Fossil child skull from 2.2 million years ago reveals how humans out-smarted the other great apes – and the key is the soft heads of our babies
A fossil more than two million years old could help explain why man became so brainy.
The Taung fossil, an early hominid which was discovered in South Africa in 1924, was significant features which could shed light on the evolution of intelligence
The Taung fossil, an early hominid that was discovered in South Africa in 1924, was significant features that could shed light on the evolution of intelligence.
Importantly it has a ‘persistent metopic suture’ – an unfused seam – in the frontal bone, which allows a baby’s skull to be pliable in childbirth. In great apes, this closes shortly after birth but in humans, it doesn’t fuse until around two years of age – allowing brain growth.
The unfused seam allows babies to be born with larger brains, and the delay in fusing allows the brain to grow larger in early life, reports Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
An australopithecine is any species of the extinct genera Australopithecus or Paranthropus that lived in Africa, walked on two legs and had relatively small brains.
Dr Dean Falk, of Florida State University, said: ‘These findings are significant because they provide a highly plausible explanation as to why the hominin brain might grow larger and more complex.
‘The persistent metopic suture, an advanced trait, probably occurred in conjunction with refining the ability to walk on two legs.
‘The ability to walk upright caused an obstretric dilemma.
‘Childbirth became more difficult because the shape of the birth canal became constricted while the size of the brain increased. The persistent metopic suture contributes to an evolutionary solution to this dilemma.
‘The later fusion was also associated with the evolutionary expansion of the frontal lobes, which is evident from the endocasts of australopithecines such as Taung.’
Discovery of oldest human decorations — thought to be 82,000 years old
The discovery of small perforated seashells, in the Cave of Pigeons in Taforalt, eastern Morocco, has shown that the use of bead adornments in North Africa is older than thought. Dating from 82,000 years ago, the beads are thought to be the oldest in the world.
As adornments, together with art, burial and the use of pigments, are considered to be among the most conclusive signs of the acquisition of symbolic thought and of modern cognitive abilities, this study is leading researchers to question their ideas about the origins of modern humans.
The study was carried out by a multidisciplinary team made up of researchers at CNRS, working with scientists from Morocco, the UK, Australia and Germany.
It was long thought that the oldest adornments, which were then dated as being 40,000 years old, came from Europe and the Middle East. However, since the discovery of 75,000-year-old carved beads and ochers in South Africa, this idea has been challenged, and all the more so with the recent discovery in Morocco of beads that are over 80,000 years old. The discoveries all indicate the presence of a much older symbolic material culture in Africa than in Europe or the Middle East.
Dated at 82,000 years old, the beads, which were unearthed by archaeologists in the Cave of Pigeons in Taforalt, north-east Morocco, consist of 13 shells belonging to the species Nassarius gibbosulus. The shells have been deliberately perforated, and some of them are still covered with red ocher. They were discovered in the remains of hearths, associated with abundant traces of human activity such as stone tools and animal remains.
The shell beads.
The mollusks were found in a stratigraphic sequence formed of ashy sediments. They were dated independently by two laboratories using four different techniques, which confirmed an age of 82,000 years.
Led by Abdeljalil Bouzouggar, a researcher at the National Institute of Archaeological and Heritage Sciences (INSAP, Morocco)and Nick Barton of the University of Oxford (UK), a multidisciplinary team has been carrying out an in-depth study of the site for the past five years.
Two CNRS researchers have been especially involved in the study of the shells: Marian Vanhaeren and Francesco d’Errico, belonging respectively to the ‘From prehistory to the present: culture, environment and anthropology’ unit (PACEA, CNRS / Université Bordeaux 1 / INRAP / Ministère de la Culture et de la Communication) and the ‘Archaeologies and sciences of Antiquity’ unit (ArScAn, CNRS / Ministère de la Culture et de la Communication / Universités Paris 1 and 10).
They were thus able to reveal that the shells had been gathered when dead, on the beaches of Morocco, which at that time were located over 40 km from the Cave of Pigeons. By taking into account the distance of the coast at that time and the comparison with natural alteration of shells of the same species on today’s beaches, the two scientists inferred that prehistoric humans had selected, transported and very probably perforated the shells and coloured them red for symbolic use.
Moreover, some shells showed traces of wear, which suggests that they were used as adornments for a long time: they were very likely worn as necklaces or bracelets or sewn onto clothes.
Noticing that the beads belong to the same species of shell and bear the same type of perforation as those uncovered in previous excavations at the palaeolithic sites at Skhul in Israel and at Oued Djebbana in Algeria, Marian Vanhaeren and Francesco d’Errico were thus able to confirm the validity of these two discoveries.
Everything, therefore, seems to indicate that 80,000 years ago the populations of the eastern and southern Mediterranean shared the same symbolic traditions. To back up this hypothesis they point to other sites in Morocco where Nassarius gibbosulus beads from the same period are also found.
In addition, the two researchers point out that there is a remarkable difference between the oldest beads from Africa and the Near East on the one hand, and from Eurasia on the other. Unlike Africa and the Near East, where only one or two types of shell are found, in Eurasia from the beginning of the Upper Paleolithic onwards tens or even hundreds of different types of beads have been described.
Additional Information
1) Among the stone tools associated with the shells there are sharp biface points that are typical of Aterian technology in North Africa. They were probably used as spearheads. The animal bones were left-over food remains and are mainly identified as wild horses and hares.
2) A stratigraphic sequence is a sequence of strata.
3) These beads were attributed by the same authors to archaeological strata at the site dating back 100 000 years, based on geochemical analysis of material stuck to the shells. However, the date of the first digs at the site (which were carried out in the 1930s) made it impossible to formally prove the stratigraphic provenance of the objects. This study resulted in an article in Science in June 2006.
4) The bead found at this site came from an archaeological stratum more than 40 000 years old and was dates thanks to stone tools found in the same location: the tools are typical of the period dating from 60 000 to 90 000 years before the modern era.
The Prehistoric Rock Art of Tassili N’Ajjer, Algeria
Just Outside the Desert Oasis of Djanet, Algeria, there’s a national park brimming with pieces of the past. A trip through the alien-like landscape of Tassili n’Ajjer is like stepping into an open-air art gallery, where the sandstone rock formations become canvases for more than 15,000 prehistoric carvings and paintings.
The Dessert around Djanet
Tassili n’Ajjer shot into worldwide fame in the 1930s, not for its landscape but for the precious collection of ancient rock art in the area.
Since their discovery, more than 15,000 petroglyphs and paintings have been identified representing 10,000 years of human history and environmental change.
Petroglyph depicting a possibly sleeping antelope, located at Tassili n’Ajjer in southern Algeria.
One of the most striking features of these petroglyphs is the way they evolved with the change in the climate.
The oldest art belongs to the so-called “Large Wild Fauna Period” (10,000-6,000 BC) characterized almost entirely by engravings of animals such as hippopotamus, crocodiles, elephants, giraffes, buffaloes and rhinos, depicting the abundant wildlife at a time when the Sahara was green and fertile.
Humans appear as tiny figures dwarfed by the immensity of these animals and are often shown holding boomerangs or throwing sticks, clubs, axes or bows.
Overlapping with this era is the Round Head Period (8,000-6,000 BC) where human figures with elaborate attires took dominance. These figures ranged from a few centimetres to several meters tall.
The majority of Round Head paintings portray people with round featureless heads and formless bodies. Some of the pieces seem to suggest shamanism with bodies flying through space or bowing before huge male figures that tower above them.
About 7,000 years ago, domesticated animals began to appear in art. This period is known as the Pastoral Period. Rock art from this period reflects a changing attitude towards nature and property.
Human figures became more prominent, and man was no longer shown as part of nature but portrayed as being above nature, yet able to derive sustenance from it.
Wild animals gave way to cattle and stock. Later drawings (3500 years ago) depicts horses and horse-drawn chariots. It’s unlikely that chariots were ever driven across the rocky Sahara, so researchers believe the figures of chariots and armed men are symbolic, representing ownership of land, or control of its inhabitants.
As the climate became progressively drier, horses were replaced by camels as evident from the rock art from the most recent period about 2000 years ago.
Tassili N’Ajjer lies about 500 meters above the level of the desert. The plateau can only be reached by climbing on foot, with camping materials and supplies drawn by donkeys and camels.
Large diurnal temperature variations and the absence of basic amenities make the trip extremely challenging, so only the young and the hardy attempt to reach it. Recent violence and insecurity in the country have further isolated Tassili N’Ajjer from the routes of most tourists.
Detail of a petroglyph depicting a bubalus anticus.
The Atlantic Ocean was known as the Ethiopian Ocean until the 19th century
Up to the 19th century, the southern part of the Atlantic Ocean was formally known as the Ethiopian/Aethiopian Sea in classical geographical works. This was the name that appeared on ancient maps, up to the 19th century.
1747 map showing the oceans and seas surrounding the African continent
The roots of such etymology can be described by how over time, areas referred to as place names often expand or contract. As such, what is termed “toponymic displacement” or geographic displacement? becomes commonplace.
European geographers used the term ‘Libyan’ to refer to North African people of Berber background. The people who inhabited lands further south of the Sahara were called ‘Ethiopians’ (or Aethiopians) and the name used for the lands below the Sahara was ‘Ethiopia.’
Ethiopia was also used as the synonym for the Nubian Kingdom of Kush (or Meroe).
The present country called Ethiopia was hardly known, and when it came to the knowledge of European geographers it was called ‘Abyssinia’ (from the Arabic ethnic designation ‘Habesh.’
The word Ethiopia was also used for unknown or quasi-mythical lands situated to the south or east of the Mediterranean.
1710 map of Africa by Daniel de la Feuille
The African interior, which was unknown to European ‘explorers’ and geographers around the 15th-16th centuries, was generally called Ethiopia.
The eastern South Atlantic Ocean was called the Aethiopian/Ethiopian Sea/Ocean due to the fact such part of the ocean was in proximity to the landmass called Ethiopia. This part of the ocean was commonly dubbed the “Ethiopian Ocean” (or Sea) through the 1700s.
In the maps of this time, the Ethiopian Ocean was shown to stretch from the South Atlantic into the western Indian Ocean.
Oceans and seas were conceptualized and titled as strips of water surrounding landmasses.
The discreet naming of oceans surfaced in the 1800s.
Decades after the classical use of the name had become obsolete, botanist William Albert Setchell (1864–1943) used the term for the sea around some islands near Antarctica.
Medieval Church Excavated in Sudan’s Northern State
Science in Poland reports that researchers led by Artur Obłuski of the University of Warsaw have found the remains of a large medieval church in the centre of Old Dongola, Northern State, Sudan.
According to, Assist. Prof. Artur Obłuski, the head of the Dongola expedition and the director of the Polish Centre of Mediterranean Archaeology of the University of Warsaw (PCMA UW), this discovery changes not only our knowledge about the city itself but also the way we reconstruct the history of the Nubian church.
Dongola was the capital of Makuria, one of the three Christian Nubian kingdoms. Archaeologists from PCMA UW have been working there since 1964, continuing the research initiated by Prof. K. Michałowski after the success of his work in another Nubian centre – Faras, the capital of Nobadia.
Since 2018, work in Dongola has been carried out under the European Research Council (ERC) grant “UMMA – Urban Metamorphosis of the community of a Medieval African capital city”, headed by Assist. Prof. Obłuski.
In 2021, archaeologists cleaned the wall of the church’s apse, together with an adjacent wall and the nearby dome of a large tomb. The structures are located in the very centre of the city.
The walls of the apse, which was the most sacred place in the church, are decorated with paintings depicting two rows of monumental figures. It is the largest apse so far discovered in Nubia: it has a diameter of 6 m, and the width of the church to which it belonged is approx. 26 m.
“If our estimates based on the known dimensions are confirmed, it is the largest church discovered so far in Nubia,” – says Obłuski, adding – “Its size is important, but so is the location of the building – in the heart of the 200-hectare city, the capital of the combined kingdoms of Nobadia and Makuria. Just to the east of the apse, a large domed building was added.
We have a great analogy for such an architectural complex: Faras. There too, the cathedral stood in the centre of the citadel, and to the east of it was the domed tomb of Joannes, the bishop of Faras. However, there is a major difference in the scale of the buildings. The dome over Joannes’ tomb is 1.5 m in diameter, while the dome over the Dongolese building is 7.5 m.”
Archaeologists assume that, just like in Faras, the large church in Dongola served as a cathedral, next to which a tomb of dignitaries, probably bishops, was erected. The confirmation of this hypothesis will have significant consequences for Nubiology.
Until now, another church located outside the citadel was considered to be Dongola’s cathedral, a building whose features would influence the religious architecture of Nubia over the centuries. “If we are right, it was a completely different building that set the trends,” – says Obłuski.
The newly discovered building stands in the middle of the citadel that is surrounded by a wall about 10 m high and 5 m thick.
The excavations have shown that this was the heart of the entire kingdom in the Makurian period as all structures uncovered there were of a monumental character: churches, a palace, and large villas belonging to a church and state elites. Test trenches dug in the building have yielded promising results.
“The sounding in the apse is approx. 9 m deep. This means that the eastern part of the building is preserved to the impressive height of a modern three-storey block of flats. And this means there may be more paintings and inscriptions under our feet, just like in Faras,” – says the archaeologist.
Therefore, among the team members are conservators from the Department of Conservation and Restoration of Works of Art of the Academy of Fine Arts in Warsaw, working under the supervision of Prof. Krzysztof Chmielewski. Their immediate task is to secure the discovered paintings on an ongoing basis, and in the long term, to prepare them for display. Unlike at Faras, they can be left on the church walls.
“In order to continue the excavations, the weakened and peeling wall plaster covered with painting decoration must be strengthened, and then carefully cleaned of layers of earth, dirt and salt deposits that are particularly harmful to the wall paintings.
When a suitable roof is erected over this valuable find, it will be possible to start the final aesthetic conservation of the paintings,” – explains Prof. Chmielewski, adding that this type of rescue conservation requires the involvement of considerable resources, time, and skilled specialists.
The next excavation seasons in Dongola are planned for the fall of this year and the winter of 2022.
Earliest known war driven by climate change, researchers say
Researchers discovered 61 bones in the Nile Valley region in the 1960s, the earliest evidence of human conflict. The deaths were first attributed to a single armed battle. However, a recent reexamination of the 13,000-year-old bones revealed that individuals died over a period of years as a result of recurrent violence that was exacerbated because of climatic changes during the period.
Two of the individuals found buried at Jebel Sahaba in the Nile Valley in the 1960s are shown. Pencils mark the position of associated stone artifacts. Image courtesy of the Wendorf Archives of the British Museum.
Published in Scientific Reports, the findings build on previous research around remains discovered in Jebel Sahaba, a prehistoric cemetery that dates to between 13,400 and 18,600 years ago, marking the oldest recorded evidence of interpersonal violence among human groups.
The study reframes the conflict between hunter-gatherers in the context of climate change and offers a unique lens into the emergence of violence and mass death in the stone age.
A closer examination of the skeletons — of adults, teens, and children — revealed previously undocumented healed and unhealed injuries sustained from brutal and continued violence. “That injury pattern more likely arose from periodic, indiscriminate raids rather than a single battle, in which the dead would have consisted mainly of male fighters,” the researchers say.
This suggests violence was a material part of life and resulted from multiple raids and ambushes — or “minor battles” — during that time because of resource competition, researchers from the U.K. and France say.
And more importantly, “repeated violent episodes [around that time] were probably triggered by well-recorded environmental changes,” paleoanthropologist Isabelle Crevecoeur, who conducted the study with her colleagues, told ScienceNews.
Isabelle Crevecoeur (right) and Marie‑Hélène Dias‑Meirinho (left) study the Jebel Sahaba human remains in the Egypt and Sudan department of the British Museum.
Since this was a pre-agriculture period, rival groups living in the same space competed for meals and other resources, which might have triggered fighting among regional groups.
“The new report fits a scenario in which ancient, possibly culturally distinct communities violently raided each other when dwindling resources threatened their survival,” said bioarchaeologist Christopher Stojanowski of Arizona State University in Tempe, who did not participate in the new study but has studied the Jebel Sahaba remains.
The Nile Valley, the area between now southern Egypt and northern Sudan, was believed to be a space of refuge for prehistoric people, who might have moved there from the arid, less fertile areas in Africa and southwest Asia. Moreover, the expanse of plains also meant an easier search for animals to hunt and fish.
This time coincided with a fluctuating climate — between 11,000 and 20,000 years ago, the Ice Age showed signs of slowing down, resulting in widespread flooding and disrupting the ecological balance; Crevecoeur mentions there was proof of very extreme flooding of the Nile, which resulted in reduced fishing and hunting spots and depleted habitats.
The origins of warfare have been a matter of dispute for a long: whether violence originated among Stone Age hunter-gatherers or among state societies within roughly the past 6,000 years. The new findings thus alter the history of violence in the stone age.
“These results enrich our understanding of the contexts in which violence emerges among foragers,” Luke Glowacki, at the Department of Human Biology at Harvard University, told NewScientist. “They provide additional evidence for an emerging consensus that foragers, just like agricultural peoples, had interpersonal violence in the form of raids and ambushes.”
The researchers note, however, that the cause for the violence cannot be determined with absolute certainty, since there are no written documents.
But the consensus was drawn based on the fact that this earliest recorded violence was sporadic, long-drawn, and took place against the backdrop of climate change depleting resources needed for survival.
Records of hunter-gatherers from the stone age not only offer an insight into warfare, but also show how climate change — that manifests as resource scarcity, flooding, and loss of habitat — triggers conflict and displacement. “These changes were not gradual at all,” Isabelle Crevecoeur says. “They had to survive these changes that were brutal.”
FBI cracks the case of the 4,000-year-old mummy’s head
A team of forensic scientists has managed to extract DNA from a 4,000-year-old mummy, and their finding has solved a century-old mystery of its ransacked tomb.
If the F.B.I.’s scientists could extract DNA from the 4,000-year-old mummy, they would add a powerful tool to their forensics arsenal and also unlock a new way of deciphering Egypt’s ancient past
The Egyptian mummy wasn’t a fully preserved corpse, but rather a decapitated, mutilated, bandage-wrapped head that archaeologists found on top of a coffin when they excavated a tomb back in 1915. And that was the source of the mystery.
As the researchers explained in a paper published March 1 in the journal Genes, the tomb belonged to an Egyptian Middle Kingdom governor named Djehutynakht.
But by the time modern scientists found the tomb, it had been ransacked; it was robbed in ancient times. In an article describing the discovery, The New York Times reported that the robbers had set the place on fire “to cover their tracks.”
All that remained of the tomb’s occupants was a dismembered torso in one corner of the tomb and a head placed on top of Djehutynakht’s coffin. For more than a hundred years, researchers have wondered and disagreed about whether these mummified remains belonged to Djehutynakht himself or to his wife.
Deepening the mystery, the head had been altered during the mummification process, with several bones removed from the jaw and cheek in an effort to enable the deceased to eat and drink in the afterlife, the Times reported. Those bones might have offered clues as to whether the body was male or female.
That left DNA analysis. But extracting DNA from ancient Egyptian mummies, after centuries in hot, DNA-degrading environments, had never been achieved before. The Times reported that earlier attempts failed or produced contaminated results.
Still, FBI forensic researchers gave it a shot. They had access because the head, along with many artefacts from the tomb, had long since made its way to the Boston Museum of Fine Arts. (Shipping artefacts out of Egypt would be illegal today under Egyptian law.) They drilled into a molar extracted from the head “in pristine condition” back in 2009, producing 105 milligrams (0.004 ounces) of tooth dust.
After exposing the dust to a liquid mixture designed to copy and amplify existing DNA, they found that it came from a biological male. The head, in other words, most likely belonged to Djehutynakht and not his wife.
A team at the Department of Homeland Security, working with a smaller tooth-dust sample, later confirmed the results. In both cases, the DNA was damaged, demonstrating that it came from the ancient mummy and not modern contamination.
Interestingly, it remains unclear which Djehutynakht the head (and tomb) belonged to. Two governors with that name ruled an area call Hare Nome, and, the researchers wrote, “while they shared the same name (which means Thoth [the main local deity] is Strong), there is no evidence they were related.”
The pyramids of Egypt are a marvel of archaeology, soaring high above the desert sands and visible for miles. Who were the people who managed to construct these pyramids, which was obviously a monumental task?
A Bedouin man on a camel by the Pyramids of Khafre and Menkaure at the Giza Necropolis in Egypt.
Many hypotheses exist concerning who constructed Egypt’s pyramids, including massive groups of enslaved Jewish and wilder ideas, such as inhabitants of the ‘lost city of Atlantis or even aliens.
None of these theories, however, have evidence to back them up.
The pyramids could not have been constructed by Jewish slaves, as no archaeological remains that can be directly linked to the Jewish people have been found in Egypt that date back to 4,500 years ago, when the Giza pyramids were built, archaeological research has revealed.
Additionally, the story told in the Hebrew Bible about Jews being slaves in Egypt refers to a city named “Ramesses.” A city named pi-Ramesses was founded during the 19th dynasty (about 1295-1186 B.C.) and was named after Ramesses II, who ruled 1279–1213 BC. This city was constructed after the era of pyramid construction had ended in Egypt.
“We have no clue, not even a single word, about early Israelites in Egypt: neither in monumental inscriptions on walls of temples, nor in tomb inscriptions, nor in papyri,” wrote archaeologists Israel Finkelstein and Neil Asher Silberman in their book “The Bible Unearthed: Archaeology’s New Vision of Ancient Israel and the Origin of its Sacred Texts” (The Free Press, 2001).
What’s more, no archaeological evidence has ever been found for the lost city of Atlantis in any time period, and many scholars believe that the story is fictional. As for aliens, well, that idea is out of this world.
In fact, all the evidence shows that the ancient Egyptians built the pyramids, Egyptologists say. But how the pyramid builders lived, how they were compensated and how they were treated is a mystery that researchers are still investigating.
The pyramids and their builders
Egypt has more than 100 ancient pyramids, but it’s most famous include the first step pyramid, built during the reign of the pharaoh Djoser (about 2630-2611 B.C.), and the first true pyramid — one that has smooth sides — built under the rule of pharaoh Snefru (about 2575-2551 B.C.), Mark Lehner wrote in his book, “The Complete Pyramids: Solving the Ancient Mysteries” (Thames & Hudson, 2008). The Great Pyramid was constructed at Giza during the reign of pharaoh Khufu (about 2551-2528 B.C.), and two of his successors, Khafre (about 2520-2494 B.C.) and Menkaure (about 2490-2472 B.C.), also had pyramids built at Giza.
Pharaohs gradually stopped building pyramids during the New Kingdom (1550-1070 B.C.), choosing instead to be buried in the Valley of the Kings, which is located about 300 miles (483 km) south of Giza, Lehner noted in his book. Over the past few decades, archaeologists have found new pieces of evidence that provide clues as to who the pyramid builders were and how they lived.
The step pyramid, built during the reign of the pharaoh Djoser, at the necropolis of Saqqara, Egypt.
Surviving written records, including papyri discovered in 2013 at Wadi al-Jarf on Egypt’s Red Sea coast, indicate that large groups of workers — sometimes translated as “gangs” — helped bring material to Giza. The papyri found at Wadi al-Jarf tell of a group of 200 men headed by an inspector named Merer. The group of workers transported limestone by boat along the Nile River a distance of about 11 miles (18 kilometres) from Tura to the Great Pyramid, where the stone was used to build the outer casing of the monument.
In the past, Egyptologists had theorized that the pyramid builders were largely made up of seasonal agricultural workers who had reached a point in the year in which there was little agricultural work to be done. However, it remains to be seen whether this is actually true.
The papyri detailing the pyramid’s histories are still in the process of being deciphered and analyzed, but the results indicate that the gang led by Merer did far more than help with pyramid construction. These workers appear to have travelled over much of Egypt, possibly as far as the Sinai Desert, carrying out various construction projects and tasks that had been assigned to them. This raises the question of whether they were part of a more permanent professional force rather than a group of seasonal agricultural workers who would return to their fields.
According to the papyri, the workers were given a diet that included dates, vegetables, poultry and meat, said Pierre Tallet, an Egyptology professor at Paris-Sorbonne University who is deciphering the papyri and is co-leader of the team that found them. In addition to the healthy diet, the papyri describe members of the work team regularly getting textiles that were “probably considered as a kind of money at that time,” Tallet told Live Science.
Additionally, officials in high-ranking positions who were involved in pyramid construction “might have received grants of land,” said Mark Lehner, director of Ancient Egypt Research Associates (AERA), a research institute based in Massachusetts. Historical records show that at times in Egypt’s history, land grants were given out to officials. However, it’s unknown whether land grants were also given to officials involved with pyramid construction.
Lehner’s team has been excavating a town at Giza that was lived in and frequented by some of the workers who were constructing the pyramid of Menkaure. So far, the archaeologists have found evidence that this town’s ancient inhabitants used to bake large amounts of bread, slaughter thousands of animals and brew copious amounts of beer. Based on the animal bones found at the site, and considering the nutritional needs of the workers, archaeologists estimate that about 4,000 lbs. (1,800 kilograms) of animals — including cattle, sheep and goats — were slaughtered every day, on average, to feed the workers.
The remains of workers buried in graves near the pyramids show that the workers had healed bones that were set properly — suggesting that they had access to the medical care that was available at the time. The rich diet of the pyramid builders, combined with the evidence for medical care and receiving textiles as a form of payment, has led Egyptologists to generally agree that the workers were not enslaved people.
But this doesn’t mean all of the workers got equal accommodations. AERA’s excavations show that some of the higher-ranking officials lived in large houses and had the choicest cuts of meat. In contrast, Lehner suspects that the lower-ranking workers likely slept in simple dwellings or “lean-tos” at the pyramids themselves.
