Ancient History

Abstract

For the first time in the Indian subcontinent, a series of royal burials with chariots have been recovered from the Chalcolithic period at the archaeological site Sinauli (29°8′28″N; 77°13′1″E), Baghpat district, western Uttar Pradesh, India. Eight burials were excavated from the site; among them a royal burial with copper decorated legged coffin (lid with a series of anthropomorphic figures) and headgear has also been recovered. Among these remarkable discoveries, three full-sized chariots made of wood and copper, and a sword with a wooden hilt, made this site unique at historical ground. These cultural findings signify that the ancients from this place were involved in warfare. All these recovered exclusive antiquities also proved the sophistication and the high degree of craftsmanship of the artisans. According to the 14C radiocarbon dating and recovered material culture, the site date back to 4000 yr BP (∼2000 BCE) and is thought to belong to Ochre-Coloured Pottery (OCP)/Copper Hoard culture. This culture was believed to develop in the Ganga-Yamuna Doab and was contemporary to the late phase of the Indus civilization. Altogether, the findings indicate that the time period of this culture is plausibly contemporary to Late Indus, Mesopotamian and Greece civilizations.

Conclusion

Sinauli is the first archaeological site in the Indian subcontinent which provides evidence of chariots, royal burials with the warfare elements during OCP/ Copper Hoard culture in Ganga-Yamuna doab. The set of 14C dates presented in this study authenticates the chronology of the site which date back to ∼4000 yr BP (∼2000 BC) and identified OCP occupation in northern India. The recovered material culture at the site indicate that the Sinaulians were involved in warfare activities. The recovered antiquities indicates their high degree of sophistication in wood and copper craftsmanship. Besides establishing chronology, the present study proposes the idea of utilising scientific analytical methods to address key questions arising from the burial sites such as exploitation of raw materials for rituals practices, subsistence, material culture, ancestry etc. This study provides a platform for the researchers to evaluate evidence of royal burials, the use of chariots and other warfare elements in relation to contemporary civilizations in other part of the world.

Abstract: Horses began to feature prominently in funerary contexts in southern Siberia in the mid-second millennium BC, yet little is known about the use of these animals prior to the emergence of vibrant horse-riding groups in the first millennium BC. Here, the authors present the results of excavations at the late-ninth-century BC tomb of Tunnug 1 in Tuva, where the deposition of the remains of at least 18 horses and one human is reminiscent of sacrificial spectral riders described in fifth-century Scythian funerary rituals by Herodotus. The discovery of items of tack further reveals connections to the earliest horse cultures of Mongolia.

Cenotes in the Yucatán Peninsula are time capsules preserving remnants of Maya culture and fossils of extinct megafauna

Highlights

• 3500 BP Lactobacillus genomes shed light on the origin of kefir in inland East Asia

•Bacterial-fungal dynamics reinforce resistance to exogenous microbes in ancient dairy

•Human-microbial interactions contribute to the adaptation of domesticated lactobacilli

•Goat DNA from dairy suggests communication between Xiaohe and the steppe populations

Summary

Despite the long history of consumption of fermented dairy, little is known about how the fermented microbes were utilized and evolved over human history. Here, by retrieving ancient DNA of Bronze Age kefir cheese (∼3,500 years ago) from the Xiaohe cemetery, we explored past human-microbial interactions. Although it was previously suggested that kefir was spread from the Northern Caucasus to Europe and other regions, we found an additional spreading route of kefir from Xinjiang to inland East Asia. Over evolutionary history, the East Asian strains gained multiple gene clusters with defensive roles against environmental stressors, which can be a result of the adaptation of Lactobacillus strains to various environmental niches and human selection. Overall, our results highlight the role of past human activities in shaping the evolution of human-related microbes, and such insights can, in turn, provide a better understanding of past human behaviors.

Abstract: “The American sweet potato (Ipomoea batatas) is a globally important comestible crop that features prominently in Polynesian lore; however, the timing and mode of its Oceanic transplantation remain obscure. New research from the Māori cultivation site M24/11 in Aotearoa/New Zealand, presented here, offers a re-evaluation of evidence for the early use and distribution of the sweet potato in southern Polynesia. Consideration of plant microparticles from fourteenth-century archaeological contexts at the site indicates local cultivation of sweet potato, taro and yam. Of these, only sweet potato persisted through a post-1650 climatic downturn it seems, underscoring the enduring southern-Polynesian appeal of this hardy crop.“

Abstract: “Walrus ivory was a prized commodity in medieval Europe and was supplied by Norse intermediaries who expanded across the North Atlantic, establishing settlements in Iceland and Greenland. However, the precise sources of the traded ivory have long remained unclear, raising important questions about the sustainability of commercial walrus harvesting, the extent to which Greenland Norse were able to continue mounting their own long-range hunting expeditions, and the degree to which they relied on trading ivory with the various Arctic Indigenous peoples that they were starting to encounter. We use high-resolution genomic sourcing methods to track walrus artifacts back to specific hunting grounds, demonstrating that Greenland Norse obtained ivory from High Arctic waters, especially the North Water Polynya, and possibly from the interior Canadian Arctic. These results substantially expand the assumed range of Greenland Norse ivory harvesting activities and support intriguing archaeological evidence for substantive interactions with Thule Inuit, plus possible encounters with Tuniit (Late Dorset Pre-Inuit).”

Abstract: “Uncertainties regarding traditional osteological methods in biological sex estimation can often be overcome with genomic and proteomic analyses. The combination of the three methodologies has been used for a better understanding of the gender-related funerary rituals at the Iberian megalithic cemetery of Panoría. As a result, 44 individuals have been sexed including, for the first time, non-adults. Contrary to the male bias found in many Iberian and European megalithic monuments, the Panoría population shows a clear sex ratio imbalance in favour of females, with twice as many females as males. Furthermore, this imbalance is found regardless of the criterion considered: sex ratio by tomb, chronological period, method of sex estimation, or age group. Biological relatedness was considered as possible sociocultural explanations for this female-related bias. However, the current results obtained for Panoría are indicative of a female-centred social structure potentially influencing rites and cultural traditions.”

Abstract: The Maghreb (north-west Africa) played an important role during the Palaeolithic and later in connecting the western Mediterranean from the Phoenician to Islamic periods. Yet, knowledge of its later prehistory is limited, particularly between c. 4000 and 1000 BC. Here, the authors present the first results of investigations at Oued Beht, Morocco, revealing a hitherto unknown farming society dated to c. 3400–2900 BC. This is currently the earliest and largest agricultural complex in Africa beyond the Nile corridor. Pottery and lithics, together with numerous pits, point to a community that brings the Maghreb into dialogue with contemporaneous wider western Mediterranean developments.

Pocket link

Snippet: Near the coast of Peru lies the ancient city of Caral, which was in existence at the same time as the Egyptians were still building the pyramids. Caral is said to be the first ancient city of the Americas.

Caral was the central city on Peru’s coastline from 3000 to 1800 BC. Today, it is remembered for the massive stone complex its people left behind. The Stone City spans over 150 square miles of desert and contains many plazas, houses for both the elite and residents, and a 60-foot temple.

Abstract: “Southern Africa has one of the longest records of fossil hominins and harbours the largest human genetic diversity in the world. Yet, despite its relevance for human origins and spread around the globe, the formation and processes of its gene pool in the past are still largely unknown. Here, we present a time transect of genome-wide sequences from nine individuals recovered from a single site in South Africa, Oakhurst Rockshelter. Spanning the whole Holocene, the ancient DNA of these individuals allows us to reconstruct the demographic trajectories of the indigenous San population and their ancestors during the last 10,000 years. We show that, in contrast to most regions around the world, the population history of southernmost Africa was not characterized by several waves of migration, replacement and admixture but by long-lasting genetic continuity from the early Holocene to the end of the Later Stone Age. Although the advent of pastoralism and farming substantially transformed the gene pool in most parts of southern Africa after 1,300 BP, we demonstrate using allele-frequency and identity-by-descent segment-based methods that the ‡Khomani San and Karretjiemense from South Africa still show direct signs of relatedness to the Oakhurst hunter-gatherers, a pattern obscured by recent, extensive non-Southern African admixture. Yet, some southern San in South Africa still preserve this ancient, Pleistocene-derived genetic signature, extending the period of genetic continuity until today.”

Published Summary: Neanderthal genomes have been recovered from sites across Eurasia, painting an increasingly complex picture of their populations’ structure that mostly indicates that late European Neanderthals belonged to a single metapopulation with no significant evidence of population structure. Here, we report the discovery of a late Neanderthal individual, nicknamed “Thorin,” from Grotte Mandrin in Mediterranean France, and his genome. These dentognathic fossils, including a rare example of distomolars, are associated with a rich archeological record of Neanderthal final technological traditions in this region ∼50–42 thousand years ago. Thorin’s genome reveals a relatively early divergence of ∼105 ka with other late Neanderthals. Thorin belonged to a population with a small group size that showed no genetic introgression with other known late European Neanderthals, revealing some 50 ka of genetic isolation of his lineage despite them living in neighboring regions. These results have important implications for resolving competing hypotheses about causes of the disappearance of the Neanderthals.

Snippet: “Life during prehistory was believed to be as Thomas Hobbes described: “nasty, brutish and short.” However, this new study shows these teens were actually quite healthy. Most individuals in the study sample entered puberty by 13.5, reaching full adulthood between 17 and 22 years old. This indicates these Ice Age adolescents started puberty at a similar time to teens in modern, wealthy countries.”

Link to research study (open access)

The study(not open access), published today in *Science *and co-led by the University of Bristol and China University of Geosciences (Wuhan), has shed new light on why the effects of rapid climate change in the Permian-Triassic warming were so devastating for all forms of life in the sea and on land.

"Our genetic analysis shows a stably growing population from the 13th century through to European contact in the 18th century. This stability is critical because it directly contradicts the idea of a dramatic pre-contact population collapse," says Bárbara Sousa da Mota, a researcher at the Faculty of Biology and Medicine at University of Lausanne and first author of the study.

"We looked into how the Indigenous American DNA was distributed across the Polynesian genetic background of the Rapanui. This distribution is consistent with a contact occurring between the 13th and the 15th centuries," says first author Víctor Moreno-Mayar, Asst. Professor at the Globe Institute's Section for Geogenetics, University of Copenhagen.

Archived link of the article

April 2023

According to recent archaeological findings published in the journal ‘Science Advances’, up to half the women in the Americas were big-game hunters. “An archaeological discovery and analysis of early burial practices overturns the long-held ‘man-the-hunter’ hypothesis,” lead author Randy Haas, assistant professor of anthropology at University of California, Davis, commented in a news release by the same institution.

To determine whether the discovery was an exception, Prof. Haas examined 429 skeletons spread across 107 other burial sites in North and South America from around 8 000 to 14 000 years ago. Of the 27 individuals buried with hunting tools, 11 were women. The study estimates that somewhere between 30 % to 50 % of hunters were women during that time.

Youtube link

2 centuries ago this ancient fabric was 26x more expensive than silk. It was worn by the Mughal Emperors, the Romans, Marie Antoinette and even Jane Austen wrote about it.

For the last 200 years, no one has been able to make this fabric.

Invidious link

It's time to discard some common misconceptions and rethink our perspective on human history, so that we can truly reckon with the scope of our political possibilities.

• Optimum Inequality - 3:10
• Agriculture and the "Inevitable" - 7:38
• The Wealth of Evidence - 14:20
• Rethinking Human History - 23:53
• Outro - 30:52

Archive link

Researchers pinpoint the mycelial source of museum artifacts

Biofabrication companies are increasingly excited about the prospect of using fungi to produce sturdy, sustainable alternatives to plastic and leather. But a new finding suggests that Indigenous Americans were already making “mycotextiles” at least a century ago. The study, published in Mycologia, confirmed the fungal origin of two wall pockets crafted by a Tlingit woman in Alaska in 1903. Some historical mycotextile use has also been reported in Europe, but “that I know of, this is the first documentation of the use of this material anywhere in North America,” says Nancy Turner, an ethnobotanist at the University of Victoria, who was not involved in the study.

Today, under-floor heating is done with electrical systems or pipes of hot water worked in a pattern under (you guessed it) the floor of the home.

Since hot air rises, this can provide a more efficient and even heat through out the room.

It is a more “gentle” heat, so most people use smart thermostats, and occasionally pair it with a secondary heat (for cold climates), such as a heat pump.

An Ondal is the historic Korean technology which used the smoke from a fire to do the same thing.

(Image Source)

While it may sound immediately dangerous, they were actually careful to cover the under parts of the house with clay and other types of fire-resistant material. As an added benefit, smoke can prevent mold/rot, and deter insects.

This technology dates back to before circa 5000 BC.

Comparatively, this same method is also how bath houses were heated. While the ones in medieval Europe did have a reputation of burning down, some ancient Roman’s had more luck.

Called the “Hypocaust” system, which apparently means “heat from bellow,” and they did just that.

(Image Link)

Under floor heating even goes back further than these examples.

It is funny how often “new” technology is often just updated historic ideas.

Link to research article (open access)

Snippet: “"It was extremely exciting to be able to count the chromosomes of an extinct creature for the first time. It's usually not possible to have this much fun simply counting from one to 28."

By examining the fossil chromosomes, which derived from the mammoth's skin, it was possible to see which genes were active. This is because of a phenomenon called chromosome compartmentalization—the fact that active and inactive DNA tends to segregate into two spatial neighborhoods inside the cell nucleus. For most genes, the activity state matches what researchers saw in modern elephant skin. But not always.

"The obvious question for us was: why is it a 'woolly mammoth?' Why isn't it a 'shockingly bald mammoth?'" said Dr. Thomas Gilbert, director of the Center for Hologenomics and co-corresponding author of the paper.

"The fact that the compartmentalization was still preserved in these fossils was critical, because it made it possible to look, for the very first time, at which genes were active in a woolly mammoth. And it turns out that there are key genes that regulate hair follicle development whose activity pattern is totally different than in elephants."

Researchers learned much but they were left with a puzzle: how could the DNA fragments of ancient chromosomes possibly survive for 52,000 years with their three-dimensional structure intact? After all, in 1905—his 'annus mirabilis,' or 'miracle year'—Albert Einstein published a classic paper calculating how quickly small particles, like bits of DNA, tend to move through a substance.

"Einstein's work makes a very simple prediction about chromosome fossils: under ordinary circumstances, they shouldn't exist," Dudchenko said. "And yet: here they are. It was a physics mystery."

To explain this apparent contradiction, the researchers realized that the chromosome fossils were in a very special state, closely resembling the state of molecules in glass. "Chromoglass is a lot like the glass in your window: it's rigid, but it's not an ordered crystal," said Dr. Erez Lieberman Aiden, co-corresponding author of the study, director of the Center for Genome Architecture and professor at the Baylor College of Medicine.“