Tuesday, January 30, 2007

Ancient Jewish-Christian settlement found

The remains of an ancient Jewish and Christian settlement, which later became Muslim, dating back to the Early Islamic period and the Crusader Period have been uncovered between Jerusalem and Tel Aviv, the Israel Antiquities Authority announced Sunday.

The large six-dunam settlement, which was found in Mishmar David, located between Rehovot and Latrun, was discovered during an archeological salvage excavation in the area ahead of planned construction work at the site.

The archeologists digging at the site discovered the remnants of residential buildings, villas, public buildings, streets and alleys, as well as an industrial zone, which housed agricultural installations.

Two Jewish ritual baths with water pipes leading from the house, in accordance with Jewish law, were also found at the site.

The highlight of the excavation is a round structure, about 10 meters in diameter, built of well-dressed ashlar stones.

The floor of the structure - which is preserved to a height of three meters - is paved with a polychrome mosaic decorated with geometric patterns and a palm tree motif.

The unique building has never been uncovered in any other previous archeological excavation in the country.

Israeli archeologists date the building to the Byzantine-Islamic period but are unsure of its purpose.

The director of the excavations, Dr. Eli Yannai, noted that buildings such as the one that was uncovered were usually meant to commemorate an important historic event that was of significance to the population that resided there.

"It can be a building that was erected in memory of a person who was martyred because of his religious beliefs, a miracle that occurred at the site or a visit by a saint," Yannai said.

The importance of the excavation and their contribution to the study of the past lie in the intensity of the remains, the size of the settlement, and the evidence that the population that lived there was a Christian population prior to it having converted to Islam.

The findings that support this theory are unequivocal Christian symbols such as crosses that were revealed on clay lamps, and inscriptions in ancient Greek that mention "the mother of God," a Christian saying that was characteristic of the Byzantine period.

At the same time, the bronze coins that were recovered at the site bear the names of caliphs from the Early Islamic period and some of them include the Arabic inscription: "There is no God but Allah and Muhammad is his servant."

Saturday, January 27, 2007

Yorkshire Clan Linked to Africa

People of African origin have lived in Britain for centuries, according to genetic evidence.

A Leicester University study found that seven men with a rare Yorkshire surname carry a genetic signature previously found only in people of African origin.

The men seem to have shared a common ancestor in the 18th Century, but the African DNA lineage they carry may have reached Britain centuries earlier.

Details of the study appear in the European Journal of Human Genetics.

The scientists declined to disclose the men's surname in order to protect their anonymity.

The discovery came out of genetic work looking at the relationship between the male, or Y, chromosome and surnames.

The Y chromosome is a package of genetic material normally found only in males.

It is passed down from father to son, more or less unchanged, just like a surname.

Rare lineage

But over time, the Y chromosome accumulates small changes in its DNA sequence, allowing scientists to study the relationships between different male lineages.

Y chromosomes can be classified into different groups (called haplogroups) which, to some extent, reflect a person's geographical ancestry.

Certain haplogroups might be very common in, for example, East Asia and very rare in Europe.

By chance, the researchers discovered a white man with a rare Yorkshire surname carrying a Y chromosome haplogroup that had previously been found only in West African men. And even there, it is relatively uncommon.

"We found that he was in haplogroup A1, which is highly West African-specific," said Turi King, a co-author on the study at the University of Leicester.

"It is incredibly rare, there are only 25 other people known worldwide and they are all African."

Family tree

The individual had no knowledge of any African heritage in his family.

Sharing a surname also significantly raised the likelihood of sharing the same type of Y chromosome, with the link getting stronger as the surname gets rarerSo the researchers started recruiting people with the same last name, which starts with "R" and originates in Yorkshire.

Of 18 people they tested, seven carried the rare African haplogroup.

Turi King and Leicester colleague Mark Jobling then commissioned a genealogist to fit the men into a family tree to see how they were related and find clues about where exactly their unusual Y haplogroup came from.

"He could only get them into two trees, one which dates back to 1788 and the other to 1789. He couldn't go back any further. So it's likely they join up in the early 18th Century," said Turi King.

The majority of the one million people who define themselves as "black" or "black British" trace their origins to immigration from the Caribbean or Africa from the middle of the 20th Century onwards.

Prior to the 20th Century, there have been various routes by which people of African ancestry might have reached Britain. For example, the Romans recruited from Africa and elsewhere for the garrison that guarded Hadrian's Wall.

Different routes

Another major route was through the slave trade.

"Some of the Africans who arrived in Britain through the slave trade rose quite high up in society, and we know they married with the rest of the population," said Ms King.

"It could be either of these two routes," she said. Even if the two family trees link up in the 18th Century, haplogroup A1 could have reached Britain long before that.

"But my guess is that, because many slaves came from West Africa, it could have been through that route," Ms King told BBC News.

She added that the study showed that Britain has always been composed of a mosaic of different people.

Professor Jobling echoed this view: "This study shows that what it means to be British is complicated and always has been," he said.

"Human migration history is clearly very complex, particularly for an island nation such as ours, and this study further debunks the idea that there are simple and distinct populations or 'races'."

Turi King said she had since found another African Y chromosome haplogroup in a different British lineage.

There are other precedents for the finding. When scientists analysed the DNA of the third US president, Thomas Jefferson, they found that his Y chromosome belonged to a haplogroup known as K2.

Jefferson's father claimed Welsh ancestry. But his Y-haplogroup is rare in Europe and has not yet been reported in Britain.

In fact, genetic studies show that Thomas Jefferson's K2 haplogroup ultimately came from north-east Africa or the Middle East, the areas where it is most commonly found today.

Friday, January 19, 2007

Archaeologists Put Egyptian Excavation on the Web

Egyptologist Betsy Bryan and her crew are once again sharing their work with the world through an online diary, a digital window into day-to-day life on an archaeological dig. Starting about Friday, Jan. 19, and running through late February, visitors to “Hopkins in Egypt Today” at http://www.jhu.edu/neareast/egypttoday.html will find photos of Bryan and her colleagues working on The Johns Hopkins University’s 12th annual expedition in Luxor. Bryan will continue to explore the Egyptian New Kingdom (1567 to 1085 B.C.E.), known as the "golden age" of Egyptian temple building.

According to Bryan, modern-day Luxor is rich in finds from the New Kingdom, like last year's major discovery: a 3,400-year-old nearly intact statue of Queen Tiy, one of the queens of the powerful king Amenhotep III. In an audio slide show -- accessible using Windows Media Player at http://www.jhu.edu/news_info/realmedia/egypt_2007.wmv -- Bryan recalls the discovery of the statue, which she calls "one of the true masterpieces of Egyptian art."

This is the seventh year Bryan -- the Alexander Badawy Professor in Egyptian Art and Archaeology -- and her team will be excavating the area behind the sacred lake at the temple of goddess Mut. In previous years, their finds have included industrial and food processing installations like granaries and bakeries. The goal of the “Hopkins in Egypt Today” Web site is to educate visitors by showing them the elements of archaeological work in progress. Photographer Jay VanRensselaer will capture images of the team as they carefully sift through trenches, uncovering mud brick walls, pottery sherds, animal bones and other remains. The daily photos and detailed captions emphasize not only discoveries, but the teamwork among Bryan, her colleagues, students and their “gufti,” the local crew members who are trained in archaeology. That teamwork is essential to a successful dig, Bryan said.

The Web site typically garners more than 50,000 hits every winter when the dig is active. The site will return in June when Bryan will be working with a larger team, including students from Johns Hopkins and several stone conservators.

Related Web sites:
Hopkins in Egypt Today: http://www.jhu.edu/neareast/egypttoday.html
Betsy Bryan slide show: http://www.jhu.edu/news_info/realmedia/egypt_2007.wmv
Department of Near Eastern Studies: http://www.jhu.edu/neareast/

Tuesday, January 16, 2007

New details of first major urban battle emerge

Obsidian manufacture may have led to urban civilization

New details in the tragic end of one of the world's earliest cities as well as clues about how urban life may have begun there were revealed in a recent excavation in northeastern Syria that was conducted by the University of Chicago and the Syrian Department of Antiquities.

"The attack must have been swift and intense. Buildings collapsed, burning out of control, burying everything in them under vast pile of rubble," said Clemens Reichel, the American co-director of the Syrian-American Archaeological Expedition to Hamoukar. Reichel, a Research Associate at the University's Oriental Institute, added that the assault probably left the residents destitute as they buried their dead in the ruins of the city.

Reichel made that assessment of the battle that destroyed Hamoukar about 3500 B.C. after an excavation was conducted in September and October at the site near the Iraqi border. The team uncovered further evidence of the accomplishments of the inhabitants among the remains of the walled city dating to the fourth millennium B.C.

In addition to the wall, the team has uncovered quasi-industrial installations and two large administrative buildings that had been destroyed by an intense fire. It was at the site that, mixed in with the debris from the collapsed wall, that over 1,000 egg-shaped sling bullets were found in 2005, leading the excavators to conclude that an early act of warfare had caused the end of the settlement.

Work in this past season may explain how powerful the early weapons were. "We literally have them at all stages of use, from manufacture to impact," Reichel said, pointing out that the team found a sling bullet that had pierced the plaster of a mud brick wall. The team also found 12 graves in the debris, very likely of people killed in the battle.

The team discovered several rooms with walls up to six feet high in which more than 1,100 sling bullets were found mixed in with collapsed walls and roofs. They also found a shallow pit into which a water jar had been buried to its rim in the floor of one of the rooms. This pit, ordinarily used to soak discarded clay sealings to recycle them into fresh sealing clay, was used to make sling bullets during the city's final hours. This was indicated by two dozen sling bullets than were lined up neatly along its edge.

"It looks as if they were--quite literally--throwing everything they could find against the aggressors," Reichel said.

Hamoukar was on a key trade route that led from Anatolia (modern-day Turkey) across Northern Syria and the river Tigris into Southern Mesopotamia. Some evidence of this long-lasting trade was found in an area to the south of Hamoukar's main site-- a large mound. The team found obsidian fragments in an area of over 700 acres (280 hectares), which they dated to 4,500 – 4,000 B.C. using pottery fragments found with the obsidian. In addition to tools and blades, the team found large amounts of production debris such as cores, a discovery that is even more significant than finding actual tools.

"Finding cores and other production debris tells us that they are not just using these tools here, they are making them here," Salam al-Kuntar, the Syrian co-director of the expedition, explained. Obsidian does not occur around Hamoukar but had to be brought in from Turkey with the nearest sources being over 70 miles away.

The discovery of an obsidian processing center is significant, Reichel added, for it could explain the emergence of a city in this location at such an early time. A large-scale export of tools to Southern Mesopotamia would have resulted in significant revenue and accumulation of wealth. "This could have been the incentive that pulled people off their fields. People specialized instead of ploughing their own fields they bought their food supplies from surrounding villages. And once people accumulated a fortune they want a walled enclosure to protect it--your first city." Unlike in southern Mesopotamia, therefore, the prime mover towards urbanism appears to have been economic incentive, not coercion.

The obsidian workshops were located off the main mound and predate the destroyed city by several hundred years, but numerous older levels have already been noted below the destroyed buildings in small test trenches. "We have no clear idea how far the first city at Hamoukar goes back in time," Reichel said. "It could be much earlier than 3,500 B.C."

By the time the city was destroyed, he added, copper had started to replace obsidian as key raw material for tools. The discovery of numerous copper tools in the ruins of Hamoukar might indicate that Hamoukar had followed developed from an obsidian into a copper processing center, possibly also exporting copper tools to the south.

The discovery could lead the way to providing an additional explanation for how civilization developed in the Fertile Crescent. In the south, urban society emerged in the Uruk culture in response to the needs of providing organization to an economy supported by an irrigation-based agriculture.

The latest findings from Hamoukar suggest that the specialized mass-production of goods for trade could have been a similar driving force in the North.

Monday, January 15, 2007

40,000-year-old skull shows both modern human and Neandertal traits

The earliest modern humans in Europe were not completely "modern" and continued to evolve after they settled on the continent nearly 40,000 years ago, according to new research published this week in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS).

An international team of researchers, including Hélene Rougier, Ph.D., post-doctoral fellow, and Erik Trinkaus, Ph.D., professor of anthropology, at Washington University in St. Louis, has been studying a 35,000-year-old cranium discovered in the Pestera cu Oase, in western Romania. The fossil specimen is the earliest largely complete example of an early modern human skull known from Europe.

The modern humans emerged within eastern Africa some 150,000 years ago, spread temporarily into extreme southwest Asia and into southern Africa, and then through northern Africa into Europe around 40,000 years ago. This skull is from the first 5,000 years of the apparent occupation of Europe by modern humans.

The cranium has no expressly Neandertal traits, those of its immediate predecessors in Europe. Yet, its combination of modern and archaic features can be used to reinforce arguments for some degree of mixture of Neandertals and modern humans, inferences that have been made from other early modern European fossils. In addition to its large face and retreating forehead, it has the largest cheek teeth so far known for an otherwise anatomically modern human.

But Rougier and Trinkaus have emphasized that the Oase 2 cranium is particularly important in showing that the earliest modern humans in Europe were not completely "modern." "I think that what this find really shows is the ongoing nature of human evolution," said Trinkaus. "Technically, this skull is a modern human, but humans as we know them today have evolved considerably since then."

Professor Joao Zilhao of the University of Bristol, Professor Erik Trinkaus of Washington University and colleagues in Europe compared the features of an early modern human cranium found in the Peºtera cu Oase (the Cave with Bones) in southwestern Romania with other human samples from the period (the Late Pleistocene). Differences between the skulls suggest complex population dynamics as modern humans dispersed into Europe.

The different fragments of the reconstructed cranium – named Oase 2 – were found in a Late Pleistocene bone bed principally containing the remains of cave bears. They were recovered during a systematic excavation project directed by Professor Trinkaus and Professor Zilhao between 2003 and 2005.

Radiocarbon dating of the specimen produced only a minimum age (more than 35,000 years), but similarity in morphological traits with the Oase 1 human mandible – found in 2002 on the surface of the cave, adjacent to the excavation area, and dated to about 40,500 years ago – lead the team to conclude that the two fossils were the same age. These are the earliest modern human remains so far found in Europe and represent our best evidence of what the modern humans who first dispersed into Europe looked like.

By comparing it with other skulls, Professor Zilhao and colleagues found that Oase 2 had the same proportions as modern human crania and shared a number of modern human and/or non-Neandertal features.

However, there were some important differences: apparently independent features that are, at best, unusual for a modern human. These included frontal flattening, a fairly large juxtamastoid eminence and exceptionally large upper molars with unusual size progression which are found principally among the Neandertals.

Professor Zilhao said: "Such differences raise important questions about the evolutionary history of modern humans. They could be the result of evolutionary reversal or reflect incomplete palaeontological sampling of Middle Paleolithic human diversity.

"They could also reflect admixture with Neandertal populations as modern humans spread through western Eurasia. This mixture would have resulted in both archaic traits retained from the Neandertals and unique combinations of traits resulting from the blending of previously divergent gene pools.

"The ultimate resolution of these issues must await considerations of larger samples of European early modern humans and chronologically intervening specimens. But this fossil is a major addition to the growing body of fossil, genetic and archaeological evidence indicating significant levels of biological and cultural interaction between modern humans and the anatomically archaic populations (including the Neandertals) they met along the way as they spread from Africa into Eurasia."

It is apparent that the Oase 2 cranium indicates there was significant modern human morphological evolution since the early Upper Paleolithic, the researchers conclude. Oase 2 is 'modern' in its abundance of derived modern human features, but it remains 'nonmodern' in its complex constellation of archaic and modern features.

Friday, January 12, 2007

Skull supports the "Out of Africa" Theory

Reliably dated fossils are critical to understanding the course of human evolution. A human skull discovered over fifty years ago near the town of Hofmeyr, in the Eastern Cape Province of South Africa, is one such fossil. A study by an international team of scientists led by Frederick Grine of the Departments of Anthropology and Anatomical Sciences at Stony Brook University in New York published today in Science magazine has dated the skull to 36,000 years ago. This skull provides critical corroboration of genetic evidence indicating that modern humans originated in sub-Saharan Africa and migrated about this time to colonize the Old World.

"The Hofmeyr skull gives us the first insights into the morphology of such a sub-Saharan African population, which means the most recent common ancestor of all of us - wherever we come from," said Grine.

Although the skull was found over half a century ago, its significance became apparent only recently. A new approach to dating developed by Grine team member Richard Bailey and his colleagues at Oxford University allowed them to determined its age at just over 36,000 years ago by measuring the amount of radiation that had been absorbed by sand grains that filled the inside of the skull’s braincase. At this age, the skull fills a significant void in the human fossil record of sub-Saharan Africa from the period between about 70,000 and 15,000 years ago. During this critical period, the archaeological tradition known as the Later Stone Age, with its sophisticated stone and bone tools and artwork appears in sub-Saharan Africa, and anatomically modern people appear for the first time in Europe and western Asia with the equally complex Upper Paleolithic archeological tradition.

In order to establish the affinities of the Hofmeyr fossil, team member Katerina Harvati of the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology in Leipzig, Germany, used 3-dimensional measurements of the skull known to differentiate recent human populations according to their geographic distributions and genetic relationships. She compared the Hofmeyr skull with contemporaneous Upper Paleolithic skulls from Europe and with the skulls of living humans from Eurasia and sub-Saharan Africa, including the Khoe-San (Bushmen). Because the Khoe-San are represented in the recent archeological record of South Africa, they were expected to have close resemblances to the South African fossil. Instead, the Hofmeyr skull is quite distinct from recent sub-Saharan Africans, including the Khoe-San, and has a very close affinity with the European Upper Paleolithic specimens.

The field of paleoanthropology is known for its hotly contested debates, and one that has raged for years concerns the evolutionary origin of modern people. A number of genetic studies (especially those on the mitochondrial DNA) of living people indicate that modern humans evolved in sub-Saharan Africa and then left between 65,000 and 25,000 years ago to colonize the Old World. However, other genetic studies (generally on nuclear DNA) argue against this African origin and exodus model. Instead, they suggest that archaic non-African groups, such as the Neandertals, made significant contributions to the genomes of modern humans in Eurasia. Until now, the lack of human fossils of appropriate antiquity from sub-Saharan Africa has meant that these competing genetic models of human evolution could not be tested by paleontological evidence.

The skull from Hofmeyr has changed that. The surprising similarity between a fossil skull from the southernmost tip of Africa and similarly ancient skulls from Europe is in agreement with the genetics-based "Out of Africa" theory, which predicts that humans like those that inhabited Eurasia in the Upper Paleolithic should be found in sub-Saharan Africa around 36,000 years ago. The skull from South Africa provides the first fossil evidence in support of this prediction.

Thursday, January 11, 2007

Earliest evidence of modern humans in Europe

Modern humans who first arose in Africa had moved into Europe as far back as about 45,000 years ago, according to a new study by an international research team led by the Russian Academy of Sciences and the University of Colorado at Boulder.

The evidence consists of stone, bone and ivory tools discovered under a layer of ancient volcanic ash on the Don River in Russia some 250 miles south of Moscow, said John Hoffecker, a fellow of CU-Boulder's Institute of Arctic and Alpine Research. Thought to contain the earliest evidence of modern humans in Europe, the site also has yielded perforated shell ornaments and a carved piece of mammoth ivory that appears to be the head of a small human figurine, which may represent the earliest piece of figurative art in the world, he said.

"The big surprise here is the very early presence of modern humans in one of the coldest, driest places in Europe," Hoffecker said. "It is one of the last places we would have expected people from Africa to occupy first."

A paper by Michael Anikovich and Andrei Sinitsyn of the Russian Academy of Sciences, Hoffecker, and 13 other researchers was published in the Jan. 12 issue of Science.

The excavation took place at Kostenki, a group of more than 20 sites along the Don River that have been under study for many decades. Kostenki previously has yielded anatomically modern human bones and artifacts dating between 30,000 and 40,000 years old, including the oldest firmly dated bone and ivory needles with eyelets that indicate the early inhabitants were tailoring animal furs to help them survive the harsh climate.

Most of the stone used for artifact construction was imported from between 60 miles and 100 miles away, while the perforated shell ornaments discovered at the lowest levels of the Kostenki dig were imported from the Black Sea more than 300 miles away, he said. "Although human skeletal remains in the earliest level of the excavation are confined to isolated teeth, which are notoriously difficult to assign to specific human types, the artifacts are unmistakably the work of modern humans," Hoffecker said.The sediment overlying the artifacts was dated by several methods, including an analysis of an ash layer deposited by a monumental volcanic eruption in present-day Italy about 40,000 years ago, Hoffecker said. The researchers also used optically stimulated luminescence dating -- which helps them determine how long ago materials were last exposed to daylight -- as well as paleomagnetic dating based on known changes in the orientation and intensity of Earth's magnetic field and radiocarbon calibration.

Anatomically modern humans are thought to have arisen in sub-Saharan Africa around 200,000 years ago.

Kostenki also contains evidence that modern humans were rapidly broadening their diet to include small mammals and freshwater aquatic foods, an indication they were "remaking themselves technologically," he said. They may have used traps and snares to catch hares and arctic foxes, exploiting large areas of the environment with relatively little energy. "They probably set out their nets and traps and went home for lunch," he said.

While there is some evidence Neanderthals once occupied the plains of Eastern Europe, they seem to have been scarce or absent there during the last glacial period when modern humans arrived, he said. The lack of competitors like the Neanderthals might have been the chief attraction to the area and the reason why modern humans first entered this part of Europe, Hoffecker said.

"Unlike the Neanderthals, modern humans had the ability to devise new technologies for coping with cold climates and less than abundant food resources," he said. "The Neanderthals, who had occupied Europe for more than 200,000 years, seem to have left the back door open for modern humans. "

The ivory artifact believed to be the head of a small figurine, discovered during the 2001 field season, was broken and perhaps never was finished by the person who began crafting it more than 40,000 years ago, said Hoffecker. "This is a really interesting piece," he said. "If confirmed, it will be the oldest example of figurative art ever discovered."

Buried under 10 feet to 15 feet of silt, the artifacts at Kostenki include blades, scrapers, drills and awls, as well as sturdy antler digging tools known as mattocks that resemble crude pick-axes, he said. Mattocks have been found at other Old World sites and the arctic and were used to dig large pits for the storage of foods and fuel, although traces of such pits have yet to turn up at the lowest levels of Kostenki, he said.

Large animal remains at Kostenki include mammoth, woolly rhinoceros, bison, horses, moose and reindeer. A bone chemistry analysis from 30,000-year-old human remains indicates a high consumption of freshwater aquatic foods -- either water birds, fish, or both -- more evidence for efficient food gathering techniques, he said.

Except for some early sites in the Near East, the oldest evidence modern humans outside of Africa comes from the Australian continent roughly 50,000 years ago, said Hoffecker, who was awarded an honorary doctorate from the Russian Academy of Sciences in 2006. Several modern human sites in south-central Europe may be almost as old as Kostenki, he said.