ASIA, INDONESIA, WORLD

DNA from a teenage girl who died 7,200 years ago reveals previously unknown humans

DNA from a teenage girl who died 7,200 years ago reveals previously unknown humans

The bones of a teenage hunter-gatherer who died more than 7,000 years ago on the Indonesian island of Sulawesi tell the story of a previously unknown group of humans. This distinct human lineage has never been found anywhere else in the world, according to new research.

The study was published Wednesday in the journal Nature.

DNA from teenage girl who died 7,200 years ago reveals previously unknown humans
The skeletal remains of an ancient teenage Toalean woman were nestled among large rocks, which were placed in the burial pit discovered in a cave on Sulawesi.

“We have discovered the first ancient human DNA in the island region between Asia and Australia, known as ‘Wallacea’, providing new insight into the genetic diversity and population history of early modern humans in this little-understood part of the world,” said the study co-author Adam Brumm, a professor of archaeology at Griffith University’s Australian Research Centre for Human Evolution, via email.

The Leang Panninge cave is where researchers uncovered the remains of a young hunter-gatherer from 7,000 years ago.

The first modern humans used the Wallacea islands, mainly Indonesian islands that include Sulawesi, Lombok and Flores, as they crossed from Eurasia to the Australian continent more than 50,000 years ago, researchers believe. The exact route or how they navigated this crossing, however, is unknown.

“They must have done so using relatively sophisticated watercraft of some kind, as there were no land bridges between the islands, even during the glacial peaks of the last ice age, when global sea levels were up to 140 meters (459 feet) lower than they are today,” Brumm said.
Tools and cave paintings have suggested that humans were living on these islands by 47,000 years ago, but the fossil record is sparse and ancient DNA degrades more rapidly in the tropical climate.

However, researchers uncovered the skeleton of a female between the ages of 17 and 18 in a cave on Sulawesi in 2015. Her remains were buried in the cave 7,200 years ago. She was part of the Toalean culture, only found in a pocket of Sulawesi’s southwestern peninsula. The cave is part of an archaeological site called Leang Panninge.

Maro’s points are associated with the Toalean culture.

“The ‘Toaleans’ is the name archaeologists have given to a rather enigmatic culture of prehistoric hunter-gatherers that lived in the forested plains and mountains of South Sulawesi between around 8,000 years ago until roughly the fifth century AD,” said Brumm via email. “They made highly distinctive stone tools (including tiny, finely crafted arrowheads known as ‘Maros points’) that are not found anywhere else on the island or in wider Indonesia.”

The young hunter-gatherer is the first largely complete and well-preserved skeleton associated with the Toalean culture, Brumm said.
Lead study author Selina Carlhoff was able to retrieve DNA from the wedge-shaped petrous bone at the base of the skull.

“It was a major challenge, as the remains had been strongly degraded by the tropical climate,” said Carlhoff, also a doctoral candidate at the Max Planck Institute for the Science of Human History in Jena, Germany, in a statement.

Secrets hiding in DNA

The work to retrieve the genetic information was well worth it.
The young woman’s DNA showed that she descended from the first wave of modern humans to enter Wallacea 50,000 years ago. This was part of the initial colonization of “Greater Australia,” or the combined ice age landmass of Australia and New Guinea. These are the ancestors of present-day Indigenous Australians and Papuans, Brumm said.

Fragmentary remains of the girl’s skull were used to retrieve her DNA.

And it turns out that the oldest genome traced to the Wallacea islands revealed something else: previously unknown ancient humans.
She also shares ancestry with a separate and distinct group from Asia who likely arrived after the colonization of Greater Australia — because modern Indigenous Australians and Papuans don’t share ancestry with this group, Brumm said.

“Previously, it was thought that the first time people with Asian genes entered Wallacea was around 3,500 years ago when Austronesian-speaking farmers from Neolithic Taiwan swept down through the Philippines and into Indonesia,” he said.

“It suggests that there might have been a distinct group of modern humans in this region that we really had no idea about up until now, as archaeological sites are so scarce in Wallacea and ancient skeletal remains are rare.”

No descendants of this lineage remain.

Her genome included another trace of an enigmatic and extinct group of humans: Denisovans. The handful of fossils signifying that these early humans ever existed are largely from Siberia and Tibet.

“The fact that their genes are found in the hunter-gatherers of Leang Panninge supports our earlier hypothesis that the Denisovans occupied a far larger geographical area” than previously understood, said study co-author Johannes Krause, a professor of archaeogenetics at the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology in Leipzig, Germany, in a statement.

But when her DNA was compared with that of other hunter-gatherers who lived west of Wallacea at the same time, their DNA didn’t contain any traces of Denisovan DNA.

“The geographic distribution of Denisovans and modern humans may have overlapped in the Wallacea region. It may well be the key place where Denisova people and the ancestors of indigenous Australians and Papuans interbred,” said study coauthor Cosimo Posth, a professor at the University of Tübingen’s Senckenberg Centre for Human Evolution and Palaeoenvironment in Frankfurt, Germany, in a statement.

Researchers don’t know what happened to the Toalean culture, and this latest discovery is one piece of the puzzle as they try to understand the ancient genetic history of humans in Southeast Asia. Brumm hopes that more ancient DNA from the Toalean people can be recovered to reveal its diversity “and its wider ancestral story.”

WORLD

An Advanced Civilization Could Have Ruled Earth Millions of Years Ago, Says the Silurian Hypothesis

An Advanced Civilization Could Have Ruled Earth Millions of Years Ago, Says the Silurian Hypothesis

Have you ever wondered if a different animal would evolve to have human-level intelligence, long after humans have passed away from this planet? We don’t know about you, but we always like to imagine raccoons in that role.

Maybe 70 million years from now, a family of masked fuzzballs will be gathering in front of Mt. Rushmore, building a fire with their opposable thumbs and wondering about what creatures carved that mountain.

But wait, would Mt. Rushmore even survive that long? And what if we’re the raccoons? In other words, if a technologically advanced species dominated the planet around the time of the dinosaurs, would we even have any record of their existence? And if not, then how do we know that didn’t happen?

Mt. Rushmore

The Land Before Time

It’s called the Silurian Hypothesis (and lest you think scientists aren’t nerds, it’s named after a bunch of Doctor Who aliens). Basically, it states that human beings might not be the first intelligent life forms to have evolved on this planet and that if there really were precursors some 100 million years ago, virtually all signs of them would have been lost by now.

In case you get the wrong idea, physicist and study co-author Adam Frank cleared things up in an Atlantic article by saying, “It’s not often that you write a paper proposing a hypothesis that you don’t support.”

In other words, they don’t really believe that there was an ancient civilization of Time Lords and/or Lizard People. Instead, their goal is to discover the ways that we might find the signs of ancient civilizations on other planets.

It might seem obvious that we’d see the signs of such a civilization — after all, there were dinosaurs 100 million years ago, and we know that because we’ve found their fossils. But they were around for more than 150 million years.

That’s important because it’s not just about how old the ruins of this hypothetical civilization would be, nor how widespread it was. It’s also about how long it was around.

Humanity has spread across the globe in a remarkably short amount of time — over the course of about 100,000 years. If another species did the same, then our chances of spotting it in the geological record would be a whole lot smaller. Frank and his climatologist co-author Gavin Schmidt’s paper is meant to pinpoint the methods of spotting deep-time civilizations.

A Needle in Time’s Haystack

We probably don’t have to tell you that humanity is already having a long-term effect on the planet. Even as it breaks down, plastic will degrade into microparticles that integrate themselves into the sediment for eons to come. But while they might hang around for a long time, it could still be difficult to count on actually finding that miniscule strata of plastic shards. Instead, it could be more fruitful to go looking for periods of heightened carbon in the atmosphere.

Right now, the planet is in the Anthropocene period, which is characterized by the widespread dominance of human beings. It’s also characterized by an unprecedented spike in airborne carbons. That’s not to say that there is more carbon in the atmosphere than ever before.

56 million years ago, the planet went through the Paleocene-Eocene Thermal Maximum (PETM), a period of extremely high temperatures around the world. We’re talking 70 degrees Fahrenheit (21 degrees Celsius) at the poles warm.

There’s also evidence of heightened fossil carbons in the air at the same time — and the exact reasons for that aren’t fully known. So was it an ancient civilization? In a word: no, absolutely not, don’t be ridiculous.

That increase of carbon unfolded over the course of a couple of hundred thousand years. The spike that we’re currently undergoing is a fresh-faced 300 years old.

The takeaway from this fascinating study is that there is, in fact, a way to look for ancient civilizations. All you have to do is comb through ice cores for signs of carbon dioxide in short, sharp bursts — but the “needle” they’d be looking for in this haystack would be easy to miss if the researchers don’t know what they were looking for.

EUROPE, ITALY, WORLD

Tourists dive into an underwater archaeological Roman party town

Tourists dive into underwater archaeological Roman party town

Fish dart across mosaic floors and into the ruined villas, where holidaying Romans once drank, plotted and flirted in the party town of Baiae, now an underwater archaeological park near Naples.

Statues which once decorated luxury abodes in this beachside resort are now playgrounds for crabs off the coast of Italy, where divers can explore ruins of palaces and domed bathhouses built for emperors.

Rome’s nobility were first attracted in the 2nd century BC to the hot springs at Baiae, which sits on the coast within the Campi Flegrei — a supervolcano known in English as the Phlegraean Fields.

Seven emperors, including Augustus and Nero, had villas here, as did Julius Caesar and Mark Anthony. The poet Sextus Propertius described the town as a place of vice, which was a “foe to virtuous creatures”.

It was where “old men behave like young boys, and lots of young boys act like young girls,” according to the Roman scholar Varro.

But by the 4th century, the porticos, marble columns, shrines and ornamental fish ponds had begun to sink due to bradyseism, the gradual rise and fall of land due to hydrothermal and seismic activity.

The whole area, including the neighbouring commercial capital of Pozzuoli and military seat at Miseno, were submerged. Their ruins now lie between four and six metres (15 to 20 feet) underwater.

‘Something unique’

“It’s difficult, especially for those coming for the first time, to imagine that you can find things you would never be able to see anywhere else in the world in just a few metres of water,” said Marcello Bertolaso, head of the Campi Flegrei diving centre, which takes tourists around the site.

In this photograph taken on August 18, 2021 a dive guide shows tourists a copy of the original statue preserved at the Museum of Baiae, representing Dionysus with ivy crown in the Nymphaeum of punta Epitaffio, the submerged ancient Roman city of Baiae at the Baiae Underwater Park.

“Divers love to see very special things, but what you can see in the park of Baiae is something unique.”

The 177-hectare (437-acre) underwater site has been a protected marine area since 2002, following decades in which antiques were found in fishermen’s nets and looters had free rein.

Divers must be accompanied by a registered guide.

A careful sweep of sand near a low wall uncovers a stunning mosaic floor from a villa which belonged to Gaius Calpurnius Pisoni, known to have spent his days here conspiring against Emperor Nero.

Explorers follow the ancient stones of the coastal road past ruins of spas and shops, the sunlight on a clear day piercing the waves to light up statues. These are replicas; the originals are now in a museum.

“When we research new areas, we gently remove the sand where we know there could be a floor, we document it, and then we re-cover it,” archaeologist Enrico Gallocchio told AFPTV.

“If we don’t, the marine fauna or flora will attack the ruins. The sand protects them,” said Gallocchio, who is in charge of the Baiae park.

“The big ruins were easily discovered by moving a bit of sand, but there are areas where the banks of sand could be metres deep. There are undoubtedly still ancient relics to be found,” he said.

MEXICO, NORTH AMERICA, WORLD

Mexico’s Teotihuacan pyramid has 2,000-year-old floral offerings, discovered by archaeologists

Mexico’s Teotihuacan pyramid has 2,000-year-old floral offerings, discovered by archaeologists

Nearly 2,000 years ago, the ancient people of Teotihuacan wrapped bunches of flowers into beautiful bouquets, laid them beneath a jumble of wood and set the pile ablaze.

Now, archaeologists have found the remains of those surprisingly well-preserved flowers in a tunnel snaking beneath a pyramid of the ancient city, located northeast of what is now Mexico City. 

The pyramid itself is immense and would have stood 75 feet (23 meters) tall when it was first built, making it taller than the Sphinx of Giza from ancient Egypt.

The Temple of the Feathered Serpent at Teotihuacan, Mexico

The Teotihuacan pyramid is part of the “Temple of the Feathered Serpent,” which was built in honour of Quetzalcoatl, a serpent god who was worshipped in Mesoamerica. 

Archaeologists found the bouquets 59 feet (18 m)  below ground in the deepest part of the tunnel, said Sergio Gómez-Chávez, an archaeologist with Mexico’s National Institute of Anthropology and History (INAH) who is leading the excavation of the tunnel.

Mexico's Teotihuacan pyramid has 2,000-year-old floral offerings, discovered by archaeologists
A digital reconstruction of the tunnel running under the pyramid at Teotihuacan.

Numerous pieces of pottery, along with a sculpture depicting Tlaloc, a god associated with rainfall and fertility, were found beside the bouquets, he added. 

The bouquets were likely part of rituals, possibly associated with fertility, that Indigenous people performed in the tunnel, Gómez-Chávez told Live Science in a translated email. The team hopes that by determining the identity of the flowers, they can learn more about the rituals. 

One of the 2,000-year-old bouquets is prepped for research.

The team discovered the bouquets just a few weeks ago. The number of flowers in each bouquet varies, Gómez-Chávez said, noting that one bouquet has 40 flowers tied together while another has 60 flowers. 

Archaeologists found evidence of a large bonfire with numerous pieces of burnt wood where the bouquets were laid down, Gómez-Chávez said.

It seems that people placed the bouquets on the ground first and then covered them with a vast amount of wood. The sheer amount of wood seems to have protected the bouquets from the bonfire’s flames. 

The tunnel that Gómez-Chávez’s team is excavating was found in 2003 and has yielded thousands of artefacts including pottery, sculptures, cocoa beans, obsidian, animal remains and even a miniature landscape with pools of liquid mercury. Archaeologists are still trying to understand why ancient people created the tunnel and how they used it. 

Teotihuacan contains several pyramids and flourished between roughly 100 B.C. and A.D. 600. It had an urban core that covered 8 square miles (20 square kilometres) and may have had a population of 100,000 people. 

EUROPE, POLAND, WORLD

Spinning Tools Recovered from 2,000-Year-Old Grave in Poland

Spinning Tools Recovered from 2,000-Year-Old Grave in Poland

Archaeologists have uncovered a 2,000-year-old grave containing human remains lying one on top of the other, spindle whorls and the remains of distaffs during barrow excavations in the Sarbia forestry district.

The remains are thought to date back to the Wielbark culture and according to researchers the presence of the weaving materials suggest that the bodies had similar professions. 

Spindle whorls are weights attached to a spindle, they prevent the threads from sliding and maintain the speed of the spin. They have a hole in the middle. They are usually made of clay, less frequently of stone. In both graves, there were also silver, S-shaped clasps, and similar bowls.

  • Spinning Tools Recovered from 2,000-Year-Old Grave in Poland

Head of the research project Professor Andrzej Michałowski from the Faculty of Archaeology at the Adam Mickiewicz University, attempted to reconstruct the funeral ritual and the reason for finding two burials under the barrow.

He said: “The body of the deceased was already in a wooden boat, which she used to take to cross to the other bank of the river… It seemed as if she was napping after work, dressed in her best robes. Her chest decorated with a rain of beads made of glass, amber and bone… Pendants sparkling in the necklace. The silver sparkle of the S-shaped clasp on her neck.”

During the excavation, the remains of a box placed at her feet were also discovered. 

Michałowski said: “It contained her beloved work tools. A set of professional whorls and two distaffs, so that in the afterlife she would be able to weave the most delicate fog that would move over the valley of the river. Or heavy stormy clouds racing over the edge of the valley… Favourite pins to catch her unruly hair that disrupted her work.”

He added that in his opinion, the spinner’s apprentice attended the funeral and during the ceremony threw a pebble with a carved face outline into the grave (archaeologists found such a pebble during excavations). 

He said: “She missed her. She, too, wanted to go where the Great Spinner went. Touch the threads again together and magic them into the weaving of fabrics.

Since the death of the Master, she knew that she would no longer be able to do this magic with her as before. She saw only one goal… The next day, a fisherman walking towards the river saw a small body floating on the waves.”

After the apparent suicide, the spinner’s apprentice was buried in the same barrow where the Great Spinner had been buried. 

Michałowski said: “For her journey, she received her whorls, reminiscent of flowers or stars hanging on the riverside sky on a summer night, and a small distaff. A small S-shaped clasp glimmered in her burnt remains. A small bowl rested in a dug pit.”

He added: “Only the stone with a face really knows the truth.”

ASIA, ISRAEL, WORLD

1,500-Year-Old Industrial Agriculture Site Unearthed in Israel

1,500-Year-Old Industrial Agriculture Site Unearthed in Israel

Archaeologists in Israel have discovered a wine press, a rare gold coin and other artefacts linked to a settlement that stood in what’s now the Tel Aviv suburb of Ramat Ha-Sharon some 1,500 years ago.

The wine press dates to the Byzantine period.

Paved with a mosaic floor, the large wine press is a key indicator that the site was home to agricultural-industrial activity during the Byzantine period, reports i24 News. Archaeologists from the Israel Antiquities Authority (IAA) also found the foundations of a large structure that may have served as a warehouse or farmstead.

“Inside the buildings and installations, we found many fragments of storage jars and cooking pots that were evidently used by labourers working in the fields here,” says excavation leader Yoel Arbel in a statement. “We also recovered stone mortars and millstones that were used to grind wheat and barley and probably also to crush herbs and medicinal plants.”

Arbel adds that most of the stone implements were made of basalt from the Golan Heights and Galilee, located 50 to 100 miles northeast of Ramat Ha-Sharon.

As Stuart Winer reports for the Times of Israel, the coin was minted in 638 or 639 C.E. under the authority of Byzantine emperor Heraclius. One side shows the emperor and his two sons.

The hill of Golgotha in Jerusalem, identified as the site of the crucifixion of Jesus in Christian gospels, appears on the reverse. Someone scratched an inscription, likely the name of the coin’s owner, onto its surface in Greek and possibly Arabic, according to Robert Kool, a coin expert with the IAA.

“The coin encapsulates fascinating data on the decline of Byzantine rule in the country and contemporary historical events, such as the Persian invasion and the emergence of Islam, and provides information on Christian and pagan symbolism and the local population who lived here,” says Kool in the statement.

The coin shows Emperor Heraclius and his sons.

Among the discoveries made at the site was a bronze chain that may have been used to suspend a chandelier—an artefact typically found in churches, writes Rossella Tercatin for the Jerusalem Post. 

Other items dated to the early Islamic period, which began in the seventh century C.E. These included oil lamps, a glass workshop, and a warehouse with large vessels used to store grain and produce.

“In this period, people were not only working at the site but also living there, because we discovered the remains of houses and two large baking ovens,” says Arbel in the statement.

Archaeologists think the site remained in use until the 11th-century C.E.

The team conducted excavations in advance of the construction of a neighbourhood at the site.

“This is the first archaeological excavation ever conducted at the site, and only part of it was previously identified in an archaeological field survey,” says IAA Tel Aviv District archaeologist Diego Barkan in the statement. “The Israel Antiquities Authority views this as an excellent opportunity to integrate the ancient remains into plans for the future municipal park.”

Ramat Ha-Sharon’s mayor, Avi Gruber, says in the statement that local authorities are working with the new neighbourhood’s developers to integrate the archaeological site into the development.

“I want all our residents to enjoy learning about life here in antiquity and in the Middle Ages,” he adds.

EUROPE, POLAND, WORLD

At the site of a new apartment building, a mass burial of 18th century plague victims was discovered.

At the site of a new apartment building, a mass burial of 18th century plague victims was discovered.

An 18th-century cemetery containing the remains of plague victims has been uncovered during an apartment build in northern Poland. The grim discovery was made after builders stumbled upon human remains during work at the site in Mikołajki in the Warmian-Maurian Voivodeship.

The grim discovery was made after builders stumbled upon human remains during work at the site in Mikołajki in the Warmian-Maurian Voivodeship.
The find included two cemeteries, one dating between the 17th -19th century and a second from the 18th century when a plague swept through the Mazurian region.

The find included two cemeteries, one dating between the 17th -19th century and a second from the 18th century when a plague swept through the Mazurian region.

Archaeologist Agnieszka Jaremek vice-president of the Dajna Foundation said: “It is mentioned in sources that there was not enough space in the cemetery by the church and that’s why victims were buried by the road leading to Mrągowo.

“Everything points to the fact that we have uncovered that place.

“Many graves conceal whole families – both adults and children.”

The find included two cemeteries, one dating between the 17th -19th centuries and a second from the 18th century when a plague swept through the Mazurian region.

So far the remains of 100 people have been uncovered in 60 graves.

Known as the Great Northern War plague of 1700–1721, the epidemic swept across what is now northern Poland and other parts of Central Eastern Europe killing hundreds of thousands.

By the time the plague had faded out by December 1709 in the then city of Danzig, around half of its inhabitants had been killed.

After the plague, near to the graves of victims, further dead were buried and burials could have taken place there until the start of the 19th century.

In these graves, archaeologists uncovered items such as buttons.

Joanna Sobolewska, director of the Department for the Protection of Monuments in Olsztyn said that the uncovered human remains would be subjected to tests and anthropological analysis and after the end of tests, they would probably be buried in a communal grave. “The issue of the exact burial place is a question for the future”, she said.

The human remains will now be subjected to tests and anthropological analysis before being buried in a communal grave.

The site also concealed the remains of a Neolithic settlement and during works lasting several weeks, archaeologists from the Dajna Foundation in the name of Jerzy Okulicz-Kozaryn discovered remains from the Roman period.

Archaeologists think it is possible that the site was chosen for a settlement due to its proximity to a lake on one side and flat terrain on the other and according to estimates, the settlement could have occupied an area of 30-50 acres.

The Dajna Foundation’s Jaremek said: “Among the artefacts which we found are elements of ceramic plates as well as a blue glass bead.”

EUROPE, TURKEY, WORLD

Health Goddess Statue Unearthed in Turkey

Health Goddess Statue Unearthed in Turkey

An ancient statue of the mythological goddess Hygieia – seen as the guardian or personification of health – has been discovered in an ancient city in western Turkey, according to a researcher.

“We unearthed a statue of Hygieia, known as the goddess of health and cleanliness, the daughter of Asclepius, the god of health in Greek and Roman mythology,” Gökhan Coşkun, who coordinates the dig in the ancient city of Aizanoi, told Anadolu Agency.

Noting that the marble statue’s head is missing – the fate of much ancient statuary – Coşkun, an archaeologist at Dumlupinar University in central Turkey, said: “Unfortunately, it hasn’t survived to the present day, but in its current form, we can see that this statue is about the size of a human.”

Health Goddess Statue Unearthed in Turkey

“During past digs in Aizanoi, finds related to Hygieia were also found,” he said. “This situation makes us think that there may have been some construction and buildings related to the health cult in Aizanoi during the Roman era.”

Located near the town of Cavdarhisar in the Kutahya province, the site is also home to one of the best-preserved temples in Anatolia dedicated to Zeus, the thunderbolt-wielding king of the Greek Olympians.

Groundbreaking ancient site

Seen as boasting a history rivaling Ephesus, another iconic ancient city in Turkey, Aizanoi was added to the UNESCO World Heritage Tentative List in 2012, with excavation efforts ongoing now for almost a decade.

Coşkun said that around 100 workers and 25 technical personnel are working on digs at the nearly 5,000-year-old site.

“We’re trying to reveal the columned galleries on the west and south wings of the agora (bazaar) and the shops right behind them,” he added.

Coşkun added that the statue of Hygieia – related to the modern word “hygiene” – was unearthed inside the columned gallery on the south wing of the agora.

Located 57 kilometres (35 miles) from the Kütahya city centre, the ancient site saw its golden age in the second and third centuries AD and became “the centre of the episcopacy in the Byzantine era,” according to the website of the Turkish Culture and Tourism Ministry.

Recent excavations around the Temple of Zeus indicate the existence of several levels of settlement in the city dating from as far back as 3000 BC. In 133 BC, it was captured by the Roman Empire.

In 1824, European travellers rediscovered the ancient site.

Between 1970 and 2011, the German Archeology Institute unearthed a theatre and a stadium, as well as two public baths, a gymnasium, five bridges, a trading building, necropolises and the sacred cave of Metre Steune – a cultist site thought to be used prior to the first century BC.

Since 2011, Turkish archaeologists have been carrying out the work at the ancient site. This year, the excavations were transferred to the Kutahya Museum Directorate.

All In One Magazine