Category Archives: WORLD

AFRICA, WORLD

Neolithic Watermelons May Have Been Valued for Their Seeds

Neolithic Watermelons May Have Been Valued for Their Seeds

The oldest known seeds from a watermelon relative, dating back 6,000 years to the Neolithic period, were found during an archaeological dig in Libya.

An investigation of these seeds led by biologist Susanne S. Renner at Washington University in St. Louis reveals some surprises about how our ancestors used a predecessor of today’s watermelon.

These results and two new genomes of ancient seeds are published in the journal Molecular Biology and Evolution.

Renner

Scientists generally agree that watermelons came from Africa, but exactly where and when watermelons with red, sweet flesh were first domesticated from their wild form is debatable.

The most recent data point to watermelon getting its start in the Nile valley, which is consistent with archaeological evidence.

However, the very old seeds discovered at Uan Muhuggiag, a rock shelter in what is now the Sahara Desert in Libya, seemed at odds with this explanation. There was no way to be certain of their identity prior to this investigation.

“The oldest seeds of watermelons cannot be securely identified as either belonging to a sweet-pulped domesticated form, or instead to one of the bitter-pulped wild forms,” said Renner, an honorary professor of biology in Arts & Sciences. “The seeds of the seven species of Citrullus are basically undistinguishable.”

“Now, having a chromosome-level genome, we can be sure that Neolithic Libyans were using a bitter-fleshed watermelon,” she said. “We suspect they used the fruits to get at the (numerous!) seeds, which even today are eaten air-dried or roasted or also boiled in soups or stews.”

Co-senior author Guillaume Chomicki, a National Environmental Research Council fellow at the University of Sheffield in the United Kingdom, collected dozens of samples of watermelon and watermelon relatives from herbarium specimens in the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew, as part of the quest to trace the path of watermelon’s domestication.

He and Renner also obtained much older samples: the 6,000-year-old Libyan seeds and another set of 3,300-year-old Sudanese seeds.

Neolithic Watermelons May Have Been Valued for Their Seeds
An unexpected new insight from this study is that Citrullus appears to have initially been collected or cultivated for its seeds, not its sweet flesh, consistent with seed damage patterns induced by human teeth in the oldest Libyan material.

“These seeds were a riddle because they were thought to be the oldest true watermelon seeds,” Chomicki said. “Yet they were from Libya, which was never thought to be the cradle of watermelon domestication.”

The scientists generated genome sequences from the seeds from Libya and Sudan and from the herbarium collections and analyzed these data together with resequenced genomes from important germplasm collections.

They discovered that the oldest seeds came from a plant known as an egusi melon, a watermelon relative that is currently restricted to western Africa.

“Both plant ‘fossils’ were C-14 dated and, as far as we know, are among the oldest plant genomes ever obtained,” Renner said.

“An unexpected new insight is that Citrullus appears to have initially been collected or cultivated for its seeds, not its sweet flesh, consistent with seed damage patterns induced by human teeth in the oldest Libyan material,” Chomicki said.

“This study documents the use of the seeds (rather than the fruit) of a watermelon relative more than 6,000 years ago, prior to the domestication of the watermelon.”

“Watermelons — the wild species, as well as the domesticated form — have very numerous seeds that are tasty and oil-rich,” Renner said.

“Different from the pulp, the seeds never contain the extremely bitter cucurbitacin chemical. Snacking on those easily available nutritious seeds may have been a good thing.”

ENGLAND, EUROPE, WORLD

HUNDREDS Of Megalithic Monuments Discovered Around Stonehenge

HUNDREDS Of Megalithic Monuments Discovered Around Stonehenge

In a groundbreaking news release, archaeologists have revealed the results of a four-year-long project to map the hidden landscape beneath the surface of the Stonehenge environs, and what they found is nothing short of amazing.

Through their high-tech devices, they could see a landscape teeming with burial mounds, chapels, shrines, pits, and other structures, which had never been seen before, including another massive megalithic monument composed of 60 giant stones stretched out along a 330-metre long c-shaped enclosure.

According to The Independent, the discovery dramatically alters the prevailing view of Stonehenge as the primary site in the landscape. Instead, it presents the Salisbury Plain as an active religious centre with more than 60 key locations where ancient peoples could carry out sacred rituals and fulfil their religious obligations.

HUNDREDS Of Megalithic Monuments Discovered Around Stonehenge

“This is not just another find,” said Professor Vince Gaffney of the University of Birmingham. “It’s going to change how we understand Stonehenge.”

Using powerful ground-penetrating radar, which can scan archaeological sites to a depth of up to four metres, investigators from Birmingham and Bradford universities and from the Ludwig Boltzmann Institute in Vienna discovered hundreds of hidden monuments and features that cover the landscape in all directions.

The biggest surprise was a 330-metre-long line of up to 60 buried stone pillars, inside the bank of a large, bowl-shaped feature called Durrington Walls, Britain’s largest henge, which sits beside the River Avon.

The 3-metre long and 1.5-metre wide stones are laid horizontally inside the mound, although they may have once stood vertically.

“Up till now, we had absolutely no idea that the stones were there,” said Professor Gaffney.

The line of megalithic stones seems to have formed the southern arm of a c-shaped ritual enclosure which faced directly towards the river, the rest of which was made up of an artificially scarped natural elevation in the ground.

The monument was later converted from a c-shaped to a roughly circular enclosure, now known as Durrington Walls – Britain’s largest pre-historic henge, roughly 12 times the size of Stonehenge itself.

In addition to this monumental discovery, the research team found more than 60 other previously unknown pre-historic monuments scattered across Salisbury Plain, including 20 large ritual pits up to 5 metres in diameter, 8 previously unknown Bronze Age burial mounds, 4 Iron Age shrines or tombs, 6 Bronze Age and Iron Age livestock enclosures, and 17 other henge-like Neolithic and Bronze Age structures, each between 10 and 30 metres in diameter.

Some may well have consisted of circles of large timber posts – wooden equivalents of conventional prehistoric stone circles.

“It shows that, in terms of temples and shrines, Stonehenge was far from being alone,” said Professor Gaffney.

Map showing the existence of existing and newly-discovered monuments in Salisbury Plain.

Another significant discovery was a mound between Durrington Walls and Stonehenge, located approximately 3 km from Stonehenge, which has been revealed as a 33-metre long, wooden ‘House of the Dead’.

Archaeologists found evidence of ritual practices including excarnation, in which the skin and organs of the deceased were removed.  The building is thought to have been used for seven generations by a single family before it was buried in chalk and forgotten for thousands of years.

A visualisation of the long barrow, which experts think was used for complex rituals, including the removal of flesh and limbs from dead bodies.

The research team is now analysing the data in an attempt to piece together exactly how Neolithic and Bronze Age people used the Stonehenge landscape. Using computer models, they are trying to work out how all the newly discovered monuments were connected with each other.

This incredible discovery has been announced ahead of a two-part special BBC Two documentary titled ‘Operation Stonehenge: What Lies Beneath, in which the research team will release the full extent of their findings.

Watch trailer of the Operation Stonehenge BBC series:

AUSTRALIA, WORLD

9,000-Year-Old Stone Houses Found On Australian Island

9,000-Year-Old Stone Houses Found On Australian Island

Archaeologists working on the Dampier Archipelago, just off the West Australian coast, have found evidence of stone houses dated to shortly after the last ice age, between 8,000 and 9,000 years ago – making them the oldest houses in Australia.

The Dampier Archipelago is a group of 42 islands, and on one of the islands, the team uncovered knee-high rock walls.

“Excavations on Rosemary Island, one of the outer islands, have uncovered evidence of one of the earliest known domestic structures in Australia, dated between 8,000 and 9,000 years ago,” said lead researcher Jo McDonald, from the University of Western Australia.

“This is an astounding find and has not only enormous scientific significance but will be of great benefit to Aboriginal communities in the area, enhancing their connections to their deep past and cultural heritage.”

The researchers suggest that the structures’ inhabitants used branches or other plant materials to make the roofs. The houses are also quite sophisticated, with multiple ‘rooms’.

“Inside the houses, you have separate areas – it could have been a sleeping area and a working area. There is evidence of people grinding seeds on the rock floors inside the houses as well as shell food remains,” McDonald told Paige Taylor from The Australian. 

“We don’t really know what they were used for as these types of structures were not used in the historic periods.”

This particular structure should help researchers to investigate how Aboriginal groups lived after the ice age – a time when sea levels rose 130 metres, at a rate of 1 metre every five to 10 years. This would have eventually cut the Archipelago islands off from the mainland.

“We assume they were a way of marking out social space for groups living close together as the sea level rose after the ice age, pushing groups inland into smaller territories,” says McDonald.

“While these people were hunter-gatherers, these structures suggest people were developing social strategies to be more sedentary, to cope with environmental change.”

The team discovered the houses back in 2014, but they have only recently been dated using shells of edible mangrove gastropods found inside.

Although the researchers haven’t yet published a paper, so we can’t get too excited until then, there should be more information released as the team find it, and they will hopefully publish a paper in the next few months.

Murujuga, which includes the islands and the nearby Burrup peninsula, are also hugely culturally important to the Aboriginal people in the area, and important for researchers trying to understand the past. A number of interest groups are pushing for Murujuga to become World Heritage listed.

“As well as containing more than one million rock engravings of great scientific and cultural significance, the Archipelago is home to one of the country’s largest industrial ports,” McDonald said in a statement today.

She says that research from the last 12 months indicates that there was a human occupation in the area dating back 21,000 years, even before the last ice age.

Just 100 km west, on Barrow Island, researchers have also found evidence of human occupation dating back 50,000 years. 

According to McDonald, although there are similar structures around Australia, the houses on Rosemary Island are the oldest found.

We hope this valuable area will be protected for many years to come. 

MEXICO, NORTH AMERICA, WORLD

Maya rulers’ ashes turned into pelota balls – expert

Maya rulers’ ashes turned into pelota balls – expert

Some Maya rulers may have been incinerated and their ashes mixed with rubber to make the balls used in the game of pelota, an archaeologist says. Burnt human remains uncovered at the ruins of a Maya city have led to a new theory about the death rites of the ancient civilisation.

Descendants of the Maya have been trying to revive the ball game
Descendants of the Maya have been trying to revive the ball game

Archaeologist Juan Yadeun Angulo came up with the hypothesis after finding urns containing human ashes, rubber and roots at a Maya temple in Mexico.

Pelota is among the oldest team sports.

Mr Yadeun, an archaeologist with Mexico’s National Institute of Anthropology and History (INAH), has been studying a recently uncovered crypt underneath the Sun Temple at the Toniná archaeological site in southern Mexico.

Inside the underground crypt and its antechamber, archaeologists found 400 urns containing a mixture of human ashes, coal, rubber and plant roots.

Vases containing human ashes and rubber were found in a crypt 8m (26ft) underground

Mr Yadeun believes the crypt was used to burn the bodies of the dead in a religious ritual.

The ashes were then added to other organic material to make the heavy balls used in pelota, the team game played in Mesoamerica thousands of years ago, the theory goes.

The Toniná archaeological site may not be as well-known as that of Mayan ruins in Palenque but it is an impressive complex built on a hill in the jungle of Chiapas.

Among the constructions preserved to this day is the sunken ballcourt where the Maya played pelota.

The sunken ballcourt at Toniná is well preserved

According to Mr Yadeun, stone carvings at key locations inside the ballcourt offer clues that back up his theory.

He says the stone carvings suggest that three rulers, all of whom died between 722AD and 776AD, were taken to the “cave of the dead” for their “transmutation”.

“Just as Egyptians tried to preserve [bodies], we know here they were transformed in another way,” Mr Yadeun told Reuters news agency.

The archaeologist thinks that the Maya wanted the bodies of their rules to “be converted into a life force, something to stimulate their people” and therefore worked their ashes into the rubber used to make balls for the game.

“We have evidence they were incorporated into balls, during the Classic Period the balls were gigantic,” Mr Yadeun explained.

A carved stone disc found at a different site in Chiapas suggests the size of the pelota ball in the 6th Century and how players propelled it with their hips.

The disc of Chinkultic, which dates back to 590, depicts a Maya ball player
NORTH AMERICA, U.S.A, WORLD

Possible Hessian Remains Found at Revolutionary War Battlefield

Possible Hessian Remains Found at Revolutionary War Battlefield

Researchers believe they have uncovered in a mass grave in New Jersey the remains of as many as 12 Hessian soldiers who fought during the Revolutionary War, officials announced Tuesday.

Possible Hessian Remains Found at Revolutionary War Battlefield
Shown is a King George III gold guinea, discovered in an excavation site at the Red Bank Battlefield Park in National Park, N.J., Tuesday, Aug. 2, 2022. Researchers believe they have uncovered in a mass grave in New Jersey the remains of as many as 12 Hessian soldiers who fought during the Revolutionary War, officials announced Tuesday.

The remains, found at the site of Fort Mercer and the 1777 Battle of Red Bank, rested for 245 years until a human femur was found in June during an archaeological dig of a trench system that surrounded the fort, scientists said.

The additional excavation yielded more skeletal remains and items including pewter and brass buttons and a King George III gold guinea, which would have been a soldier’s pay for a month.

A team of scientists from Rowan University and officials from Gloucester County presented their preliminary findings during a news conference at Red Bank Battlefield Park, just south of Philadelphia.

Officials believe the remains are part of a mass grave of Hessian soldiers—German troops hired by the British—who were part of about 377 troops killed by Colonial forces during the Battle of Red Bank. Americans lost 14, historians said.

The victory allowed Americans at the fort to delay the British from moving supplies up the Delaware River.

“Based on everything we’ve found and the context of what we’ve found, these appear to be Hessians,” Wade Catts, principal archaeologist for South River Heritage Consulting of Delaware, said in a statement.

Shown is a soldiers knee buckle discovered in an excavation site at the Red Bank Battlefield Park in National Park, N.J., Tuesday, Aug. 2, 2022. Researchers believe they have uncovered in a mass grave in New Jersey the remains of as many as 12 Hessian soldiers who fought during the Revolutionary War, officials announced Tuesday.
Shown is a casting made of human remains discovered in an excavation site at the Red Bank Battlefield Park in National Park, N.J., Tuesday, Aug. 2, 2022. Researchers believe they have uncovered in a mass grave in New Jersey the remains of as many as 12 Hessian soldiers who fought during the Revolutionary War, officials announced Tuesday.
Flags indicate the location of human remains discovered at the Red Bank Battlefield Park in National Park, N.J., Tuesday, Aug. 2, 2022. Researchers believe they have uncovered in a mass grave in New Jersey the remains of as many as 12 Hessian soldiers who fought during the Revolutionary War, officials announced Tuesday.

The remains have been turned over to forensic anthropologists at the New Jersey State Police forensic unit to extract DNA from the bones and teeth to identify their origin. Additional studies are being conducted to examine life history, health and disease.

The scientists hope they can identify the remains and find their descendants.

“We’re hoping that eventually, perhaps, we can find some of these individuals,” Rowan University public historian Jennifer Janofsky said in a statement.

“If we can extract their stories, and if we can tell their stories, it lets us put a name to a face. And that, to me, is a very powerful moment in public history.”

Officials said the remains were excavated with “extraordinary attention” to preserving the dignity of the war dead.

Wade Catts, the principal archaeologist for South River Heritage Consulting of Delaware, speaks with members of the media and officials at the Red Bank Battlefield Park in National Park, N.J., Tuesday, Aug. 2, 2022. Researchers believe they have uncovered in a mass grave in New Jersey the remains of as many as 12 Hessian soldiers who fought during the Revolutionary War, officials announced Tuesday.
Rowan University public historian Jennifer Janofsky speaks with members of the media at the Red Bank Battlefield Park in National Park, N.J., Tuesday, Aug. 2, 2022. Researchers believe they have uncovered in a mass grave in New Jersey the remains of as many as 12 Hessian soldiers who fought during the Revolutionary War, officials announced Tuesday.
Rowan University public historian Jennifer Janofsky speaks during a news conference at the Red Bank Battlefield Park in National Park, N.J., Tuesday, Aug. 2, 2022. Researchers believe they have uncovered in a mass grave in New Jersey the remains of as many as 12 Hessian soldiers who fought during the Revolutionary War, officials announced Tuesday.

When the study is complete, they will be interred at another site, and the trench will be refilled. The land will be incorporated into the park on a bluff overlooking the river.

“Archaeology is helping us better understand what happened on the battlefield,” Janofsky said.

AFRICA, EGYPT, WORLD

The Legendary Emerald Tablet and its Secrets of the Universe

The Legendary Emerald Tablet and its Secrets of the Universe

The origins of Western alchemy can be traced back to Hellenistic Egypt, in particular to the city of Alexandria. One of the most important characters in the mythology of alchemy is Hermes Trismegistus (Hermes the Thrice-Great). The name of this figure is derived from the Egyptian god of wisdom, Thoth, and his Greek counterpart, Hermes.

The Hermetica, which is said to be written by Hermes Trismegistus, is generally regarded as the basis of Western alchemical philosophy and practice. In addition, Hermes Trismegistus is also believed to be the author of the Emerald Tablet.

Legends of the Emerald Tablet

The Emerald Tablet is said to be a tablet of emerald or green stone inscribed with the secrets of the universe. The source of the original Emerald Tablet is unclear; hence it is surrounded by legends.

The most common story claims that the tablet was found in a caved tomb under the statue of Hermes in Tyana, clutched in the hands of the corpse of Hermes Trismegistus himself.

Hermes Trismegistus.

And the creator of the Emerald Tablet has been provided in myth as the Egyptian god Thoth, who Armando Mei writes “divided his knowledge into 42 plates of emerald, codifying the great scientific principles ruling the Universe.

The legend tells that after the gods’ fall, the Hermetic tablets were cleverly hidden so that no human being might find them. Only Thoth, on his return to that dimension, was able to recover the mysterious book.

Thoth

Another legend suggests that it was the third son of Adam and Eve, Seth, who originally wrote it. Others believed that the tablet was once held within the Ark of the Covenant. Some even claim that the original source of the Emerald Tablet is none other than the fabled city of Atlantis.

Spreading Stories of the Emerald Tablet

While various claims have been made regarding the origins of the Emerald Tablet, as yet no verifiable evidence has been found to support them.

The oldest documentable source of the Emerald Tablet’s text is the Kitab sirr al-haliqi (Book of the Secret of Creation and the Art of Nature), which was itself a composite of earlier works.

This was an Arabic work written in the 8th century AD and attributed to ‘Balinas’ or Pseudo-Apollonius of Tyana. It is Balinas who provides us with the story of how he discovered the Emerald Tablet in the caved tomb. Based on this Arabic work, some believe that the Emerald Tablet was also an Arabic text and written between the 6th and 8th centuries AD, rather than a piece of work from Antiquity, as many have claimed.

While Balinas claimed that the Emerald Tablet was written originally in Greek, the original document that he purportedly possessed no longer exists, if indeed it existed at all. Some say the text burned up in the Library of Alexandria. Nevertheless, Balinas’ version of the text itself quickly became well-known and has been translated by various people over the centuries.

For instance, an early version of the Emerald Tablet also appeared in a work called the Kitab Ustuqus al-Uss al-Thani (Second Book of the Elements of the Foundation), which is attributed to Jabir ibn Hayyan. It would, however, take several more centuries before the text was accessible to Europeans. In the 12th century AD, the Emerald Tablet was translated into Latin by Hugo von Santalla.

A reconstruction of what the Emerald Tablet is believed to have looked like.

What’s Written on the Emerald Tablet?

The Emerald Tablet would become one of the pillars of Western alchemy. It was a highly influential text in medieval and Renaissance alchemy, and probably still is today. In addition to translations of the Emerald Tablet, numerous commentaries have also been written regarding its contents.

For instance, a translation by Isaac Newton was discovered among his alchemical papers. This translation is currently being held in King’s College Library in Cambridge University. Other notable researchers of the Emerald Tablet include Roger Bacon, Albertus Magnus, John Dee, and Aleister Crowley. And today knowledge of the legendary Emerald Tablet (at least one interpretation of it ) is reaching new audiences with its presence in the surreal German-language series Dark.

An imaginative 17th-century depiction of the Emerald Tablet from the work of Heinrich Khunrath, 1606.

The interpretation of the Emerald Text is not a straightforward matter, as it is after all a piece of esoteric text. One interpretation, for instance, suggests that the text describes seven stages of alchemical transformation – calcination, dissolution, separation, conjunction, fermentation, distillation and coagulation. Yet, despite the various interpretations available, it seems that none of their authors claims to possess knowledge of the whole truth. Furthermore, readers are encouraged to read the text and try to interpret and find the hidden truths themselves.

AFRICA, EGYPT, WORLD

2,700-year-old ancient Egyptian stroke victim discovered

2,700-year-old ancient Egyptian stroke victim discovered

The recent medical inspection of the mummy in Egyptian led to a novel discovery believed to be one of, if not the earliest examples of a stroke in an Egyptian mummy.

2,700-year-old ancient Egyptian stroke victim discovered
A 2,300-year-old mummy is displayed after it was found by the Sakkara pyramids south of Cairo, May 3, 2005.

Upon examination, a research team from the Spanish National Program for Scientific Research, Technology and Innovation concluded that the mummy,  a woman between 25 and 40 years of age who died about 2,700 years ago, suffered a right cerebral stroke.

The mummy was studied both macroscopically and radiographically.

The findings, published last month in World Neurosurgery, explain that the position of the female mummy’s shoulders, head, flexed arm and inward turning of the left foot indicate she endured a stroke on the right side of her brain.

The researchers also note that a stick or a crutch remained with her in the mummification process, which they speculate she used in life following the stroke.

The earliest example of a stroke 

The researchers believe the woman lived with the aftermath of the stroke for several years. Strokes, which occur when blood supply to the brain is disrupted, are the second highest leading cause of death and disability globally.

The typical stroke patient today is at least 60 years old, decades older than the mummy is believed to have been.

Stroke (illustrative)

Ancient mummies can advance modern medicine

In another study this month that analyzed the remains of a 2,000-year-old Egyptian mummy and found that she may have suffered from nasopharyngeal cancer, Polish researchers said that investigating mummy illnesses can significantly contribute to modern medicine.

NORTH AMERICA, U.S.A, WORLD

Octopus lures from the Mariana Islands were found to be the oldest in the world

Octopus lures from the Mariana Islands were found to be the oldest in the world

An archaeological study has determined that cowrie-shell artefacts found throughout the Mariana Islands were lures used for hunting octopuses and that the devices, similar versions of which have been found on islands across the Pacific, are the oldest known artefacts of their kind in the world.

Octopus lures from the Mariana Islands were found to be the oldest in the world
University of Guam archaeologist Michael Carson at the 2013 excavation of Sanhalom, near the House of Taga, on the island of Tinian in the Northern Mariana Islands. The excavation uncovered an octopus lure artefact from a layer that Carson has since carbon dated to 1500–1100 B.C., making it the oldest known artefact of its kind in the world.

The study used carbon dating of archaeological layers to confirm that lures found on the Northern Mariana Islands of Tinian and Saipan were from about 1500 B.C., or 3,500 years ago.  

“That’s back to the time when people were first living in the Mariana Islands. So we think these could be the oldest octopus lures in the entire Pacific region and, in fact, the oldest in the world,” said Michael T. Carson, an archaeologist with the Micronesian Area Research Center at the University of Guam.

The study, titled “Let’s catch octopus for dinner: Ancient inventions of octopus lures in the Mariana Islands of the remote tropical Pacific,” is published in World Archaeology, a peer-reviewed academic journal. Carson, who holds a doctorate in anthropology, is the lead author of the study, assisted by Hsiao-Chun Hung from The Australian National University in Canberra, Australia.

The fishing devices were made with cowrie shells, a type of sea snail and favourite food of octopuses, that were connected by a fibre cord to a stone sinker and a hook.

They have been found in seven sites in the Mariana Islands. The oldest lures were excavated in 2011 from Sanhalom near the House of Taga in Tinian and in 2016 from Unai Bapot in Saipan. Other locations include Achugao in Saipan, Unai Chulu in Tinian, and Mochom at Mangilao Golf Course, Tarague Beach, and Ritidian Beach Cave in Guam.

Known artefacts, unknown purpose — until now

“The artefacts have been known — we knew about them. It just took a long time considering the possibilities, the different hypotheses, of what they could be,” Carson said. “The conventional idea — what we were told long ago from the Bishop Museum [in Honolulu] — was that these must be for scraping breadfruit or other plants, like maybe taro. [But] they don’t look like that.”

The shells didn’t have the serrated edge of other known food-scraping tools. With their holes and grooves where the fibre cord would have been attached as well as the stone sinker components, they appeared a closer match to octopus lures found in Tonga from about 3,000 years ago or 1100 B.C.

“We’re confident they are the pieces of octopus lures, and we’re confident they date back to 1500 B.C.,” Carson said.

An invention of the ancient CHamorus?

Carson said the question now becomes: Did the ancient CHamoru people invent this adaptation to their environment during the time when they first lived in the islands?”

That’s a possibility, he said, the other being that they brought the tradition with them from their former homeland; however, no artefacts of this kind have yet been discovered in the potential homelands of the first Marianas settlers.

If the CHamoru people did invent the first octopus lures, it provides new insight into their ingenuity and ability to problem solve — having to create novel and specialized ways to live in a new environment and take advantage of an available food source.

“It tells us that […] this kind of food resource was important enough for them that they invented something very particular to trap these foods,” Carson said. “We can’t say that it contributed to a massive percentage of their diet — it probably did not — but it was important enough that it became what we would call a ‘tradition’ in archaeology.”

The next question to look at, Carson said, is whether there are similar objects anywhere else from an older time.

“Purely from an archaeology standpoint, knowing the oldest of something is always important — because then you can track how things change through time,” he said. “[…] The only other place that would be is in the overseas homeland area for the first CHamoru people moving to the Marianas. So we would look in islands in Southeast Asia and Taiwan for those findings.”