Reconstructing how Neanderthals grew, based on an El Sidrón child

How did Neanderthals grow? Does modern man develop in the same way as Homo neanderthalensis did? How does the size of the brain affect the development of the body? A study led by the Spanish National Research Council (CSIC) researcher, Antonio Rosas, has studied the fossil remains of a Neanderthal child's skeleton in order to establish whether there are differences between the growth of Neanderthals and that of sapiens.

Neanderthal children may have grown up as slowly as modern humans 
[Credit: © S.Plailly, E.Daynes/LookatSciences]

According to the results of the article, which are published in Science, both species regulate their growth differently to adapt their energy consumption to their physical characteristics.

"Discerning the differences and similarities in growth patterns between Neanderthals and modern humans helps us better define our own history. Modern humans and Neanderthals emerged from a common recent ancestor, and this is manifested in a similar overall growth rate," explains CSIC researcher, Antonio Rosas, from Spain's National Natural Science Museum (MNCN). As fellow CSIC researcher Luis Ríos highlights, "Applying paediatric growth assessment methods, this Neanderthal child is no different to a modern-day child." The pattern of vertebral maturation and brain growth, as well as energy constraints during development, may have marked the anatomical shape of Neanderthals.

Neanderthals had a greater cranial capacity than today's humans. Neanderthal adults had an intracranial volume of 1,520 cubic centimetres, while that of modern adult man is 1,195 cubic centimetres. That of the Neanderthal child in the study had reached 1,330 cubic centimetres at the time of his death, in other words, 87.5% of the total reached at eight years of age. At that age, the development of a modern-day child's cranial capacity has already been fully completed.

"Developing a large brain involves significant energy expenditure and, consequently, this hinders the growth of other parts of the body. In sapiens, the development of the brain during childhood has a high energetic cost and, as a result, the development of the rest of the body slows down," Rosas explains.

Neanderthals and sapiens

The cost, in terms of energy, of anatomical growth of the modern brain is unusually high, especially during breastfeeding and during infancy, and this seems to require a slowing down of body growth. The growth and development of this juvenile Neanderthal matches the typical characteristics of human ontogeny, where there is a slow anatomical growth between weaning and puberty. This could compensate for the immense energy cost of developing such a large brain.

Skeleton of the Neanderthal boy recovered from the El Sidrón 
cave (Asturias, Spain) [Credit: Paleoanthropology Group 
MNCN-CSIC]

In fact, the skeleton and dentition of this Neanderthal present a physiology which is similar to that of a sapiens of the same age, except for the thorax area, which corresponds to a child between five and six years, in that it is less developed. "The growth of our Neanderthal child was not complete, probably due to energy saving," explains CSIC researcher Antonio Rosas.

The only divergent aspect in the growth of both species is the moment of maturation of the vertebral column. In all hominids, the cartilaginous joints of the middle thoracic vertebrae and the atlas are the last to fuse, but in this Neanderthal, fusion occurred about two years later than in modern humans.

"The delay of this fusion in the vertebral column may indicate that Neanderthals had a decoupling of certain aspects in the transition from infancy to the juvenile phase. Although the implications are unknown, this feature could be related to the characteristic enlarged shape of the Neanderthal torso, or slower brain growth," says Rosas.

The Neanderthal child

The protagonist of this study was 7.7 years old, weighed 26 kilos and measured 111 centimetres at the time of death. Although the genetic analyses failed to confirm the child's sex, the canine teeth and the sturdiness of the bones showed that it to be a male. 138 pieces, 30 of them teeth (including some milk teeth), and part of the skeleton- including some fragments of the skull from the individual- identified as El Sidrón J1, have recovered.

(Left to Right) Antonio García-Tabernero, Antonio Rosas and Luis Ríos beside the Neanderthal child's skeleton 
[Credit: Andrés Díaz-CSIC Communications Department]

The researchers have been able to establish that our protagonist was right-handed and was already performing adult tasks, such as using his teeth as a third hand to handle skins and plant fibres. In addition, they know who his mother was, and that the child protagonist of this investigation had a younger brother in the group. Furthermore, this child was found to have suffered from enamel hypoplasia when he was two or three years old. Hypoplasia (white spots on the teeth, especially visible in the upper incisors), occurs when the teeth have less enamel than normal, the cause usually being malnutrition or disease.

Discovered in 1994, the El Sidrón cave, located in Piloña (in Asturias, northern Spain) has provided the best collection of Neanderthals that exists on the Iberian Peninsula. The team has recovered the remains of 13 individuals from the cave. The group consisted of seven adults (four women and three men), three teenagers and three younger children.

Previous studies have been carried out by a multidisciplinary team led by the paleoanthropologist Antonio Rosas (CSIC's National Museum of Natural Sciences), the geneticist Carles Lalueza-Fox (Institute of Evolutionary Biology, run by CSIC and the Pompeu Fabra University) and by the archaeologist Marco de la Rasilla (University of Oviedo).

Source: Spanish National Research Council (CSIC) [September 22, 2017]

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Nymphaion in ancient city of Side undergoing restoration

Restoration and conversation is set to start again at the Monumental Fountain (Nymphaion) in the ancient city of Side in the southern Turkish province of Antalya.

The Nymphaion of Side [Credit: AA]

The Monumental Fountain dates back to the 2nd century AD and has undergone a series of restorations since 2004.

Antalya Surveying and Monuments Director Cemil Karabayram, who recently visited the ancient site, said only 20 percent of the restoration has so far been completed, but the work will be finished in the coming period.

Karabayram said a financial allocation for the project had been provided under the auspices of Culture and Tourism Minister Professor Numan Kurtulmuş, Foreign Minister Mevlüt Çavuşoğlu and Antalya Governor Münir Karalıoğlu, and a tender will be initiated in the coming days.

He said there are a number of large stone blocks in the area, which have each been documented with a separate number, adding that the blocks and the arch structure at the front of the site will be placed on the upper columns.

Karabayram said the restoration team strongly suspects that new blocks will be found under the layer of soil right behind the fountain.

“Excavations will unearth these new blocks. I hope that we will make the fountain complete by finishing the work. Tourists will be able to enter the area and visit the fountain. Almost 12 million Turkish Liras have been allocated for the entire Side region and its monumental structures,” he added.

The restoration team plans to restore the pool system in front of the fountain to its original state, while the asphalt in the gate of the castle, which is located at the entrance of Side, will be removed.

Karabayram said the excavations at the ancient site of Side were first initiated by Professor Arif Müfit Mansel, whose words and articles about Side are very important.

“Mansel said a copy of this fountain was constructed in Italy by Italians. Of course this was a matter of debate but we are carrying out work for it. We are talking with art historians about this issue, and whether the fountain here was a source of inspiration for the fountain in Rome,” he added.

Karabayram also said some columns of the fountain have been preserved throughout history.

“All of these columns are original and new materials will never be used in the restoration. But some extra blocks could be placed in order to provide balance,” he added.

Source: Hurriyet Daily News [September 22, 2017]

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Continued excavations of the Minoan Neopalatial complex at Sissi, Crete

A team of the Université Catholique de Louvain under the auspices of the Ephorate of Antiquities of Lasithi and the Belgian School at Athens, aided by experts and students from many Greek and foreign universities, continued the excavation of a monumental court-centered building on the Kephali-hill at Sissi (Lassithi, Crete) during the summer of 2017.

Aerial view of the court-centred complex at Sissi 
[Credit: © EBSA/N. Kress]

The entire complex largely dates to the Neopalatial period of the Minoan civilization, roughly the 16th c. BC, and was abandoned close in time to the Santorini eruption, ash of which was found within the building.

Started in 2015, we finally achieved the clearance of the plastered central court, which is seen to have a maximum size of 16.50 by 33 m.

Ritual Installations and paved corridor leading into court 
[Credit: © EBSA/J. Driessen]

Several ritual installations are found on and along this central court, which was directly accessible from the outside to the southwest via a finely paved corridor with ashlar walls.

The excavation further revealed large parts of the east and west wings of the complex; the latter also comprises a circular water-collecting basin with an associated subterranean cistern.

Fragments of ritual vase, probably a kernos, from the Central Court 
[Credit: © EBSA/Chronis Papanikolopoulos]

The excavation further identified an early phase of Mycenaean occupation (end of 15th c. BC) within the settlement while the exploration of the cemetery was continued.

Source: Belgian School at Athens [September 22, 2017]

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Ancient textiles reveal differences in Mediterranean fabrics in the 1st millennium BC

Textiles represent one of the earliest human craft technologies and applied arts, and their production would have been one of the most important time, resource and labour consuming activities in the ancient past.

Twill example from Civita Castellana, Italy, seventh century BC [Credit: Margarita Gleba]

In archaeological contexts, textiles are relatively rare finds, especially in Mediterranean Europe where conditions are unfavourable for organic material preservation. Many archaeological textile fragments do, however, survive in mineralised form, which forms the basis of a new study published in Antiquity.

Detailed analysis of several hundred textile fragments has provided, for the first time, a much more detailed definition of the textile cultures in Italy and Greece during the first half of the first millennium BC.

According to Dr Margarita Gleba, the study's author and researcher at the McDonald Institute for Archaeological Research, University of Cambridge, "Luckily for us, during the Iron Age (c. 1000-400 BC) people were buried with a lot of metal goods such as personal ornaments, weapons and vessels. These metals are conducive to the preservation of textiles as the metal effectively kills off the micro-organisms which would otherwise consume the organic materials, while at the same time metal salts create casts of textile fibres, thereby preserving the textile microstructure."

Weft-faced tabby example from Corfu, Greece, sixth century BC [Credit: Artex]

"This is how we get such a large number of textiles, even though they only exist now in tiny fragments. Through meticulous analysis using digital and scanning electron microscopy, high performance liquid chromatography and other advanced methods we are able to determine a lot of information including the nature of the raw materials and structural features such as thread diameter, twist direction, type of weaving or binding, and thread count."

The technical differences suggest that during the Iron Age, textiles in Italy more closely resembled those found in Central Europe (associated with the Hallstatt culture that was prevalent in modern-day Germany, Austria and Slovenia) while the textile culture of Greece was largely connected with the Near East.

Dr Gleba added, "There is overwhelming evidence for frequent contact between Italy and Greece during the first half of the first millennium BC, but this evidence shows that their textile traditions were technically, aesthetically and conceptually very different. This means that the populations in these two regions are making an active decision to clothe themselves in a certain way and it may have to do with traditions set up already in the Bronze Age."

"Textiles have been and still are widely considered one of the most valuable indicators of individual and group identity. Even in societies today, we frequently form opinions of others based on the type of cloth they are wearing: tweed is associated with Irish and British country clothing, cashmere with Central Asia and silk with the Far East for example."

"Curiously, by Roman times, the establishment of Greek colonies in southern Italy and more general oriental influences observed in material culture of Italic populations leads towards gradual disappearance of the indigenous textile tradition. Our future research will attempt to understand the cause behind this change in textile culture."

Source: University of Cambridge [September 21, 2017]

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Ancient human DNA in sub-Saharan Africa lifts veil on prehistory

The first large-scale study of ancient human DNA from sub-Saharan Africa opens a long-awaited window into the identity of prehistoric populations in the region and how they moved around and replaced one another over the past 8,000 years.

Mount Hora in Malawi, where the oldest DNA in the study, from a woman who lived more than 8,000 years ago, 
was obtained [Credit: Jessica C. Thompson/Emory University]

The findings, published Cell by an international research team led by Harvard Medical School, answer several longstanding mysteries and uncover surprising details about sub-Saharan African ancestry—including genetic adaptations for a hunter-gatherer lifestyle and the first glimpses of population distribution before farmers and animal herders swept across the continent about 3,000 years ago.

"The last few thousand years were an incredibly rich and formative period that is key to understanding how populations in Africa got to where they are today," said David Reich, professor of genetics at HMS and a senior associate member of the Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard. "Ancestry during this time period is such an unexplored landscape that everything we learned was new."

Reich shares senior authorship of the study with Ron Pinhasi of the University of Vienna and Johannes Krause of the Max Planck Institute for the Science of Human History and the University of Tübingen in Germany.

"Ancient DNA is the only tool we have for characterizing past genomic diversity. It teaches us things we don't know about history from archaeology and linguistics and can help us better understand present-day populations," said Pontus Skoglund, a postdoctoral researcher in the Reich lab and the study's first author. "We need to ensure we use it for the benefit of all populations around the world, perhaps especially Africa, which contains the greatest human genetic diversity in the world but has been underserved by the genomics community."

Long time coming

Although ancient-DNA research has revealed insights into the population histories of many areas of the world, delving into the deep ancestry of African groups wasn't possible until recently because genetic material degrades too rapidly in warm, humid climates.

Technological advances—including the discovery by Pinhasi and colleagues that DNA persists longer in small, dense ear bones—are now beginning to break the climate barrier. Last year, Reich and colleagues used the new techniques to generate the first genome-wide data from the earliest farmers in the Near East, who lived between 8,000 and 12,000 years ago.

Genomic time-lapse

Almost half of the team's samples came from Malawi, providing a series of genomic snapshots from the same location across thousands of years.

This visual abstract depicts the findings of Skoglund et al. In their paper, the prehistory of African populations is explored 
by genome-wide analysis of 16 human remains providing insight into lineages, admixture, and genomicadaptions 
[Credit: Skoglund et al./Cell 2017]

The time-series divulged the existence of an ancient hunter-gatherer population the researchers hadn't expected.

When agriculture spread in Europe and East Asia, farmers and animal herders expanded into new areas and mixed with the hunter-gatherers who lived there. Present-day populations thus inherited DNA from both groups.

The new study found evidence for similar movement and mixing in other parts of Africa, but after farmers reached Malawi, hunter-gatherers seem to have disappeared without contributing any detectable ancestry to the people who live there today.

"It looks like there was a complete population replacement," said Reich. "We haven't seen clear evidence for an event like this anywhere else."

The Malawi snapshots also helped identify a population that spanned from the southern tip of Africa all the way to the equator about 1,400 years ago before fading away. That mysterious group shared ancestry with today's Khoe-San people in southern Africa and left a few DNA traces in people from a group of islands thousands of miles away, off the coast of Tanzania.

"It's amazing to see these populations in the DNA that don't exist anymore," said Reich. "It's clear that gathering additional DNA samples will teach us much more."

"The Khoe-San are such a genetically distinctive people, it was a surprise to find a closely related ancestor so far north just a couple of thousand years ago," Reich added.

The new study also found that West Africans can trace their lineage back to a human ancestor that may have split off from other African populations even earlier than the Khoe-San.

Missing links

The research similarly shed light on the origins of another unique group, the Hadza people of East Africa.

"They have a distinct appearance, language and genetics, and some people speculated that, like the Khoe-San, they might represent a very early diverging group from other African populations," said Reich. "Our study shows that instead, they're somehow in the middle of everything."

The Hadza, according to genomic comparisons, are today more closely related to non-Africans than to other Africans. The researchers hypothesize that the Hadza are direct descendants of the group that migrated out of Africa, and possibly spread within Africa as well, after about 50,000 years ago.

Another discovery lay in wait in East Africa.

Scientists had predicted the existence of an ancient population based on the observation that present-day people in southern Africa share ancestry with people in the Near East. The 3,000-year-old remains of a young girl in Tanzania provided the missing evidence.

Reich and colleagues suspect that the girl belonged to a herding population that contributed significant ancestry to present-day people from Ethiopia and Somalia down to South Africa. The ancient population was about one-third Eurasian, and the researchers were able to further pinpoint that ancestry to the Levant region.

"With this sample in hand, we can now say more about who these people were," said Skoglund.

The finding put one mystery to rest while raising another: Present-day people in the Horn of Africa have additional Near Eastern ancestry that can't be explained by the group to which the young girl belonged.

Natural selection

Finally, the study took a first step in using ancient DNA to understand genetic adaptation in African populations.

It required "squeezing water out of a stone" because the researchers were working with so few ancient samples, said Reich, but Skoglund was able to identify two regions of the genome that appear to have undergone natural selection in southern Africans.

One adaptation increased protection from ultraviolet radiation, which the researchers propose could be related to life in the Kalahari Desert. The other variant was located on genes related to taste buds, which the researchers point out can help people detect poisons in plants.

The researchers hope that their study encourages more investigation into the diverse genetic landscape of human populations in Africa, both past and present. Reich also said he hopes the work reminds people that African history didn't end 50,000 years ago when groups of humans began migrating into the Near East and beyond.

"The late Stone Age in Africa is like a black hole, research-wise," said Reich. "Ancient DNA can address that gap."

Source: Cell Press [September 21, 2017]

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3-D analysis of dog fossils sheds light on domestication debate

In an effort to settle the debate about the origin of dog domestication, a technique that uses 3-D scans of fossils is helping researchers determine the difference between dogs and wolves.

3D plot of PC1–3 mandible shape variation. Black: dogs, dark grey: Alaskan wolves, light grey: European wolves, 
dark red: Ivolgin fossils, green: Ust’-Polui fossils, purple: Pleistocene Alaskan wolves, cyan: 1600CE fossil dogs, 
orange: unknown Alaskan fossil canids, pink: 1600CE fossil wolf [Credit: Scientific Reports (2017)]

In the ongoing debate, one camp believes dogs were domesticated in the Paleolithic age (more than 17,000 years ago), when humans were hunter-gatherers. The other camp believes domestication occurred in the Neolithic age (17,000 to 7,000 years ago), when humans first established agriculture and civilizations.

Abby Grace Drake, a senior lecturer in the Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, and her colleagues have been analyzing 3-D scans of ancient fossil canid mandibles to determine whether they belong to dogs or wolves. The answer, they find, is not so simple.

The researchers found that in the early stages of domestication, the skull changed shape but evolution of the mandible lagged behind and did not co-evolve with the skull. Their study is reported in the journal Scientific Reports.

"A lot of the fossil evidence for the date of dog domestication is based on morphological [structural] analysis of mandibles," said Drake, the paper's first author. Robert Losey, an anthropologist at the University of Alberta, Canada, is a senior co-author of the paper. "Our study shows that when you measure modern dog mandibles and wolf mandibles using 3-D measurements you can distinguish them, and yet when we looked at these fossil mandibles, they don't look like dogs or wolves."

Wolves have fairly straight mandibles while dog mandibles are curved, structural features that become evident in a 3-D scan. In a proof of principle, when analyzing the 3-D structures of mandibles of modern dogs, Drake and colleagues correctly classified 99.5 percent of the samples as being dog or wolf.

This video shows how a canid mandible changes shape and curves during its transition from wolf to dog 

[Credit: Abby Grace Drake/Cornell University]

However, 3-D analysis of fossil records from four ancient sites, two from Russia and two from Alaska, found that most of those fossil mandibles could not be classified as either dog or wolf, even though features in canid skulls from the same sites as well as other data proved that the samples were dog remains.

Other evidence also showed that these canids were domesticated: The remains were found within human dwellings, remains at both the Russian sites revealed butchery marks, indicating that they were eaten, and isotope analysis of canid and human remains from one of the sites - Ust'-Polui, in the Russian Arctic - showed canids and humans were both eating fish, and humans were feeding their canids.

Since mandibles do not appear to evolve as rapidly as the skull, the results show they are not reliable for identifying early dog fossils, Drake said.

Four of 26 fossil mandibles from Ust'-Polui, which was occupied from 250 B.C. to 150 B.C., were identified as dogs, while three of the mandibles from the site were identified as wolves.

At another site, Ivolgin, in southern Russia, occupied between 300 B.C. and 200 B.C., none of the 20 mandibles were identified as dogs, though 8 were identified as wolves. All of the skulls found at these sites, 12 from Ivolgin and five from Ust'-Polui, were clearly identified as dogs.

Canid fossils of wolves and dogs from the Alaskan sites from 1600 CE were used as controls and to compare genetic testing against the structural 3-D data.

A 2015 paper by Drake and Michael Coquerelle, an anthropologist at the University Rey Juan Carlos in Alcorcon, Spain, and a co-author on the current paper, used the 3-D technique to refute a claim that dogs existed 30,000 years ago. That claim was based on linear caliper measurements of skulls. Linear measurements are inaccurate because dog and wolf skull sizes overlap, Drake said. On the other hand, 3-D analysis of skulls uses landmarks across the skull to identify differences between dogs and wolves in the angle of the muzzle, or snout, and in the angling of the eye orbits.

"The earliest dogs I've seen in my analysis are from 7,000 to 9,000 years ago," Drake said.

Author: Lindsey Hadlock | Source: Cornell University [September 21, 2017]

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Viking boat burial found in Norway

On one of the last days of the excavation in the market square, archaeologists from the Norwegian Institute for Cultural Heritage Research (NIKU) became aware of a feature with a somewhat special shape.

The boat dates between the seventh and 10th centuries, around the time the Vikings began exploring and raiding Europe 
[Credit: Norwegian Institute for Cultural Heritage Research (NIKU)]

The feature, which was dug into the natural deposits, had been disturbed in several places by later pits and postholes, but it was quite clearly boat-shaped.

"Careful excavation revealed that no wood remained intact, but lumps of rust and some poorly-preserved nails indicated that it was a boat that was buried here", says archaeologist Ian Reed.

The remains of the boat show that it was at least 4 meters long and oriented more or less north-south.

Skeletal remains

The boat contained two long bones, which, like the boat, were oriented north-south.

"This suggests that there was a human skeleton contained within the boat. Because of the poor state of preservation we will have to carry out DNA tests to be 100% certain that the bones are human", says Reed.

The boat is damaged several places by pits and post holes. Cautious excavation has reveiled that there is no wood left 
but clumps of rust and some poorly preserved nails that show that this is probably a boat grave 
[Credit: Norwegian Institute for Cultural Heritage Research (NIKU)]

Sheet bronze and a key

Other finds included a small piece of sheet bronze, located up against one of the bones, as well as what are likely personal items from the grave.

"In a posthole dug through the middle of the boat we found a piece of a spoon and part of a key for a chest. If this is from the grave then it can probably be dated from the 7th to the 10th century", says Reed.

Could it be an Åfjord boat?

The location away from today’s harbor and the fjord suggests that the boat grave dates from the late Iron Age, or perhaps the early Viking Age.

"It is likely a boat that has been dug down into the ground and been used as a coffin for the dead. There has also probably been a burial mound over the boat and grave", says NIKU’s Knut Paasche, a specialist in early boats.

Sketcth of an Åfjord boat [Credit: Nordlandsbåten og Åfjordsbåten av G. Eldjarn og J. Godal, 1988.]

He believes that the boat type is similar to an Åfjord boat, which has historically been a common sight along the Trøndelag coast.

"This type of boat is relatively flat in the bottom midship. The boat can also be flat-bottomed as it is intended to go into shallow waters on the river Nidelven. Boat graves are common from the Iron Age and into the Viking Period, but this is the first time a ship burial from this period has been discovered in Trondheim city centre."

"This is another discovery by NIKU that refers to a Trondheim older than the medieval city. Other Viking settlements such as Birka, Gokstad or Kaupang, all have graves in close proximity to the trading centre", says Paasche.

Work on the boat has now been completed.

Source: Norwegian Institute for Cultural Heritage Research [September 21, 2017]

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Urartian necropolis reveals burial customs

Excavations in a Urartian necropolis in the eastern province of Van’s Çavuştepe Castle, which has been plundered by treasure hunters in recent years, provide important details about Urartian burial customs.

AA Photo

The Culture and Tourism Ministry has initiated excavations to rescue the necropolis in the castle. During the excavations, a tomb was unearthed with the skeletons of a man and a woman. Officials believe they were husband and wife because they were buried together. A bronze belt, tray, seal and several bronze jewelries were also found in the tomb.

Along with the tomb of the wife and husband, a horse skeleton was also found in the search. Officials say it is the first horse skeleton unearthed in a Urartian tomb, making it the most important finding among other discoveries in the castle. Samples from the horse skeleton will be analyzed to determine the age and species of the horse.

Close to the horse skeleton, the excavation team found many oxidized and deformed iron pieces and bronze nails. The first observations on the pieces show that these findings may have belonged to a horse carriage.

AA Photo

Illegal excavations in the necropolis have so far given extensive damage to the field, erasing the traces of thousands of years of customs.

The main purpose of the recent works was to rescue the necropolis from treasure hunters and also to obtain information about people’s social lives, faiths and burial customs. Two different types of burial methods have been determined in the field.

The first one is the urn-type burial, in which the dead people are cremated and their ashes are buried. Eight urn-type tombs were unearthed in the southern part of the excavation field. The tombs were found in an underground of nearly half a meter depth and most of them were broken.

AA Photo

In the second type of burial method, the dead are placed in a tomb in hocker position, just like in a mother’s womb. The Çavuştepe Castle, where the Urartian people were buried after death, was built in 750 B.C. by the Urartian King Sarduri II. The necropolis in the castle was used by people who lived there for the next 200 years.

Recent excavations in the castle have been carried out by Yüzüncü Yıl University Archaeology Department academic Associate Professor Rafet Çavuşoğlu.

Source: Hurriyet Daily News [September 21, 2017]

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Dinosaurs laid blue-green eggs

Scientists have found evidence that dinosaurs laid blue-green eggs, telling us something about the prehistoric creatures’ behaviour and challenging what we know about how coloured eggs evolved.

(A) Pair of oviraptorid Heyuannia eggs (NMNS CYN-2004-DINO-05) from the Chinese province of Jiangxi before
 sampling. Porosity measurements and calculations of water vapour conductance are based on these eggs. Pieces 
of eggshell from each of the four zones depicted in (B) were used in porosity measurements. (B) Egg model 
separated into four zones used for zonal porosity measurements [Credit: PeerJ (2017)]

The team of researchers chemically analyzed eggshells recovered from the Late Cretaceous period, between about 100 million and 66 million years ago, and found two pigments in the makeup, suggesting that the eggshells were originally blue-green. A study in the journal PeerJ says the eggs, which were in a late stage of embryonic development, came from a species of oviraptor, a group of small theropods with feathers that lived in the area of Mongolia, and were collected from river deposits in eastern and southern China. The fact that the eggs were not white suggests that these particular dinosaur parents used open nests and were not constantly brooding over their unborn babies.

In modern birds, colouring on eggshells provides camouflage or diversion so that open-nesting birds can protect their children from potential predators. According to the study, “cryptic colouration evolved to match the predominant shades of colour found in the nesting environment.”

Meanwhile, birds that instead protect their eggs by hovering over them do not have much pigmentation in the shells. Crocodiles, which are close relatives, have unpigmented eggs too; they bury their eggs.

The researchers on this study compared the case of modern birds to those of non-avian dinosaurs that may have had coloured eggs. The blue-green eggs for this oviraptor, a creature that had a beak like a parrot and walked on its hind legs, “support an at least partially open nesting behaviour for oviraptorosaurs,” the authors wrote.

The two pigments found in the eggshells were protoporphyrin and biliverdin. Those two components can be found in the eggshells of many modern birds.

According to the study, scientists have assumed that egg colouration evolved in the last shared ancestor between birds and crocs.

That colouration would have been passed down in the genes even of birds that developed behaviour obviating the need for it. The study gives the example of ostriches, which sit on their eggs. Analysis shows that those eggshells still “contain minor amounts of eggshell pigment.” That lingering amount suggests that evolution gradually reduced the pigment in their eggs because their brooding over their eggs reduced evolutionary pressure on egg-colouring genes.

But this new finding shows a deeper history to the trait than just the last common ancestor of birds and crocodiles. The scientists say it may have evolved when some dinosaurs began building nests that were at least partially exposed, as opposed to burying all their eggs, which was a much more common practice.

“Selection for egg color would only have occurred after the eggs themselves became visible to parents, conspecifics, predators, or parasites,” the authors wrote.

The results of the egg analysis also represent an additional avenue for studying fossils, and the researchers said other fossilized dinosaur eggs could contain evidence of pigmentation.

Initially the scientists thought a bluish colouring on the oviraptor eggs was from mineralization.

“The result has important implications both for the origin of avian biology and the reproductive biology of theropods dinosaurs,” the study says.

Author: Elana Glowatz | Source: International Business Times [September 21, 2017]

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Early trilobites had stomachs, new fossil study finds

Exceptionally preserved trilobite fossils from China, dating back to more than 500 million years ago, have revealed new insights into the extinct marine animal's digestive system. Published in the journal PLOS ONE, the new study shows that at least two trilobite species evolved a stomach structure 20 million years earlier than previously thought.

A specimen of the trilobite Palaeolenus lantenoisi from the Guanshan Biota in southern Yunnan Province, 
China. Rarely are internal organs preserved in fossils, but this specimen shows the digestive system
 preserved as reddish iron oxides. The digestive system is comprised of a crop (inflated region at top 
of specimen), lateral glands, and a central canal that runs along the length of the body; the iron 
oxides that extend beyond the fossil are the remains of gut contents that were 
extruded during preservation [Credit: © F. Chen]

"Trilobites are one of the first types of animals to show up in large numbers in the fossil record," said lead author Melanie Hopkins, an assistant curator in the Division of Paleontology at the American Museum of Natural History. "Their exoskeletons were heavy in minerals, and so they preserved really well. But like all fossils, it's very rare to see the preservation of soft tissues like organs or appendages in trilobites, and because of this, our knowledge of the trilobite digestive system comes from a small number of specimens. The new material in this study really expands our understanding."

Trilobites are a group of extinct marine arthropods -- distantly related to the horseshoe crab -- that lived for almost 300 million years. They were extremely diverse, with about 20,000 species, and their fossil exoskeletons can be found all around the world. Most of the 270 specimens analyzed in the new study were collected from a quarry in southern Kunming, China, during an excavation led by Hopkins' co-author, Zhifei Zhang, from Northwest University in Xi'an.

Previous research suggests that two body plans existed for trilobite digestive systems: a tube that runs down the length of the trilobite's body with lateral digestive glands that would have helped process the food; or an expanded stomach, called a "crop," leading into a simple tube with no lateral glands. Until now, only the first type had been reported from the oldest trilobites. Based on this, researchers had proposed that the evolution of the crop came later in trilobite evolutionary history and represented a distinct type of digestive system.

The Chinese trilobite fossils, about 20 percent of which have soft tissue preservation, are dated to the early Cambrian, about 514 million years ago. Contradictory to the previously proposed body plans, the researchers identified crops in two different species within this material. In addition, they found a single specimen that has both a crop and digestive glands -- suggesting that the evolution of trilobite digestive systems is more complex than originally proposed.

The study backs up an earlier announcement made by a separate research team, which found evidence for the unusual crop and gland pairing in a single juvenile trilobite specimen from Sweden from the late Cambrian. But the Chinese material presents the oldest example of this complex digestive system in a mature trilobite, wiping away doubts that the dual structures might just be part of the animal's early development.

"This is a very rigorous study based on multiple specimens, and it shows that we should start thinking about this aspect of trilobite biology and evolution in a different way," Hopkins said.

Source: American Museum of Natural History [September 21, 2017]

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Big herbivorous dinosaurs ate crustaceans as a side dish

Some big plant-eating dinosaurs roaming present-day Utah some 75 million years ago were slurping up crustaceans on the side, a behavior that may have been tied to reproductive activities, says a new University of Colorado Boulder study.

CU Boulder Associate Professor Karen Chin excavating dinosaur coprolites at Grand Staircase-Escalante National 
Monument in Utah. The new study shows herbivorous dinosaurs also were eating crustaceans, likely seasonally 
[Credit: University of Colorado]

The evidence for the crustacean-chowing dinosaurs comes from fossilized feces samples known as coprolites, said Associate Professor Karen Chin, curator of paleontology at CU Boulder's Museum of Natural History. Dating to the late Cretaceous Period, the coprolites were discovered in Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument in southern Utah by a team from the Denver Museum of Nature & Science who invited Chin out to their dig.

From what we know about dinosaurs, this was a totally unexpected behavior," said Chin. "It was such a surprising discovery we wondered what the motivation could have been."

Chin said the Utah coprolites were similar to those she has examined from Montana -- which likely were from duck-billed dinosaurs known as hadrosaurs -- in that both were similar in size and held jumbled fragments of rotting wood. A closer look at some of the Utah coprolites also turned up thick bits and pieces of fossilized shell, an indication crustaceans were living in the decaying, coniferous wood, she said.

Because crustacean shells turned up in at least 10 coprolite samples in three different stratigraphic layers of the national monument over a distance of about 13 miles, Chin thinks their ingestion by the dinosaurs was purposeful and would have provided valuable protein and calcium sources.

Examples of modern crustaceans, which have hard exoskeletons, include lobsters, crab, shrimp and crayfish. Some of the coprolites examined were probably around two gallons in volume, Chin said.

The size of the crustacean shell bits in the coprolites indicate the crustaceans were at least two inches in length and perhaps larger, said Chin. Individual crustaceans comprised from 20 to 60 percent of the width of a common hadrosaur beak, suggesting it was unlikely the crustaceans were unwittingly swallowed, she said.

"While it is difficult to prove intent regarding feeding strategies, I suspect these dinosaurs targeted rotting wood because it was a great source of protein in the form of insects, crustaceans and other invertebrates," said Chin. "If we take into account the size of the crustaceans and that they were probably wriggling when they were scooped up, the dinosaurs would have likely been aware of them and made a choice to ingest them."

Even though the team is unable to determine what kind of crustaceans they were, fossil crab claws have been found in the same area in a slightly older geologic formation. Present-day Utah appears to have been next to or near a sea during the Cretaceous Period, said Chin.

Chin also suspects the consumption of crustaceans may have been a seasonal dietary shift, perhaps tied to breeding and egg-laying activities of dinosaurs. She notes contemporary bird species -- which are technically avian dinosaurs -- often consume more protein and calcium during the breeding season to support successful reproduction.

"If we found one coprolite with a crustacean fossil in it, that would be a really interesting scientific discovery," Chin said. "But it wouldn't necessarily indicate a recurring feeding behavior. We now have multiple coprolites with crustacean fossils, showing that at least some types of herbivorous dinosaurs occasionally engaged in this unanticipated feeding strategy."

The researchers sliced the coprolite material into thin sections that were then analyzed with an electron microprobe to determine their chemical composition -- in this case they found a preponderance of calcium, said Chin.

Hadrosaurs were one of the most common dinosaur type of the Cretaceous, growing up to 30 feet long and weighing up to three tons. Some species had characteristic crests on their heads. They also had specialized teeth for grinding plant material, and are thought by some paleontologists to have roamed in herds and nurtured their young.

A paper on the subject was published in the journal Scientific Reports.

Source: University of Colorado at Boulder [September 21, 2017]

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Racism behind outlandish theories about Africa’s ancient architecture

Some of the most impressive buildings and cities ever made by humans can be found in Africa: the ruined city of Great Zimbabwe, Mapungubwe in South Africa, Kenya’s Gedi Ruins and Meroe in Sudan. Perhaps the most awe-inspiring of these are the last remaining of the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World, the Great Pyramid of Giza, in Egypt.

The pyramids of Giza on the outskirts of Cairo, Egypt [Credit: Mohamed Abd El Ghany/Reuters]

This should come as no surprise. Africa has an extensive archaeological record, extending as far back as 3.3 million years ago when the first-ever stone tool was made in what is today Kenya. The continent’s cultural complexity and diversity is well established; it is home to the world’s oldest-known pieces of art. And, of course, it is the birth place of modern humans’ ancient ancestors, Homo sapiens.

Despite all this evidence, some people still refuse to believe that anyone from Africa (or anywhere in what is today considered the developing world) could possibly have created and constructed the Giza pyramids or other ancient masterpieces. Instead, they credit ancient astronauts, extraterrestrials or time travellers as the real builders.

Well, you may ask, so what? Who cares if relatively few people don’t believe the ancient Egyptians built the pyramids? What’s the harm? Actually, there is great harm: firstly, these people try to prove their theories by travelling the world and desecrating ancient artefacts. Secondly, they perpetuate and give air to the racist notion that only Europeans – white people – ever were and ever will be capable of such architectural feats.

A threat to world heritage

In 2014 two German pseudo-scientists set out to “prove” that academics were concealing the Giza pyramids’ “real” origin. To do so, they chiselled off a piece of one of the pyramids – of course, without authorisation, so they could “analyse” it.

And earlier in 2017 scientists from the World Congress on Mummy Studies in South America published a communique on their Facebook page to draw attention to the raiding of Nazca graves for a pseudo-scientific research programme called the Alien project. It insists that aliens rather than ancient Peruvians were responsible for the famous geoglyphs called the Nazca Lines, despite all the evidence to the contrary.

Such incidents exemplify the threats to developing nations’ cultural heritage. Conservation authorities around the world must spend a great deal of money to protect and restore unique pieces of heritage, and to guard them against vandalism. For instance, the most recent overhaul planned for the Giza site – back in 2008 – was estimated at a cost of USD$45 million.

These are not wealthy nations, as a rule, and it costs money they often don’t have to repair the damage done by, among others, pseudo-scientists.

The ancient city of Meroe [Credit: Mohamed Abd El Ghany/Reuters]

Racism and colonial attitudes

A series of stone circles in South Africa’s Mpumalanga province provides an excellent example of the other problem with pseudo-archaeologists. Some people genuinely believe that these structures were designed by aliens. They scoff at scientific research that proves the stone circles were made by the Koni people using ropes, sticks and wood. They will not even entertain the notion that ancient African tribes could be responsible.

But the same people have no problem believing that medieval Europeans built the continent’s magnificent cathedrals using only ropes, sticks and wood. They dismiss scientific research that overwhelmingly proves ancient Africans’ prowess, but insist the documents which contain evidence of Europeans’ construction processes are beyond reproach.

Why is it so hard for some to acknowledge that ancient non-European civilisations like the Aztecs, people from Easter Island, ancient Egyptians or Bantu-speakers from southern Africa could create intricate structures?

The answer is unfortunately as simple as it seems: it boils down to profound racism and a feeling of white superiority that emanates from the rotting corpse of colonialism.

Colonial powers saw their “subjects” in Africa, South America and Southeast Asia as exotic, fascinating – but ultimately primitive.

An increasing knowledge and understanding of the archaeological record mostly dispelled these notions. But for some, and until nowadays, it seems unthinkable that ancient non-European societies have been resourceful and creative enough to erect such monuments. So, the thinking went, conventional science must have been missing or hiding something: ancient astronauts, aliens, or the lost civilisation of Atlantis. Even some mainstream scholars have dabbled in this thinking.

Telling the truth

The internet and social media has given these modern conspiracy junkies a perfect platform to share their theories. They try to make others believe that scientists are hiding “the truth” about ancient monuments. Sometimes they even succeed.

There is a risk that they will drown out quality knowledge and science with their colourful, outlandish theories. When such bizarre theories emerge, it can water down people’s understanding and appreciation of Africa’s architectural and cultural heritage.

At the same time, these theories can prevent awareness about Africa’s rich heritage from developing. The heirs of the real builders may never learn about their ancestors’ remarkable achievements.

Scientists have a crucial role to play in turning the tide on such harmful theories. Those of us who are doing ongoing research around the continent’s architectural and fossil record should be sharing our findings in a way that engages ordinary people.

We must show them just how awe-inspiring structures like Great Zimbabwe, Meroe and the Giza Pyramids are – not because they were created by some alien race, but because they are living proof of ancient societies’ ingenuity.

Author: Julien Benoit | Source: The Conversation [September 20, 2017]

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New scientific dating research unravels the story of life in prehistoric Orkney

A new study, published today in Antiquity journal, is challenging the previously understood narrative for prehistoric life on Orkney. It was led by Professor Alex Bayliss of Historic England and is based on the interrogation of more than 600 radiocarbon dates, enabling much more precise estimates of the timing and duration of events in the period c.3200-2500 BC.

Excavating the Smerquoy Hoose [Credit: © Colin Richards]

The study is part of a much wider project, The Times of Their Lives, funded by the European Research Council (2012-2017), which has applied the same methodology to a wider series of case studies across Neolithic Europe. That project has demonstrated many other examples of more dynamic and punctuated sequences than previously suspected in 'prehistory'.

Neolithic Orkney is well-preserved and is a time of stone houses, stone circles and elaborate burial monuments. World-renowned sites such as the Skara Brae settlement, Maeshowe passage grave, and the Ring of Brodgar and Stones of Stenness circles have long been known and are in the World Heritage Site (given this status in 1999). They have been joined by more recent discoveries of great settlement complexes such as Barnhouse and Ness of Brodgar.

The new study reveals in much more detail than previously possible the fluctuating fortunes of the communities involved in these feats of construction and their social interaction. It used a Bayesian statistical approach to combine calibrated radiocarbon dates with knowledge of the archaeological contexts that the finds have come from to provide much more precise chronologies than those previously available.

Aerial view of Barnhouse [Credit: © Colin Richards]

Professor Alex Bayliss of Historic England, leader of the Orkney study, said: 'This study shows that new statistical analysis of the large numbers of radiocarbon dates that are now available in British archaeology really changes what we can know about our pasts. People in the Neolithic made choices, just like us, about all sorts of things - where to live, how to bury their dead, how to farm, where and when to gather together - and those choices are just beginning to come into view through archaeology. It's an exciting time to be an archaeological scientist!'

The study indicates:

• Orkney was probably first colonised in c. 3600 cal BC (cal indicates dates calibrated by radiocarbon dating). There was an expansion and growth of settlement and building of monuments from c. 3300 cal BC.

• Settlement peaked in the period c. 3100-2900 cal BC

• There was a phase of decline c. 2800-2600 cal BC, measured by the number of stone houses in use

• Settlement resumed in c. 2600-2300 cal BC, but only away from the 'core' area of the Brodgar-Stenness peninsula in western Mainland. It was probably about this time that the Ring of Brodgar itself was erected, probably bringing people together from across Orkney but into what was now a sacred, not a domestic, landscape

Excavating Ring of Brodgar [Credit: © Colin Richards]

The study suggests that the period saw competition between communities that was played out in how they buried their dead and in their communal gatherings and rituals.

The study also throws up other complexities in the sequence of development on the island:

• An overlap between the construction of different kinds of burials tombs - passage graves and large stalled cairns - in the later fourth millennium cal BC

• An overlap between the emergence of the new pottery style, flat-based Grooved Ware, characteristic of the Late Neolithic in Orkney, and the round-based pottery of earlier Neolithic inhabitants

• The first appearance of the non-native Orkney vole, Microtus agrestis, c. 3200 cal BC. This is significant as it is found today on Orkney and on the European continent but not in mainland Britain. It was probably introduced via direct long-distance sea travel between Orkney and the continent. The study therefore also considers whether new people from continental Europe were part of this complex cultural scenario.

Ring of Brodgar [Credit: © Colin Richards]

Professor Alasdair Whittle of Cardiff University, Principal Investigator of The Times of Their Lives, said: 'Visitors come from all over the world to admire the wonderfully preserved archaeological remains of Orkney, in what may seem a timeless setting. Our study underlines that the Neolithic past was often rapidly changing, and that what may appear to us to be enduring monuments were in fact part of a dynamic historical context.'

Professor Colin Richards of the University of the Highlands and Islands in Kirkwall, Orkney, and co-author of the study, said: 'Our study shows how much remains to be discovered in Orkney about the Neolithic period, even though it may appear well known. This applies throughout the sequence, including in the period of decline at its end.'

Source: Historic England [September 20, 2017]

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