Category Archives: WORLD

EUROPE, ITALY, WORLD

Does Composition of Roman Coins Reflect Currency Crisis?

Does Composition of Roman Coins Reflect Currency Crisis?

New scientific analysis of the composition of Roman denarii has brought fresh understanding to a financial crisis briefly mentioned by the Roman statesman and writer Marcus Tullius Cicero in his essay on moral leadership, De Officiis, and solved a longstanding historical debate.

Does Composition of Roman Coins Reflect Currency Crisis?

Researchers at the University of Warwick and the University of Liverpool have analysed coins of the period and revealed a debasement of the currency far greater than historians had thought, with coins that had been pure silver before 90BC cut with up to 10 per cent copper five years later.

Dr. Ponting at the University of Liverpool said: “The Romans had been used to extremely fine silver coinage, so they may well have lost confidence in the denarius when it ceased to be pure. The precise level of debasement might have been less important to contemporaries than the mere realisation that the coin was adulterated and no longer made of true ‘silver’.”

Professor Butcher at the University of Warwick said “The discovery of this significant decrease in the value of the denarius has shed new light on Cicero’s hints of a currency crisis in 86BC. Historians have long debated what the statesman and scholar meant when he wrote “the coinage was being tossed around so that no one was able to know what he had.” (De Officiis, 3:80) and we believe we have now solved this puzzle.”

The reference is part of an anecdote describing self-serving behaviour by Marius Gratidianus, who took credit for a proposal for currency reform worked out jointly by the tribunes and the college of praetors and became hugely popular with the public as a result.

But what was the cause of the coinage being ‘tossed about, and what were the solutions for which Gratidianus took credit?  

Rome and the Coinages of the Mediterranean 200 BCE – 64 CE, a five-year research project funded by the ERC aims to increase our understanding of the economies of classical Rome and other Mediterranean states by analysing the composition of their coins and cross-referencing the findings with the historical record.

The research team includes Professor Kevin Butcher at the University of Warwick, Dr Matthew Ponting at the University of Liverpool, and Dr Adrian Hillier at ISIS Neutron and Muon Facility, STFC Rutherford Appleton Laboratory.

Dr Ponting said: “Our minimally invasive sampling technique used to take samples from these important coins has revealed a significant decline in the value of the denarius – from being a pure silver coin, the denarius first dropped to under 95% fine, and then it fell again to 90%, with some coins as low as 86%, suggesting a severe currency crisis.”

Professor Kevin Butcher explains the context: “In the years after 91 BC, the Roman state was in danger of becoming bankrupt. The Romans were at war with their own allies in Italy, and by the conclusion of the war, in 89 BC, there was a debt crisis.

“By 86 BC there appears to have been a crisis of confidence in the currency, too. Cicero related how the Roman tribunes approached the college of praetors to resolve the crisis before Gratidianus claimed sole credit for the collective effort.

“One theory is that Gratidianus fixed the exchange rate between the silver denarius and the bronze as (which had only recently been reduced in weight). Another is that he published a method for detecting fake denarii, and so restored faith in the coinage.

“Unfortunately, Cicero’s choice of words is too obscure for historians to determine exactly what was going on. His purpose in writing about it wasn’t to illuminate monetary history; he was just using the incident as an illustration of a Roman magistrate behaving badly by taking credit for the work of others.

“It has long been thought that there was a very slight devaluation of the denarius between 89-87, but was it enough to trigger a currency crisis?”

The results of the metallurgical analysis suggest that the financial difficulties experienced by Rome in these years led to a relaxation of standards at the mint in 90 BC, with the result that the silver content of the coinage declined in two stages so that by 87 BC the coinage was deliberately alloyed with 5-10% copper.

Professor Butcher added: “This could be the meaning of Cicero’s words: that the value of the coinage was ‘tossed about’ because nobody could be certain whether the denarii they had were pure or not.

“It is all the more noteworthy that around the time Gratidianus published his edict, the standard of fineness rose sharply, reversing the debasement and restoring the denarius to a high-quality currency.

“Although the precise chronology remains uncertain, the new scientific data suggest that it could have been the main aim of Gratidianus’ edict, rather than something to do with exchange rates between silver and bronze or detecting forgeries.”

In the decades that followed, the Romans avoided debasing the denarius again, until the state once again faced huge expenses during the civil war between Pompey and Julius Caesar. Even then, the Roman mint did not go as far as it had in the time of Gratidianus.

These findings are part of a larger EU-funded study that aims to examine the financial and monetary strategies of Mediterranean states from c. 150 BCE to a major coinage reform in c. 64 CE by providing a detailed and reliable set of analyses of the chemical composition of all major silver coinages of that period.

AUSTRALIA, WORLD

WA Aboriginal site near Rio Tinto mine more than 50,000 years old, a new study reveals

WA Aboriginal site near Rio Tinto mine more than 50,000 years old, a new study reveals

An Aboriginal sacred place located 65 metres from a land bridge used by Rio Tinto to haul iron ore is at least 50,000 years old, with new research finding evidence of occupation during the height of the last ice age. The mining giant, which funded the latest excavation, has promised to ensure the site “is preserved for future generations”.

WA Aboriginal site near Rio Tinto mine more than 50,000 years old, a new study reveals
Traditional owners say the latest excavation at the Aboriginal sacred site Yirra is globally significant and needs to be protected.

Archaeological exploration at the site, known as Yirra by the Yinhawangka traditional owners, has yielded stone tools, charcoal and bone which show a 50,000-plus year habitation, making it one of the oldest sites yet found in Australia. The research is the first traditional owner-led, non-mining related, heritage excavation in Yinhawangka country, and the first time Rio Tinto has participated in such exploration.

The initiative is part of the company’s efforts to improve its relationships with traditional owner groups in the wake of the Juukan Gorge disaster, when the iron ore giant destroyed a 46,000-year-old rock shelter against the consent of Puutu Kunti Kurrama and Pinikura traditional owners.

A subsequent 2021 federal parliamentary inquiry heard that archaeological work was usually perfunctory, and only done as part of a mining company’s application to destroy Aboriginal heritage sites under Western Australia’s previous heritage laws.

Heritage experts told the inquiry that very few sites were studied in detail before the sign-off to destroy was given. The work at Yirra marks a significant departure from that practice.

Yinhawangka people told the Juukan Gorge inquiry they were concerned for the integrity of Yirra, which was recorded in the WA heritage system but was not a registered site and therefore “unprotected”. The traditional owners said Yirra was very close to a “massive” (110-metre high) land bridge that haul pack trucks used to deliver ore from the mine pit. They said large boulders had rolled onto the site and there was significant soil erosion.

Experts say the Yirra site is among the oldest known places of human habitation in Australia.

Rio Tinto’s cultural heritage management plan did not provide for any actions relating to Yirra at that time, they said.

Now there are calls for more work of this kind to be done.

“We hope that Yirra will help us tell our ancestral story to Australia and our future generations. We would still be visiting this site if it wasn’t for the mining leases,” Yinhawangka Aboriginal Corporation (YAC) chair Halloway Smirke said.

“All Pilbara groups should have this kind of scientific work done on cultural sites.

“Important sites like Yirra need to be protected, especially when they turn out to be amongst the oldest known places of human habitation in Australia,” Smirke said.

YAC heritage manager, archaeologist and anthropologist Dr Anna Fagan said the study was globally significant.

“This was the first study of its kind to be done, not for mining compliance or heritage clearance, but for Yinhawangka People and Country. The Yirra findings help overturn and reset ideas of desert presence in Australia and I’m confident in global narratives,” Dr Fagan said.

A spokesperson for Rio Tinto said the company acknowledged the significance of Yirra “and is committed to working in partnership with the Yinhawangka people” to preserve it.

“We’ve undertaken a geotechnical study to further our understanding of the surrounds of the site and implemented additional controls,” the spokesperson said, without elaborating.

YAC conducted the archaeological work in collaboration with Archae-aus heritage consultants, and researchers from the University of Western Australia. Archae-aus director Fiona Hook, who excavated the site with her husband, the late Dr Bruce Veitch, and traditional owners more than 20 years ago, said the importance of the site has now been proven beyond doubt.

“When the old dates were returned, I was overwhelmed by emotion. I’ve worked with three generations of Yinhawangka People at this place. It is such an immense relief that we finally got to return to the site and excavate Yirra again after 20 years of waiting,” Hook said.

Rio Tinto said it plans to fund further traditional owner-led cultural research and archaeological excavations.

“This is a wonderful outcome for the Yinhawangka people and we welcome this incredible discovery,” Rio’s iron ore chief executive Simon Trott said.

“These findings at Yirra are a major archaeological breakthrough of international significance, expanding knowledge of Aboriginal occupation in the Pilbara,” Trott said.

Rio Tinto is in talks with other traditional owner groups in the Pilbara to fund further traditional owner-led cultural research and archaeological excavations, a spokesperson said.

EUROPE, POLAND, WORLD

Researchers Reconstruct Likenesses From 400-Year-Old Bones

Researchers Reconstruct Likenesses From 400-Year-Old Bones

The bust of an elderly man and digital images of a young woman and a young man are the results of research conducted on human skulls found in an early medieval stronghold.

Researchers Reconstruct Likenesses From 400-Year-Old Bones

The appearance of the former inhabitants of Upper Lusatia was recreated by anthropologists, archaeologists and visual artists.

The three reconstructions were made by the team of Professor Barbara Kwiatkowska from the Wroclaw University of Environmental and Life Sciences in collaboration with visual artists from the Academy of Art and Design in Wroclaw. One female and two male skulls were found in Göda, western Saxony.

‘Radiocarbon dating of human remains showed that the cemetery in the yard of the stronghold functioned between the end of the 15th century and the beginning of the 17th century when the stronghold was already abandoned.

The older man’s appearance has been recreated in the form of a full, realistic bust. The reconstruction of the appearance of the young man and the young woman was done digitally.

Upon discovery almost a century ago, these burials were thought to date from the early Middle Ages. That is why we included them in our research project that concerns the Polish-German border 1,000 years ago.

This allowed verifying their chronology. It turned out that these graves were much younger than previously thought. This is another example that it is worth it to re-analyse past archaeological discoveries with modern research tools’, explains Dr. Paweł Konczewski, an archaeologist from the Wroclaw University of Environmental and Life Sciences.

The reconstructions are presented at the City Museum in Budziszyn at an exhibition devoted to the period of the early Middle Ages in Upper Lusatia – a geographic and historical region located today on both sides of the Polish-German border.

The exhibition was prepared as part of the Polish-German scientific and educational project ‘1000 years of Upper Lusatia – the people, the forts, the cities’.

ENGLAND, EUROPE, WORLD

Silver coins unearthed in New England may be loot from one of the ‘greatest crimes in history’

Silver coins unearthed in New England may be loot from one of the ‘greatest crimes in history’

A handful of Arabian silver coins found in New England may be the last surviving relics of history’s most notorious act of piracy — and perhaps one of the most famous pirates who ever lived. Evidence suggests the distinctive coins were spent as common silver in the American colonies in the late 1690s by the fugitive pirate crew of Henry Every, also known as John Avery, who had fled there after plundering the Mughal treasure ship Ganj-i-Sawai as it was returning pilgrims from the Muslim Hajj.

Silver coins unearthed in New England may be loot from one of the 'greatest crimes in history'
The 1693 Yemeni silver coin was found in 2014 in Rhode Island. Similar similar coins have since been unearthed at American colonial sites.

Researchers aren’t certain that the coins are from the Ganj-i-sawai, but their origin, their dates and their discovery in such a distant region suggest they were seized by the pirates and spent in the Americas. 

The coins may have been handled by Every himself, who disappeared a few years later but who came to be portrayed as an almost heroic figure from what some have called the “Golden Age of Piracy.”

Their discovery has also cast new light on Every’s whereabouts shortly before he vanished with his loot. “We can prove beyond a doubt that he actually was in the mainland American colonies,” Rhode Island metal detectorist Jim Bailey told Live Science. 

Bailey found one of the first Arabian silver coins, called a comassee, in 2014 at the site of a colonial settlement on Aquidneck Island, about 20 miles (32 kilometres) south of Providence. 

More than a dozen similar coins thought to be from the pirate raid on the Ganj-i-sawai have now been discovered by metal detectorists and archaeologists elsewhere in Rhode Island, and in Massachusetts, Connecticut and North Carolina — may be the last evidence of one of the greatest crimes in history. 

Captain Henry Every and his crew take one of the Great Mogul’s ships in this illustration.

Pirate attack

In 1695, Every and his cutthroat crew onboard their ship Fancy joined a pirate raid on a convoy in the Red Sea that was returning to India from Mecca. Every’s ship chased and caught the convoy’s flagship, the Ganj-i-sawai, which belonged to the Grand Mughal Aurangzeb, the Muslim emperor of what is now India and Pakistan.

Reports say the pirates tortured and killed its crew and 600 passengers, before making off with gold and silver, including thousands of coins, said to be worth between 200,000 and 600,000 British pounds — the equivalent of between $40 million and $130 million in today’s money.

After an outcry led by the British East India Company, whose profits on the riches of India were threatened by the raid, Britain’s King William III ordered what is regarded as the first international manhunt to capture Every and the other pirates.

By this time, however, Every and his crew had escaped to the New World. They lived for several months in the Bahamas, possibly with the collusion of the British governor of the islands; but they fled in late 1696 as the Royal Navy closed in. 

Some of Every’s crew went to live in the mainland colonies, where they were eventually tried and acquitted, possibly as a result of bribery; but there were no further sightings of Every. Later reports suggested he had sailed to Ireland while still on the run and that he died there, impoverished, a few years later. Since his loot from the Ganj-i-sawai was never accounted for, rumours long persisted that the treasure had been buried somewhere in secret.

Bailey unearthed other metallic objects from the same period, including these bit-bosses from a horse’s bridle, a buckle for a spur and part of a spur itself.

Arabian silver

Bailey is an amateur archaeologist who worked on the recovery of the wreck of the Whydah, a pirate ship discovered off Cape Cod in 1984. In 2014, his metal detector picked up the first of the mysterious coins in a meadow on Aquidneck Island that was once the site of a colonial township.

“You never field-clean a coin, because you could damage it,” he said. “I had to run to my car and get a big bottle of water… the mud came off, and I saw this Arabic script on the coin and I was amazed because I knew exactly where it’d come from,” he said. “I was aware that the American colonies had been bases of operation for piracy in the late 17th century.”

Studies of the Arabic writing on the coin showed it had been minted in Yemen in southern Arabia in 1693, just a few years before the pirate attack on the Ganj-i-sawai. Another 13 have been found, mostly by metal detectorists, but the latest in 2018 by archaeologists in Connecticut; two Ottoman Turkish silver coins thought to be from the same hoard have also been unearthed in the region. 

Bailey has carefully studied each of the discoveries while researching historical sources about the pirates who might have brought the coins to the Americas; and in 2017, some of his work was published in the Colonial Newsletter, a research journal published by the American Numismatic Society. 

Several of the coins show the year they were minted, while some are marked with the names of rulers at the time, which can be used to date them. “None of the coins date after 1695, when the Ganj-i-sawai was captured,” Bailey said.

Pirate treasure

Everyone is thought to have sailed directly to Ireland after his time in the Bahamas, but Bailey’s research suggests Every first spent several weeks on the American mainland, trading in African slaves he had bought with the loot from the Ganj-i-sawai. Historical records relate that a ship Every had acquired in the Bahamas, Sea Flower, sold dozens of slaves on the mainland, and Bailey’s research suggests that Everyone was on board, he said.

Bailey thinks Every probably died in Ireland eventually, as described by some chroniclers. But others portrayed him as a swashbuckling “king” who ruled for years over a fictional pirate utopia in Madagascar. There’s no way to know if Everyone handled the New England coins himself, but Bailey thinks they were almost certainly part of the hoard looted from the Mughal ship (Some coin specialists, however, are not convinced by his theory.) 

While most of the loot was probably melted down to hide the origins, “what we’re finding basically are the coins that were being used by the pirates when they were on the run: coins for lodgings, coins for meals, coins for drinking,” he said.  Astonishingly, the coins may also have been referred to in the manhunt proclamation by King William, which stated that Every and the other fugitives had looted many “Indian and Persian” gold and silver coins from the captured ship. 

“How often do you find a coin that’s mentioned in the proclamation for the capture of a pirate and the subject of the first worldwide manhunt?” Bailey said. “It’s just fantastic.”

DENMARK, EUROPE, WORLD

Researchers stumbled upon a box of human bones that had been missing for 100 years

Researchers stumbled upon a box of human bones that had been missing for 100 years

The long-lost bones of a Viking nobleman have been found in the archives of the Museum of Denmark in Copenhagen, more than 50 years after the remains were mislabeled and vanished into museum storage.

Researchers stumbled upon a box of human bones that had been missing for 100 years
The human remains, with detail of a fabric roll around the ankle.

These artefacts came from the burial of a wealthy Viking man in Bjerringhøj, Denmark, dating to around A.D. 970, and they were excavated in 1868. Researchers brought the artefacts and remain to the Museum of Denmark for analysis, but the bones were misplaced sometime during the 20th century.

Archaeologists recently found the missing bones among artefacts and remain from another Danish Viking Age burial site, in Slotsbjergby; the mixup between the two graves likely happened “between the 1950s and 1984,” according to a new study. New analyses of the bones and fabric confirmed that the remains belonged to an older man who was likely rich and important, as he was buried in a very fancy pair of trousers, the study authors reported.

It wasn’t archaeologists who initially discovered the Bjerringhøj burial. Farmers in the village of Mammen unearthed the mound, finding a clay-sealed wooden chamber with a coffin inside; they then opened the chamber and generously “shared” its contents among their friends. Arthur Feddersen, a local schoolmaster with an interest in archaeology, heard about the find and travelled to Mammen, but by the time Feddersen got there, he found only “fragments of textiles, clumps of down feathers and human bones scattered in the soil” at the burial site, according to the study.

Researchers Charlotte Rimstad (left) and Ulla Mannering (right) with some of the textiles they studied.

“The grave was more or less looted,” said study co-author Ulla Mannering, a research professor of ancient cultures of Denmark and the Mediterranean at the National Museum of Denmark.

Feddersen promptly visited the farmers’ homes to collect and catalogue all the objects; the mound was eventually identified as a high-status Viking burial. The man in the coffin wore garments that were decorated with silk and stitched with gold and silver thread, and he was placed on a layer of down feathers that may have been stuffed inside a mattress. He was also buried with two iron axes, one of which had silver inlay, and there was a beeswax candle attached to his coffin lid.

Reconstruction of the burial chamber in Bjerringhøj.

But after the bones were brought to the museum, their trail — somehow — went cold. During the late 19th century, human remains weren’t considered to be archaeological artefacts, and one possible explanation is that the bones were separated from the rest of the Bjerringhøj objects in the decades after they were discovered, Mannering told Live Science.  

“It’s very likely that the bones were put aside, maybe awaiting some decision about how they were going to be recorded at the museum,” and they were never returned to their proper place, Mannering said. 

Subsequent efforts to locate the bones met with failure; the remains weren’t found in 1986, during a search of the museum’s collection, nor did they turn up in 2009, in a search of the Anthropological Collection at the University of Copenhagen’s Department of Forensic Medicine, “where most of the human remains belonging to the National Museum of Denmark’s prehistoric collections are stored,” the study authors reported.

“It seemed that the bones had been lost forever,” the researchers wrote.

Who wears the pants?

Mannering first glimpsed the wayward remains in 2017 — though she didn’t know it at the time — while reviewing artefacts from another Viking burial site called Slotsbjergby, she told Live Science. Details in the textiles from one box differed dramatically from fabrics in the rest of the Slotsbjergby crates, “but my main focus was not the bones,” and so she didn’t investigate the box’s contents further, Mannering said.

However, when Mannering later embarked on a new project about fashion in the Viking Age, she remembered those textiles and revisited the alleged Slotsbjergby box. Pieces of the fabric in that box were wrapped around the ankle of the person’s leg bones, so the scientists determined that it was part of a cuff for a pair of long trousers. As the individual in the Slotsbjergby burial was a woman and trousers were only worn by Viking men, this strongly suggested that the bones came from a different burial.

The technique that shaped the pants cuff was also highly unusual. Small strips of fabric had been rolled and joined together, and the cuff was further decorated by a band that was woven on a tablet.

“This is a detail that hasn’t been seen before to my knowledge in any Viking Age find in Denmark,” Mannering said. 

However, the structure of this peculiar rolled-fabric trouser cuff closely resembled that in a pair of well-preserved sleeve cuffs from the Bjerringhøj burial, whose occupant was male. The scientists verified their hypothesis by comparing the fabric and remains with objects from Bjerringhøj, using computed X-ray tomography (CT) scans and radiocarbon dating to examine the bones; they also analyzed fibres and dyes in the textiles.

“There can be no doubt that these bones are from the Bjerringhøj grave,” Mannering said.

Their analysis showed that the Bjerringhøj man was an adult, around 30 years old or possibly older when he died, and signs of inflammation around his knees may reflect an active lifestyle that included lots of horseback riding, study authors reported. Judging by the elaborateness of his fancy pants, this Viking noble may also have been a bit of a clothes horse.

“The design of the trousers is really exquisite, with silk, and silver and gold threads,” Mannering said. “There are lots of colours and very unusual details attached to his costume — he must have looked really fantastic.”

The findings were published online in the journal Antiquity.

EUROPE, GREECE, WORLD

‘Folded’ iron sword found in a Roman soldier’s grave was part of a pagan ritual

‘Folded’ iron sword found in a Roman soldier’s grave was part of a pagan ritual

An iron sword deliberately bent as part of a pagan ritual has been discovered in a Roman soldier’s grave in Greece, an archaeologist has revealed. The deformed or ‘folded’ sword was buried with an as yet unidentified soldier about 1,600 years ago in the Greek city of Thessaloniki.

His ‘arch-shaped’ grave was found in the underground remains of a basilica – a large public building and place of worship – dating from the fifth century AD. 

Along with the sword, the man was found buried with a spearhead and a ‘shield-boss’ – the circular centre of a shield.  

The sword (pictured) was deliberately bent in some form of pagan ritual, according to a Greek archaeologist

The ‘astonishing’ findings have been shared by Errikos Maniotis, an archaeologist at the Aristotle University of Thessaloniki in Greece, who believes the man likely served in the Roman imperial army. 

‘Usually, these types of swords were used by the auxiliary cavalry forces of the Roman army,’ Maniotis told Live Science. 

‘Thus, we may say that the deceased, taking also into consideration the importance of the burial location, was a high-ranking officer of the Roman army.

It’s rare to find a ‘folded’ sword in an urban landscape, let alone in this part of Europe, Maniotis pointed out. 

Image of the underground remains of the ancient basilica – a large public building and place of worship

‘Folded swords are usually excavated in sites in Northern Europe,’ he said.

‘It seems that Romans didn’t practise it, let alone when the new religion, Christianity, dominated, due to the fact that this ritual [was] considered to be pagan.’

Archaeologists are yet to assess the remains of the soldier, described as likely a ‘Romanized Goth or from any other Germanic tribe who served as a mercenary’. 

‘We don’t know anything about his profile – age of death, cause of death, possible wounds that he might have from the wars he fought,’ Maniotis said.        

The soldier’s grave was one of seven found in the basilica, but not all of them were found to contain artefacts.

Along with the sword, the man was found buried with a spearhead and a ‘shield-boss’ – the circular centre of a shield.
Researchers have called it the ‘Sintrivani basilica’ after the upcoming station, which itself is named after an Ottoman fountain near the entrance (pictured)

According to Live Science, the basilica was discovered in 2010 during an excavation in preparation for the construction of a new subway line – the Sintrivani station, which is due to enter service in 2023.  

Researchers have called it the ‘Sintrivani basilica’ after the station, which itself is named after an Ottoman fountain near the entrance. 

Allegedly, the basilica was built over a fourth-century chapel, which might be the oldest Christian church in Thessaloniki, according to Maniotis.    

The church was damaged in the seventh century and abandoned in the eighth or ninth century, he added.  

Archaeologists have also excavated the basilica’s ‘beautiful’ mosaic floor, which ‘shows a vine with birds on its stalks’, including a mythical phoenix with a halo.  

WORLD

Trilobite Fossil Reveals World’s Oldest Cannibalism, What Animal Is It?

Trilobite Fossil Reveals World’s Oldest Cannibalism, What Animal Is It?

It’s a dog-eat-dog world out there. But before there were dogs — or even dinosaurs — there were trilobites brutally biting each other on the Cambrian seafloor.

New research has revealed that these armoured predators didn’t only hunt smaller and weaker animals for food, but would occasionally take bites out of their trilobite comrades of the same species. This finding represents the earliest evidence of cannibalism in the fossil record to date. 

Trilobites are now-extinct marine arthropods that first appeared in the fossil record around 541 million years ago.

An artist’s impression of trilobites on the seafloor

They were stout creatures with thick exoskeletons, which is likely one of the reasons so many trilobite fossils remained preserved all these years; exoskeletons fossilize much easier than softer tissues. 

Russell Bicknell, a palaeontologist at the University of New England in Australia, spent five years examining trilobite fossils from the Emu Bay Shale formation on Kangaroo Island in South Australia.

There are two trilobite species from the same genus found in this formation: Redlichia takooensis, a deposit feeder(opens in new tab) that ate particles on the ocean floor, and the larger, predatory R. rex.

Many of the R. takooensis fossils were found with what appeared to be bite marks, mostly on their hind ends. This was expected, as palaeontologists already knew that R. rex made meals of R. takooensis. In the Emu Bay formation, fossilized faeces, called coprolites, left behind by R. rex contain trilobite shell remnants. This suggests that R. rex had the capability of eating the smaller trilobite species. What was unexpected, though, were signs of similar bite marks on R. rex.

These injuries, the researchers concluded, were likely the result of cannibalism. 

“There’s not much else in this deposit that has the toolkit, is biomechanically optimized for this kind of thing, and could willingly crunch down on something hard,” Bicknell told Live Science.

While not much is known about trilobite mouthparts, Bicknell is certain that these injuries weren’t “bites” in the traditional sense. Instead, the underside of a trilobite featured two rows of legs, and on these legs were little inward-facing spines. If you have ever eaten crab legs or lobster, then imagine an animal with legs like the tool modern chefs use to crack open these shells. R. rex was born to hunt trilobites, and apparently it didn’t matter much which species.

Most of the injuries seen on the Emu Bay fossils were injuries to the abdomen and not the head. Bicknell believes this is because the injured animals were trying to get away from their predator’s clutches, but he also suggests there may have been a bit of survivorship bias at play too.

The injured fossils are from the animals that got away — they weren’t eaten. Trilobites that sustained head injuries likely ended up as coprolites.

While this is the earliest documented example of cannibalism for any animal in the fossil record, Bicknell said it’s likely that cannibalism is much older and more widespread than even these fossils suggest.

“I would go as far as to say that arthropods have been eating arthropods since the dawn of arthropods becoming arthropods,” Bicknell said. However, direct evidence of such ancient cannibalism has not been available in the fossil record, until now. 

While it is difficult to prove that cannibalism took place, Bicknell and his colleagues were able to systematically remove all other explanations for the injuries found in R. rex fossils. “What you’re left with is this almost demonstrable record of cannibalism, just short of going back in time and watching it happen,” said Bicknell. 

This research was published in the journal Palaeogeography, Palaeoclimatology, and Palaeoecology(opens in new tab).

PERU, SOUTH AMERICA, WORLD

1,000 Years Ago, Patients Survived Brain Surgery, But They Had To Live With Huge Holes in Their Heads

1,000 Years Ago, Patients Survived Brain Surgery, But They Had To Live With Huge Holes in Their Heads

Healers in Peru carried out cranial surgery more than a thousand years ago to treat a host of conditions – often successfully. Without the benefits of a sterile operating theatre, state-of-the-art surgical instruments, anaesthetic and pain medication, the ancient people of the South American country undertook a surgical procedure that involves removing a section of the skull using a hand drill or a scraping tool – a practice called preparation. It was used to treat a variety of ailments, mainly head injuries but even, bizarrely, a broken heart.

Gruesome: Some 900 years ago, Peruvian healers used hand drills to make dozens of small holes in a patient’s skull

Excavating burial caves in the south-central Andean province of Andahuaylas in Peru, University of California bioarchaeologist Danielle Kurin and her research team unearthed the remains of 32 individuals that date back to the Late Intermediate Period (around AD 1000-1250).

Among them, 45 separate trepanation procedures were in evidence.

‘When you get a knock on the head that causes your brain to swell dangerously, or you have some kind of neurological, spiritual or psychosomatic illness, drilling a hole in the head becomes a reasonable thing to do,’ said Kurin, a visiting assistant professor in the Department of Anthropology at UC Santa Barbera and a specialist in forensic anthropology. According to Kurin, trepanations first appeared in the south-central Andean highlands during the Early Intermediate Period (circa AD 200-600), although the technique was not universally practised. Still, it was considered a viable medical procedure until the Spanish put a halt to the practice in the early 16th century. But Kurin, whose findings appear in the current issue of the American Journal of Physical Anthropology, wanted to know how trepanation came to exist in the first place and looked to a failed empire to find some answers.

‘For about 400 years, from 600 to 1000 AD, the area where I work — the Andahuaylas — was living as a prosperous province within an enigmatic empire known as the Wari,’ she said.

‘For reasons still unknown, the empire suddenly collapsed.’ And the collapse of civilisation, she drily noted, brings a lot of problems.

‘But it is precisely during times of collapse that we see people’s resilience and moxie coming to the fore,’ Kurin continued.

‘In the same way that new types of bullet wounds from the Civil War resulted in the development of better glass eyes, the same way IED’s are propelling research in prosthetics in the military today, so, too, did these people in Peru employ trepanation to cope with new challenges like violence, disease and depravation 1,000 years ago.’

A Peruvian actress impersonates an ancient female warrior in this file picture. Trepanning was common in the mysterious Wari culture

Kurin’s research shows various cutting practices and techniques being employed by practitioners around the same time. Some used scraping, others used cutting and still, others made use of a hand drill. It looks like they were trying different techniques, the same way we might try new medical procedures today,’ she said. They’re experimenting with different ways of cutting into the skull. Sometimes they were successful and the patient recovered, and sometimes things didn’t go so well. We can tell a trepanation is healed because we see these finger-like projections of bone that are growing,’ Kurin explained.

‘We have several cases where someone suffered a head fracture and was treated with the surgery; in many cases, both the original wound and the trepanation healed.’

It could take several years for the bone to regrow, and in a subset of those, a trepanation hole in the patient’s head might remain for the rest of his life, thereby conferring upon him a new ‘survivor’ identity. When a patient didn’t survive, his skull (almost never hers, as the practice of trepanation on women and children was forbidden in this region) might have been donated to science, so to speak, and used for education purposes.

‘The idea with this surgery is to go all the way through the bone, but not touch the brain,’ said Kurin. ‘That takes incredible skill and practice.

‘As bioarchaeologists, we can tell that they’re experimenting on recently dead bodies because we can measure the location and depths of the holes they’re drilling,’ she continued.

‘In one example, each hole is drilled a little deeper than the last. So you can imagine a guy in his prehistoric Peruvian medical school practising with his hand drill to know how many times he needs to turn it to nimbly and accurately penetrate the thickness of a skull.’

Some might consider drilling a hole in someone’s head a form of torture, but Kurin doesn’t perceive it as such.

‘We can see where the trepanations are. We can see that they’re shaving the hair. We see the black smudge of a herbal remedy they put over the wound,’ she noted.

‘To me, those are signs that the intention was to save the life of the sick or injured individual.’

But thanks to Kurin’s careful archaeological excavation of intact tombs and methodical analysis of the human skeletons and mummies buried therein, she knows exactly where, when and how the remains she found were buried, as well as who and what was buried with them. She used radiocarbon dating and insect casings to determine how long the bodies were left out before they skeletonised or were mummified, and multi-isotopic testing to reconstruct what they ate and where they were born.

‘That gives us a lot more information,” she said.

‘These ancient people can’t speak to us directly, but they do give us information that allows us to reconstruct some aspect of their lives and their deaths and even what happened after they died,’ she continued.

‘Importantly, we shouldn’t look at a state of collapse as the beginning of a “dark age”, but rather view it as an era that breeds resilience and foments stunning innovation within the population.’