that, in addition to good genes, Julia might have used an early toothpaste concoction. Last year, a team of Viennese scientists discovered an old Egyptian toothpaste formula. It suggests that teeth cleaning in the ancient world was not as rare as experts once thought.
The Egyptian recipe, which might have inspired a Thracian toothpaste, included rock salt mixed with smaller amounts of mint, iris and 20 grains of pepper. All of the ingredients were pounded into a paste before being applied to the teeth.
Sofia Archaeology Museum director Vasil Nikolov agrees with the importance of the recent Bulgarian finds.
When asked about the female skeleton, he said the discovery confirms that "a modern European civilisation lived in our region".
Future excavations are planned in Bulgaria at the archaeological sites, which are now collectively referred to as the "Valley of the Thracian Kings." In 45 A.D., the Romans conquered the Thracians, who interbred with locals and later lost their once distinct culture.