SOUTH AMERICA, WORLD

Analysis Links the Origins of the Maya and Corn Cultivation

Analysis Links the Origins of the Maya and Corn Cultivation

In Maya creation myths, the gods created humans out of corn. Now, a new study from a site in Belize suggests corn really was important in the origin of the ancient Maya: More than half of their ancestry can be traced to migrants who arrived from South America sometime before 5600 years ago, likely bringing with them new cultivars of the crop that sustained one of Mesoamerica’s great cultures.

These previously unknown migrants “were the first pioneers who essentially planted the seeds of Maya civilization,” which emerged about 4000 years ago, says archaeologist and co-author Jaime Awe.

A native Belizean now at Northern Arizona University, he, like many people in Belize, has some Maya ancestry. “Without corn, there would have been no Mayans.”

Archaeologists found human remains at this rock shelter in the Maya Mountains of southwestern Belize.
Archaeologists found human remains at this rock shelter in the Maya Mountains of southwestern Belize.

The discovery reveals a significant new source of ancestry for the Maya, whose civilization spanned one-third of Central America and Mexico, dotting the region with cities and monuments at its height more than 1000 years ago.

Today, the Maya are an ethnolinguistic group of at least 7 million Indigenous peoples in Central America.

The study also suggests that as in Europe, where farming arrived with immigrants from the Middle East, farming in the Americas spread as least in part with people on the move, rather than simply as know-how passed between cultures.

“This paper is really groundbreaking,” says Mary Pohl, a Maya archaeologist at Florida State University. “This is a dramatic revelation and is really stirring things up.”

Awe, a Maya archaeologist and former director of the Belize Institute of Archaeology, had long wondered how the Maya were related to the hunter-gatherers and early farmers who brought maize, manioc, and chiles to what is now Mexico, Belize, and Guatemala. But poor preservation of bones and DNA in the hot and humid climate had left few clues.

The new study analyzes remain from two rock shelters on the steep slopes of old-growth rainforest in the Bladen Nature Reserve in southwestern Belize, a 2.5-kilometre hike from the nearest road.

Since 2014, archaeologist Keith Prufer of the University of New Mexico, Albuquerque, wildlife biologist Said Gutierrez of the Ya’axché Conservation Trust, and their colleagues have unearthed more than 85 skeletons from shallow graves in the rock shelters’ dry dirt floors.

The archaeologists directly dated 50 individuals with radiocarbon, finding they lived between 1000 to 9600 years ago. Then, population geneticist David Reich of Harvard University and his team managed to extract high-quality ancient DNA from the inner ear bones of 20 individuals—“the oldest human DNA from a tropical rainforest site,” Reich says.

They analyzed 1.2 million nucleotide bases across the genomes and compared them to DNA from ancient and living people from the Americas.

The comparisons showed the earliest people buried at the rock shelters, 9600 to 7300 years ago, closely resembled that of hunter-gatherers descended from an ancient migration from North to South America. But after 5600 years ago, the DNA recorded a major shift: All 15 individuals tested were most closely related to another group of Indigenous people who today live from northern Colombia to Costa Rica and who speak Chibchan languages. “It’s clearly a major movement into the Maya region of people related to Chibchan speakers,” Reich says.

The migration had a lasting impact: Reich’s team found that living Maya has inherited more than half of their DNA from this influx from the south, they reported today in Nature Communications. Half of the remainder came from the ancient hunter-gatherers who were first in the region, the rest from ancestors of people in the Mexican highlands.

The population shift eventually led to a new diet. Prufer and archaeologist Douglas Kennett at the University of California, Santa Barbara, had previously analyzed carbon isotopes from the teeth of the people in the rock shelters, which shows the kind of food they ate. As reported in Science in 2020, they found a steady increase in maize consumption over time. The ancient hunter-gatherers got less than 10% of their diet on average from maize. The first migrants from the south also ate relatively little corn. But then, between about 5600 years ago and 4000 years ago the proportion of maize surged, from 10% to 50%, providing “the earliest evidence of maize as a staple grain,” Prufer says.

The shift to maize happened hundreds of years after the influx of migrants, but the team says its results fit with the emerging story of maize cultivation. The plant was partially domesticated as early as 9000 years ago in southwest Mexico, but over the past 8 years, genetic and archaeological evidence has shown that it wasn’t fully domesticated until 6500 years ago—at sites in Peru and Bolivia. There, farmers developed larger, more nutritious cobs than the partially domesticated maize still found in Mexico 5300 years ago, says archaeologist Logan Kistler of the Smithsonian Institution’s National Museum of Natural History (NMNH).

Together, the evidence suggests the migrants brought improved maize plants from the south by 5600 years ago, perhaps with methods for growing corn in small gardens, says Kennett, a co-author. By 4000 years ago it had become the keystone crop. That scenario could explain why one early Maya language incorporates a Chibchan word for maize, says linguist and co-author David Mora-Marín of the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill.

In tracing the origin of one of Mesoamerica’s great peoples, the genetic and isotopic work also illuminates the evolutionary roots of one of the world’s most successful crops, says archaeobotanist Dolores Piperno of NMNH and the Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute. “It really transforms our knowledge of how maize dispersed.”

AFRICA, EGYPT, WORLD

Egypt uncovers the 4,000-year-old painted tomb of a royal palace official

Egypt uncovers the 4,000-year-old painted tomb of a royal palace official

Five painted tombs were recently unearthed in Saqqara, an ancient Egyptian necropolis just outside of Cairo, according to a report by Reuters.

The Egyptian Ministry of Tourism and Antiquities said that a recent excavation of burial shafts resulted in the finding of the tombs, along with more than 20 sarcophagi, toys, wooden boats, masks, and more.

The tombs are at least 4,000 years old, dating back to the Old Kingdom and First Intermediate period, a so called dark period in ancient Egyptian history as the regime of the Old Kingdom collapsed and political instability led to the destruction of monuments, artworks, and more. As such, not much remains from this time.

Mostafa Waziri, head of the Supreme Council of Antiquities.

These tombs, however, are well-preserved and particularly well-decorated, with the additional inclusion of small statues and pots. Some of the paintings seem to represent food offerings.

The tombs, which reside near the pyramid of King Merenre I, are believed to have belonged to senior officials and court advisors.

The identity of two of those buried in the tombs has been ascertained. One was a top official named Iry, whose tomb included a limestone sarcophagus.

The other was occupied by a woman named Petty, who was both a priest of Hathor and a kind of beautician for Menere I.

Menere I is believed to be the father of Pepi II, the most notable pharaoh of this age whose reign is said to have lasted for more than 90 years.

The Egyptian government has been actively excavating Saqqara over the past several months.

In November, the Ministry of Tourism and Antiquities announced that it had found the tomb of a treasurer to the New Kingdom pharaoh Ramses II, which included several intact murals, in Saqqara.

These recent discoveries come amid the government’s “Follow the Sun” campaign that is aimed at attracting tourists to come see the archaeological wonders of ancient Egypt, both those well-known and recently discovered.

The country’s economy largely depends on this tourism, which has been impacted for over a decade beginning with the Arab Spring protests there.

More recently, the pandemic’s slowing down on international travel and Russia’s invasion of Ukraine—a large portion of tourists to Egypt are Polish, Russian, and Ukrainian—have also affected the tourism industry there.

EUROPE, IRELAND, WORLD

The Royal Burials of 65 Celtic Kings Identified in England and Wales

The Royal Burials of 65 Celtic Kings Identified in England and Wales

Roughly 60 newly-discovered royal graves in the north and west were of British or Irish Celtic origin, according to a new study. A number of English kings in the post-Roman era were of Irish origin, with several Celtic tombs uncovered in the west and north of Britain.

Artist’s depiction of the Celts.

Professor Ken Dark of the University of Reading and Spain’s University of Navarra, a leading expert on the period immediately after the collapse of Roman rule in Britain, has published a new report revealing the locations of between 55 and 65 Celtic-British royal graves from the dark ages. 

The newly-discovered graves are located in Wales, Cornwall, Devon, and Somerset and share several similarities with Irish royal tombs, according to Dark’s research. 

England consisted of a series of tiny states following the collapse of the Roman Empire in the 5th century, with Anglo-Saxons of Germanic origin dominating in the south and celts of British and Irish origin ruling in the north and west. 

The names of the kings buried in the newly-discovered graves are currently unknown, but Dark says that they are likely to have been kings, sub-kings, or other royals in the British kingdoms of Gwynedd (northwest Wales), Dyfed (southwest Wales), Powys (central east Wales), Brycheiniog (modern Breckonshire) and Dumnonia (now southwest England). 

The study of early Celtic graves in Britain remains in its infancy. Archaeologists only ever identified one definite indigenous British royal burial site, while the graves discovered by Dark represent just 0.1% of British-Celtic dark age burials.

The graves have square or rectangular ditched enclosures around them, while many appear to have entry gates or access causeways.

The enclosures, which measure up to 10 meters squared, often feature timber posts or a stone-lined pit. 

The graves had been gradually discovered over the years, but Dark is the first scholar to realize their probably royal status. 

Dark has also identified a further 43 sites as likely royal burial sites in Ireland. 

ASIA, SYRIA, WORLD

One of the First Known Chemical Attacks Took Place 1,700 Years Ago in Syria

One of the First Known Chemical Attacks Took Place 1,700 Years Ago in Syria

A researcher from the University of Leicester has identified what looks to be the oldest archaeological evidence for chemical warfare — from Roman times.

At the meeting of the Archaeological Institute of America, University of Leicester archaeologist Simon James presented CSI-style arguments that about twenty Roman soldiers, found in a siege-mine at the city of Dura-Europos, Syria, met their deaths not as a result of sword or spear, but through asphyxiation.

Dura-Europos on the Euphrates was conquered by the Romans who installed a large garrison. Around AD 256, the city was subjected to a ferocious siege by an army from the powerful new Sasanian Persian empire.

The dramatic story is told entirely from archaeological remains; no ancient text describes it. Excavations during the 1920s-30s, renewed in recent years, have resulted in spectacular and gruesome discoveries.

The Sasanians used the full range of ancient siege techniques to break into the city, including mining operations to breach the walls. Roman defenders responded with ‘counter-mines’ to thwart the attackers. In one of these narrow, low galleries, a pile of bodies, representing about twenty Roman soldiers still with their arms, was found in the 1930s.

The ancient Roman fort Dura Europos, in Syria Heretiq

While also conducting new fieldwork at the site, James has recently reappraised this coldest of cold-case ‘crime scenes’, in an attempt to understand exactly how these Romans died, and came to be lying where they were found.

Dr James, Reader in the School of Archaeology and Ancient History at the University of Leicester, said: “It is evident that, when mine and countermine met, the Romans lost the ensuing struggle.

Careful analysis of the disposition of the corpses shows they had been stacked at the mouth of the countermine by the Persians, using their victims to create a wall of bodies and shields, keeping Roman counterattack at bay while they set fire to the countermine, collapsing it, allowing the Persians to resume sapping the walls.

This explains why the bodies were where they were found. But how did they die? For the Persians to kill twenty men in a space less than 2m high or wide, and about 11m long, required superhuman combat powers—or something more insidious.”

Finds from the Roman tunnel revealed that the Persians used bitumen and sulphur crystals to get it burning. These provided a vital clue. When ignited, such materials give off dense clouds of choking gases. “The Persians will have heard the Romans tunnelling,” says James, “and prepared a nasty surprise for them.

I think the Sasanians placed braziers and bellows in their gallery, and when the Romans broke through, added the chemicals and pumped choking clouds into the Roman tunnel.

One of the First Known Chemical Attacks Took Place 1,700 Years Ago in Syria
One of the skeletons is believed to have died during an ancient poison gas attack

The Roman assault party were unconscious in seconds, dead in minutes. Use of such smoke generators in siege mines is actually mentioned in classical texts, and it is clear from the archaeological evidence at Dura that the Sasanian Persians were as knowledgeable in siege warfare as the Romans; they surely knew of this grim tactic.”

Ironically, this Persian mine failed to bring the walls down, but it is clear that the Sasanians somehow broke into the city.

James recently excavated a ‘machine-gun belt’, a row of catapult bolts, ready to use by the wall of the Roman camp inside the city, representing the last stand of the garrison during the final street fighting.

The defenders and inhabitants were slaughtered or deported to Persia, the city abandoned forever, leaving its gruesome secrets undisturbed until modern archaeological research began to reveal them.

AFRICA, WORLD

DNA from child burials reveals ‘profoundly different’ human landscape in ancient Africa

DNA from child burials reveals ‘profoundly different’ human landscape in ancient Africa

Central Africa is too hot and humid for ancient DNA to survive—or so researchers thought. But now the bones of four children buried thousands of years ago in a rock shelter in the grasslands of Cameroon have yielded enough DNA for scientists to analyze.

It’s the first ancient DNA from humans in the region, and as the team reports today in Nature, it holds multiple surprises. For one, the area today is the homeland of Bantu speakers, the majority group in western and Central Africa.

But the children turned out to be most closely related to hunter-gatherers such as the Baka and Aka—groups traditionally known as “pygmies”—who today live at least 500 kilometres away in the rainforests of western Central Africa.

DNA from child burials reveals ‘profoundly different' human landscape in ancient Africa
People like these Baka hunter-gatherers once ranged well beyond their current homeland in Central Africa.

“In the supposed cradle of Bantu languages and, therefore, Bantu people, these people are basically ‘pygmy’ hunter-gatherers,” says Lluís Quintana-Murci, a population geneticist at the Pasteur Institute and CNRS, the French national research agency, who was not part of the new study.

He and others have long suspected that these groups had a larger range before the Bantu population exploded 3000 years ago.

The second big surprise came when the team compared the children’s DNA to other genetic data from Africa and found hints that the Baka, Aka, and other Central African hunter-gatherers belong to one of the most ancient lineages of modern humans, with roots going back 250,000 years.

In the new study, geneticists and archaeologists took samples from the DNA-rich inner ear bones of the four children, who were buried 3000 and 8000 years ago at the famous archaeological site of Shum Laka.

The researchers were able to sequence high-quality full genomes from two of the children and partial genomes from the other two.

Comparing the sequences to those of living Africans, they found that the four children were distant cousins and that all had inherited about one-third of their DNA from ancestors most closely related to the hunter-gatherers of western Central Africa.

Another two-thirds of children’s DNA came from an ancient “basal” source in West Africa, including some from a “long lost ghost population of modern humans that we didn’t know about before,” says population geneticist David Reich of Harvard University, leader of the study.

The discovery underscores the diversity of African groups that inhabited the continent before the Bantus began to herd livestock in the grassy highlands of western Central Africa.

The Bantus made pottery and forged iron, and their burgeoning populations rapidly displaced hunter-gatherers across Africa. Analyzing DNA from a time before this expansion offers “a glimpse of a human landscape that is profoundly different than today,” Reich says.

The team compared the children’s DNA to ancient DNA extracted earlier from a 4500-year-old individual from Mota Cave in Ethiopia and sequences from other ancient and living Africans, using various statistical methods to sort out how they all were related, which groups came first, and when they split from one another.

The team’s bold new model pushes back Central African hunter-gatherer origins to 200,000 to 250,000 years ago—not long after our species evolved.

The model suggests their lineage split from three other modern human lineages: one leading to the Khoisan hunter-gatherers in southern Africa, one to East Africans, and one to a now-extinct “ghost” population.

Early diversification of modern humans fits the great variation seen in fossils of early Homo sapiens, says paleoanthropologist Katerina Harvati of the University of Tübingen, who is not part of this study.

The lineages would have parted company and moved off into different parts of Africa 200,000 to 250,000 years ago, preserving their distinctness by only occasionally interbreeding at the boundaries.

But others say that although the new study offers compelling new evidence, the data aren’t yet solid enough to build a reliable model.

“It needs to be further tested with additional whole-genome data from both modern and, if possible, ancient DNA from more Africans,” says evolutionary geneticist Sarah Tishkoff of the University of Pennsylvania.

That may be possible. A third key lesson from the study is that ancient DNA can be extracted from bones in Central Africa after all. “The future is not as bleak for ancient DNA in these regions,” says population geneticist Joshua Akey of Princeton University.

EUROPE, WORLD

Crimean Atlantis: Remarkable Ancient Underwater City Of Akra

Crimean Atlantis: Remarkable Ancient Underwater City Of Akra

The ancient city of Akra was once a beautiful place famous for its outstanding architecture. Then, its glory and prosperity came suddenly to an end. About 2,000 years ago, the city of Akra was submerged.

Underwater archaeologists have discovered several of the ancient city’s ruins, defensive walls, houses, and a mysterious tower.

The underwater city of Akra still remains vastly unexplored and has many more secrets to reveal.

Ancient City Of Akra Belonged To The Bosporus Kingdom

Ancient historians such as Strabo and Ptolemy mentioned the city’s existence. Akra was part of the Bosporus Kingdom,  an ancient state on the northern coast of the Black Sea, founded ca 480 B.C through an alliance of existing Greek city-states.

The kingdom’s capital was Panticapaeum (present-day Kerch). It was ruled by the Archaeanactid and then by the Spartocid dynasty, which endured for over 300 years.

The stele of Staphhilos from the Panticapaeum, depicting a soldier with the traditional Bosporan long hair and beard.

Founded by the settlers from Nymphaeum or Panticapaeum in the late 6th century B. C, the city of Akra was a large shopping centre visited by many people from various corners of the ancient kingdom.

Crimean Atlantis: Remarkable Ancient Underwater City Of Akra

Many Of The Ancient Underwater Ruins Are Well-Preserved

The underwater city of Akra was accidentally discovered in 1981 when a high school boy walking along the beach found 150 ancient coins in the sand. This discovery prompted researchers to launch an expedition to find out what ancient treasures were resting underwater.

Underwater archaeologists from Ukraine and Russia investigated the ancient, submerged ruins.

Since then, a team of underwater archaeologists from Ukraine and Russia has discovered thick defensive walls, two towers, remains of well-preserved ancient houses, and other valuable ancient artefacts such as coins, amphorae, arrowheads, and pottery.

One of the discovered towers is still in very good condition. Considering the towers have survived underwater for more than 2,000 years it clearly shows the ancient people of Akra possessed sophisticated knowledge of architecture. The tower probably served as part of the city’s defence buildings.

In 2011, researchers also found remains of the wreck of a wooden ship in the distance of several kilometers from Akra on the depth of 4 meters. The observed length of the ship was about 30 meters; its hull was covered with brass plates.

Several of the ancient underwater structures are still in good condition.

While other ancient cities of the Black Sea region – Pantikapea, Olbia, and Chersonesos were almost completely destroyed by the sea, it can be said that the ancient city of Akra was lucky.

According to underwater archaeologists Viktor Vakhonieiev and Sergey Solovyev, features of the wave conditions in this part of Kerch Peninsula led to the fact that the cultural layers of the ancient city were not mainly washed away, and its building constructions were not completely destroyed, but only partially covered with sea sand deposits.

What more is hidden beneath the waters of the Black Sea?

The Black Sea can become a significant region for future underwater archaeologists. Not only are natural well-preserved here, but there are also many intact submerged ancient vessels, sites, and cities resting beneath the waters.

In May 2013, the ancient underwater city of Akra became a tourist attraction. However, according to the Crimean Ministry of Culture and Tourism, permissions to visit the underwater city of Acre are extremely limited. Tourists are only allowed to visit the flooded city from late May to early June.

Scientists say they have much more to explore, and they still haven’t been able to reach many of the underwater ruins of ancient Akra.

All these amazing underwater discoveries Make you wonder what more is hidden beneath the waters of the Black Sea.

ENGLAND, EUROPE, WORLD

“Incredibly rare” 180-million-year-old giant “sea dragon” fossil discovered in the U.K.

“Incredibly rare” 180-million-year-old giant “sea dragon” fossil discovered in the U.K.

Palaeontologists have made a massive discovery in the United Kingdom’s smallest county — the fossilized remains of a giant Jurassic sea creature. The fossil, which researchers said is “very well-preserved,” is said to be the “palaeontological discovery of a lifetime,” according to the Leicestershire and Rutland Wildlife Trust.

The fossil was found at the Rutland Water Nature Reserve in central England in February 2021, according to an announcement from the wildlife trust.

Joe Davis, who works on the water conservation team for the trust, found it during a routine draining procedure for re-landscaping. 

"Incredibly rare" 180-million-year-old giant "sea dragon" fossil discovered in the U.K.
Ichthyosaur skeleton found at Rutland Water Nature Reserve in central England, August 26, 2021.

At first, he said in a statement, he thought the remains were clay pipes sticking out of the mud, except that “they looked organic.” He told a colleague that they looked like vertebrae, and when they got closer, they saw “what indisputably looked like a spine” as well as a jawbone at the spine’s end. 

“We couldn’t quite believe it,” Davis said. “The find has been absolutely fascinating and a real career highlight. It’s great to learn so much from the discovery and to think that this amazing creature was once swimming in seas above us.” 

The fossil was excavated in August and September and has since been identified as an ichthyosaur, a marine reptile that somewhat resembled dolphins.

This particular fossil found nearly complete, is nearly 33 feet long and is roughly 180 million years old, researchers said. Its skull measures more than 6.5 feet long.

Davis told the BBC that the fossil was “very well-preserved, better than I think we could have all imagined.” 

Ichthyosaur expert Dean Lomax, who helped with the fossil’s research, said that the find is the “largest ichthyosaur skeleton ever discovered in Britain.” 

“These animals, they first appeared in a time called the Triassic period around roughly 250 million years ago,” Lomax said in a video for Rutland Water Nature Reserve. “Our specimen, the Rutland Ichthyosaur, or the Rutland Sea Dragon, is the biggest complete ichthyosaur ever found in Britain in over 200 years of collecting these things scientifically, which is an incredible feat.” 

Ichthyosaurs are not swimming dinosaurs, he clarified. 

According to the company Anglian Water, which helps maintain the reservoir in which the fossil was found, ichthyosaurs of this size and completeness are “incredibly rare,” especially in the U.K., with most comparable examples being found in Germany and North America. 

Alicia Kearns, who represents Rutland Melton in Parliament, said the discovery “surpassed every possible expectation.” 

“It is utterly awe-inspiring,” she said. 

Though the largest, this was not the first ichthyosaur fossil found in the reservoir. The Wildlife Trust said that two incomplete and “much smaller” remains were found in the ’70s when the reservoir was first being constructed. 

The palaeontologists working on the remains are continuing their research and are working on an academic paper about the findings. 

EUROPE, SWEDEN, WORLD

Stunning 3D image recreates real Stone Age woman

Stunning 3D image recreates real Stone Age woman

A Stone Age woman who lived 4,000 years ago is leaning on her walking stick and looking ahead as a spirited young boy bursts into a run, in a stunning life-size reconstruction now on display in Sweden.

Although her likeness is new — it debuted last month in an exhibit about ancient people at Västernorrlands Museum — researchers have known about this woman’s existence for nearly a century. During the construction of a road in the hamlet of Lagmansören in 1923, workers found her skeletal remains buried next to the remains of a child, likely a 7-year-old boy.

“With our eyes and perhaps in all times, you tend to think that this is a mother and son,” said Oscar Nilsson, the Sweden-based forensic artist who spent 350 hours creating the lifelike model.

“They could be. Or they could be siblings: sister and brother. They could be relatives, or they could just be tribe friends. We don’t know, because the DNA was not that well preserved to establish this relationship.”

But as Nilsson molded the woman’s posture and sculpted her face, he pretended that she was near her son who was scampering ahead of her. “She’s looking with the mother’s eyes — both with love and a bit of discipline,” Nilsson told Live Science. This stern but tender gaze looks as if she’s on the cusp of calling out to the boy, telling him to be careful.

Stunning 3D image recreates real Stone Age woman
This reconstruction is based on the remains of a Neolithic woman who lived about 4,000 years ago in what is now Sweden.

The Neolithic woman and youngster were interred in a cist grave, a burial built with long, flat stones in the shape of a coffin. The woman died in her late 20s or early 30s, and at 4 feet, 11 inches (150 centimetres) in height, “she was not a very tall person,” even for the Neolithic period, Nilsson said.

The woman’s remains didn’t show any signs of malnutrition, injury or diseases, although it’s possible that she died of an illness that didn’t leave a mark on her remains, Nilsson said.

“She seems to have had a good life,” he said. She ate land-based food, an examination of the isotopes (different versions of elements) in her teeth revealed, which was odd given that her grave was found near a fish-filled river near the coast, he said.

When Nilsson received the commission to reconstruct the woman two years ago, he scanned her skull and made a copy of it with a plastic 3D printer. As with other reconstructions he’s created, including those of an ancient Wari queen from what is now Peru and a Stone Age man whose head was found on a spike, Nilsson had to take into account the ancient individual’s sex, age, weight and ethnicity — factors that can influence the person’s facial tissue thickness and general appearance. But because the woman’s DNA was too degraded, he wasn’t sure about her genetic background, hair or eye colour.

So Nilsson took an educated guess about her appearance. There were three large migration waves into ancient Scandinavia: During the first, hunter-gatherers with dark skin who tended to have blue eyes arrived between 12,000 and 10,000 years ago; the second wave included pale-skinned, dark-haired and brown-eyed farmers from further south who moved north about 5,000 to 4,000 years ago when this woman was alive; and the third wave included the Yamnaya (also spelled Yamna) culture from modern-day Ukraine, who were a bit darker-skinned than the farmers and brought the art of metal making with them when they arrived about 3,500 years ago, making them the first Bronze Age culture in the region, Nilsson said.

Based on this information, Nilsson gave the woman brown hair and eyes, and light skin like the farmers’. Even so, the woman wasn’t necessarily a full-time farmer; she likely participated in a mix of hunting and gathering as well as agricultural practices, he said.

“We can’t say for sure whether she was living a nomadic life if she was living the life of the early farmers; it’s impossible to say,” Nilsson said. “But we have chosen to make the safest interpretation, which is she was both because, of course, there was a transition period of many hundreds of years when they left the old way of living.”

The Neolithic woman’s reconstructed clothes were made from deer, moose and elk, while her boots were made from reindeer, beaver and fox.

Fancy furs, Stone Age style

In the reconstruction, the woman from Lagmansören is dressed head to toe in fur and leather. This is the work of Helena Gjaerum, a Sweden-based independent archaeologist who uses Stone Age techniques for tanning leather. 

Before dressing the model, Gjaerum studied the ancient climate, landscape, vegetation and animal life of Neolithic Lagmansören. Based on what she uncovered, she designed the woman’s clothes out of deer, moose and elk and the shoes out of reindeer, beaver and fox. The woman likely stuffed hay inside the shoes for padding, noted Gjaerum, who took inspiration from clothing worn by Indigenous Americans and Indigenous Siberians, as well as the leather clothing of Özti the Iceman mummy, who lived about 5,300 years ago in the Italian Alps.

Preparing the clothes entailed hours of labour. Gjaerum, who acquired real animal remains, scraped the flesh off the skins and then put them in a river — a method that helps loosen the fur from the skin. Next, she scraped off the fur and slathered on a solution made of moose brain, a fatty mixture that bonds with skin fibres. Without this mixture, the skin would stiffen and could easily rot if it got wet, she said.

The next several steps involved massaging, boiling, stretching and smoking the skins and then finally designing the clothing. Gjaerum’s young son, who was about the same height as the Stone Age woman, served as a helpful model, Gjaerum said.

She made the clothing as comfortable and practical as possible — for instance, by not putting a seam at the top of the shoulder, where water might seep in during rainy weather.

Often, modern people think of Stone Age humans as primitive, dressed in ugly, toga-like furs as in “The Far Side” comics. But Gjaerum challenged that perception. “I think it would be crazy to think she’d have primitive clothes,” Gjaerum told Live Science. “I wanted to make her dress like you could dress today” because you are both Homo sapiens.

All In One Magazine