Category Archives: WORLD

GREENLAND, NORTH AMERICA, WORLD

Massive Greenland shark believed to be up to 512 years old has been found

Massive Greenland shark believed to be up to 512 years old has been found

Greenland sharks are now the longest-living vertebrates known on Earth, scientists say. Researchers used radiocarbon dating to determine the ages of 28 of the animals and estimated that one female was about 512 years old. The team found that the sharks grow at just 1cm a year, and reach sexual maturity at about the age of 150.

The Greenland shark spends most of its time deep underwater but comes to the surface to feed on large mammals
The Greenland shark spends most of its time deep underwater but comes to the surface to feed on large mammals

The research is published in the journal Science. Lead author Julius Nielsen, a marine biologist from the University of Copenhagen, said: “We had our expectations that we were dealing with an unusual animal, but I think everyone doing this research was very surprised to learn the sharks were as old as they were.”

The former vertebrate record-holder was a bowhead whale estimated to be 211 years old. But if invertebrates are brought into the longevity competition, a 507-year-old clam called Ming holds the title of the most aged animal.

Slow swimmers

Greenland sharks are huge beasts, that can grow up to 5m in length. They can be found, swimming slowly, throughout the cold, deep waters of the North Atlantic.

With this leisurely pace of life and sluggish growth rate, the sharks were thought to live for a long time. But until now, determining any ages was difficult. For some fish, scientists are able to examine ear bones called otoliths, which when sectioned, show a pattern of concentric rings that scientists can count as they would the rings in a tree.

Sharks are harder, but some species, such as the Great White, have calcified tissue that grows in layers on their backbones, which can also be used to age the animals.

“But the Greenland shark is a very, very soft shark – it has no hard body parts where growth layers are deposited. So it was believed that the age could not be investigated,” Mr Nielsen told the BBC. However, the team found a clever way of working out the age.

“The Greenland shark’s eye lens is composed of a specialised material – and it contains proteins that are metabolically inert,” explained Mr Neilson.

“Which means after the proteins have been synthesised in the body, they have not renewed anymore. So we can isolate the tissue that formed when the shark was a pup, and do radiocarbon dating.”

The team looked at 28 sharks, most of which had died after being caught in fishing nets as by-catch. Using this technique, they established that the largest shark – a 5m-long female – was extremely ancient. Because radiocarbon dating does not produce exact dates, they believe that she could have been as “young” as 272 or as old as 512. But she was most likely somewhere in the middle, so about Greenland sharks are now the longest-living vertebrates known on Earth, scientists say. Researchers used radiocarbon dating to determine the ages of 28 of the animals and estimated that one female was about 512 years old. years old. It means she was born between the years 1501 and 1744, but her most likely date of birth was in the 17th century.

The scientists studied 28 Greenland sharks. mysterious Picture

“Even with the lowest part of this uncertainty, 272 years, even if that is the maximum age, it should still be considered the longest-living vertebrate,” said Mr Nielsen.

Conversely, if her age is at the upper end of the scale, she will have out-lived Ming the clam – although her age has a greater probability of lying in the middle.

Conservation lessons

The team believes the animals only reach sexual maturity when they are 4m-long. And this new, very lengthy age range, suggests this does not occur until the animals are about 150 years old. The researchers say this has consequences for the future conservation of the animals. Because of their extreme longevity, Greenland sharks may still be recovering from being over-fished before WW2. The sharks’ livers were once used for machine oil, and they were killed in great numbers before a synthetic alternative was found and the demand fell.

“When you evaluate the size distribution all over the North Atlantic, it is quite rare that you see sexually mature females, and quite rare that you find newborn pups or juveniles,” Mr Nielsen explained.

“It seems most are sub-adults. That makes sense: if you have had this very high fishing pressure, all the old animals – they are not there anymore. And there are not that many to give birth to new ones.

“There is, though, still a very large amount of ‘teenagers’, but it will take another 100 years for them to become sexually active.” Another author of the study, Prof Christopher Ramsey, director of Oxford Radiocarbon Accelerator Unit at the University of Oxford, said that radiocarbon dating could be used to determine the ages of other animals, but was not likely to be chosen as the primary method.

“For many animals, we have other methods to determine age,” he said.

“Also, the radiocarbon method is not very precise, and so is only really relevant for very long-lived species.” He added that the statistical method used to determine the sharks’ ages was Bayesian statistics.

“Bayesian statistics were first worked out by the Rev Bayes in the 18th Century. This means he will have been working on this when some of these oldest sharks were young.”

WORLD

Have any human societies ever lived underground?

Have any human societies ever lived underground?

From ancient catacombs to modern subways, humans have always travelled underground for short periods of time. But has the entire society of people ever lived underground? Yes. However, historically only in emergencies and when there are no other options. But in the last few decades, it has begun to change.

“The important thing to know about the underground is that we don’t belong to it. Biologically and physiologically, our body is not designed for underground life.” Said Wilhunt, the author of the book.Underground: The history of mankind in the world under our feet“(Random House, 2019).” Still, there are moments when we withdraw underground. “

Historical people temporarily live underwater for a variety of reasons. If they didn’t have the materials to build a house, they dug an underground house, Hunt told Live Science. In places of extreme climate, people went under the earth summer Cool, winter To stay warm. The basement was also a safe place to hide from the enemy.

For example, ancient people built the famous underground city of Cappadocia in what is now Turkey to protect it from both weather and war.

“They were in a very strategic location geographically,” Hunt said. “They were constantly being attacked.” Residents withdrew underground in an emergency, but they did not stay there for a long time, perhaps several weeks at a time.

The underground city of Derinkuyu is in the Cappadocia region of Turkey

One of the largest underground cities in Cappadocia is Derinkuyu. Derinkuyu dates back to the 7th and 8th centuries and was home to about 20,000 people. Geophysicists have discovered that another recently discovered city in the area could be 5 million square feet (13 million square kilometres) and 371 feet (113 m) deep. 

If so, this would make the recently discovered city of Cappadocia about one-third larger than Derinkuyu.

Hunt said the underground city of Cappadocia is an “architectural wonder.” The well plunged deep into the water table. The hole leading to the surface acted as a ventilation shaft.

A layer of Protection — Contains large circular stones that ancient people had Rolled in front of the city entrance — Separated the people inside from the surface intruders.

However, not all underground dwellings were as complex as Cappadocia dwellings. People also lived in natural and man-made caves, Hunt said.

This room, cut out of the porous rock tufa, is in the underground city of Kaymakli in the Cappadocia region of Turkey.

The constructed caves can be found everywhere with the right type of geology. For example, stone hills made of puffs, soft Volcano Rocks that are easy to dig.

“They are very common,” he said. “Some people around the world are building cave dwellings.” Even in modern Australia, in a town called Coober Pedy, about half of the population lives in “dagouts,” or holes carved on the sides of the hills.

Many marginalized people have found shelters under the surface of the abandoned infrastructure of modern cities. These “mole people” in New York are less than in the 1980s, but perhaps more than 1,000 uninhabited people live in tunnels below the streets of the city, Hunt said.

Many homeless people also live in tunnels under Las Vegas. And a large community of orphans lives under the streets of Bucharest, Romania.

As more people move to cities, more of those city dwellers can move underground. Places such as Singapore are looking for options to build downwards.

Unhillie, an assistant professor of psychology at the University of Nottingham’s Malaysian campus, who studies the psychology of being underground, said the skills needed to do so are already here. The challenge is to convince people to move underground.

In fact, according to Lee, is under the earth has a negative psychological effect, as long as the lighting, room size, ceiling height, and other physical attributes of the settings match the ground. That has not been shown yet. For example, technologies such as Lightwell, which allows natural light to brighten underground spaces using materials such as reflective paints, can fight.

Depression resulting from lack of sunlight. People may feel isolated or lack control on the surface, but these emotions are manageable, Lee said. But people still hate the idea of ​​living underground.

In any case, Lee believes that people around the world will soon begin to move, inspired by more than 20 miles of underground cities, shopping malls, offices, and other places in Montreal, Canada. increase. , Hotels and schools.

“Realistically, we’ll be going underground soon. Within at least 30 years, we’ll have more underground working environments and more fun underground,” she said. “It’s coming. It’s not just an idea.”

ENGLAND, EUROPE, WORLD

Ancient stone tomb linked to King Arthur legend is older than Stonehenge, scientists say

Ancient stone tomb linked to King Arthur legend is older than Stonehenge, scientists say

According to researchers, a mystery stone tomb in western England known as Arthur’s Stone — named after the mythical King Arthur — originated almost 6,000 years ago as part of an elaborate “ceremonial landscape” across the whole area.

Ancient stone tomb linked to King Arthur legend is older than Stonehenge, scientists say
The ancient monument is linked by legends to the mythical King Arthur, but archaeologists say it was built in the Neolithic period almost 6,000 years ago.

Excavations this year near the ancient stone structure in rural Herefordshire, just east of the River Wye between England and Wales, show that the site was first occupied by an earthen mound pointing to another ancient structure nearby; but that a few hundred years later, it was rebuilt and realigned to point to hills much farther south, project leader Julian Thomas, a professor of archaeology at the University of Manchester in the U.K., told Live Science in an email.

“This is a ceremonial landscape like those around Stonehenge or Avebury, but rather earlier,” Thomas said. “It certainly implies that this is a location that was politically or spiritually important at the start of the Neolithic.”

Recent excavations near Arthur’s Stone have revealed it was the site of two different Neolithic tombs aligned in different directions.

Arthur’s Stone consists of nine upright, or “standing,” stones that support an immense “capstone” weighing more than 25 tons (23 metric tons). The passage underneath leads to what’s thought to be a burial chamber, although no human remains have been found there. 

The structure gets its name from legends of King Arthur, who is said to have resisted the Saxon invasion of Britain about 1,500 years ago. 

Several historical events have also taken place there, including a duel between knights during the Wars of the Roses in the 15th century.

In 1645, during the English Civil War, King Charles dined with his army there. And according to the website Mysterious Britain, Arthur’s Stone was C.S. Lewis’s inspiration for the “stone table” where Aslan the Lion was sacrificed in his “Narnia” stories.

The surviving stones are thought to be part of a tomb built about 5,500 years ago that was aligned to a prominent gap between hills on the horizon.

Stone table

The excavations revealed that the first earthen mound at the Arthur’s Stone site pointed to the so-called Halls of the Dead, which teams led by Thomas discovered on a ridge a little over 1,000 yards (910 meters) away in 2013.

The Halls of the Dead were originally large timber buildings that were deliberately burned down and replaced by three earthen burial mounds, possibly after a local leader had died. The remains of similar wooden buildings have been found at Neolithic cemeteries in Europe. 

The original mound site was retained by a palisade of upright wooden posts and was very similar to the central mound at the Halls of the Dead site, Thomas said. But the posts soon rotted away and the mound collapsed, so a second monument was built at the site up to 200 years later.

The rebuilt monument, probably consisting of the stones that remain today within a second earthen mound, also had an “avenue” of wooden posts that pointed toward a prominent gap between two hills on the horizon about 12 miles (20 kilometres) away, he said. 

“Significantly, the stone elements are on the later alignment, along with the post avenue, and that is one of the reasons why I think they form part of the later version of the monument,” Thomas said. “I think the initial emphasis is on the internal relationships between the monuments that make up the complex but that later, the focus shifts outwards.”

Archaeologists think the first tomb at the site was built about 5700 years ago and aligned with nearby tombs called the “Halls of the Dead.”

King Arthur

Arthur’s Stone is now one of the most distinctive and best-known Neolithic monuments in England. Several local legends link it to King Arthur.  However, it must have stood for several thousand years by his time, and most historians think Arthur probably didn’t exist.

According to one tale, marks on one of the stones were made by Arthur when he knelt there to pray; another story is that those marks are the indentations of the elbows of a giant he killed. The monument also supposedly marks where Arthur was buried.

Mysterious ‘Super-Henge‘ Found Near Stonehenge High-resolution ground-penetrating radar and other archaeological technologies have revealed up to 9 large intentionally placed stones outlining a crescent-shaped arena less than 2 miles away from the well-known Stonehenge in the UK Durrington Walls area. The site was home to a large Neolithic prehistoric settlement built about 4,500 years ago.

Arthur’s Stone seems to have been part of a ceremonial landscape during the early Neolithic period beginning about 5,700 years ago. The realignment of the stones about 5,500 years ago seems to have been part of an expansion of that landscape.

For example, the later alignment may have indicated that that the gap in the hills it pointed to was an important route for travellers or “a source of some important resource, or a place where allied communities lived, or another place of spiritual significance,” Thomas said.

Other features of the landscape, including several other earthen mounds and a Neolithic “causeway” and enclosure, were “an indication that this was a place that people came to for gatherings, meetings, [and] feasting … and a place that retained its significance for centuries,” he said.

ASIA, CHINA, WORLD

Archaeologists Discover 1,500-year-old Skeletons Of Couple Buried Together In China

Archaeologists Discover 1,500-year-old Skeletons Of Couple Buried Together In China

Archaeologists in China have discovered a rare double burial, or “lovers’ tomb,” featuring the skeletons of a man and woman locked in an eternal embrace.

This ancient Chinese couple buried embracing, dates to the Northern Wei dynasty (386-534).

Though the grave is 1,500 years old, she still wears a plain silver band on her ring finger.

“The message was clear—husband and wife lay together, embracing each other for eternal love during the afterlife,” a group of ten scholars wrote in a study published in the International Journal of Osteoarchaeology.

“This joint burial could be direct evidence of a full display of love and the ­importance of the rings in love.”

The tomb was one of 600 found in an ancient cemetery unearthed at a construction site in Datong, in Shanxi province. The excavation was carried out in 2020.

An illustration of the ancient Chinese couple buried embracing during ​the Northern Wei dynasty (386-534).

The couple likely lived during the Northern Wei dynasty (386–534), a politically turbulent time. Buddhism was spreading rapidly, with cultural diffusion helping shape ideas about death and the afterlife.

“This discovery is a unique display of the human emotion of love in a burial,” Qun Zhang, an associate professor at the Institute of Anthropology at Xiamen University, told the South China Morning Post.

“[It] offer[s] a rare glimpse of concepts of love, life, death, and the afterlife in northern China during a time of intense cultural and ethnic exchange.”

Pathological and trauma signs on the lovers’ skeletons: (a) An unhealed ulnar fracture and missing part of the fourth digit on the right hand of the male individual. Slight development of the marginal osteophytes on the lumbar vertebrae could be detected in the female skeleton; (b) Osteophytosis on the distal end of the lower limbs of the male individual; (c) Antemortem tooth loss in the female individual.

Researchers believe it is likely that the man—whose body showed signs of an unhealed traumatic injury on his right arm—died, and that the woman died by suicide to be buried with him.

Other possibilities include a double death by suicide, or that they both died of illness at the same time.

This is the first known double burial from Chinese antiquity.

Another famous dual grave, Italy’s Lovers of Modena of two skeletons holding hands, was discovered to be two men, rather than a man and a woman, as previously believed.

NORTH AMERICA, U.S.A, WORLD

Mystery of the “East Bay” rock walls in California?

Mystery of the “East Bay” rock walls in California?

There are Remnants of Ancient stone walls all over the East Bay, and no one knows how old they are, who built them, or why?

Though people have been pondering the enigma of the  Berkeley Mystery Walls for well over a hundred years, no conclusions have been reached, and despite wild speculation, no serious scholarly study has ever been undertaken.

Stretching for over 50 miles, the East Bay “Mystery Walls” are found up and down the hills of the East Bay from Berkeley to San Jose.

Who Built the East Bay Mystery Walls in California?

The stone walls are up to five feet tall in places and are constructed from boulders of varying sizes, some weighing up to a ton.

The walls run in broken sections, anywhere from a few meters to half a mile in length, and are placed in unlikely and inaccessible places. They seem to serve no known purpose.

They are not continuous or high enough to act as an enclosure, or measure of defence. They are clearly, visibly, very old.

The heavy stones have sunk deep into the ground, and they are overgrown with lichen. After meandering throughout the Oakland hills, they head inland towards Mt. Diablo where they lead to mysterious stone circles, up to 30 feet in diameter. In one place the walls form a spiral 200 feet wide that circles a large boulder.

The Spanish settlers in the area reported that the walls were already there when they arrived, and when they asked the local Ohlone American Indians, they said the same thing.

In 1904, the founder of the Contra Costa Club said the walls were clearly of prehistoric origin and could be evidence that an advanced civilization had once settled in the East Bay.

Also in 1904, the professor of Oriental languages at UC Berkeley declared that the walls were surely the work of settlers from Mongolia, as the Chinese tended to wall in their cities, and the mystery walls were reminiscent of the Great Wall of China.

Others have theorized that they were built by the early Missionaries, and still, others wonder if Sir Frances Drake did not leave colonists behind at the site where he completed the circumnavigation of the globe.

While speculations abound, the “Mystery Walls of the East Bay,” or the “Great Wall of California” remains a mystery to this day.

WORLD

In regards to a possible threat to Earth, ancient cuneiform tablets prove historically accurate

In regards to a possible threat to Earth, ancient cuneiform tablets prove historically accurate

Some 3,000 years ago, astrologers working for the king of the Assyrian empire kept a close eye on the skies, and what they found and recorded on cuneiform tablets can give us incredibly valuable insights into things such as solar flares and other cosmological happenings that are just as relevant today as they were when first recorded.

A solar flare

Ancient Origins notes that approximately 2,700 years ago, astrologers observed something that caught their eye, and they recorded the event on stone tablets:

“(The astrologers) wrote about an unusual red glow in the sky. A University of Tsukuba team found that there are at least three ancient cuneiform tablets that mention such an event, sometimes described as a ‘red cloud’ or with text saying ‘red covers the sky.’”

According to Science Daily, those observations were compared against carbon-14 concentrations in tree rings from that same time period, and what they found is nothing short of incredible:

“These were probably manifestations of what we call today stable auroral red arcs, consisting of light emitted by electrons in atmospheric oxygen atoms after being excited by intense magnetic fields. While we usually think of aurorae as confined to northern latitudes, during periods of strong magnetic activity, as with a solar mass ejection, they may be observed much further south. Moreover, because of changes in the Earth’s magnetic field over time, the Middle East was closer to the geomagnetic pole during this period in history.”

In regards to a possible threat to Earth, ancient cuneiform tablets prove historically accurate
A cuneiform tablet such as the ones used in Assyria

A Helping Hand From the Ancient Assyrians

It turns out that the Assyrians may be able to lend a helping hand to modern-day scientists who are also studying the sun.

Researchers writing in the Astrophysical Letters Journal explain that solar events are an even bigger threat now than they were thousands of years ago:

“These space weather events constitute a significant threat to a modern civilization, because of its increasing dependency on an electronic infrastructure.”

Think about it: A massive solar flare such as the one described by the Assyrians could negatively impact cell phone towers and internet connections. We already know that satellites and spacecraft are highly vulnerable to such happenings. How long could our modern, interconnected world last without the telecommunications devices we all rely on?

In a sense, we can learn a great deal from the Assyrians, and that knowledge may allow us to prepare for future solar events:

“From a historical point of view, it’s interesting because these cuneiform tablets are believed to be the earliest records of this kind of solar events, pushing information back on that phenomena by at least a century. So, the ancient Assyrian astrologers who wrote the texts have provided another example of how learning about the past can help enhance the present, and sometimes even ‘predict’ the future.”

Other Celestial Events

Ancient astrologers did more than just watch the sun and its effects on Earth. They also tracked comets, meteors, and planetary movements, or other celestial events that might portend good or bad omens for their societies.

The job of being an astrologer was very serious and highly respected, Sarah Roberts writes:

“When reading these signs, the priests were primarily concerned with what was happening in the state as a whole and in the life of the king as the central figure of the state. They also believed that they could undertake rituals to appease the gods and mitigate any negative warnings revealed by the stars.”

Astronomers or astrologists at work in the 14th century

The Path to Scientific Exploration

It may sound ridiculous to suggest that astrology led the way to scientific knowledge, but in many ways that just so happens to be exactly what transpired with the work of the ancient Assyrian astrologers:

“Babylonian astronomers had developed an empirical approach to predicting planetary movement by the 8th century BC. Their studies were later adopted and developed by the ancient Greeks and included some good illustrations of ancient Babylonians using advanced mathematical methods. For example, they used calculus to track Jupiter – a key planet in their minds due to the link they created between Jupiter and their key god, Marduk.”

Man has been contemplating his place in the universe for centuries, and eventually, our interest in the stars led to the space program which has taken us to places in our solar system which were once little more than a dream. Our ancient forefathers laid the path for what would later come to pass, and we owe them a debt of gratitude for taking the time to record what they saw as they too stared into the night sky.

AFRICA, EGYPT, WORLD

43 million-year-old fossil of previously unknown four-legged whale found in Egypt

43 million year old fossil of previously unknown four legged whale found in Egypt

Scientists said on Wednesday they had discovered the 43 million-year-old fossil of a previously unknown amphibious four-legged whale species in Egypt that helps trace the transition of whales from land to sea.

43 million-year-old fossil of previously unknown 4-legged whale found in Egypt

The newly discovered whale belongs to the Protocetidae, a group of extinct whales that falls in the middle of that transition, the Egyptian-led team of researchers said in a statement.

Its fossil was unearthed from middle Eocene rocks in the Fayum Depression in Egypt’s the Western Desert — an area once covered by the sea that has provided a rich seam of discoveries showing the evolution of whales — before being studied at Mansoura University Vertebrate Palaeontology Centre (MUVP).

The new whale, named Phiomicetus Anubis, had an estimated body length of some three meters (10 feet) and a body mass of about 600 kg (1,300 lb), and was likely a top predator, the researchers said. Its partial skeleton revealed it as the most primitive protocetid whale known from Africa.

Laid out on a tray are parts of the 43 million-year-old fossil of a previously unknown four-legged amphibious whale called “Phiomicetus Anubis”, which helps trace the transition of whales from land to sea, which were discovered in the Fayum Depression in the Western Desert of Egypt.

“Phiomicetus Anubis is a key new whale species, and a critical discovery for Egyptian and African palaeontology,” said Abdullah Gohar of MUVP, lead author of a paper on the discovery published in the journal Proceedings of the Royal Society B.

The whale’s genus name honours the Fayum Depression and the species name refers to Anubis, the ancient canine-headed Egyptian god associated with mummification and the afterlife.

Despite recent fossil discoveries, the big picture of early whale evolution in Africa has largely remained a mystery, the researchers said.

Work in the region had the potential to reveal new details about the evolutionary transition from amphibious to fully aquatic whales.

With rocks covering about 12 million years, discoveries in the Fayum Depression “range from semiaquatic crocodile-like whales to giant fully aquatic whales”, said Mohamed Sameh of the Egyptian Environmental Affairs Agency, a co-author.

The new whale has raised questions about ancient ecosystems and pointed research towards questions such as the origin and coexistence of ancient whales in Egypt, said Hesham Sellam, founder of the MUVP and another co-author.

ASIA, JAPAN, WORLD

Extensive Hyper-Violence in Japan’s Ancient Yayoi Period Revealed by Researcher

Extensive Hyper-Violence in Japan’s Ancient Yayoi Period Revealed by Researcher

The human capacity for warfare and whether it is an inescapable part of human nature is a hot button issue at the heart of various disciplines like anthropology, archaeology, philosophy, and so on.

Researchers have posited a range of ideas about why humans engage in war, and the running list of various triggers for inter-group violence is long, be it the transition from hunting and gathering to agriculture, the development of weapons, ecological constraints, or population pressures.

Among these, the population pressure hypothesis has become more prominent recently as people globally experience climatic changes and environmental breakdown.

The hypothesis states that population increase can result in resource scarcity, leading to competition and conflict over resources. While there is wide acceptance of this claim, there are very few studies that have quantitatively backed up the origin of inter-group violence due to population pressure based on actual archaeological data.

To correct this gap, Professor Naoko Matsumoto from Okayama University and her team surveyed the skeletal remains and jar coffins, called kamekan, from the Middle Yayoi period (350 BC to AD 25 CE) in northern Kyushu, Japan.

These images from the recent study show evidence of violence in the cut mark on this Yayoi period man just above his right eye socket.

This region has been the focus of inter-group violence investigations because the skeletal remains in the Yayoi period indicate a significant increase in the frequency of violence compared to those living in the preceding Jomon period.

“The inhabitants of the Yayoi period practised subsistence agriculture, in particular wet rice cultivation,” says Professor Matsumoto. “This was introduced by immigrants from the Korean peninsula along with weapons such as stone arrowheads and daggers, resulting in enclosed settlements accompanied by warfare or large-scale inter-group violence. However, those living during the Jomon period were primarily pottery-makers who followed a complex hunter-gatherer lifestyle and had low mortality rates caused by conflict.”

Professor Matsumoto and her team inferred demographic changes using the numbers of well-dated burial jars as a proxy for population size and estimated population pressure from the ratio of population to arable land.

The team calculated the frequency of violence by using percentages of injured individuals identified within the skeletal population, followed by a statistical analysis between population pressure and the frequency of violence.

Analyses of the human skeletal remains excavated at the Middle Yayoi period Doigahama site (near Shimonoseki, Japan; the closest point on Honshu island to Kyushu island) showed that Yayoi people skulls (upper two) were relatively longer and flatter than those of the earlier Jomon people (lower two).

The results of the investigation were published in the Journal of Archaeological Science. The researchers uncovered 47 skeletal remains with trauma, in addition to 51 sites containing burial jars in the Itoshima Plain, 46 in the Sawara Plain, 72 in the Fukuoka Plain, 42 in the Mikuni Hills, 37 in the east Tsukushi Plain, and 50 in the central Tsukushi Plain, encompassing all six study sites.

They found that the highest number of injured individuals and the highest frequency-of-violence levels occurred in the Mikuni Hills, the east Tsukushi Plain, and the Sawara Plain. Interestingly, the Mikuni Hills and the central Tsukushi Plain also showed the highest overall values for population pressure. Overall, statistical analyses supported that population pressure affected the frequency of violence.

However, the peak population did not correlate with the frequency of violence. High levels of population pressure in the Mikuni Hills and the central Tsukushi Plain showed low frequency-of-violence values, while the relatively low population pressures of the east Tsukushi Plain and Sawara Plain were linked to higher frequency-of-violence levels.

Professor Matsumoto reasons there may be other factors that could have indirectly influenced such high levels of violence in the Middle Yayoi period. “I think that the development of a social hierarchy or political organization might also have affected the level of violence.

We have seen stratified burial systems in which certain members of the ruling elite, referred to as ‘kings’ in Japanese archaeology, have tombs with large quantities of prestige goods such as weapons and mirrors,” she says.

“It is worth noting that the frequency of violence tends to be lower in the subregions with such kingly tombs. This suggests that powerful elites might have a role in repressing the frequency of violence.”

The evidence collected by Professor Matsumoto and her team undeniably confirms a positive correlation between population pressure and higher levels of violence and may help devise mechanisms to avoid seemingly never-ending conflicts in motion today.

Further research based on these insights could identify other variables at play in determining the root causes of inter-group violence and actively prevent them.