Archaeologists in Mexico find 1,000-year-old Mayan canoe
Archaeologists in southern Mexico have discovered a well-preserved wooden canoe that may be more than 1,000 years old. Used by the Maya, the vessel was submerged in a cenote, or freshwater sinkhole, near the ruins of Chichén Itzá in Yucatán state, Reuters reports.
Researchers have tentatively dated the canoe to between 830 and 950 C.E.
The canoe is just over five feet long and two and a half feet wide.
Ancient Maya people may have used it to gather water from the cenote or deposit offerings there, notes Mexico’s National Institute of Anthropology and History (INAH) in a statement. The team made the discovery during the construction of the Maya Train, a controversial railway set to connect tourist sites in the region.
Researchers have tentatively dated the canoe to between 830 and 950 C.E., BBC News reports. Experts from Sorbonne University in Paris are using dendrochronology, a dating method based on tree rings found in wood, to pinpoint the boat’s exact age.
Per a translation by Reuters, INAH describes the find as “the first complete canoe like this in the Maya area.”
Underwater archaeologists found the canoe in a cenote near the ruins of Chichén Itzá.
Archaeologists have previously found fragments of similar boats in Guatemala, Belize and the Mexican state of Quintana Roo.
The experts made the discovery while surveying a site known as San Andrés, located in a buffer area near the planned train route. A team from INAH’s Sub-Directorate of Underwater Archaeology (SAS) investigated three bodies of water at the site.
While diving in the cenote, the researchers found a cave about 15 feet below the current water level, at a spot that marked the pool’s surface centuries ago. Inside the cave was the canoe.
As Ian Randall reports for the Daily Mail, the researchers also found mural paintings, a ceremonial knife and fragments of 40 pottery vessels that were likely intentionally broken as part of ritual events.
“It is evident that this is an area where ceremonies were held,” says SAS archaeologist Helena Barba Meinecke in the statement, per a translation by the Daily Mail, “… not only because of the intentionally fragmented pottery, but also because of the remains of charcoal that indicate their exposure to fire and the way [the Maya] placed stones on top of them to cover them.”
If the archaeologists are right about the age of the canoe, then it was made around the end of the Maya Classic Period, which is widely dubbed the culture’s golden age. During that era (250 to 900 C.E.), the civilization comprised about 40 cities and was home to between two and ten million people, according to History.com.
Archaeologists explored three bodies of water at the San Andrés site.
Chichén Itzá itself was home to around 35,000 people at its peak, notes Encyclopedia Britannica. The people who founded the city in the sixth century C.E. may have chosen the site because of its cenotes and other limestone formations, which provided easy access to water in a dry region.
Most of Chichén Itzá’s iconic buildings appear to have been constructed by a group of Mayan language speakers who invaded the city in the tenth century, following the collapse of other Maya cities.
Among these is El Castillo, a 79-foot-tall pyramid with a design reflecting Maya astronomical principles.
During the Post-Classic Period (900 to 1540 C.E.), Chichén Itzá joined the cities of Uxmal and Mayapán in a confederacy called the League of Mayapán.
By the time Spanish forces arrived in the region in the 16th century, however, Chichén Itzá and the rest of the Maya’s major cities had been mostly abandoned for reasons that remain unclear.
INAH has put the San Andrés site under protection in response to evidence of looting at the cenote.
The team transferred ceramic and bone items found at the site to the Archaeological Zone of Chichén Itzá; it also plans to make a 3-D model of the boat for research purposes and to facilitate the production of replicas for display in museums.
Archaeologists believe they found the oldest Hebrew text in Israel – including the name of God
Archaeologist Dr. Scott Stripling and a team of international scholars held a press conference on Thursday in Houston, Texas, unveiling what he claims is the earliest proto-alphabetic Hebrew text — including the name of God, “YHWH” — ever discovered in ancient Israel. It was found at Mount Ebal, known from Deuteronomy 11:29 as a place of curses.
If the Late Bronze Age (circa 1200 BCE) date is verified, this tiny, 2-centimeter x 2 centimeter folded-lead “curse tablet” may be one of the greatest archaeological discoveries ever. It would be the first attested use of the name of God in the Land of Israel and would set the clock back on proven Israelite literacy by several centuries — showing that the Israelites were literate when they entered the Holy Land, and therefore could have written the Bible as some of the events it documents took place.
“This is a text you find only every 1,000 years,” Haifa University Prof. Gershon Galil told The Times of Israel on Thursday. Galil helped decipher the hidden internal text of the folded lead tablet based on high-tech scans carried out in Prague at the Academy of Sciences of the Czech Republic.
Based on epigraphical analysis of the scans and lead analysis of the artifact, Stripling and his team date the curse tablet (or defixio) to the late Bronze Age, before or around 1200 BCE. If this dating is verified, it would make the text centuries older than the previous recordholder for oldest Hebrew text in Israel and 500 years older than the previously attested use of the tetragrammaton YHWH, according to Galil. Writing in a similar alphabet was discovered in the Sinai Peninsula dating to the beginning of the 16th century BCE.
However, the researchers have not yet published the find in a peer-reviewed academic journal. Likewise, they are not yet releasing clear images and scans of the inscription for other academics to weigh in on.
Also challenging the secure dating of the object is the fact that the tablet was not discovered during a carefully excavated stratified context. Rather, it was found during a 2019 re-examination of earth from a dump pile formed during 1980s excavations at Mount Ebal that were held under Prof. Adam Zertal. The earth had been dry-sifted then, and in 2019 Stripling’s team resifted it using a wet sifting technique that was developed at the Temple Mount Sifting Project, where Stripling once worked. Stripling current heads ongoing excavations at biblical Shiloh.
Archaeologists approached by The Times of Israel were unwilling to comment on the record until they viewed the hopefully forthcoming academic paper and scans.
“The fact that they are publishing it in the news before being published scientifically is a bit off,” said one established academic. Another cautioned that since he hasn’t been able to view the inscription himself, it was impossible to know whether the claims were factual or a case of “overdeveloped imagination.”
However, both skeptics said that “everything is possible” and that “it may be valid,” even though the images were not yet being made available. While it is irregular to promote an unpublished work in the lay press before an academic journal, Galil noted that the team felt obligated to share news of the tablet’s existence and their initial findings because of its history-changing potential.
Dr. Scott Stripling, head of the current excavation at biblical Shiloh, exhibits a find. May 22, 2017.
A curse tablet from the mount of curses
The curse tablet was discovered in earth originally taken from a cultic site at Mount Ebal, near biblical Shechem and today’s Nablus. Mount Ebal appears in Deuteronomy 11:29 as a place of “curses” and is revered by some Christians and Jews as the place where the biblical Joshua built an altar as commanded in Deuteronomy 27. It is described in Joshua 8:31 as “an altar of unhewn stones, upon which no man had lifted up any iron.”
The site known is known by locals as “Al-Burnat,” or “top hat” in Arabic, and is regarded by archaeologists as an exceedingly rare and significant illustration of early Israelite settlement. It is the only one of its type in the area. A consensus of archaeologists date the clearly cultic site to the early Iron Age, somewhere around the 11th century BCE, or when the Israelites evidently began to settle the land of Canaan. Other archaeologists push that date back to the 12th century or Late Bronze Age.
‘Joshua’s Altar’ at the Mount Ebal archaeological site, February 15, 2021.
“This is an important site, belonging to the wave of settlement in the highlands in the early phase of the Iron Age,” said Prof. Israel Finkelstein, one of the world’s leading researchers on Iron Age settlement in the region. Finkelstein spoke with The Times of Israel in February 2021 when Mount Ebal was in the news after allegations were made that it was being destroyed by local Arab towns in the course of construction of a road.
“As far as I can judge, it dates to the 11th century BCE. As such, it can be understood as representing the groups which established the kingdom of Israel (the Northern Kingdom) in the 10th century BCE. In other words, it is an early Israelite site,” he told The Times of Israel.
The late University of Haifa professor Zertal excavated the site in the 1980s, including a large rectangular altar that was apparently constructed over an earlier round altar. Stripling said the tablet came from earth originally excavated from this round altar.
Artist’s rendering of the Mt. Ebal archaeological site and the dump piles sifted by Dr. Scott Stripling and his team in 2019.
“As soon as I saw it [the tablet], I knew what it was because these curse tablets are known. My heart almost jumped out of my chest,” said Stripling.
In addition to the fact of an early — if not the earliest — Hebrew inscription found in the Land of Israel, Galil told The Times of Israel that this find sets to rest the ongoing academic discussion of whether the Israelites were literate.
“We know that from the moment they came to Israel, the Israelites knew how to write, including the name of God, clearly,” said Galil. “It’s not too surprising; people already knew how to write in other places,” he added.
Arguably the earliest written evidence of the name of God, YHWH, according to epigrapher Haifa University Prof. Gershon Galil.
The scans were read by Galil and Pieter Gert van der Veen of Johannes Gutenberg-Universität Mainz. Speaking with The Times of Israel, Stripling said the reading includes the words “arur” (cursed) and “YHWH” (including the three main letters of the tetragrammaton).
“We recovered 40 letters, 40 on the inside and outside of the tablet. And they were all in this proto-alphabetic script which dates to the Late Bronze Age,” said Stripling.
Galil told The Times of Israel that the text is largely written in an archaic proto-Canaanite script, with some letters coming from hieroglyphs. The latest date of the epigraphic analysis would put it circa the 12th century, while some elements are dated to even earlier.
The majority Hebrew-language text, he posited, was written by Israelites as an internal legal document, a form of social contract, warning the person under contract what would happen if he did not fulfill his obligations.
An English translation of Prof. Gershon Galil’s reading of the arguably 13th century BCE lead curse tablet found on Mt. Ebal.
According to the researchers, it reads: “Cursed, cursed, cursed – cursed by the God YHW./ You will die cursed./ Cursed you will surely die./ Cursed by YHW – cursed, cursed, cursed.”
Galil said the structure is a parallel chiastic, which is found elsewhere in the Bible, as well as in other Near Eastern texts of the period and even earlier. But until now, researchers have held that the Bible was only written down — if not composed — hundreds of years after the posited dating of this text.
“Now we see that someone could write a chiastic” in the 12th century BCE. No longer should the conversation be about whether the Israelites were literate during the time of King David, he said.
“The person who wrote this text had the ability to write every text in the Bible,” Galil stated.
Discovery of “unique” burial containing 140 pieces of amber jewellery
An archaeologist at the burial site.
A team of archaeologists from Petrozavodsk State University in Russia have unearthed the burial site of a Copper Age “amber man” who was painted with ocher upon his death and laid to rest with more than 100 pieces of jewellery.
The expedition took place on the western shore of Lake Onega, the second-largest lake in Europe, where archaeologist Alexander Zhulnikov led a team of students on the dig, according to a press release issued by the university.
Amber buttons were discovered at the burial site.
The students discovered what a research paper describes as a “unique burial” surrounded by amber jewellery and flint objects.
Inside the narrow chamber, the man was painted with ocher, a red pigment often used to mark a grave so it wouldn’t be disturbed, and surrounded by about 140 pieces of amber jewellery from the Baltic region.
The man buried in the chamber was almost certainly of high social standing and may have been a trader himself from the Eastern Baltic States.
The objects included pendants, discs, and amber buttons “arranged in rows face down” and sewn onto a covering made of leather and placed over the body.
Another two tiers of amber buttons were found along the edges of the small grave.
Amber buttons were discovered at the burial site.
The flint chips found are likely from tools placed over the body and “are clearly so-called votive items—offerings apparently symbolizing whole knives and arrowheads,” researchers said in their paper.
The unique aspect of this particular burial, they said, is that it is an individual grave.
Other burials dating to the Mesolithic era and found in the forest belt of Europe are large cemeteries.
Burials with such a large number of jewels were previously unheard of in this area of Karelia, nor have they been uncovered in nearby northwestern regions.
The burial site.
Flint deposits are also unknown in the region, indicating that ancient people must have obtained them through the exchange.
In a statement, Zhulnikov said the discovery “testifies to the strong ties of the ancient population of Karelia with the tribes that lived on the southern coast of the Baltic Sea” and to the “formation of the so-called ‘prestigious’ primitive economy” among those living in Northern Europe, where high-value objects like jewellery and tools helped create and maintain social hierarchies.
Machu Picchu is among the most recognized archaeological sites in the world. A lasting symbol of the Inca Empire, it’s one of the most visited attractions in Latin America and at the heart of the Peruvian tourist industry.
However, when Hiram Bingham first visited the ruins in 1911 and then brought them to the world’s attention, they were little known — even among those who lived in Peru’s Cusco region.
More than 110 years after Bingham’s first visit to the site, historian Donato Amado Gonzales from the Ministry of Culture of Peru (Cusco) and archaeologist Brian S. Bauer from the University of Illinois Chicago reviewed Bingham’s original field notes, early 20th century maps of the region, and centuries-old land documents from different archives.
Their findings suggest that less was known about the site than what was previously thought.
In their paper, published by Ñawpa Pacha: Journal of Andean Archaeology, the researchers conclude that the Incas originally called it Huayna Picchu, for the rocky summit that lies nearest to the site, and not Machu Picchu, which is the name of the highest mountain near the ancient city.
Machu Picchu, Peru.
“We began with the uncertainty of the name of the ruins when Bingham first visited them and then reviewed several maps and atlases printed before Bingham’s visit to the ruins,” said Bauer, UIC professor of anthropology.
“There is significant data which suggest that the Inca city actually was called Picchu or more likely, Huayna Picchu.”
The researchers found that the ruins of an Inca town called Huayna Picchu are mentioned in a 1904 atlas that was published seven years before Bingham arrived in Peru.
Additionally, they detail that Bingham was told in 1911 of ruins called Huayna Picchu along the Urubamba River before he left Cusco to search for the remains.
A landowner’s son later told Bingham in 1912 that the ruins were called Huayna Picchu.
According to Bauer, the most definitive connections to the original name of the Inca city are preserved within accounts written by Spaniards relatively soon after the region came under their control in the late 16th century.
“We end with a stunning, late 16th-century account when the indigenous people of the region were considering returning to reoccupy the site which they called Huayna Picchu,” he said.
One of the great mysteries of late medieval history is why did the Norse, who had established successful settlements in southern Greenland in 985, abandon them in the early 15th century?
Raymond Bradley takes a photo of the sediment samples acquired from Lake Igaliku, southern Greenland.
The settlement, Igaliku, nearby the team’s research site.
The consensus view has long been that colder temperatures, associated with the Little Ice Age, helped make the colonies unsustainable.
However, new research, led by the University of Massachusetts Amherst and published recently in Science Advances, upends that old theory. It wasn’t dropping temperatures that helped drive the Norse from Greenland, but drought.
The field group acquired a short lake sediment core from Lake SI-102, southern Greenland. From left to right: Isla Castañeda, Tobias Schneider, Boyang Zhao, Raymond Bradley. Not pictured: William Daniels.
When the Norse settled in Greenland on what they called the Eastern Settlement in 985, they thrived by clearing the land of shrubs and planting grass as pasture for their livestock. The population of the Eastern Settlement peaked at around 2,000 inhabitants but collapsed fairly quickly about 400 years later.
For decades, anthropologists, historians and scientists have thought the Eastern Settlement’s demise was due to the onset of the Little Ice Age, a period of exceptionally cold weather, particularly in the North Atlantic, that made agricultural life in Greenland untenable.
A fjord view from southern Greenland.
However, as Raymond Bradley, University Distinguished Professor of geosciences at UMass Amherst and one of the paper’s co-author, points out,
Before this study, there was no data from the actual site of the Viking settlements. And that’s a problem.
Instead, the ice core data that previous studies had used to reconstruct historical temperatures in Greenland was taken from a location that was over 1,000 kilometres to the north and over 2,000 meters higher in elevation.
“We wanted to study how climate had varied close to the Norse farms themselves,” says Bradley. And when they did, the results were surprising.
Bradley and his colleagues travelled to a lake called Lake 578, which is adjacent to a former Norse farm and close to one of the largest groups of farms in the Eastern Settlement. There, they spent three years gathering sediment samples from the lake, which represented a continuous record for the past 2,000 years.
“Nobody has actually studied this location before,” says Boyang Zhao, the study’s lead author who conducted this research for his PhD in geosciences at UMass Amherst and is currently a postdoctoral research associate at Brown University.
Lead author Boyang Zhao of UMass Amherst in the field with some sediment samples he recovered from sediment traps left over the winter months.
They then analyzed that 2,000-year sample for two different markers: the first, a lipid, known as BrGDGT, can be used to reconstruct temperature.
“If you have a complete enough record, you can directly link the changing structures of the lipids to changing temperature,” says Isla Castañeda, professor of geosciences at UMass Amherst and one of the paper’s co-authors.
A second marker, derived from the waxy coating on plant leaves, can be used to determine the rates at which the grasses and other livestock-sustaining plants lost water due to evaporation. It is therefore an indicator of how dry conditions were.
What we discovered is that, while the temperature barely changed over the course of the Norse settlement of southern Greenland, it became steadily drier over time.
says Zhao.
Norse farmers had to overwinter their livestock on stored fodder, and even in a good year, the animals were often so weak that they had to be carried to the fields once the snow finally melted in the spring.
Under conditions like that, the consequences of drought would have been severe. An extended drought, on top of other economic and social pressures, may have tipped the balance just enough to make the Eastern Settlement unsustainable.
Scientists at Smith College and the University at Buffalo also contributed to the research, which was supported by the National Science Foundation, UMass Amherst, the Geological Society of America, and the Swiss National Science Foundation, changes our understanding of early European history, and highlights the importance of continuing to explore how environmental factors influence human society.
The new findings change our understanding of early European history and highlight the importance of continuing to explore how environmental factors influence human society.
French cave tells a new story about Neanderthals, early humans
A hillside dwelling overlooking the picturesque Rhone Valley in southern France proved irresistible for our ancestors, attracting both Neanderthals and modern humans long before the latter was thought to have reached that part of Europe, a new study suggests.
This undated photo provided by Ludovic Slimak shows the Mandrin cave, near Montelimar, southern France. Scientists have uncovered fossilized modern human remains and tools sandwiched between Neanderthal remains and tools in the stratigraphic record at a site in the Rhône Valley in France, suggesting occupation of the area alternated between Neanderthals and modern humans.
In a paper published Wednesday by the journal Science Advances, researchers from Europe and the United States described finding fossilized homo sapiens remains and tools sandwiched between those of Neanderthals in the Mandrin Grotto, named after an 18th-century French folk hero.
“The findings provide archaeological evidence that these hominin cousins may have coexisted in the same region of Europe during the same time period,” the team said.
Using new techniques, the authors dated some of the human remains to about 54,000 years ago—almost 10,000 years earlier than previous finds in Europe, with one exception in Greece.
“This significantly deepens the known age of the colonization of Europe by modern humans,” said Michael Petraglia, an expert on prehistory at Germany’s Max Planck Institute for the Science of Human History.
Petraglia, who was not involved in the study, said it had major implications for understanding the spread of modern humans and our interactions with the Neanderthals.
The researchers said they spent more than 30 years carefully sifting through layers of dirt inside the cave, which is 140 kilometres (87 miles) north of the French Mediterranean city of Marseille.
They discovered hundreds of thousands of artefacts that they were able to attribute to either Neanderthals or modern humans. These included advanced stone tools known as “points” that were used by homo sapiens—our closest ancestors—to cut or scrape and as spear tips.
This undated photo provided by Ludovic Slimak shows Neronian nano points found in the Mandrin cave, near Montelimar, southern France. Scientists have uncovered fossilized modern human remains and tools sandwiched between Neanderthal remains and tools in the stratigraphic record at a site in the Rhône Valley in France, suggesting occupation of the area alternated between Neanderthals and modern humans.
Similar tools from almost the exact same period have been found some 3,000 kilometres (nearly 1,900 miles) away, in present-day Lebanon, indicating that modern humans with a common culture may have travelled across the Mediterranean Sea, said Ludovic Slimak, one of the lead authors of the new study.
While the researchers found no evidence of cultural exchanges between the Neanderthals and modern humans who alternated in the cave, the rapid succession of occupants is in itself significant, they said. In one case, the cave changed hands in the space of about a year, said Slimak.
Katerina Harvati, a professor of paleoanthropology at the University of Tuebingen, Germany, who was not involved in the study, said the findings upend the idea that most of the European continent was the exclusive domain of Neanderthals until 45,000 years ago.
This undated photo provided by Ludovic Slimak shows scientists working at the entrance of the Mandrin cave, near Montelimar, southern France. Scientists have uncovered fossilized modern human remains and tools sandwiched between Neanderthal remains and tools in the stratigraphic record at a site in the Rhône Valley in France, suggesting occupation of the area alternated between Neanderthals and modern humans.
This undated photo provided by Ludovic Slimak shows nano points of the Modern Neronian technologies found in the Mandrin cave, near Montelimar, southern France. Scientists have uncovered fossilized modern human remains and tools sandwiched between Neanderthal remains and tools in the stratigraphic record at a site in the Rhône Valley in France, suggesting occupation of the area alternated between Neanderthals and modern humans.
This undated photo provided by Ludovic Slimak shows excavations at the entrance of the Mandrin cave, near Montelimar, southern France. Scientists have uncovered fossilized modern human remains and tools sandwiched between Neanderthal remains and tools in the stratigraphic record at a site in the Rhône Valley in France, suggesting occupation of the area alternated between Neanderthals and modern humans.
However homo sapiens’ first venture into the region wasn’t particularly successful, she noted.
“Mandrin modern humans seem to have only survived for a very brief period of time and were replaced again by Neanderthals for several millennia,” she said.
Slimak, an archaeologist at the University of Toulouse, said the findings at Mandrin suggest the Rhone River may have been a key link between the Mediterranean coast and continental Europe.
“We are dealing with one of the most important natural migration corridors of all the ancient world,” he said.
This undated photo provided by Ludovic Slimak shows the entrance of the Mandrin cave, near Montelimar, southern France. Scientists have uncovered fossilized modern human remains and tools sandwiched between Neanderthal remains and tools in the stratigraphic record at a site in the Rhône Valley in France, suggesting occupation of the area alternated between Neanderthals and modern humans.
This undated photo provided by Ludovic Slimak shows the excavation on the Neronian layer dated to 54.000 years old and recording the first Home sapiens in the European continent, near Montelimar, southern France. Scientists have uncovered fossilized modern human remains and tools sandwiched between Neanderthal remains and tools in the stratigraphic record at a site in the Rhône Valley in France, suggesting occupation of the area alternated between Neanderthals and modern humans.
This undated photo provided by Ludovic Slimak showq a long blade of the Neronian of Grotte Mandrin, near Montelimar, southern France. Scientists have uncovered fossilized modern human remains and tools sandwiched between Neanderthal remains and tools in the stratigraphic record at a site in the Rhône Valley in France, suggesting occupation of the area alternated between Neanderthals and modern humans.
He and his colleagues expect to publish several further significant findings based on the mountain of data collected from the cave. Slimak said a steady supply of sand carried in by the local Mistral winds has helped preserve a rich trove of treasures that rivals other famous archaeological sites.
“Mandrin is like a kind of Neanderthalian Pompeii,” he said.
Archaeologists discover innovative 40,000-year-old culture in China
Archaeologists excavating the well-preserved surface at the Xiamabei site, northern China, showing stone tools, fossils, ochre and red pigments.
When did populations of Homo sapiens first arrive in China and what happened when they encountered the Denisovans or Neanderthals who lived there? A new study in Nature by an international team of researchers opens a window into hunter-gatherer lifestyles 40,000 years ago.
Archaeological excavations at the site of Xiamabei in the Nihewan Basin of northern China have revealed the presence of innovative behaviours and unique toolkits.
The discovery of a new culture suggests processes of innovation and cultural diversification occurring in Eastern Asia during a period of genetic and cultural hybridization. Although previous studies have established that Homo sapiens arrived in northern Asia about 40,000 years ago, much about the lives and cultural adaptations of these early peoples, and their possible interactions with archaic groups, remains unknown.
In the search for answers, the Nihewan Basin in northern China, with a wealth of archaeological sites ranging in age from 2 million to 10,000 years ago, provides one of the best opportunities for understanding the evolution of cultural behaviour in northeastern Asia.
The article published in Nature describes a unique 40,000-year-old culture at the site of Xiamabei in the Nihewan Basin. With the earliest known evidence of ochre processing in Eastern Asia and a set of distinct blade-like stone tools, Xiamabei contains cultural expressions and features that are unique or exceedingly rare in northeastern Asia.
Through the collaboration of an international team of scholars, analysis of the finds offers important new insights into cultural innovation during the expansion of Homo sapiens populations.
“Xiamabei stands apart from any other known archaeological site in China, as it possesses a novel set of cultural characteristics at an early date,” says Dr. Fa-Gang Wang of the Hebei Provincial Institute of Cultural Relics and Archaeology, whose team first excavated the site.
Cultural adaptations at Xiamabei
“The ability of hominins to live in northern latitudes, with cold and highly seasonal environments, was likely facilitated by the evolution of culture in the form of economic, social and symbolic adaptations,” says Dr. Shixia Yang, a researcher with the Chinese Academy of Sciences and the Max Planck Institute for the Science of Human History, in Jena, Germany.
“The finds at Xiamabei are helping us to understand these adaptations and their potential role in human migration.”
Ochre pieces and stone processing equipment laying on a red-stained pigment patch.
One of the significant cultural features found at Xiamabei is the extensive use of ochre, as shown by artefacts used to process large quantities of pigment. The artefacts include two pieces of ochre with different mineral compositions and an elongated limestone slab with smoothed areas bearing ochre stains, all on a surface of red-stained sediment.
Analysis by researchers from the University of Bordeaux, led by Prof. Francesco d’Errico, indicates that different types of ochre were brought to Xiamabei and processed through pounding and abrasion to produce powders of different colours and consistency, the use of which stained the habitation floor. Ochre production at Xiamabei represents the earliest known example of this practice in Eastern Asia.
The stone tools at Xiamabei represent a novel cultural adaptation for northern China 40,000 years ago. Because little is known about stone tool industries in Eastern Asia until micro blades became the dominant technology about 29,000 years ago, the Xiamabei finds provide important insights into toolmaking industries during a key transition period.
The blade-like stone tools at Xiamabei were unique for the region, with the large majority of tools being miniaturized, more than half measuring less than 20 millimetres.
Seven of the stone tools showed clear evidence of hafting to a handle, and functional and residue analysis suggests tools were used for boring, hide scraping, whittling plant material and cutting soft animal matter.
The site inhabitants made hafted and multipurpose tools, demonstrative of a complex technical system for transforming raw materials not seen at older or slightly younger sites.
A complex history of innovation
The record emerging from Eastern Asia shows that a variety of adaptations were taking place as modern humans entered the region roughly 40,000 years ago. Although no hominin remains were found at Xiamabei, the presence of modern human fossils at the contemporary site of Tianyuandong and the slightly younger sites of Salkhit and Zhoukoudian Upper Cave suggests that the visitors to Xiamabei were Homo sapiens. A varied lithic technology and the presence of some innovations—such as hafted tools and ochre processing, but not other innovations, such as formal bone tools or ornaments—may reflect an early colonization attempt by modern humans. This colonization period may have included genetic and cultural exchanges with archaic groups, such as the Denisovans, before ultimately being replaced by later waves of Homo sapiens using microblade technologies.
Extraordinarily well-preserved bladelet showing microscopic evidence of a bone handle, plant fibres used for binding, and plant polish produced by whittling action.
Given the unique nature of Xiamabei, the authors of the new paper argue that the archaeological record does not fit with the idea of continuous cultural innovation, or of a fully formed set of adaptations that enabled early humans to expand out of Africa and around the world.
Instead, the authors argue that we should expect to find a mosaic of innovation patterns, with the spread of earlier innovations, the persistence of local traditions, and the local invention of new practices all taking place in a transitional phase.
“Our findings show that current evolutionary scenarios are too simple,” says Professor Michael Petraglia of the Max Planck Institute in Jena, “and that modern human, and our culture, emerged through repeated but differing episodes of genetic and social exchanges over large geographic areas, rather than as a single, rapid dispersal wave across Asia.”
Experiments show why early humans began adding handles to tools
A team of researchers at the University of Liverpool has tested the assumption that hafted tools (those with handles) provided early humans with enough benefit to warrant their construction and use.
Figure 1. Hafted (a) and hand-held (b) chopping tools and hafted (c) and hand-held (d) scraping tools used in experimental conditions.
In their paper published in Journal of the Royal Society Interface, the group describes how they enlisted the assistance of several volunteers to help them learn more about the types of benefits to be gained from hafted tools.
For many years, the wheel has been named as the most important invention humans have ever come up with due to the major impact it had on the development of so many early activities such as industry, transport and agriculture.
In this new effort, the researchers suggest the invention of hafted tools might have been equally important.
By adding a handle to tools, humans stabilized their existence—handled tools made cutting down trees much easier, which led to the development of wooden structures.
They also made hunting more efficient by making it a lot easier to sharpen spears.
In this new effort, the researchers noted that little work has been done to learn more about the advantages given to early humans by hafted tools. And that led them to conduct tests of their own.
The work by the researchers entailed enlisting the assistance of 24 male and 16 female adult volunteers to conduct early human type activities using both hafted and unhafted tools—each was fitted with a suit holding sensors that measured motion, muscle contractions, oxygen consumption and the speed at which tools were moving through the air.
The volunteers were asked to attempt to chop down a simulated tree using axes with and without handles and to try to scrape away fibres on a carpet that simulated an animal hide using scrapers with and without handles.
In looking at the data from the tests, the researchers found that the hafted tools allowed for a greater range of motion, the use of more muscle and a greater impact speed, which resulted in more force.
And while the use of the hafted tools required much more exertion, the payoff more than outweighed the cost.
The researchers conclude by suggesting that their tests showed that the benefits obtained from hafted tools almost certainly contributed to their invention and spread in early civilizations.
