Incredible 5,500-year-old tomb discovery is ‘find of a lifetime’
It appears as if Meath is in the midst of a golden age of archaeological discovery after the unearthing of a 5,500-year-old megalithic passage tomb at Dowth Hall.
After last week’s incredible discovery of a previously uncharted henge site near Newgrange in Co Meath, another fascinating find nearby is shedding even more insight into ancient Ireland.
According to RTÉ News, a 5,500-year-old megalithic passage tomb has been revealed on the grounds of Dowth Hall, just down the road from the Newgrange monument. It is the most significant find of its type in Ireland in the past 50 years.
So far, two burial chambers have been discovered in what is the western section of the main passage tomb, buried by a massive stone cairn measuring 40 metres in diameter.
A series of six kerbstones have been found around the perimeter of the cairn, one of which is adorned with a number of well-preserved Neolithic carvings and drawings.
A kerbstone with elaborate carvings.
The discovery was made as part of a collaboration between the agritech firm Devenish and the University College Dublin School of Archaeology.
Speaking of its importance, Dr Clíodhna Ní Lionáin, who led the Devenish part of the dig, said: “For the archaeologists involved in this discovery, it is truly the find of a lifetime.”
Adding to this, Devenish’s executive chair Owen Brennan compared its decision to choose the site with those made by the tomb’s constructors thousands of years ago.
“From our archaeological research, it seems we made the same decision for the same reasons as a long line of our farming colleagues from the Neolithic, the Bronze Age, medieval and more recent times,” he said.
“The monuments here, created by some of Ireland’s first farmers, capture our imaginations and those of our visitors to the Devenish Lands of Dowth.”
The Brú na Bóinne World Heritage Site at the tomb’s location is now a real hotbed of archaeological activity, and with the recent henge discovery made after an intense heatwave, more major digs could be in the works in the region in the years ahead.
The Venus of Hohle Fels is the oldest statue depicting a woman’s figure
The Venus of Hohle Fels is 2.4 inches in height and was carved from the tusk of a woolly mammoth tusk. It has been pieced together from six fragments found in a cluster, about 10 feet below ground, although the left arm and shoulder are still missing. It has a short and squat body whose waist is slightly narrower than its broad shoulders and wide hips.
The figurine has no head; in its place, a carved ring protrudes between the shoulders, indicating that the sculpture was probably worn as a pendant or amulet.
The figure is endowed with prominent breasts, while its two short arms with their carefully shaped hands and fingers rest on the upper part of the abdomen.
A number of deeply etched horizontal creases (indicating clothes?) traverse the torso from just below the breasts to the pubic triangle. The buttocks and genitals are portrayed in exaggerated detail, while the legs are small and pointed.
The Venus of Hohle Fels was discovered in the cave of “Hohle Fels” (German for “hollow rock”) near Schelklingen, by a team of archaeologists from the University of Tubingen led by Professor Nicholas Conard, as reported in the prestigious journal Nature.
The six fragments were found in the cave hall, roughly 10 feet below ground about 65 feet from the cave entrance. They were lying, well preserved, in a layer of red-brown, clay silt below five Aurignacian horizons (radiocarbon-dated to the period 30-40,000 BCE), with about twelve stratigraphically intact anthropogenic features.
The latter’s thickness (2-4 feet) indicates that Venus was created at the beginning of the Aurignacian era, roughly 35-40,000 BCE, and refutes claims that figurative representations only appeared in the later phases of the Swabian Aurignacian (c.33,000 BCE). (Note: all of the 20+ previous finds in Swabia had been of animal or therianthropic imagery – human figures were entirely unknown.)
Curiously, neither the Hohle Fels cave nor the other Swabian caves of Hohlenstein-Stadel and Vogelherd, have yielded any significant cave art, such as paintings or engravings.
In effect the discovery of the Venus of Hohle Fels pushes back the date of the oldest prehistoric carving by at least 2,000 and perhaps as many as 7,000 years – that is, from 33,000 BCE to 35-40,000 BCE). According to Professor Nicholas J. Conard, the find “radically changes our views of the earliest Paleolithic art.”
The good condition of the fragments and the fact they were lying within inches of each other, suggests that the Venus suffered little if any disturbance during its time in the ground.
A few feet away, the team also discovered a flute carved out of a vulture bone, dating back to 34,000 BCE – which makes it the oldest known musical instrument – along with bones (or ivories) belonging to reindeer, horses, bears, mammoths, and ibexes.
To see how the Schelklingen Venus fits into the evolution of petroglyphs and other rock art during the Upper Paleolithic Era of prehistory, see: Prehistoric Art Timeline.
Interpretation
As in the case of later Venus figurines, the figure’s exaggerated reproductive attributes suggest that it may have been a fertility symbol.
Whatever the precise meaning or interpretation of the Schelklingen Venus, the immensely time-consuming work that went into it, using only primitive tools, suggests that this piece of primitive art had a particularly high value in the eyes of the sculptor(s) who carved it.
The Venus of Hohle Fels may not look like a sophisticated example of Paleolithic plastic art, but appearances in this case are misleading. All paleoanthropologists and archaeologists agree that the carving of a human figure – indeed any pictorial depiction (engraving, painting or otherwise) of the human form – represents a major step forward in the cultural development of mankind.
Just Under the Island’s sandy soil, archaeologists are discovering complex history extending back 4,000 years
A forgotten sliver of land in the far north of the Persian Gulf, Kuwait’s Failaka Island is home now mostly to camels. Its only town is a sprawling ruin pockmarked with bullet holes and debris from tank rounds, and the landscape beyond seems empty and bleak.
An aerial view of Kuwait’s Failaka Island shows four different sites representing thousands of years of civilization.
Even before Iraq’s 1990 invasion of Kuwait prompted its sudden evacuation, Failaka in the past century was little more than a quiet refuge for fishermen and the occasional Kuwaiti seeking relief from the mainland’s fierce heat. But just under the island’s sandy soil, archaeologists are discovering a complex history extending back 4,000 years, from the golden age of the first civilizations to the wars of the modern era.
The secret to Failaka’s rich past is its location, just 60 miles south of the spot where the Tigris and Euphrates Rivers empty into the Gulf. From the rise of Ur, the world’s largest metropolis in the late third millennium B.C., until Saddam Hussein’s attack during the First Gulf War, the island has been a strategic prize. For thousands of years, Failaka was a key base from which to cultivate and protect—or prey on—the lucrative trade that passed up and down the Persian Gulf. In addition, there were two protected harbours, potable water, and even some fertile soil. The island’s relative isolation provided a safe place for Christian mystics and farmers amid the rise of Islam in the seventh and eighth centuries A.D., as well as for pirates a millennium later.
Currently, archaeological teams from no less than half a dozen countries, including Poland, France, Denmark, and Italy, are at work on Failaka. Given the political volatility of neighbouring nations such as Iraq, Iran, and Syria, the island offers a welcome haven for researchers unable to conduct their work in many other parts of the region. “I started encouraging teams to come in 2004,” says Shehab Shehab, Kuwait’s antiquities director. “And I want to encourage more.”
The oldest settlement on Failaka was long thought to have been founded in about 1800 B.C. by the Dilmunites, a maritime people who likely hailed from what are today’s Bahraini and Saudi Arabian coasts, and who controlled the Persian Gulf trade. But on Failaka’s southwest corner, a team from Denmark’s Moesgård Museum has uncovered evidence that Mesopotamians arrived at least a century before the Dilmunites.
The finds are centred on a recently unearthed Mesopotamian-style building typical of those found on the nearby Iraqi mainland dating from around 2000 B.C. The structure was later partially covered by a Dilmunite temple.
In the mythology of ancient Sumeria (modern Iraq), Dilmun is described as an Eden-like place of milk and honey. But by 2000 B.C., Dilmunites were leaving their homeland to become seagoing merchants and establish a powerful trading network that eventually stretched from India to Syria. Mesopotamian clay tablets refer to ships from Dilmun bringing wood, copper, and other goods from distant lands. By the nineteenth century B.C., Failaka had become a linchpin in the Dilmunites’ operations. At this point, after the Dilmunites had either ousted the Mesopotamians or merely succeeded them, there are no further signs of a Mesopotamian presence.
The Dilmunites constructed a large temple and palace complex almost on top of the houses built by the earlier Mesopotamian residents. A French team that excavated the temple in the 1980s suggested that it was an oddity, possibly related to Syrian temple towers. But recent work by a team from the Moesgård Museum in Denmark points to a building remarkably similar to the Barbar sanctuary in Bahrain, considered the grandest Dilmun structure.
Failaka’s name is derived from the Greek word for the outpost. But Alexander the Great, according to later classical authors such as Strabo and Arrian, gave Failaka the name Ikaros, since it resembled the Aegean island of that name in size and shape. French archaeologists working on the island in recent years have found several stone inscriptions dating to the fourth and third centuries b.c. mentioning the name Ikaros, as well as architecture and artefacts that reveal a bustling community with international ties during that period.
The island’s accessible freshwater easily defended coastline and strategic location also attracted the attention of Alexander’s successors, who vied among themselves for control of regional trade routes. Antiochus I, who ruled the Seleucid Empire in the third century B.C., built a 60-foot-square fort around a well on Failaka. Inside the fortress compound, one small, elegant temple has Ionic columns and a plan that is quintessentially Greek, including an east-facing altar. This was no simple import, however, but a fascinating amalgamation of designs. The column bases, for example, are of the Persian Achaemenid style, similar to those in the capital, Persepolis, burned by Alexander’s troops in the fourth century B.C.
The centre of Failaka is a low-lying swampy area that is now the province of mosquitoes and wandering white camels that belong to the Kuwaiti emir. But a millennium ago, this was a three-square-mile pocket of fertile and well-watered plain cultivated by a small community of isolated Christians in a region populated by Muslims. Previous French excavations revealed several villages and two churches, including a possible monastic chapel.
A Polish team led by Warsaw-based archaeologist Magdalena Zurek is now busy excavating nearby sites to understand the extent of the settlements that flourished in the eighth and ninth centuries A.D., several hundred years after the faith inspired by Muhammad swept through the region. “We know nothing about Christians on Failaka,” says Zurek, who suspects that a third church lies near her current excavation of a modest farmstead.
The story of Failaka after the abandonment of the Christian villages remains shadowy. Currently, archaeologists are turning their attention to several sites that sit along the northern shore of the island to probe the medieval and early modern periods. The most interesting is located on a high spot overlooking the gulf, facing Iraq. Nearly 30 years ago, a team from the University of Venice surveyed the site, pinpointing a village, called Al-Quraniya, that dates to at least as early as the seventeenth century A.D., and possibly several centuries earlier. In 2010, an Italian team led by Gian Luca Grassigli of the University of Perugia began intensive fieldwork there.
The excavators have since uncovered an array of pottery, porcelain, glass bangles, and bronze objects, including nails and coins, dating to between the seventeenth and nineteenth centuries A.D. The mound seems to have two large concentrations of building materials, and the archaeologists hope to make a detailed plan of the settlement in future campaigns. Deeper trenches may reveal evidence of earlier settlement, filling in the long gap between the abandonment of Christian villages and more recent times.
What is clear is that Failaka was still a notable outpost two millennia after Alexander. Just to the southeast of the village is a small square rock fort dating to about the sixteenth or seventeenth century.
Some researchers believe that this structure was constructed by Portuguese soldier-merchants who did frequent business in the region. others suspect that Arab pirates built the base to attack the lucrative shipping lanes that led to wealthy Iraqi cities such as Basra or to ports along the Iranian coast to the east. In this era, European, Iranian, and Chinese elites had a growing appetite for the gulf pearls that dominated the region’s economy. Pirates were a constant threat until the nineteenth century; British guns and diplomacy put an end to their raids.
Pirate hideout.
The mainland of Kuwait is mostly a harsh desert, with only a handful of significant ancient sites. Even the old town of Kuwait City, dating back two centuries, was long ago demolished to make way for skyscrapers. Thus Failaka is of prime importance to the country’s heritage. Recently, much of the island’s history was threatened by a plan to transform the barren land with its rocky coast into a major tourist magnet, complete with marinas, canals, spas, chalets, and enormous high-rise hotels and condominiums. In the wake of the global economic recession, however, the $5 billion projects foundered and was recently shelved. Shehab has moved into the resulting vacuum, lobbying hard to turn all of Failaka into a protected site in order to enable archaeologists to uncover, study, and preserve this small nation’s past.
The government already sets aside more than $10 million annually to cover the costs of foreign projects in Kuwait, and hopes to promote science as well as encourage heritage tourism. “Shehab’s dream is to create in Kuwait a kind of research centre for Gulf basin archaeology,” says archaeologist Piotr Bielinski from the University of Warsaw, who is digging at a prehistoric site on the mainland just north of Kuwait City.
And excavators on Failaka are making the most of this unique opportunity, exposing evidence of Mesopotamian merchants, religious structures representing three cultures and spanning more than 2,500 years, a pirate’s lair, and the remains of Failaka’s last battle, ample testimony to the island’s millennia-long endurance.
Researchers Uncovered a 5,000-Year-Old Crystal Dagger Buried in Spain
Inside an ancient tomb near Seville, researchers found the remains of several individuals buried in a ritualistic fashion, as well as a most striking artefact: a quite beautiful dagger made from rock crystal.
The intricately carved crystal dagger has been dated to at least 3000 BCE, making it the “most technically sophisticated and esthetically impressive collection of rock crystal material culture ever found in Prehistoric Iberia,” according to Spanish researchers who investigated the site.
Prehistoric humans in Europe made most of their tools from chert and flint. Tools made by knapping ‘rock crystals’ (macro-crystalline quartz) were far less prevalent, but nevertheless, people developed a technique for their manufacturing that appeared during late prehistory in certain European regions, such as the southwest Iberian Peninsula in the third millennium BCE.
Although rock crystal tools were more difficult to fashion and the raw materials weren’t as abundant as sedimentary rock, prehistoric people likely cherished them due to their social value.
Just as we stand in awe today at their sight, one would imagine that people were even more impressed by the thousands of years ago.
This particularly exquisite rock crystal tool, an 8.5-inch long dagger, was found in one of eight megalithic tombs from Valencina de la Concepción, a site near Seville in Spain that is considered one of the most significant for the study of Copper Age Iberia.
The tomb, known as the Montelirio tholos, was excavated between 2007 and 2010.
It is a great megalithic construction with a 39-meter (128-foot) corridor leading to the main chamber with a 4.75-meter (15.5-foot) diameter from which, through a narrow corridor, a secondary chamber is accessible.
Researchers found the remains of at least 25 individuals, alongside numerous sumptuous grave goods, including shrouds and clothes made of tens of thousands of perforated beads and decorated with amber beads, as well as many flint arrowheads, found fragments of gold blades, ivory objects, and of course the dazzling crystal core.
The arrowheads, blade, and rock crystal dagger were found at the back of the main chamber. No other objects were found in the rest of the chamber, which is suspicious.
The accumulation of artefacts right next to the main chamber’s access corridor “suggest an offering similar to those discovered in the main corridor, where the arrowheads, although made of lower quality materials, were found in large groups associated with an altar and other offerings (plants),” said researchers at the University of Granada and the University of Seville in a study published in Quaternary International.
At least several females and one male-identified within Montelirio tholos are believed to have died due to poisoning.
The remains of the women were arranged in a circular fashion in a chamber next to the bones of the male, who may have been a person of high status. The dagger itself was found in a different chamber “in association with an ivory hilt and sheath.”
There are no sources of quartz of the kind used in the dagger near the site, which suggests the materials were sourced from far afield.
The researchers say this is another reason why these crystal daggers and arrowheads may have been reserved to a few elite individuals who could afford them, having a dual significance.
“On the one hand, it had a social significance due to the exoticism of the material and the fact that its transformation required very specific skills and probably some degree of technical specialisation. They probably represent funerary paraphernalia only accessible to the elite of this time period. The association of the dagger blade to a handle made of ivory, also a non-local raw material that must have been of great value, strongly suggests the high-ranking status of the people making use of such objects.”
“On the other hand, rock crystal must have had a symbolic significance as a raw material invested with special meanings and connotations. The literature provides examples of societies in which rock crystal and quartz as raw materials symbolise vitality, magical powers and a connection with ancestors.”
This was once one of ancient Israel’s most powerful cities
Gezer used to be a major city. Some 3,000 years ago, this settlement – situated between Tel Aviv and Jerusalem – was considered one of the main regional cities, along with Jerusalem and Beit She’an.
Down the rabbit hole: Visitors to Gezer’s ancient water system.
Twenty-five layers of habitation have been found here during decades of archaeological excavations. Its earliest structures were built about 5,500 years ago.
The Bible recounts how the king of Egypt “had taken Gezer and burnt it with fire,” giving it as a loving wedding gift to his daughter who married King Solomon (1 Kings 9:16). Solomon subsequently rebuilt the city.
There is always a crucial question when it comes to ancient sites: what can we see there today? Are these just piles of “important” ruins, or can you actually enjoy the place and is it interesting?
Tel Gezer offers several wonderful observation points.
It can get a bit dark in the ancient water system at Gezer.
With Gezer, the answer is a resounding yes – especially now its ancient water system is open to the public.
The residents of Gezer dug out this water system 3,600 years ago in order to reach groundwater. It’s the largest Canaanite water system ever discovered, established around 600 years before the presumed reign of King Solomon.
On the eastern side is Solomon’s Gate and the Canaanite steles, an area used for worshipping that features a stone basin and 10 huge stone monuments.
The first person to find it was the Irish archaeologist Robert Macalister, in the early 20th century. That excavation also yielded the Gezer calendar – one of the earliest Hebrew inscriptions, which is now on show in an Istanbul museum.
The water system was blocked over the years and only recently excavated. A new stairwell has been installed, allowing us to look and be amazed.
The system is 90 meters long and 7 meters high (295 x 23 feet), and groundwater is used to accumulate at the bottom, at a depth of some 40 meters. This pool is currently dry (you should bring a flashlight when visiting).
The water system is not the only attraction. There is also a Canaanite gate that served as the entryway into the city, flanked by a high guard tower.
These are the largest such fortifications found in Israel to date.
On the eastern side is Solomon’s Gate and the Canaanite steles, an area used for worshipping that features a stone basin and 10 huge stone monuments. The western end of the site boasts large jujube (Ziziphus) tree, providing pleasant shade.
Tel Gezer offers several wonderful observation points, allowing you to gaze over the green fields and beautiful vineyards surrounding the moshav of Karmei Yosef.
Tel Gezer seen from the air.
The western side also features the tomb of Sheikh Mohammed al-Ghazali. Up until 1948, 1,000 residents of the Arab village of Abu Shusha lived next to the archaeological mound.
They grew cereals and fruit trees. The village’s houses were all destroyed when the village was conquered during the War of Independence.
Spring can be found southeast of the site with a memorial honouring Itay Steinberger from Karmei Yosef, who fell during the Second Lebanon War in 2006.
“China is the first country in the world to discover and cultivate tea,” said Professor Shuya Wei from the Institute of Cultural Heritage and History of Science & Technology at the University of Science and Technology Beijing and her colleagues.
A small tea bowl was found in the ancient capital of the Zhu Kingdom in Zoucheng, Shandong province, China.
“In Chinese legend, tea was first discovered as an antidote by Emperor Shen Nung in 2737 BCE, according to the first monograph on Chinese herbal medicine Shennong’s Classic of Materia Medica.”
“The first mention of tea planting is believed to occur in the Xiaxiaozheng, a Chinese earliest almanac recording traditional agricultural affairs, probably written in the Warring States period (475-221 BCE).”
“According to the literature, in the Spring and Autumn period (770-476 BCE), tea had been used as a sacrifice and vegetable, in the Warring States period and the early Western Han dynasty, tea cultivation, tea making techniques and tea-drinking custom in Sichuan province began to spread to other places.”
The physical evidence of tea is very important to confirm the origin, development, function and culture of tea.
“As archaeological plant leaves remain have been buried for many years, most of them have rotted or charred, it is difficult to find archaeological plant leaves remains in archaeological excavation,” the researchers explained.
“Recently, 2,400-year-old charred tea remains were found in a bowl unearthed from tomb No. 1 at Xigang in the ancient capital city site of the Zhu Kingdom in Zoucheng City, Shandong province.”
“If the remains could be determined as tea, that would be the direct evidence for tea drinking in the ancient time.”
The 2,400-year-old tea residue from a bowl was found in the ancient capital of the Zhu Kingdom in Zoucheng, Shandong province, China.
In the study, Professor Wei and co-authors analyzed the sample from the Warring State tomb using Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy (FTIR) and several other methods. They used modern tea and modern tea residue as reference samples.
Their results show that the sample contains abundant calcium phytoliths identifiable as tea and that its FTIR spectra are similar to that of the modern tea residue.
They also detected caffeine, methoxybenzene compounds, organic acids, and several other compounds in both the ancient sample and the modern tea residue.
“Since ancient times, the Chinese people have always had the habit of drinking tea, but there is no physical evidence to prove when tea actually appeared, until the discovery of tea in the Han Yangling Mausoleum, which proved that Chinese tea has a history of at least 2,150 years, which has earned recognition from Guinness World Records as the oldest tea in 2016,” the scientists said.
“The identification of the tea remains in Zoucheng — the early stage of Warring States, approximately 2,400 years ago — has advanced the origin of tea by nearly 300 years.”
“Furthermore, the tea was found in a small bowl, providing additional evidence of the usage of tea.”
“Our results indicate that tea drinking culture may start as early as in Warring State period.”
The findings were published in the journal Scientific Reports.
We Homo sapiens didn’t use to be alone. Long ago, there was a lot more human diversity; Homo sapiens lived alongside an estimated eight now-extinct species of humans about 300,000 years ago. As recently as 15,000 years ago, we were sharing caves with another human species known as the Denisovans. And fossilized remains indicate an even higher number of early human species once populated Earth before our species came along.
An Australopithecus skull
“We have one human species right now, and historically, that’s really weird,” said Nick Longrich, an evolutionary biologist at the University of Bath in the United Kingdom. “Not that far back, we weren’t that special, but now we’re the only ones left.”
So, how many early human species were there?
When it comes to figuring out exactly how many distinct species of humans existed, it gets complicated pretty quickly, especially because researchers keep unearthing new fossils that end up being totally separate and previously unknown species.
“It’s all about the definition of a species and the degree to which you accept variation within a species,” Stewart told Live Science. “It can become a slightly irritating and pedantic discussion because everyone wants an answer. But the truth is that it really does depend.”
What is a species?
The definition of a species used to be nice and simple: If two individuals could produce fertile offspring, they were from the same species. For example, a horse and a donkey can mate to produce a mule, but mules can’t successfully reproduce with each other. Therefore, horses and donkeys, though biologically similar, are not the same species. In recent decades, however, that simplicity has given way to a more complex scientific debate about how to define a species. Critics of the interbreeding definition point out that not all life reproduces sexually; some plants and bacteria can reproduce asexually.
Others have argued that we should define species by grouping together organisms with similar anatomical features, but that method has weaknesses as well. There can be significant morphological variation between the sexes and even individuals of the same species in different parts of the world, making it a very subjective way of classifying life.
Some biologists prefer to use DNA to draw the lines between species, and with advancing technology, they can do so with increasing precision. But we don’t have the DNA of every ancient human — the genome of Homo erectus, for instance, has never been sequenced, Live Science previously reported.
The skulls of various human species
It gets even murkier when you consider that as much as 2% of the average European’s DNA comes from Neanderthals and up to 6% of the DNA of some Melanesians (Indigenous people from islands directly northeast of Australia in Oceania) comes from Denisovans. So, are we a separate species from these ancestors?
“Some people will tell you that Neanderthals are the same species as us,” Stewart said. “They’re just a slightly different type of modern humans and the interbreeding is the proof, but again the definition of species has moved on from just interbreeding.”
After taking all of this into account, some experts have argued that the concept of a species doesn’t actually exist. But others say that, while a cast-iron definition of a species is almost impossible to achieve, it’s still worth the effort so that we can talk about evolution — including the evolution of our own species — in a meaningful way.
So we muddle on, knowing that a species means different things to different people — which means, of course, that people will disagree on how many species of human have ever existed. It’s also a question of what constitutes a human. To answer this question, it helps to understand the word hominin, a large group that includes humans and chimps going back to their shared ancestor.
“The chimpanzee and we have evolved from a common ancestor,” Stewart said. If we decide that humans are everything that arrived after our split from ancient chimpanzees about 6 million to 7 million years ago, then it’s likely to be a diverse group. The Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History has listed at least 21 human species that are recognized by most scientists. Granted, it’s not a totally complete list; the Denisovans, for instance, are missing.
Those on the list include Homo sapiens, Neanderthals, the Indonesian hobbit-sized people, Homo erectus and Homo Naledi. The list also includes other species that existed closer in time to the common ancestor of humans and chimps, and so look more like chimpanzees than modern-day humans. Despite their looks, these species are still known as early humans. “You can’t go back 5 million years and expect them to look like us,” Stewart said.
If the Smithsonian says there are 21, then you can be sure the diversity is much greater, Stewart said. That’s because the list errs on the side of caution, picking the species that are close to universally recognized. For instance, the recently discovered dwarf human species Homo luzonensis, which is known from just a few bones from a cave in the Philippines, is not included on the Smithsonian’s list.
Researchers also suspect there are many other fossilized species yet to be excavated. “The list has only ever grown and I don’t see why that will change,” Stewart said.
Evolution of Personhood: Earliest Adorned Female Infant Burial in Europe Reveals Significant Insights
Ten thousand years ago, just after the last Ice Age, a group of hunter-gatherers buried an infant girl in a cave in what is now Italy. They entombed her with a rich selection of their treasured beads and pendants, and an eagle-owl talon, signalling their grief and showing that even the youngest females were recognized as full persons in their society.
The excavations and analysis of the discovery are published this week in Nature Scientific Reports and offer insight into the early Mesolithic period, from which few recorded burials are known.
Claudine Gravel-Miguel, the postdoctoral researcher with the Institute of Human Origins at Arizona State University and co-author on the paper, performed the analysis of the ornaments, which includes over 60 pierced shell beads and four shell pendants.
The mouth of the Arma Veirana cave, a site in the Ligurian mountains of northwestern Italy.
Mortuary practices offer a window into the worldviews and social structure of past societies. Child funerary treatment provides important insights into who was considered a person and afforded the attributes of an individual self, moral agency and eligibility for group membership. The seemingly “egalitarian” funerary treatment of this infant female, whom the team nicknamed “Neve,” shows that as early as 10,000 years ago in Western Europe, even the youngest females were recognized as full persons in their society.
“The evolution and development of how early humans buried their dead as revealed in the archaeological record have enormous cultural significance,” said Jamie Hodgkins, ASU doctoral graduate and paleoanthropologist at the University of Colorado Denver.
The excavation
Arma Veirana, a cave in the Ligurian pre-Alps of northwestern Italy, is a popular spot for local families to visit. Looters also discovered the site, and their digging exposed the late Pleistocene tools that drew researchers to the area.
The research team started surveying the site in 2015 and discovered the remains during the last week of the 2017 field season. The team of project coordinators includes Italian collaborators Fabio Negrino from the University of Genoa and Stefano Benazzi from the University of Bologna, as well as researchers from the University of Montreal, Washington University, University of Ferrara, University of Tubingen and ASU Institute of Human Origins.
The first two excavation seasons were spent near the mouth of the cave, exposing stratigraphic layers that contained tools over 50,000 years old typically associated with Neandertals in Europe (Mousterian tools).
They also found the remains of ancient meals such as the cut-marked bones of wild boars and elk and bits of charred fat. In addition, they found stone tools that were much more recent and that had likely been eroding from deeper inside the cave. To better understand the stratigraphy of the cave and document its occupation history, the team opened new sections further inside the cave in 2017.
As the team explored this new section, they began to unearth pierced shell beads, which Hodgkins examined more carefully back in the lab.
Illustration showing the placement of beads and shells along with the cranium.
A few days after they found the first bead, one of the excavators uncovered a small piece of the infant’s cranial vault.
“I was excavating in the adjacent square and remember looking over and thinking, ‘That’s a weird bone,’” Gravel-Miguel said. “It quickly became clear that not only we were looking at a human cranium, but that it was also of a very young individual. It was an emotional day.”
Using dental tools and a small paintbrush, researchers spent that week and the following field season carefully exposing the whole skeleton, which was adorned with articulated lines of pierced shell beads.
“The excavation techniques are state-of-the-art and leave no doubt to the associations of the materials with the skeleton,” said Curtis Marean, who was not involved in the study. Marean is associate director of the Institute of Human Origins and Foundation Professor with the School of Human Evolution and Social Change.
Important changes in human prehistory
In a series of analyses coordinated across multiple institutions and numerous experts, the team uncovered critical details about the ancient burial. Radiocarbon dating determined that the child lived 10,000 years ago, and amelogenin protein analysis and ancient DNA revealed that the infant was a female belonging to a lineage of European women known as the U5b2b haplogroup.
“There’s a decent record of human burials before around 14,000 years ago,” Hodgkins said. “But the latest Upper Paleolithic period and earliest part of the Mesolithic are more poorly known when it comes to funerary practices. Infant burials are especially rare, so Neve adds important information to help fill this gap.”
“The Mesolithic is particularly interesting,” said co-author Caley Orr, ASU doctoral graduate and paleoanthropologist and anatomist at the University of Colorado School of Medicine. “It followed the end of the final Ice Age and represents the last period in Europe when hunting and gathering was the primary way of making a living. So, it’s a really important time period for understanding human prehistory.”
Detailed virtual histology, or study of the tissue and structure, of the infant’s teeth, showed that she died 40 to 50 days after birth and that she experienced stress that briefly halted the growth of her teeth 47 days and 28 days before she was born. Carbon and nitrogen analyses of the teeth revealed that the baby’s mother had been nourishing the infant in her womb on a land-based diet.
The child as a member of the community
Gravel-Miguel performed an analysis of the ornaments adorning the infant, which demonstrated the care invested in each piece and showed that many of the ornaments exhibited wear that proves they were passed down to the child from group members. The details of this research — along with further results — are the focus of a separate article, currently under review.
Citing a similar burial of two infants dating to 11,500 years ago at Upward Sun River, Alaska, Hodgkins said the funerary treatment of Neve suggests that the recognition of infant females as full persons has deep origins in a common ancestral culture that was shared by peoples who migrated into Europe and those who migrated to North America. Or it may have arisen in parallel in populations across the planet.
The research, excavation and analysis were made possible with funding from The Wenner-Gren Foundation, Leakey Foundation, National Geographic Society Waitt Program, Hyde Family Foundations, Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council (SSHRC), the European Union’s Horizon 2020 Research and Innovation Programme, and the Max Planck Society.
