Archaeology/Paleontology news

[Pmt111500]

This thread may be used to inform forumites of interesting archeology/paleontology news, lets keep the posts short and always link to a source, please.
I'm opening the thread with a local find. The site is under 10 km from my place.
Part of the burial ground of the earliest christian church yet found in Finland has been found, and the burial of a 13th century women has been excavated. No written records of this site exist. Among finds are remnants of cloth used during the time, as of yet the colors used are unknown, samples of the cloths are sent to Belgian laboratory for color analysis. Parts of socks and a skirt (apparently also a cape) have been identified.
 https://www.is.fi/tiede/art-2000005911736.html

[Pmt111500]

1400s AD fisherman found probably drowned in then Thames mudflats, wearing tigh high boots: https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-england-london-46444769

[kassy]

Meanwhile in Denmark...

Oldest ever traces of the plague found in Falköping

In a 5,000 year old grave outside Falköping, scientists have found the oldest traces of the plague bacterium's DNA in the world.

"The discovery of such an early variant of the bacterium in Falköping was totally unexpected since previous findings pointed to Yersinia pestis as having originated in Asia.

The find in Falköping also means that the researchers may have solved another mystery. It was only recently discovered that people in different regions of Eurasia were all infected with the plague during the Bronze Age.

t was by analysing 'molecular clock' data that the researchers discovered that different strains of the plague bacterium spread very rapidly in Eurasia between 5,000 and 6,000 years ago. This matches exactly a period in South-East Europe when the first large population densities arose but also collapsed. It was also at this time that many technological breakthroughs occurred such as the wheel, the use of draught animals, and metallurgy – breakthroughs that facilitated long-distance trade, for example.

For full details see
https://phys.org/news/2018-12-oldest-plague-falkping.html

or this
https://www.heritagedaily.com/2018/12/an-ancient-strain-of-plague-may-have-led-to-the-decline-of-neolithic-europeans/122286

[kassy]

Not archaeology per se if if this pans out it will be useful for the field so i am smuggling it in here:

Chinese cave holds carbon dating ‘Holy Grail’

Stalagmites in a Chinese cave have given scientists all they need to reconstruct the historical record of atmospheric radiocarbon (carbon-14) back to the carbon dating limit of around 54,000 years ago.

...

 carbon dating requires calibrating because levels of carbon-14 in the atmosphere vary from year to year. Tree ring data provides a good gauge for carbon dating because their growth reflects their yearly uptake of atmospheric carbon-14. But tree ring data only goes back around 13,000 years.

...
Hai Cheng at Xi’an Jiaotong University, China, and colleagues in the US previously discovered that a stalagmite in Hulu Cave in China showed unusually low and stable amounts of dead carbon that allowed for accurate carbon-14 calibration between around 27,000 and 10,500 years ago. Now the team have studied two older stalagmites in the cave to help take carbon dating to its limit.

https://www.chemistryworld.com/news/chinese-cave-holds-carbon-dating-holy-grail/3009899.article

[kassy]

Archaeologists in Egypt have made an exciting tomb discovery - the final resting place of a high priest, untouched for 4,400 years.

https://www.bbc.com/news/world-middle-east-46580264

Lots of pictures on the link. Quite a bit of the paint is preserved.

[Pmt111500]

Feathers were present way earlier than thought, international group discovers,

https://www.bristol.ac.uk/news/2018/december/origin-of-feathers-.html

[kassy]

Neanderthals Were Intelligent Enough To Make Spears That Could Kill Animals At A Distance

...

The 300,000-year-old Schöningen spears are throwing spears from the Palaeolithic Age that hold the record as the oldest known wooden artifacts in the world. They are also the oldest completely preserved hunting weapons from prehistoric Europe so far discovered.

...

To find out if the Schöningen spears could hit a target at a distance, Annemieke Milks, from University College London, and colleagues made replicas of the prehistoric weapons. They also asked six javelin athletes to throw the spears.

The researchers chose javelin athletes for the study because they have the skill to throw at high velocity, which can match of the capability of Neanderthal hunters.

Hunting Prey At A Distance
The athletes showed they could hit a target at a range of up to 20 meters, and with significant impact that could translate into killing a prey.

This means the wooden spears would have allowed the Neanderthals to use them as hunting weapons and kill at a distance.

The Neanderthals have long been known as hunters but the finding is significant since earlier studies suggest these archaic human species could only hunt and kill their prey at a close range. The demonstrated range was, in fact, double the distance scientists previously thought the spears could be thrown.

and more on:
https://www.techtimes.com/articles/237995/20190126/neanderthals-were-intelligent-enough-to-make-spears-that-could-kill-animals-at-a-distance.htm

One of my pet peeves is scientists painting Neanderthals as primitive brutes (which they did to make modern us more special). Of course nowadays we know they and Homo Sapiens mixed so they could probably communicate.

[Sebastian Jones]

Neanderthals Were Intelligent Enough To Make Spears That Could Kill Animals At A Distance

...



One of my pet peeves is scientists painting Neanderthals as primitive brutes (which they did to make modern us more special). Of course nowadays we know they and Homo Sapiens mixed so they could probably communicate.

Agreed, with the additional observation that Neanderthals were Homo Sapiens...Also as we learn how many non-homo animals use tools, even as weapons, this news makes even more sense.

[sidd]

Isnt that older than neanderthal ? thats two glaciations ago ...

sidd

[vox_mundi]

A model of the evolution of the genus Homo over the last 2 million years (vertical axis). The rapid "Out of Africa" expansion of H. sapiens is indicated at the top of the diagram, with admixture indicated with Neanderthals, Denisovans, and unspecified archaic African hominins. Late survival of robust australopithecines (Paranthropus) alongside Homo until 1.2 Mya is indicated in purple.

Homo sapiens (anatomically modern humans) emerges close to 300,000 to 200,000 years ago,[6] most likely in Africa, and Homo neanderthalensis emerges at around the same time in Europe and Western Asia.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Archaic_humans

[kassy]

Neanderthals and Denisovans Shared a Siberian Cave for Thousands of Years, New Research Suggests


Results from this work showed that Denisovans first occupied the cave around 287,000 years ago, and continued to live in the cave until around 55,000 years ago. Neanderthals arrived at the cave around 193,000 years ago, and they continued to live there up until around 97,000 years ago—an overlap of 96,000 years. The bones of 27 animals, including mammals and fishes, along with 72 species of plants, were also analysed, pointing to a variable climate in the region during the millennia of occupation at the cave. At times, the region was relatively warm, featuring forests of broad-leaved trees, but at other times it was a harsh and desolate tundra-steppe habitat.

for the details see:
http://www.gizmodo.co.uk/2019/01/neanderthals-and-denisovans-shared-a-siberian-cave-for-thousands-of-years-new-research-suggests/

[kassy]

A taste for fat may have made us human

Long before human ancestors began hunting large mammals for meat, a fatty diet provided them with the nutrition to develop bigger brains, posits a new paper in Current Anthropology.

The paper argues that our early ancestors acquired a taste for fat by eating marrow scavenged from the skeletal remains of large animals that had been killed and eaten by other predators. The argument challenges the widely held view among anthropologists that eating meat was the critical factor in setting the stage for the evolution of humans.

...

"The reservoirs of fat in the long bones of carcasses were a huge calorie package on a calorie-poor landscape. That could have been what gave an ancestral population the advantage it needed to set off the chain of human evolution."

...

A meat-centered paradigm for human evolution hypothesizes that an ape population began more actively hunting and eating small game, which became an evolutionary stepping stone to the human behavior of hunting large animals.

The paper argues that this theory does not make nutritional sense. "The meat of wild animals is lean," Thompson says. "It actually takes more work to metabolize lean protein than you get back."

In fact, eating lean meat without a good source of fat can lead to protein poisoning and acute malnutrition. Early Arctic explorers, who attempted to survive on rabbit meat exclusively, described the condition as "rabbit starvation."

https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2019/02/190205161420.htm

[gerontocrat]

A taste for fat may have made us human

. "The meat of wild animals is lean," Thompson says. "It actually takes more work to metabolize lean protein than you get back."

In fact, eating lean meat without a good source of fat can lead to protein poisoning and acute malnutrition. Early Arctic explorers, who attempted to survive on rabbit meat exclusively, described the condition as "rabbit starvation."

Modern 21st Century Anglo-Saxon man mostly just eats the lean meat of an animal. Three or four generations or more ago this was not the case for most people. Everything got eaten - the offal, the tripes, the head, and the marrow. I remember being at a smallholder credit meeting in Malawi back in the early 1980's. The one bit of the goat we had for dinner I could not eat was intestines on a stick. I was not keen on bat kebabs either. Chinese cuisine - in China - also uses all of the animal.

To say that an early humanoid would just have eaten the lean meat from an animal it killed is just stupid, as were those early Arctic explorers (and like Scott who would not eat the horses to supplement their food supply on his fatal Antarctic adventure).

And just about all predators will eat carrion if it is available and digestible. So an argument that says carrion vs an argument that says hunting is also completely dumb, as they are not mutually exclusive.

Some scientists need to get out of their studies and laboratories more

[johnm33]

I thought Elane Morgan had the transition pretty much nailed down with her aquatic ape hypothesis. A prolonged period of exploiting the tidal reaches, using the high protien harvest available there, the closer for me was that menses ceases whilst swimming.

[Sebastian Jones]

the closer for me was that menses ceases whilst swimming.

Are you joking? If so, my apologies for being slow. If not please provide a reference for this assertion.

[vox_mundi]

Danish Workers Unearth 'Still-Sharp' Medieval Sword While Digging Out Sewer
https://gizmodo.com/danish-workers-unearth-still-sharp-medieval-sword-while-1832465793

[johnm33]

"Are you joking" Iirc it's what the book said, the consensus now seems to be that the flow ceases due to external water pressure[?] whereas the book associated it with other reflex actions, the heart slowing when the head goes under water being one, rapid reduction of flow to near surface capillaries another.

[TerryM]

I thought Elane Morgan had the transition pretty much nailed down with her aquatic ape hypothesis. A prolonged period of exploiting the tidal reaches, using the high protien harvest available there, the closer for me was that menses ceases whilst swimming.

"The Naked Ape" by Desmond Morris opened my mind to the possibility of an aquatic ancestor. Living in a commune at Ortega Hot Springs convinced me that those ancestors were on to something good.
Terry

[kassy]

The Black Death May Have Transformed Medieval Societies In Sub-Saharan Africa

In the 14th century, the Black Death swept across Europe, Asia, and North Africa, killing up to 50% of the population in some cities. But archaeologists and historians have assumed that the plague bacterium Yersinia pestis, carried by fleas infesting rodents, didn’t make it across the Sahara Desert.

...

Plague is endemic in parts of Africa now; most historians have assumed it arrived in the 19th century from India or China. But Gérard Chouin, an archaeologist and historian at the College of William & Mary in Williamsburg, Virginia, and a team leader in the French National Research Agency’s GLOBAFRICA research program, first started to wonder whether plague had a longer history in sub-Saharan Africa while excavating the site of Akrokrowa in Ghana. Founded around 700 C.E., Akrokrowa was a farming community surrounded by an elliptical ditch and high earthen banks, one of dozens of similar “earthwork” settlements in southern Ghana at the time. But sometime in the late 1300s, Akrokrowa and all the other earthwork settlements were abandoned. “There was a deep, structural change in settlement patterns,” Chouin says, just as the Black Death ravaged Eurasia and North Africa. With GLOBAFRICA funding, he has since documented a similar 14th century abandonment of Ife, Nigeria, the homeland of the Yoruba people, although that site was later reoccupied.

https://www.3quarksdaily.com/3quarksdaily/2019/03/the-black-death-may-have-transformed-medieval-societies-in-sub-saharan-africa.html

[kassy]

Cave of relics found under Mayan ruins of Chichen Itza

Archaeologists have discovered a cave filled with hundreds of artifacts beneath the ruins of the Mayan city of Chichen Itza in Mexico, the lead researcher on the project said Monday, calling the find "incredible."

...

It sits about 24 meters (80 feet) underground, and contains multiple chambers connected by narrow passages -- often so narrow that researchers had to crawl or drag themselves through them, De Anda said.

His team has explored about 460 meters of the cave so far, and does not know how far it stretches, he added.

The relics found include seven incense burners shaped like the Mayan rain god Chaac, which researchers believe were offerings meant to bring rain.

...

De Anda's team plans to continue exploring the cave. Rather than remove the artifacts they find, they will study them on site, he said.

https://www.france24.com/en/20190305-cave-relics-found-under-mayan-ruins-chichen-itza

[vox_mundi]

‘Elixir of Immortality’ Uncovered in 2,000-Year-Old Chinese Tomb 
https://gizmodo.com/elixir-of-immortality-uncovered-in-2-000-year-old-chi-1833038438



A yellowish liquid found in a bronze pot dating back some 2,000 years is not wine, as Chinese archaeologists initially thought. It’s actually an “elixir of immortality” concocted during ancient times.

The bronze pot was discovered last October by archaeologists working at the tomb of a noble family in the Henan Province of central China. The 210-square-meter site in the city of Luoyang dates back to the Western Han Dynasty (202 BCE to 8 CE) and, in addition to the pot, yielded the well-preserved remains of a nobleman, painted clay pots, materials made from jade and bronze, and a lamp in the shape of a wild goose.

Intriguingly, the pot contained 3.5 liters (0.9 gallons) of a yellowish liquid exhibiting a very strong alcohol-like smell. At the time, archaeologists figured it was wine—a conclusion consistent with other discoveries dating back to the same period. Back then, wine made from rice and sorghum grains were used in ritual sacrifices and ceremonies, reported Xinhua.

But as Xinhua points out in an update to this discovery, further lab work has shown that the substance isn’t wine at all. The liquid is primarily comprised of potassium nitrate and alunite—the main ingredients of a life-enriching elixir documented in ancient Taoist texts.


He chose ... poorly

- Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade

[Tor Bejnar]

a life-enriching elixir

It must work:  that urn is 2000 years young!

[vox_mundi]

Doesn't look a day over 1500 

[Neven]

a life-enriching elixir

It must work:  that urn is 2000 years young!

Yes, and a tomb must be the ideal location for an 'elixir of immortality'. 

in addition to the pot, yielded the well-preserved remains of a nobleman, painted clay pots, materials made from jade and bronze, and a lamp in the shape of a wild goose.

I think the people who stacked the tomb, were experts in irony. A pot with an 'elixir of immortality' and 'a lamp in the shape of a wild goose'. Great combination. 

[Jim Hunt]

I think the people who stacked the tomb, were experts in irony. A pot with an 'elixir of immortality' and 'a lamp in the shape of a wild goose'. Great combination. 

I must have slept for 3 weeks after partying too hard on Friday night/Saturday morning.

I didn't realise that it's already April 1st 

[vox_mundi]

Hey, don't knock it ... Maybe those folks were on to something there. 

... The liquid is primarily comprised of potassium nitrate and alunite—the main ingredients of a life-enriching elixir documented in ancient Taoist texts.

... potassium nitrate is used for food preservation and color retention, particularly in cured meats such as bacon, bologna, corned beef, ham, hot dogs and pepperoni

https://www.nytimes.com/1992/08/13/nyregion/seeking-the-truth-in-refuse.html

... After 20 years of sorting through garbage cans and landfills, the archaeologist William L. Rathje has accumulated precious memories. There are the 40-year-old hot dogs, perfectly preserved beneath dozens of strata of waste, and the head of lettuce still in pristine condition after 25 years. But the hands-down winner, the one that still makes him shake his head in disbelief, is an order of guacamole he recently unearthed. Almost as good as new, it sat next to a newspaper apparently thrown out the same day. The date was 1967. ...

[vox_mundi]

More on the Mayan cave artfacts at Chichen Itza



https://www.npr.org/2019/03/10/702017075/archaeologists-find-trove-of-maya-artifacts-dating-back-1-000-years



The water drip over hundreds of years has resulted in the concretion of some of the objects, including this incense burner in the shape of Mayan rain God Tlaloc. 

[vox_mundi]

Geologic Evidence Supports Theory that Major Cosmic Impact Event Occurred Approximately 12,800 Years Ago   
https://phys.org/news/2019-03-geologic-evidence-theory-major-cosmic.html



... in a paper published in the journal Nature Scientific Reports, Kennett and colleagues, led by Chilean paleontologist Mario Pino, present further evidence of a cosmic impact, this time far south of the equator, that likely lead to biomass burning, climate change and megafaunal extinctions nearly 13,000 years ago.

"We have identified the Younger Dryas Boundary (YDB) Impact Hypothesis layer at high latitudes in the Southern Hemisphere at near 41 degrees south, close to the tip of South America," Kennett said. This is a major expansion of the extent of the Younger Dryas Boundary (YDB) Impact Hypothesis event." The vast majority of evidence to date, he added, has been found in the Northern Hemisphere.

Investigators recognized changes known to be associated with YDB impact event. They included a "black mat" layer, 12,800 years in age, that coincided with the disappearance of South American Pleistocene megafauna fossils, an abrupt shift in regional vegetation and a disappearance of human artifacts.

... the group decided to run analyses of impact-related proxies in search of the YDB layer," Kennett said. This yielded the presence of microscopic spherules interpreted to have been formed by melting due to the extremely high temperatures associated with impact. The layer containing these spherules also show peak concentrations of platinum and gold, and native iron particles rarely found in nature.

"Among the most important spherules are those that are chromium-rich," Kennett explained. The Pilauco site spherules contain an unusual level of chromium, an element not found in Northern Hemisphere YDB impact spherules, but in South America. "It turns out that volcanic rocks in the southern Andes can be rich in chromium, and these rocks provided a local source for this chromium," he added. "Thus, the cometary objects must have hit South America as well."



"The plant assemblages indicate that there was an abrupt and major shift in the vegetation from wet, cold conditions at Pilauco to warm, dry conditions," Kennett said. According to him, the atmospheric zonal climatic belts shifted "like a seesaw," with a synergistic mechanism, bringing warming to the Southern Hemisphere even as the Northern Hemisphere experienced cooling and expanding sea ice.

The rapidity—within a few years—with which the climate shifted is best attributed to impact-related shifts in atmospheric systems, rather than to the slower oceanic processes, Kennett said. 

Open Access: Mario Pino et al, Sedimentary record from Patagonia, southern Chile supports cosmic-impact triggering of biomass burning, climate change, and megafaunal extinctions at 12.8 ka, Scientific Reports (2019)

[kassy]

Nile shipwreck discovery proves Herodotus right – after 2,469 years

In the fifth century BC, the Greek historian Herodotus visited Egypt and wrote of unusual river boats on the Nile. Twenty-three lines of his Historia, the ancient world’s first great narrative history, are devoted to the intricate description of the construction of a “baris”.

For centuries, scholars have argued over his account because there was no archaeological evidence that such ships ever existed. Now there is. A “fabulously preserved” wreck in the waters around the sunken port city of Thonis-Heracleion has revealed just how accurate the historian was.

https://www.theguardian.com/science/2019/mar/17/nile-shipwreck-herodotus-archaeologists-thonis-heraclion

[kassy]

Huge fossil discovery made in China's Hubei province

...

Scientists say they have discovered a "stunning" trove of thousands of fossils on a river bank in China.

The fossils are estimated to be about 518 million years old, and are particularly unusual because the soft body tissue of many creatures, including their skin, eyes, and internal organs, have been "exquisitely" well preserved.

Palaeontologists have called the findings "mind-blowing" - especially because more than half the fossils are previously undiscovered species.

The fossils, known as the Qingjiang biota, were collected near Danshui river in Hubei province.

More than 20,000 specimens were collected, and a total of 4,351 have been analysed so far, including worms, jellyfish, sea anemones and algae.


https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-china-47667880

[Tor Bejnar]

See also https://wileyearthpages.wordpress.com/2019/03/25/the-cambrian-explosion-a-broader-view/

[vox_mundi]

New Analysis Confirms Oldest Mariner's Astrolabe Ever Found
https://gizmodo.com/new-analysis-confirms-oldest-mariners-astrolabe-ever-fo-1833497494

Scientists have confirmed that a gunmetal disk uncovered off the coast of Oman is the oldest known mariner’s astrolabe, according to a new study.

The disk was found underwater at the Sodré shipwreck site, and contained iconic Portuguese imagery still found on the flag of Portugal. Though it appeared to be an astrolabe, it required further confirmation. Laser imagery from scientists at the University of Warwick in the United Kingdom has now revealed scale markers along the disk’s edges, confirming that it was in fact an early navigational tool. Astrolabes were instruments used by mariners beginning in the late 15th century to determine latitude, which they did by pointing the disk at the Sun and reading the markings on its sides.

The Sodré astrolabe is believed to have been made between 1496 and 1501 and is unique in comparison to all other mariner's astrolabes.

The astrolabe comes from a set of excavations of the Sodré shipwreck off of Al Hallaniyah, an island off of the Omani coast. The ships were part of a subfleet of the Portuguese armada on a trip to India led by Vasco da Gama in 1502-1503, commanded by da Gama’s uncles Vicente and Brás Sodré. They’d anchored by Al Hallaniyah to find shelter from the seasonal monsoon winds—but a particularly strong wind sunk the ship, killing many of its sailors and Vicente Sodré.



----------------------------------

Archeologists believe Norway Find is Rare Viking Ship Burial
https://phys.org/news/2019-03-archeologists-norway-rare-viking-ship.html

Archeologists believe they have found a rare Viking ship burial site in a region of Norway known for its Viking-era treasures, Norwegian officials said Monday.

Using ground-penetrating radar (GPR), experts found a ship-shaped anomaly near other Viking burial mounds in the Borre Park in Vestfold county, southeast of Oslo.

"The GPR data clearly show the shape of a ship, and we can see weak traces of a circular depression around the vessel. This could point to the existence of a mound that was later removed," Terje Gansum, leader of the department for cultural heritage management in Vestfold county, said in a statement.

There are only seven ship burials dating from the Viking Age (800-1050) in Europe, including three located in Vestfold county.

Another Viking ship burial was believed to have been found in Jellestad in southeastern Norway last year.

[vox_mundi]

Stunning Fossils Discovery Details the Day Dinosaurs Were Wiped Out 
https://phys.org/news/2019-03-million-year-old-deathbed-linked-dinosaur-killing-meteor.html



Buried for 66 million years, a prehistoric graveyard is revealing what happened in the minutes after a giant asteroid slammed into the Earth and wiped out the dinosaurs, a new study says.

The site, part of the Hell Creek Formation in what is now North Dakota, used to lie along an inland sea that divided North America into two land masses.

“Essentially, what we've got there is the geologic equivalent of high-speed film of the very first moments after the impact,” paleontologist Robert DePalma, the study's lead author, told National Geographic.

Perfectly preserved fossils of fish, animals and plants at the site, which is nicknamed Tanis, offer a detailed recording of what happened immediately after the killer asteroid struck off Mexico's Yucatan Peninsula, according to the study to be published Monday in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

Some of the fossilized fish at the site inhaled tiny glass beads (tekites) formed by the impact.

... “This is the first mass death assemblage of large organisms anyone has found associated with the K-T boundary,” DePalma said. “At no other K-T boundary section on Earth can you find such a collection consisting of a large number of species representing different ages of organisms and different stages of life, all of which died at the same time, on the same day.” 

... We are looking at the moment-by-moment records of one of the most notable impact events in Earth’s history. No other site has a record quite like that. And this particular event is tied directly to all of us — to every mammal on Earth, in fact. Because this is essentially where we inherited the planet. Nothing was the same after that impact. It became a planet of mammals rather than a planet of dinosaurs."

"Prelude to Extinction: a seismically induced onshore surge deposit at the KPg boundary, North Dakota," by Robert DePalma et al. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (2019

[Tor Bejnar]

For another take on the recent K-T (now K-Pg) Boundary news:  A bad day at the end of the Cretaceous by Steve Drury, concerning both DePalma, R.A. and 11 others 2019, A seismically induced onshore surge deposit at the KPg boundary, North Dakota, Proceedings of the National Academy of Science; and Preston, D. 2019, The day the dinosaurs died, The New Yorker.

Some snippets:

…
 its contents are the stuff of dreams for any aspiring graduate student of palaeontology; the Indiana Jones opportunity.
…
The paper itself contains little of the information that dominated Preston’s New Yorker article and the global media coverage.
...
If verified in later peer-reviewed publications, DePalma et al’s work would help resolve the gradual vs sudden hypotheses for the end-Cretaceous mass extinction.
…

[vox_mundi]

New Species of Ancient Human Discovered in Philippines Cave 
https://www.theguardian.com/science/2019/apr/10/new-species-of-ancient-human-homo-luzonensis-discovered-in-philippines-cave

A new species of ancient human, thought to have been under 4ft tall and adapted to climbing trees, has been discovered in the Philippines, providing a twist in the story of human evolution.

The specimen, named Homo luzonensis, was excavated from Callao cave on Luzon island in the northern Philippines and has been dated to 50,000-67,000 years ago – when our own ancestors and the Neanderthals were spreading across Europe and into Asia.

... “We now know that it was a much more complex evolutionary history, with several distinct species contemporaneous with Homo sapiens, interbreeding events, extinctions,” said Détroit. “Homo luzonensis is one of those species and we will [increasingly see] that a few thousand years back in time, Homo sapiens was definitely not alone on Earth.”

... Most intriguing was the presence of a curved toe bone, which closely resembled the anatomy of far more ancient species such as Australopithecus, known only in Africa and dating to 2m-3m years ago. ... Normally this anatomy would indicate a mixed lifestyle with an ability to walk on two legs and climb trees.

Another mystery is how they arrived at Luzon, a large island that has never been connected to the mainland by a land bridge. One possibility is that the early humans set out to sea intentionally on some form of raft; another is that they were washed there in relatively large numbers due to a natural event such as a tsunami. 

[Tom_Mazanec]

A lot of species we can see today will be "paleontology" in a hundred years.
When does species loss become a social crisis:
https://www.straight.com/news/1228996/david-suzuki-when-does-plant-and-animal-species-loss-become-societal-crisis

[vox_mundi]

Researchers Suggest Ancient Supernovae Prompted Human Ancestors To Walk Upright
https://phys.org/news/2019-05-ancient-supernovae-prompted-human-ancestors.html

A paper published today in the Journal of Geology makes the case: Supernovae bombarded Earth with cosmic energy starting as many as 8 million years ago, with a peak some 2.6 million years ago, initiating an avalanche of electrons in the lower atmosphere and setting off a chain of events that feasibly ended with bipedal hominins such as homo habilis, dubbed "handy man."

The authors believe atmospheric ionization probably triggered an enormous upsurge in cloud-to-ground lightning strikes that ignited forest fires around the globe. These infernos could be one reason ancestors of homo sapiens developed bipedalism—to adapt in savannas that replaced torched forests in northeast Africa.

... Based on a "telltale" layer of iron-60 deposits lining the world's sea beds, astronomers have high confidence supernovae exploded in Earth's immediate cosmic neighborhood—between 100 and only 50 parsecs (163 light years) away—during the transition from the Pliocene Epoch to the Ice Age.

"We calculated the ionization of the atmosphere from cosmic rays which would come from a supernova about as far away as the iron-60 deposits indicate," Melott said. "It appears that this was the closest one in a much longer series. We contend it would increase the ionization of the lower atmosphere by 50-fold. Usually, you don't get lower-atmosphere ionization because cosmic rays don't penetrate that far, but the more energetic ones from supernovae come right down to the surface—so there would be a lot of electrons being knocked out of the atmosphere."

The KU researcher said the probability that this lightning spike touched off a worldwide upsurge in wildfires is supported by the discovery of carbon deposits found in soils that correspond with the timing of the cosmic-ray bombardment.

"The observation is that there's a lot more charcoal and soot in the world starting a few million years ago," Melott said. "It's all over the place, and nobody has any explanation for why it would have happened all over the world in different climate zones. This could be an explanation. That increase in fires is thought to have stimulated the transition from woodland to savanna in a lot of places—where you had forests, now you had mostly open grassland with shrubby things here and there. That's thought to be related to human evolution in northeast Africa. Specifically, in the Great Rift Valley where you get all these hominin fossils."

Melott said no such event is likely to occur again anytime soon. The nearest star capable of exploding into a supernova in the next million years is Betelgeuse, some 200 parsecs (652 light years) from Earth.



https://www.journals.uchicago.edu/doi/10.1086/703418

[mitch]

I tried to check out the paper, and found that all the data was in another that I couldn't access.  There is a problem when astrophysicists try to do geology--they don't seem to understand that the recording system is imperfect.  So the speculation without a tie to the actual sediment cores that they worked on is very untrustworthy.  Furthermore, they string together Fe-60 data from unknown sources to a dubious calculation of change in lightning frequency to disappearance of forests in Africa via lightning-caused fire. 

The likelihood that they are right is probably less than 10%.

[kassy]

Climate change had significant impact on Amazon communities before arrival of Europeans

…

New analysis of what the climate was like in the Amazon from 700 to 1300 shows the changing weather led to the end of communities who farmed intensively, and had a strong class structure. Those who lived without political hierarchy, who grew a greater variety of crops, and took more care to look after the land so it remained fertile, were able to adapt and were less affected.

and much more:
https://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2019-06/uoe-cch061719.php

[johnm33]

Anyone else think this was a cemetary? https://phys.org/news/2019-06-atalhyk-years-modern-urban-problems.html

[kassy]

Nice article...I remember a drawn picture of this city with it's roof top access in a kids science book.

Most people were buried in pits that had been dug into the floors of houses, and researchers believe they were interred under the homes in which they lived. That led to an unexpected finding: Most members of a household were not biologically related.
Researchers discovered this when they found that the teeth of individuals buried under the same house weren't as similar as would be expected if they were kin.

I think this is the relevant quote for johns question.

Another quote:
Excavations showed that interior walls and floors were re-plastered many times with clay. And while the residents kept their floors mostly debris-free, analysis of house walls and floors showed traces of animal and human fecal matter.

Clear signs of living there so it is not just a cemetary.

The remains were in the same location but they are only direct family if they died at the same time. The article does not mention the quality of this time data or if they have any and the research article is paywalled.

Also we don't know who actually owned the house or if they moved often.
We don't know how this society handled death....if the mother died in childbirth the baby might go to another woman who also has a baby. And maybe stay there especially if her own dies. This sounds weird to us but maybe the father would come and visit his sibling daily and give the family raising her some food. Just an old school way of coping with infant and maternal deaths.

That could account for more mixing but it is near impossible to tease out so ideally we get the time line of the remains and some genetics (if there is teeth there is some hope for DNA).

[Tom_Mazanec]

AGW threatens archeological sites:
https://grist.org/article/climate-change-could-ruin-archeological-sites-before-we-get-the-chance-to-study-them/

[kassy]

Ancient Northland kauri tree reveals secrets of Earth's polar reversal

The 20 metre-long kauri log could map out what to expect during a geomagnetic reversal – a change in the planet's magnetic field – including its impact on climate change and solar radiation.

The kauri, measuring a massive 2.5m in diameter, is one of the oldest trees ever found.

...

The tree was buried in about 8m of soil and was preserved like swamp kauri, despite not actually being in a swamp.

Now, carbon dating has confirmed the ancient kauri was alive 41,000 to 42,500 years ago, making it one of the oldest trees ever found.

"This Ngāwhā kauri is unique in the world," University of Waikato associate professor Alan Hogg, the director of the Waikato Radiocarbon Dating laboratory, said.

During its 1500-year lifespan, the tree experienced one of the earth's geomagnetic excursions, meaning the north magnetic pole drifted down to the southern hemisphere and back up again.

https://www.stuff.co.nz/science/113954687/ancient-northland-kauri-tree-reveals-secrets-of-earths-polar-reversal

That´s an interesting find. It will be interesting to see what it shows when all the work on it is done.

[TerryM]

Nice find Kassy!
Wonder what will be learned.
Terry

[kassy]

Earliest modern human found outside Africa

...

A skull unearthed in Greece has been dated to 210,000 years ago, at a time when Europe was occupied by the Neanderthals.

The sensational discovery adds to evidence of an earlier migration of people from Africa that left no trace in the DNA of people alive today.

The findings are published in the journal Nature.

Researchers uncovered two significant fossils in Apidima Cave in Greece in the 1970s.

One was very distorted and the other incomplete, however, and it took computed tomography scanning and uranium-series dating to unravel their secrets.

The more complete skull appears to be a Neanderthal. But the other shows clear characteristics, such as a rounded back to the skull, diagnostic of modern humans.

Modern humans left Africa much earlier

What's more, the Neanderthal skull was younger.

"Now our scenario was that there was an early modern group in Greece by 210,000 years ago, perhaps related to comparable populations in the Levant, but it was subsequently replaced by a Neanderthal population (represented by Apidima 2) by about 170,000 years ago," said co-author Prof Chris Stringer, from London's Natural History Museum.

For details:
https://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-48913307

[Gumbercules]

Does anyone here follow Graham Hancock and Randall Carlson? They are a bit out there. Their thing is talking about how an advanced, at least compared to what we now understand, civilization existed in pre-history. And it was wiped out in part by an asteroid/comet strike in North America on the ice sheet during one of the ice ages, contributing to the mega floods in the west, and which also killed off all of the large animals here (mammoths, saber-toothed cat, giraffes, etc.). There have recently been found some large craters under the Greenland ice sheet that could be as young as when this extinction event happened, around 12,000 years ago.

It's also related ideas like the Sphynx being significantly older than it supposedly is (it's a lion, thus it faced the sunrise or set when the sun was in the constellation Leo, which due to precession of the equinoxes would have been thousands of years earlier than it is supposed to have been built.

[oren]

As a curious young teenager I read Von Däniken's Chariots of the Gods. It all made perfect sense, until I learned to think more scientifically and realized it was a steaming pile of BS.
I don't think pseudo-science has any value on this forum.

[b_lumenkraft]

steaming pile of BS.

That's an understatement!

[Tom_Mazanec]

Gumbercules, I'll look up those two...I enjoy a little pseudoscience once in awhile.

[Pragma]

As a curious young teenager I read Von Däniken's Chariots of the Gods. It all made perfect sense, until I learned to think more scientifically and realized it was a steaming pile of BS.
I don't think pseudo-science has any value on this forum.

Oren:

I am embarrassed to say I did the same thing.
Critical thinking is both an art and a science that needs to be learned, and practiced daily. Our monkey brains need to be on a short leash.

That said, I will at least consider just about anything, but I will not entertain any discussion about a flat earth or perpetual motion. Curiously, both are on the rise. This tells me we are truly eff'ed

Gumbercules, I'll look up those two...I enjoy a little pseudoscience once in awhile.

Well, if you're looking for crackpottery, for free no less, try:

Our Mysterious Spaceship Moon
by Don Wilson.

Spoiler alert: 'cuz aliens