Neanderthals Were Altering the Landscape at Least 125,000 Years Ago, New Evidence Suggests
Researchers at an archaeological site in Germany may have discovered the earliest evidence of hominins, or early humans, transforming their surroundings, they said Wednesday.
The dig at Neumark-Nord near Halle, Germany.
Specifically, they identified a distinct footprint of Neanderthal activities near a large body of water in the region surrounding the Neumark-Nord site, a dig location in the Geisel Valley in Saxony-Anhalt, dating about 125,000 years ago, they said, in an article published Wednesday by Science Advances.
Based on their findings, activities that include hunting, animal processing, tool production and fire use may explain why the region’s forests were cleared during this period compared with vegetation surrounding other nearby lakes, according to the researchers.
The discovery “adds an important aspect to early human, including Neandertal, behaviour [as] it shows that humans were already a locally visible factor in shaping vegetation 125,000 years ago,” lead researcher Wil Roebroeks told UPI in an email.
“We might expect to find other examples of this, especially since Neandertals and their contemporaries were skilled in fire technology,” said Roebroeks, a professor of Palaeolithic archaeology at Leiden University in the Netherlands.
The findings may complicate scientists’ understanding of the Last Interglacial period, which began about 130,000 years ago and ended about 115,000 years ago, as the last in which the landscape was untouched by humans, according to the researchers.
The Last Interglacial period is seen as the last in which environmental and climate conditions most mirrored those of the present day.
Scientists are still trying to confirm how, when and to what degree Pleistocene hunter-gatherers impacted their surrounding environments, they said.
It is believed these impacts are likely small, however, given the low population densities in these communities, the researchers said.
To determine whether Neumark-Nord may contribute to the ongoing debate over how far back in time the environmental influence of humans can be observed, Roebroeks and his colleagues analyzed paleoenvironmental data, including pollen counts, and archaeological data at the site.
Flint artefacts found at Neumark-Nord.
Neumark-Nord was abandoned by hominins, or early humans, when parts of the northern European plain were covered by ice sheets but re-inhabited at the beginning of the Last Interglacial period, earlier studies suggest.
The researchers compared the data with two other nearby locations that are also located in the eastern region of the Harz Mountains in Germany, they said.
While pollen composition and levels at these other sites indicate a closed, forested environment, pollen data at Neumark-Nord suggest more open vegetation, a pattern inconsistent with the rest of the region, the researchers said.
Combined with charcoal data and previous evidence of the presence of Neanderthals in the area, the findings suggest that early hominin hunter-gatherers left a lasting mark on the region’s environment, they said.
“With the quarry closed and the sites destroyed, our multidisciplinary team is still studying material from the excavations, such as the huge amount of remains of butchered animals,” Roebroeks said.
“The time period of 125,000 years ago is often used to provide reference information about the state of natural vegetation in the absence of human impact,” he said.
Incredible 5,500-year-old tomb discovery is ‘find of a lifetime’
It appears as if Meath is in the midst of a golden age of archaeological discovery after the unearthing of a 5,500-year-old megalithic passage tomb at Dowth Hall.
After last week’s incredible discovery of a previously uncharted henge site near Newgrange in Co Meath, another fascinating find nearby is shedding even more insight into ancient Ireland.
According to RTÉ News, a 5,500-year-old megalithic passage tomb has been revealed on the grounds of Dowth Hall, just down the road from the Newgrange monument. It is the most significant find of its type in Ireland in the past 50 years.
So far, two burial chambers have been discovered in what is the western section of the main passage tomb, buried by a massive stone cairn measuring 40 metres in diameter.
A series of six kerbstones have been found around the perimeter of the cairn, one of which is adorned with a number of well-preserved Neolithic carvings and drawings.
A kerbstone with elaborate carvings.
The discovery was made as part of a collaboration between the agritech firm Devenish and the University College Dublin School of Archaeology.
Speaking of its importance, Dr Clíodhna Ní Lionáin, who led the Devenish part of the dig, said: “For the archaeologists involved in this discovery, it is truly the find of a lifetime.”
Adding to this, Devenish’s executive chair Owen Brennan compared its decision to choose the site with those made by the tomb’s constructors thousands of years ago.
“From our archaeological research, it seems we made the same decision for the same reasons as a long line of our farming colleagues from the Neolithic, the Bronze Age, medieval and more recent times,” he said.
“The monuments here, created by some of Ireland’s first farmers, capture our imaginations and those of our visitors to the Devenish Lands of Dowth.”
The Brú na Bóinne World Heritage Site at the tomb’s location is now a real hotbed of archaeological activity, and with the recent henge discovery made after an intense heatwave, more major digs could be in the works in the region in the years ahead.
Researchers Uncovered a 5,000-Year-Old Crystal Dagger Buried in Spain
Inside an ancient tomb near Seville, researchers found the remains of several individuals buried in a ritualistic fashion, as well as a most striking artefact: a quite beautiful dagger made from rock crystal.
The intricately carved crystal dagger has been dated to at least 3000 BCE, making it the “most technically sophisticated and esthetically impressive collection of rock crystal material culture ever found in Prehistoric Iberia,” according to Spanish researchers who investigated the site.
Prehistoric humans in Europe made most of their tools from chert and flint. Tools made by knapping ‘rock crystals’ (macro-crystalline quartz) were far less prevalent, but nevertheless, people developed a technique for their manufacturing that appeared during late prehistory in certain European regions, such as the southwest Iberian Peninsula in the third millennium BCE.
Although rock crystal tools were more difficult to fashion and the raw materials weren’t as abundant as sedimentary rock, prehistoric people likely cherished them due to their social value.
Just as we stand in awe today at their sight, one would imagine that people were even more impressed by the thousands of years ago.
This particularly exquisite rock crystal tool, an 8.5-inch long dagger, was found in one of eight megalithic tombs from Valencina de la Concepción, a site near Seville in Spain that is considered one of the most significant for the study of Copper Age Iberia.
The tomb, known as the Montelirio tholos, was excavated between 2007 and 2010.
It is a great megalithic construction with a 39-meter (128-foot) corridor leading to the main chamber with a 4.75-meter (15.5-foot) diameter from which, through a narrow corridor, a secondary chamber is accessible.
Researchers found the remains of at least 25 individuals, alongside numerous sumptuous grave goods, including shrouds and clothes made of tens of thousands of perforated beads and decorated with amber beads, as well as many flint arrowheads, found fragments of gold blades, ivory objects, and of course the dazzling crystal core.
The arrowheads, blade, and rock crystal dagger were found at the back of the main chamber. No other objects were found in the rest of the chamber, which is suspicious.
The accumulation of artefacts right next to the main chamber’s access corridor “suggest an offering similar to those discovered in the main corridor, where the arrowheads, although made of lower quality materials, were found in large groups associated with an altar and other offerings (plants),” said researchers at the University of Granada and the University of Seville in a study published in Quaternary International.
At least several females and one male-identified within Montelirio tholos are believed to have died due to poisoning.
The remains of the women were arranged in a circular fashion in a chamber next to the bones of the male, who may have been a person of high status. The dagger itself was found in a different chamber “in association with an ivory hilt and sheath.”
There are no sources of quartz of the kind used in the dagger near the site, which suggests the materials were sourced from far afield.
The researchers say this is another reason why these crystal daggers and arrowheads may have been reserved to a few elite individuals who could afford them, having a dual significance.
“On the one hand, it had a social significance due to the exoticism of the material and the fact that its transformation required very specific skills and probably some degree of technical specialisation. They probably represent funerary paraphernalia only accessible to the elite of this time period. The association of the dagger blade to a handle made of ivory, also a non-local raw material that must have been of great value, strongly suggests the high-ranking status of the people making use of such objects.”
“On the other hand, rock crystal must have had a symbolic significance as a raw material invested with special meanings and connotations. The literature provides examples of societies in which rock crystal and quartz as raw materials symbolise vitality, magical powers and a connection with ancestors.”
Evolution of Personhood: Earliest Adorned Female Infant Burial in Europe Reveals Significant Insights
Ten thousand years ago, just after the last Ice Age, a group of hunter-gatherers buried an infant girl in a cave in what is now Italy. They entombed her with a rich selection of their treasured beads and pendants, and an eagle-owl talon, signalling their grief and showing that even the youngest females were recognized as full persons in their society.
The excavations and analysis of the discovery are published this week in Nature Scientific Reports and offer insight into the early Mesolithic period, from which few recorded burials are known.
Claudine Gravel-Miguel, the postdoctoral researcher with the Institute of Human Origins at Arizona State University and co-author on the paper, performed the analysis of the ornaments, which includes over 60 pierced shell beads and four shell pendants.
The mouth of the Arma Veirana cave, a site in the Ligurian mountains of northwestern Italy.
Mortuary practices offer a window into the worldviews and social structure of past societies. Child funerary treatment provides important insights into who was considered a person and afforded the attributes of an individual self, moral agency and eligibility for group membership. The seemingly “egalitarian” funerary treatment of this infant female, whom the team nicknamed “Neve,” shows that as early as 10,000 years ago in Western Europe, even the youngest females were recognized as full persons in their society.
“The evolution and development of how early humans buried their dead as revealed in the archaeological record have enormous cultural significance,” said Jamie Hodgkins, ASU doctoral graduate and paleoanthropologist at the University of Colorado Denver.
The excavation
Arma Veirana, a cave in the Ligurian pre-Alps of northwestern Italy, is a popular spot for local families to visit. Looters also discovered the site, and their digging exposed the late Pleistocene tools that drew researchers to the area.
The research team started surveying the site in 2015 and discovered the remains during the last week of the 2017 field season. The team of project coordinators includes Italian collaborators Fabio Negrino from the University of Genoa and Stefano Benazzi from the University of Bologna, as well as researchers from the University of Montreal, Washington University, University of Ferrara, University of Tubingen and ASU Institute of Human Origins.
The first two excavation seasons were spent near the mouth of the cave, exposing stratigraphic layers that contained tools over 50,000 years old typically associated with Neandertals in Europe (Mousterian tools).
They also found the remains of ancient meals such as the cut-marked bones of wild boars and elk and bits of charred fat. In addition, they found stone tools that were much more recent and that had likely been eroding from deeper inside the cave. To better understand the stratigraphy of the cave and document its occupation history, the team opened new sections further inside the cave in 2017.
As the team explored this new section, they began to unearth pierced shell beads, which Hodgkins examined more carefully back in the lab.
Illustration showing the placement of beads and shells along with the cranium.
A few days after they found the first bead, one of the excavators uncovered a small piece of the infant’s cranial vault.
“I was excavating in the adjacent square and remember looking over and thinking, ‘That’s a weird bone,’” Gravel-Miguel said. “It quickly became clear that not only we were looking at a human cranium, but that it was also of a very young individual. It was an emotional day.”
Using dental tools and a small paintbrush, researchers spent that week and the following field season carefully exposing the whole skeleton, which was adorned with articulated lines of pierced shell beads.
“The excavation techniques are state-of-the-art and leave no doubt to the associations of the materials with the skeleton,” said Curtis Marean, who was not involved in the study. Marean is associate director of the Institute of Human Origins and Foundation Professor with the School of Human Evolution and Social Change.
Important changes in human prehistory
In a series of analyses coordinated across multiple institutions and numerous experts, the team uncovered critical details about the ancient burial. Radiocarbon dating determined that the child lived 10,000 years ago, and amelogenin protein analysis and ancient DNA revealed that the infant was a female belonging to a lineage of European women known as the U5b2b haplogroup.
“There’s a decent record of human burials before around 14,000 years ago,” Hodgkins said. “But the latest Upper Paleolithic period and earliest part of the Mesolithic are more poorly known when it comes to funerary practices. Infant burials are especially rare, so Neve adds important information to help fill this gap.”
“The Mesolithic is particularly interesting,” said co-author Caley Orr, ASU doctoral graduate and paleoanthropologist and anatomist at the University of Colorado School of Medicine. “It followed the end of the final Ice Age and represents the last period in Europe when hunting and gathering was the primary way of making a living. So, it’s a really important time period for understanding human prehistory.”
Detailed virtual histology, or study of the tissue and structure, of the infant’s teeth, showed that she died 40 to 50 days after birth and that she experienced stress that briefly halted the growth of her teeth 47 days and 28 days before she was born. Carbon and nitrogen analyses of the teeth revealed that the baby’s mother had been nourishing the infant in her womb on a land-based diet.
The child as a member of the community
Gravel-Miguel performed an analysis of the ornaments adorning the infant, which demonstrated the care invested in each piece and showed that many of the ornaments exhibited wear that proves they were passed down to the child from group members. The details of this research — along with further results — are the focus of a separate article, currently under review.
Citing a similar burial of two infants dating to 11,500 years ago at Upward Sun River, Alaska, Hodgkins said the funerary treatment of Neve suggests that the recognition of infant females as full persons has deep origins in a common ancestral culture that was shared by peoples who migrated into Europe and those who migrated to North America. Or it may have arisen in parallel in populations across the planet.
The research, excavation and analysis were made possible with funding from The Wenner-Gren Foundation, Leakey Foundation, National Geographic Society Waitt Program, Hyde Family Foundations, Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council (SSHRC), the European Union’s Horizon 2020 Research and Innovation Programme, and the Max Planck Society.
According to a statement released by Flinders University, chemical analysis of 2,600-year-old copper ingots discovered off the coast of southwest France in 1964 indicates they came from a variety of locations.
For the first time, a scientific team led by Flinders University archaeologists, working with the Institute of History (CSIC) in Spain, has examined the origins of Iron Age metal items from an archaeological site in southwest France and found they were sourced from a variety of Mediterranean locations.
The underwater site of Rochelongue believed to be four small boats located west of Cap d’Agde in southwestern France and discovered in 1964, dates to about 600 BCE and its cargo included 800kg of copper ingots and about 1,700 bronze artefacts. They contain very pure copper with traces of lead, antimony, nickel and silver.
Rochelongue’s underwater site artefacts in-situ during the campaign of 1964
Flinders University maritime archaeology researcher Dr Enrique Aragón Nunez says the isotope analysis shows the composition of different ingots in the cache is consistent with Iberian and also eastern Alpine metalliferous sources, and possibly some Mediterranean sources – illustrating that water trade and movement was active in this period between Atlantic, Continental and Mediterranean circuits.
This now provides a key to investigate the coastal mobility and cultural interactions between the Languedoc area in France and the broader Western Mediterranean basin in 600 BCE – before permanent Greek settlement occurred in this region.
Trade for metals, especially with seafaring people from the Levant, Aegean and Greek mainland, influenced these indigenous communities with the introduction of their foreign cultural goods and practices.
While the various sizes, shapes and composition of the various ingots found at Rochelongue show they originated from diverse geographical sources, the elemental and lead isotope analyses provide much more comprehensive knowledge, showing that a broad and diverse exchange network existed in this period for metals that includes continental and maritime routes.
“These metallic objects are important diagnostically because they lend themselves to source tracing of geological components, and technological studies of their processing and manufacture,” says Flinders University Maritime Archaeology Associate Professor Wendy van Duivenvoorde.
“The copper ingots were made of unalloyed copper with low levels of impurities – and more than half can be linked to the Iberian Peninsula.
This points to the circulation of metal through the wider Mediterranean region, but also to local and western alpine mining and manufacture, and possibly north-western Sardinia.
“Therefore, the Rochelongue items speak of indigenous agency rather than maritime intervention.”
Archaeologists Unearth Celtic Warrior Grave Complete With Chariot, Elaborate Shield
Some archaeological finds have to be seen to be believed, and the discovery of the 2,200-year-old grave of a male Celtic warrior has experts very excited indeed – as you’ll understand once you take a peek at the haul.
Among the findings in the grave is an ornate shield described as “the most important British Celtic art object of the millennium” by archaeologist Melanie Giles from the University of Manchester in the UK, as reported by the Independent.
Made in an early Celtic art style known as La Tène, the shield features an unusual scalloped edge and a triple spiral design called a triskele. The shield also shows organic forms such as mollusc shells, along with signs of having been repaired.
The shield was buried alongside a 2,000-year-old chariot drawn by two horses.
“The popular belief is that elaborate metal-faced shields were purely ceremonial, reflecting status, but not used in battle,” says archaeologist Paula Ware from the MAP Archaeological Practice in the UK, according to the Yorkshire Post.
“Our investigation challenges this with the evidence of a puncture wound in the shield typical of a sword. Signs of repairs can also be seen, suggesting the shield was not only old but likely to have been well used.”
Measuring 75 centimetres or nearly 30 inches across, the shield would have been crafted by hammering a bronze sheet of metal from underneath. Any leather and wood trappings that once existed on the defensive weapon have since rotted away.
Besides the shield, in a rather grim turn, the grave also features what looks to be a chariot, complete with horses – though it’s not clear if the horses were sacrificed for the purposes of the burial or had already died beforehand.
“These horses were placed with their hooves on the ground and their rear legs looking as though they would leap out of the grave,” Ware explained.
The horse remains.
Seeing all this weaponry, a method of transportation and provisions packed into the grave indicates how seriously Celtic tribes of the time considered the move to the afterlife.
The society that this warrior would have lived in would have wanted to give him as much help as possible in whatever came next.
The man himself is thought to have been in his late 40s or older when he died, sometime around 320-174 BCE. Nothing like this type of burial has ever been seen in the UK before, although another chariot-and-horse grave was uncovered in Bulgaria in 2013.
These latest findings haven’t yet appeared in a peer-reviewed paper, but come from a burial site originally uncovered in 2018, near the town of Pocklington, Yorkshire. A red glass brooch and pig remains (another potential animal sacrifice) have also been discovered in the same grave.
As work continues on the artefacts uncovered from the site, expect to hear more about this ancient warrior and his unusual burial in the months and years to come – there are still plenty of unanswered questions.
“We don’t know how the man died,” Ware said, according to the Yorkshire Post. “There are some blunt force traumas but they wouldn’t have killed him. I don’t think he died in battle; it is highly likely he died in old age.”
“What his role was I can’t tell you. He has collected some nice goodies along the way – he is definitely not run of the mill.”
Neolithic And Bronze Age Burial Mounds With Remains Of Five Children Found In Denmark
It is extremely rare that burial mounds with children’s remains are discovered in Denmark, so it’s a big deal when some are located.
Recently, the remains of five children were found in an excavation in Hedehusene, Denmark. To find five sets of remains in one spot is very thrilling to researchers.
The remains of the children were spread over two separate graves. The first was a collective grave from the late Neolithic period (2400-1700 BCE) and contained the remains of four skeletons of children.
Rock coffin containing four children’s skeletons. The small flint dagger is the dark gray object on the right side just above the centre of the grave.
Three out of the four children in this collective grave were aged three to four years old, while the last child was a little older. The second grave was for a single individual and dates from the Bronze Age (1700-500 BCE).
One of the children in the collective grave was buried with a flint dagger as a burial gift, while the child from the single grave was found buried with a bronze ring attached to its head.
Archaeologist Katrine Ipsen Kjær explains the significance of this find, stating, “Right now it seems like it’s a graveyard dedicated to children. It is interesting in itself with a burial site with so far a time span between the individual graves.
It seems as if it was known to be a children’s cemetery. It is a mystery why only children are buried here. However, we cannot rule out that adults may have been buried here. For example, we have found a bronze blade at the top of the burial mound, and this is not a typical funerary gift for children.”
Little flint dagger was the only burial gift found in the collective grave.
It is a rare phenomenon for archaeologists to find any children buried anywhere before the Stone Age. As Kjær explains, “it is only graves from the late Middle Ages (1300-1400 AD) that it becomes more common to find children’s graves. Where have all the older children’s graves gone? It is actually a big mystery.
We know that infant mortality was high so there should be many child graves As in this case, we archaeologists occasionally find children’s graves but we don’t find as many as there should be. Were children only rarely buried? Did they have other burial rituals for children? Did the little bones just disappear over time?”
The bones of the skeletons found were well preserved. Katrine Ipsen Kjær hopes to find traces of DNA in the bones that could give archaeologists answers about who these children were.
DNA could provide clues as to how the children died. If the four children were buried in the collective grave in a short period of time, that could be an indication of an infectious disease.
It is rare for bones this old to still have traces of DNA, but archaeologists are hopeful to obtain some as they are quite curious to find some answers.
A stunning gold earring discovered in Denmark may have been gifted by the Emperor of Byzantium to a Viking chief 1,000 years ago, experts claim. Dating from the 11th century, the ‘completely unique’ gold jewellery has never been seen before in the Nordic countries.
Likely one of a pair, it was found by a metal detectorist in a field near Bøvling in West Jutland, Denmark. It’s thought to have been originally crafted in Byzantium or Egypt and is potential evidence the Vikings had connections all the way around the Mediterranean.
The Byzantine Empire (395 to 1204 and 1261 to 1453), also known as the Eastern Roman Empire or Byzantium, was a powerful civilization based in Constantinople (modern-day Istanbul).
The earring has an email, now slightly cracked, formed in a motif of two stylised birds around a tree or a plant, which symbolises the tree of life
It’s now being exhibited in Denmark National Museum’s Viking exhibition ‘Togtet’, which translates as ‘The Cruise’ and is all about Viking travels to the Middle East. Experts have so far been unable to find a similar earring in the area that may have formed a pair.
‘It is completely unique to us, we only know of 10 to 12 other specimens in the whole world, and we have never found one in Scandinavia before,’ said Peter Pentz, inspector at the National Museum Denmark.
‘We had expected to find such a fine and invaluable piece of jewellery like this together with a large gold treasure or in a royal tomb and not on a random field in Bøvling.’
The find consists of a crescent-shaped gold plate inserted in a frame made of gold threads adorned with small gold balls and gold ribbons.
Its crescent-shaped plate is covered with an enamel, now slightly cracked, which would have been created by a special technique involving breaking and powdering glass before melting it with metal so it becomes opaque.
The motif of the enamel is two stylised birds around a tree or a plant, which symbolises the tree of life. This type of jewellery is known especially from Muslim Egypt and Syria and from Byzantium and Russia.
Back of the earring. The find consists of a crescent-shaped gold plate inserted in a frame made of gold threads adorned with small gold balls and gold ribbons
In terms of style and craftsmanship, it’s similar to the Dagmark cross – an 11th or 12th-century Byzantine relic. The earring and the Dagmark Cross are thought to both date from the Viking Age or the earliest Middle Ages and were likely not traded but donated by kings and emperors.
That explains why the Dagmark cross was found in a queen’s grave, at St. Bendt’s Church in Ringsted, Denmark in 1683. In contrast, the new treasure was found in a field in Bøvling without known Viking sites nearby, so how it ended up there is, therefore, a bit of a mystery.
The earring and the Dagmark Cross (pictured) are thought to both date from the Viking Age or the earliest Middle Ages
The discoverer of the priceless find was 54-year-old Frants Fugl Vestergaard, who had searched the field many times before in the hunt for ‘danefæ’ – gold and silver in the earth without an owner.
As his detector gave a faint bleep, he picked up a clump of earth and crushed it in his hand to find the earring peeping out.
‘”Stop it”, I think, and then time stands still for me,’ he told the National Museum.
‘I get very humbled and wondered why I should find that piece and then even in West Jutland, where there is so much between the finds. It’s like getting a text from the past.
It’s now being exhibited in Denmark National Museum’s Viking exhibition ‘Togtet’, which translates as ‘The Cruise’ and is all about Viking travels to the Middle East
‘You always yearn to find something beautiful, a top find, and then you suddenly have it in your hands. It is completely inconceivable.’
One explanation for how it got there may be that many Vikings went into war service for the Byzantine emperor, who had a bodyguard consisting of warriors from Scandinavia.
Icelandic sagas show that mercenaries came home from the East with silk and weapons, and it is also said that the emperor occasionally donated fine gifts to his bodyguard.
So the earring could have been given personally by the emperor to a trusted Viking in the bodyguard and was then lost under unknown circumstances in Denmark.
The find confirms that West Jutland has always had strong connections around the world,’ said Astrid Toftdal Jensen, an inspector at Holstebro Museum, which is near its finding place. Jensen hopes the earring can be lent to the museum at a later date so that it can be seen in the area where it was found.
