Hillfort revealed to be the largest Pictish site ever discovered in Scotland
The fort, overlooking the small village of Rhynie, is believed to be one of the largest ancient settlements ever discovered in Scotland.
Researchers think that as many as 4,000 people may have lived in more than 800 huts on the Tap O’Noth in the fifth to sixth centuries.
However, the settlement may date back as far as the third century, which would make it Pictish in origin.
Researchers excavating around a construction at the Tap o’ Noth site.
The Aberdeenshire settlement may, in fact, date back as far as the third century, meaning it is likely to be Pictish in origin.
The Picts were a collection of Celtic-speaking communities who lived in the east and north of Scotland during the Late British Iron Age and Early Medieval periods.
The “Craw Stane”, a Pictish symbol stone depicting a salmon and an unknown animal, with Tap o’ Noth in background.
It was previously thought that settlements of that size did not appear until about the 12th century.
At its height, it may have rivalled the largest known post-Roman settlements in Europe.
Archaeologists from the University of Aberdeen used radiocarbon dating to establish timeframes.
Judging by the distribution of the buildings, they are likely to have been built and occupied at a similar time.
Many are positioned alongside trackways or clustered together in groups, the University of Aberdeen said.
Drone surveys showed one hut that was notably larger, suggesting a hierarchy.
The site is near Rhynie in Aberdeenshire
Professor Gordon Noble, who led the research, said the discovery was “truly mind-blowing”, adding that it “shakes the narrative of this whole time period”.
He continued: “The size of the upper and lower forts together are around 16.75 hectares and one phase at least dates from the fifth to sixth centuries AD.
“This makes it bigger than anything we know from early medieval Britain.
“The previous biggest known fort in early medieval Scotland is Burghead at around five and a half hectares, and in England, famous post-Roman sites such as Cadbury Castle is seven hectares and Tintagel around five hectares.”
He said the site was “verging on urban in scale and in a Pictish context we have nothing else that compares to this”.
The Mystery Of Cahokia Mounds, North America’s First City
Long before Christopher Columbus “discovered” North America, the mounds of Cahokia stood tall and formed the continent’s first city in recorded history.
In fact, during its height in the 12th century, Cahokia Mounds was larger in population than London. It spread across six square miles and boasted a population of 10,000 to 20,000 people — vast figures for the time.
But Cahokia’s peak didn’t last long. And its demise remains mysterious to this day.
An illustrated aerial view of Cahokia.
The region has been occupied for the first time around 1200 BC in the late Archaic period but the first inhabitants in the area are thought to have arrived in the late woodland period around AD 600–700.
It is founded around AD 1050 in what is now western Illinois by archaeological evidence.
Cahokia at its peak was the largest urban center north of Central America’s Mesoamerican civilization with a population of 20,000 inhabitants, although the extent of the population at its highest is still disputed.
Monks Mound, the largest manmade pre-Columbian earthen mound in North America.
The city covered an area between six to nine square miles, notably larger than many contemporary European cities such as London, which during the same period was just 1.12 square miles.
The inhabitants constructed 120 earthen mounds, ranging in size and shape from raised platforms, conical, and ridge-top designs that involved moving 55 million cubic feet of earth over a period several decades.
They constructed ceremonial plazas, situated around the mounds that were interconnected with pathways, courtyards and thousands of dwellings made from wattle and daub, with outlying farming villages that supported the main urban centre.
The largest structure at Cahokia is “Monks Mound” (named after a community of Trappist monks who settled on the mound) which is a 290-metre-tall platform with four terraces that was built around AD 900–955.
An 1882 illustration of Monks Mound
The perimeter of the base of Monks Mound measures similar in size to the Great Pyramid of Giza and is notably larger than the base of the Pyramid of the Sun at Teotihuacan.
Surrounding the main precinct was a defensive wooden palisade measuring 2 miles in length with watchtowers, that was built around the year AD 1200.
Although there is no archaeological evidence of conflict, some theories suggest that the defences were built for ritual or societal separation rather than for military purposes.
Cahokia began to decline by the 13th century and was mysteriously abandoned around AD 1300-1350.
Scholars have suggested that environmental factors such as flooding, or deforestation led to an exhaustion of natural resources.
In 1982, UNESCO (the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organisation) designated the site a World Heritage Site.
This Gecko Has Been Trapped In Amber For 100 Million Years
Researchers at the University of Oregon state and the Natural History Museum in London confirmed that they had found the oldest known gecko fossil with life-like pieces after 100 million years of the amber-buried skeleton.
This ancient chameleon relative is the oldest found to date, beating out the previous title-holder by roughly 80 million years.
The tiny foot of this ancient lizard also displays the tiny “lamellae” or sticky headdress hairs, that to this day give modern geckos their unusual ability to cling to surfaces or run across a ceiling. Research programs around the world have tried to mimic this bizarre adhesive capability, with limited success.
This gecko’s running days are over, however, as only the foot, toes, and part of a tail are left in the stone. The rest might have become lunch for a small dinosaur or another predator during an ancient fight in the tropical forests of Myanmar during the Lower Cretaceous Period, from 97 million to 110 million years ago.
These ancient amber fossils from Burma in Southeast Asia help complete the patchy record of lizard evolution.
The find is at least 40 million years older than the oldest known gecko fossil, shedding additional light on the evolution and history of these ancient lizards that scampered among the feet of giant dinosaurs then and still are common in tropical or sub-tropical regions all over the world.
The findings were just published in Zootaxa, a professional journal.
“It’s the unusual toe pads and clinging ability of some geckos that make them such a fascinating group of animals, so we were very fortunate to find such a well-preserved foot in this fossil specimen,” said George Poinar, Jr., a courtesy professor at OSU and one of the world’s leading experts on insects, plants and other life forms trapped in amber, a semi-precious stone that begins as tree sap.
“There’s a gecko society, gecko clubs, just a lot of interest in these animals because of their unusual characteristics,” Poinar said. “So there are a lot of people pretty excited about this.”
Based on the number of lamellae found on its toe pads, this gecko was probably a very small juvenile of what would have become a comparatively large adult, possibly up to a foot long, the researchers say. Modern geckos get no more than about 16 inches long, although it’s possible there were larger species millions of years ago.
The juvenile gecko found in the fossil was less than an inch in length when it died – possibly by being eaten or attacked since only partial remains were found.
The discovery has been announced as a new genus and species of gecko, now extinct, and has been named Cretaceogekko. It had a striped pattern that probably served as camouflage.
There are more than 1,200 species of geckos in the world today, common in warm or tropical regions, including parts of the southern United States. They are frequently kept as pets, and often are welcome in the homes of some tropical residents because they help control insects. Some are very colorful. They use long tongues to lick, clean, and moisturize their eyes.
“Geckos are territorial, and when I lived in Africa in the early 1980s we used to have them in our house,” Poinar said. “They are pretty friendly and don’t bother humans. Certain individuals would move into the house, we’d give them names, and they would run around the house, catch mosquitoes, help control bugs. They would crawl across the ceiling and look down at you.”
The new study provides evidence that geckos were definitely in Asia by 100 million years ago, and had already evolved their bizarre foot structure at that time. The amber fossil was mined in the Hukawng Valley in Myanmar, and during its life, the gecko probably lived in a moist, tropical forest with ample opportunities for climbing.
3D printing the fossils allow researchers to study them without risking damage to the originals. They can also enlarge the printed fossils to get a look at minute details.
This 3D print of the early gecko trapped in amber gives a much clearer view of the lizard’s remarkable preservation—right down to its teeth.
This micro-CT scan of the oldest known fossil chameleon shows the hyoid bone highlighted in blue, which indicates that the lizard had a projectile tongue like modern chameleons.
The ability of geckos to walk on vertical walls or even upside down is due to the presence of thousands of “setae” on their toes, very tiny, hairlike structures that have tips which attach to surfaces by van der Walls forces. It’s a type of incredibly strong, dry adhesion shared by virtually no other group of animals.
It’s not known exactly how old this group of animals is, and when they evolved their adhesive toe pads. However, the new study makes it clear that this ability was in place at least 100 million years ago, in nature. Modern research programs still have not been able to completely duplicate it.
Scientists at the University of California at Berkeley reported earlier this year that they have developed a new “anti-sliding” adhesive that they said was the closest man-made material yet to mimic the ability of geckos – they think it might help a robot climb up the side of walls. A research team at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology this year created a waterproof adhesive bandage inspired by geckos, that may someday be used in surgery. And of course, geckos have become an advertising icon for the insurance company Geico.
This study is just one of many in which Poinar and colleagues have used the unusual characteristics of amber to study ancient life forms and develop information on the ecology of ancient ecosystems.
As a stone that first begins to form as sap oozing from a tree, amber can trap small insects or other life forms and preserve them in near-perfect detail for observation millions of years later.
Armchair archaeologists are discovering ancient historic sites during the lockdown
Volunteer archaeologists working from home are revealing hitherto uncharted prehistoric burial mounds, Roman roads, and medieval farms, using LiDAR technology. This just goes to show what can be achieved working from home during a pandemic, history in the making. Businesses and companies have all had to make changes during this time, meaning that software has been updated and implemented across the board, including updating communication areas for workers to have access to, meaning that shares in software such as Slack (Slack Aktie kaufen) have gone up for the benefit of home workers.
A probable Iron Age or Roman enclosed settlement (red arrows) and associated field system (blue arrows) revealed by LiDAR data but hidden today beneath woodland.
An innovative project is underway integrating scientific research with the power of the public. Led by Dr. Smart and Dr. João Fonte from the University of Exeter, and working closely with Cornwall and Devon Historic Environment Record, citizens were called on to search databases of aerial images while on coronavirus lockdown and they revealed “roads, burial mounds, and settlements – all while working from home,” according to a report in the Heritagedaily.
These topographical images of the Tamar valley, that highlight hidden features and with historic maps of the area, have been cross-referenced by amateur archaeologists. Lead researchers Dr. Chris Smart also said that they “draw the archeological map of the South West’ to get a clearer understanding of the history of the regions over thousands of years.
A section of a probable Roman road. The road’s ‘agger’ – the raised metalled surface – shows as a straight pale line (red arrows). A line of quarry pits show as black spots (blue arrows) possibly used to gather material for the road
The sites were not released because of the possibility that treasure hunters could enter the sites prior to being properly given access, but they are all in the Tamar Valley. The team found parts of two Roman roads with about 30 large, prehistoric or Roman settlement enclosures, about 20 prehistoric burial mounds, as well as the remains of hundreds of medieval farms, field systems, and quarries.
Those leading the project believe they will make many more discoveries in the coming weeks as more images are reviewed – potentially hundreds of new sites. The team, led by Dr. Smart from the University of Exeter, are analyzing images from technology used to create detailed topographical maps by the Environment Agency.
Modern vegetation and buildings can be removed from the data, allowing archaeologists to look at the shape of the land surface to find the remains of archaeological earthworks.
‘The South West arguably has the most comprehensive LiDAR data yet available in the UK and we are using this to map as much of the historic environment as possible,’ said Dr. Smart. They are focusing on the Tamar Valley but are also looking at the land around Bodmin Moor, Dartmoor, Plymouth, and Barnstaple – an area covering 1,500 sq miles.
The information has helped researchers to realize the region was much more densely populated during the Iron Age than previously thought. They haven’t been selective in the images they have asked volunteers to look at either, so to find so many from a relatively random record is even more exciting. The research is adding to an evolving database of all known heritage in the South West of England and includes everything from lost field boundaries to prehistoric enclosures and everything in between.
‘Ordinarily, we would now be out in the field surveying archaeological sites with groups of volunteers, or preparing for our community excavations, but this is all now on hold,’ said Smart.
‘I knew there would be enthusiasm within our volunteer group to continue working during lockdown – one even suggested temporarily rebranding our project “Lockdown Landscapes”,’ he said.
‘I don’t think they realized how many new discoveries they would make.’
New archaeological sites are often found by chance, through digs before new development, so it is unusual to find so many in one go. Dr Smart said there is a large gap in the historical map of the South West, as there isn’t as much development there as in other parts of the country – so these chance discoveries don’t happen as often. Most of the finds so far have been Iron Age enclosed settlements but they have found dozens of sites dating back to prehistory and as late as the Medieval era.
One regular project volunteer, Fran Sperring, said: ‘Searching for previously unknown archaeological sites – and helping to identify places for possible future study – has been not only gratifying but engrossing.
‘Although it’s a fairly steep learning curve for me – being a relative novice to the subject – I’m enjoying every minute. Archaeology from the warm, dry comfort of your living room – what could be better?’
Dr. Smart is working closely with his University of Exeter colleague Dr. João Fonte, a specialist in LiDAR data manipulation and interpretation.
A probable Iron Age or Roman enclosed settlement, defined by a bank and ditch (red arrows). The remnants of the bank shows as a pale line on the LiDAR data, and the ditch as a darker line
‘Remote sensing is a very powerful tool for archaeological prospection,’ said Fonte.
‘Whilst I normally work in Northwest Iberia, I’m really happy to collaborate in this project and share my expertise for the benefit of Devon and Cornwall’s wonderful landscapes,’ he added. The team is also working with Cornwall and Devon Historic Environment Record teams to find a way to integrate all of this new information into their databases. It’s hoped the work can then be rolled out over more of the South West of England. When the worst of the pandemic is over the team intends to undertake geophysical surveys at a number of the newly-identified sites as part of the Understanding Landscapes project.
Dr. Smart said ‘It’s hard for us not to be able to carry out the work we had planned this summer – including an excavation at Calstock Roman fort.
‘Hopefully, this is only a temporary blip and we will be back out in the countryside with volunteers as soon as it is safe to do so.’
There is a wider benefit to using the LiDAR mapping data though. Dr. Smart hopes to be able to create a wider-reaching citizen science project that will help map more of the region’s history and create a rich record for the future. He said they were able to make use of existing maps created from a number of aerial surveys and satellite data. These maps are generated by the Environment Agency for the purpose of flood monitoring, but Dr. Smart said the detail is also perfect for spotting historical sites.
Norway’s melting ice is revealing priceless ancient artifacts
“The moment these artifacts melt out of the ice, they’re immediately vulnerable to the elements,” says James H, in an interview with national geographic.
Ancient artifacts preserved in snow and ice over thousands of years in Norway’s mountains are emerging at an unprecedented rate, and archaeologists are scrambling to collect them all before it’s too late, according to national geographic
Because ice patches in the past have contracted and expanded due to temperature shifts, many of the objects recovered have likely one time or another been exposed and then buried by snow and ice.
An iron arrowhead, possibly dating back a millennium or more, emerging from an ice patch in the mountains of Norway.
The bronze arrowheads of 1500 years ago, the Tunic of the Iron Age, and even the remains of a wooden ski complete with leather binding left behind sometime in the year 700. Some of the oldest objects were dropped more than 6,000 years ago.
With low-winter precipitation and warmer summers the alpine ice dramatically reducing the alpine ice that acts as a time capsule for lost treasures.
“The ice is a time machine,” Lars Pilö, an archaeologist who works for the Oppland County council told Archaeology in 2013. “When you’re really lucky, the artifacts are exposed for the first time since they were lost.”
A ski with leather binding recovered from an ice patch in the Norwegian mountains. Analysis later determined that the artifact dates back to the year 700.
Unlike glaciers, which tend to crush and grind objects as they move down a mountain, the majority of artifacts coming out of Norway are being recovered from ice patches.
These isolated non-moving accumulations of ice and snow are significant to the archeological record because of their extreme stability, with many containing layers of seasonal snowpack dating back thousands of years.
Sections of ice in the Juvfonne snow patch in Jotunheimen, Norway, are an astounding 7,600 years old, according to a 2017 study.
An Iron Age tunic recovered from the Lendbreen ice patch in August 2011.
Despite their remote setting and scarce visits from modern-day humans, ice patches for thousands of years were veritable hot spots for ancient hunters.
In the summer, reindeer herds often crowd together on the islands of snow and ice to escape pesky, biting botflies, which have a strong aversion to the cooler temperatures. In the past, hunters would follow, losing or forgetting precious equipment along the way that was later buried and preserved in the winter snows.
Some items, such as the 1,600-year-old knife shown in the video below, look as if they were lost only a few decades ago.
A small iron knife with a birchwood handle was found just below the pass area at Lendbreen. It has been radiocarbon-dated to the 11th century.
Because ice patches in the past have contracted and expanded due to temperature shifts, many of the objects recovered have likely one time or another been exposed and then reburied by snow and ice. They also have a tendency to be carried by meltwater. As explained on the Secrets of the Ice Facebook page, the 2,600-year-old arrows shown in the image below were washed downslope far from the place they were originally lost.
Arrows discovered in the scree of an ice patch were later determined to date back to 600 B.C.
Some of the most exciting finds are those objects found emerging from the surface of the ice, a sign that they have previously been untouched by melting, according to researchers from the Oppland County Council. These artifacts are generally exceptionally preserved, with organic materials such as leather and fabric still present. It’s also an indication of the severity of anthropogenic global warming, with certain ice patches in Norway estimated to have retreated to levels last seen during the Stone Age.
“It’s very impressive when you can say this melting ice is 5,000 years old, and this is the only moment in the last 7,000 years that the ice has been retreating,” Albert Hafner, an archaeologist at the University of Bernsays Hafner, told Archaeology. “Ice is the most emotional way to show climate change.”
The preserved remains of a 3400-year-old hide shoe discovered on an ice patch in 2006. Over the last 30 years, some 2,000 artifacts have been recovered from Norway’s melting ice fields.
Unfortunately for archaeologists, the rate of ice loss coupled with the extremely small annual windows of opportunity to scour the alpine patches, means some newly exposed items will break down and disappear before anyone has a chance to study them.
“This material is like the library of Alexandria. It is incredibly valuable and it’s on fire now,” George Hambrecht, an anthropologist at the University of Maryland, College Park, told New Scientist.
Right now you might be thinking, “I want to help find and preserve these incredible artifacts!,” and we agree, it sounds like quite the adventure to take a romp into the Norwegian wilderness and possibly stumble upon a well-preserved Viking Sword (see below). The reality, however, is that field work can sometimes be laborious and uncomfortable, with every day at the mercy of Mother Nature’s fickle moods.
That said, the Oppland County Council did accept volunteers last spring and it’s possible, especially with so many finds emerging from the ice each year, that others may be called upon to assist.
“We may not find much (or we could strike the jackpot, who knows),” Lars Pilø wrote last April in the Secrets blog. “It all depends on the melting conditions, and they develop over the summer and during fieldwork. If we are unlucky, the scenery and the team spirit make up for the lack of finds.”
A Viking sword discovered in 2017 and dating back to c. AD 850-950.
Scientists find evidence of fires built in Yucatán cave 10,000 years ago
In Mexico the oldest traces of charcoal ever discovered is found in a cenote of the Yucatán Peninsula.
Recent archeological evidence from tests of burnt charcoal has shown that the first inhabitants on the Yucatán peninsula in Mexico constructed bonfires in the cave now flooded with water for over 10,000 years.
Chemical charred samples of 14 prehistory bonfires were obtained by the scientists of the National Autonomous University of Mexico (UNAM) in 2017 and 2018 from the cenote of Aktun Ha (sinkhole) at a distance of around nine kilometers from Tulum, Quintana Roo.
In late April this year archaeologist Luis Alberto Martos López authored an article about the charcoal sample analysis which was published in the journal Geoarchaeology detailing how they had all been found in the Ancestors Chamber of the Aktun Ha cenote.
The subsequent study included controlled heating experiments, nuclear magnetic resonance spectroscopy, and carbon dating to determine the fires had burned between “10,250 and 10,750 years ago.”
Studies show that bonfires in the Aktun Ha cenote were created by a man more than 10,000 years ago.
Located beside the Tulum-Cobá highway the cenote is known locally as the “Car Wash,” for before becoming a major heritage and tourist attraction taxi drivers used to get water for washing their cars.
The dating of the fires corresponds to the early Holocene period, which is the geological epoch we are still in that began more than 11,000 years ago at the end of the last Ice Age, and the 14 charcoal remnants have been called the “oldest ever discovered in a Yucatán Peninsula cenote” according to a report in Mexico News Daily.
Mr. Martos López said this finding is helping him and his fellow scientists to reconstruct the history of fire in the Americas which he believes is of great importance for the “study of evolution and human migration.”
Before this discovery was cemented as bonafide archaeology the scientists first had to negate the possibility that waters from elsewhere had swept the charcoal remains into the cenote cave.
And increasing this possibility, in 2018, the discovery of an underground link between the Sac Actun underwater river system which is approximately 263 kilometers long, and the Dos Ojos system in Tulum which is 84 kilometers long, which Geo Mexico called “the world’s largest underwater cave system .” However, the archaeologists were able to determine that the fires had been burned locally to the cenote.
Studies show that bonfires in the Aktun Ha cenote were created by a man more than 10,000 years ago. Octavio del Río in front of the main bonfire.
Analysis of the charcoal revealed the fires had reached temperatures as high as 600 C and archaeological divers discovered stone tools and artifacts in the cave, such as hammers and scraper tools, suggesting it was a temporary shelter where butchery and cooking occurred.
But the researchers say the early hunter-gatherers who lived on the Yucatán Peninsula may have used the Ancestors Chamber “for ritual purposes”.
Describing how the ancient sacred site was accessed over 10 millennia ago, Martos explained that to get into the cave in prehistoric times people would have had to crawl through “a narrow five-meter-long tunnel whose entrance was hidden by a mound of rocks.”
At the end of the tunnel, the Ancestors Chamber of the Aktun Ha cenote measures 20 square meters high and five to six meters wide, and around 10,000 years ago a natural well-formed at the back of the cave and Martos explained that before it was flooded with water it had been “well ventilated allowing the fire smoke to escape.”
Inhabitants of the Chamber of Ancestors of the Aktun Ha cenote.
This new discovery jigsaw into the content of a Feb 2020 news article I wrote for Archaeology org about new research published in the journal PLOS One detailing the discovery of “a 9,900-year-old human skeleton,” found in the Chan Hol cave, near the Tulum archaeological site in Quintana Roo.
Belonging to a woman who had died in her 30s, the archaeologists referred to her as being among the “first people to set foot in the Americas.”
In context, when this 9,000-year-old woman sat around a fire at night considering where she might have come from, her fire burning ancestors who left the charcoal behind in the Aktun Ha cenote were as distant to her as the Norman Invasion of Britain in 1066 AD is to us, having occurred almost 1,000 before our present day.
It seems that as technologies rapidly advance, every few months archaeologists in Mexico push back the anthological clock penetrating deeper into our Ancient Origins, and very soon we may have an answer to the big question: where did the 10,000-year-old fire starters come from?
Ancient Bones Found in Bulgarian Cave Are Oldest Evidence of Modern Humans in Europe
According to new research, modern humans have overlapped with Neanderthals in Europe longer than previously thought. Remains of Homo sapiens found in a Bulgarian cave are roughly 44,000 to 46,000 years old, making them the oldest directly dated remains of modern humans in Europe, reports Bruce Bower for Science News.
Nicola Davis for the Guardian reports that Neanderthals had been stumpy, cold-adapted hominins living across Europe and as far east as Siberia until about 40 000 years ago.
Neanderthal remains to live on in modern human DNA, indicating that our species and theirs met and interbred, but how long the two groups overlapped is unclear.
Excavations at the Bacho Kiro Cave in Bulgaria uncovered ancient human bones along with stone tools, animal bones, bone tools, and pendants.
Other human remains previously discovered in the United Kingdom and Italy have been dated to between 41,000 and 45,000 years ago, but their ages were measured indirectly, relying on the fossils’ archaeological and geological surroundings rather than the specimens themselves, reported Jonathon Amos for BBC News in 2011.
The direct dating of these newly unearthed remains from the Bacho Kiro Cave in northern Bulgaria comes from two sources: radiocarbon dating and DNA extracted from a tooth and six shards of bone identified as belonging to H. sapiens.
Both methods dated the remains to around 44,000 to 46,000 years ago, the researchers report in two papers published in the journals Nature Ecology & Evolution and Nature.
“Our work in Bacho Kiro shows there is a time overlap of maybe 8,000 years between the arrival of the first wave of modern humans in eastern Europe and the final extinction of Neanderthals in the far west of Europe,” Jean-Jacques Hublin, a paleoanthropologist at the Max Planck Institute and co-author of the research, tells the Guardian.
The new estimate adds as much as 5,000 years of biological, cultural, and behavioral interaction between the species compared to the chronology suggested by other researchers, he tells the Guardian.
Hublin and his colleagues began their new excavation at the Bacho Kiro Cave in 2015. The site was first excavated by archaeologists in 1938 and then again in the 1970s. The new dig turned up animal bones, tools made of stone and bone, beads and pendants, and, of course, a handful of ancient human remains.
The team had some 1,200 fragments of bones and teeth, but only a single molar could be visually identified as having come from a modern human. To figure out which species all the other fragments belonged to, the researchers extracted proteins from each specimen.
The protein’s structure can be used to tell species apart. This massive screening process yielded six additional chunks of human remains. Genetic evidence also corroborated the identities of six out of the seven fossils.
“In my view, this is the oldest and strongest published evidence for a very early upper paleolithic presence of Homo sapiens in Europe, several millennia before the Neanderthals disappeared,” Chris Stringer, an expert in human origins from London’s Natural History Museum, tells the Guardian.
In 2019, Stringer was part of a team that reported an incomplete skull found in Greece may have belonged to a modern human that lived some 210,000 years ago. However, both the age and species assigned to the skull have been disputed.
Initial Upper Paleolithic artifacts, including blades and a sandstone bead, from the Bacho Kiro Cave in Bulgaria.
The tools and ornaments found alongside modern humans remain at Bacho Kiro, such as pendants made of cave bear teeth, closely resemble artifacts from Neanderthal sites in western Europe dated several thousand years later, Hublin tells Science News.
The similarities provide “evidence that pioneer groups of Homo sapiens brought new behaviors into Europe and interacted with local Neandertals,” Hublin adds.
Stringer tells the Guardian that he has doubts about whether subsequent Neanderthal jewelry and tools were influenced as a result of interactions with early modern humans. In an interview with Science News, Stringer cites Neanderthal jewelry made out of eagle talons from roughly 130,000 years ago.
The new findings highlight the mystery of why Neanderthals disappeared when they did, if, as these new findings suggest, they coexisted with modern humans for millennia. If they were able to persist side by side for so long, what finally drove Neanderthals to extinction?
According to Richard Klein, a paleoanthropologist at Stanford University who was not involved in the research, who spoke with Tom Metcalfe of NBC News, “that’s the ultimate question.”
Stringer tells the Guardian that there simply may not have been enough of these early modern human pioneers in Europe to establish and sustain a significant presence, adding that an unstable climate could have also kept them at bay.
A valuable piece of Croatian warrior heritage found at Krka National Park
LOZOVAC, CROATIA— Archaeology Org reports that an artillery weapon was found in a defensive wall in a tower at the fourteenth-century site of Nečven fortress, which is located in southern Croatia’s Krka National Park.
The bronze object, known as a mačkula, is similar to a mortar and was used to attack fortified settlements. This one is thought to date to the seventeenth or eighteenth century.
“A mačkula is a weapon that holds a special place in Croatian warrior heritage. During the traditional manifestation Sinjska Alka, every hit „u sridu“ (‘in the middle’) is celebrated by a shot from the mačkula.
Its value is enhanced even more during the ceremony for the winner when several mačkula are shooting from Sinj’s old fortified walls,” Krka NP said in a statement.
The mačkula was found in the defensive wall of the hexagonal tower right from the entrance of the fortress.
Archaeological research of Nečven fortress started back n 2011 and along with archaeological excavations conservation works of the fortress was also carried out. Metal and stone findings were conserved at the Krka NP conservation workshop.
“The mačkula is another valuable finding that will complete the Krka NP archaeological collection and contribute to the valorization of the cultural and historical heritage of our region,“ Nella Slavica, director of the Public Institute of Krka National Park said.
Slavica says that the conservation of the Nečven fortress is a long-lasting project to preserve heritage along with preparatory activities for the future construction of a 462-meter pedestrian suspension bridge over the Krka River connecting Nečven and Trošenj fortresses.
The bridge which will connect the fortresses
The bridge will be a tourist attraction with its fascinating views of the Krka canyon and Nečven and Trošenj Fortresses without causing any burden on the underlying phenomenon.
“Built at the beginning of the 14th century, the Nečven fortress is one of the most valuable monuments of medieval fortification architecture in Dalmatia. It was owned by the Nelipić family for two centuries.
In the 16th century, Nečven was conquered by the Ottomans but a year before the final expulsion of the Ottomans and the liberation of the City of Knin in 1688, Skradin inhabitants took over Nečven fortress and from it guarded the border.
Opposite Nečven fortress above the Krka canyon, the Trošenj fortress has proudly stood for centuries. Both fortresses represent valuable monuments of Croatian cultural heritage.
Nečven and Trošenj fortresses, built and owned by great Croatian families Nelipići and Šubići as part of the medieval defense system, today are valued within Krka National Park,” Krka NP stated.
