For Those Interested in Archaeology

Ah, no man is an island.
"Stone Age Brits were past masters at choosing the perfect ‘des res’, according to new research carried out by archaeologists.


Their investigations have revealed that, 300,000 years before the emergence of anatomically modern humans, prehistoric Britons were selecting their domestic real estate with tremendous care.
Nutritional and security considerations appear to have been the main criteria, according to the new research carried out by scholars at the University of Southampton and Queens University, Belfast.
A survey of 25 major British and north-west French sites dating from 500,000 to 200,000 years ago has revealed that early humans – members of the now long-extinct species Homo heidelbergensis – predominantly chose to live on islands in the flood plains of major rivers. They avoided forests and hills – and the upper and middle reaches of river systems, and their estuaries.
It is the first ever detailed interdisciplinary investigation into early humanity’s home location preferences. The degree to which they preferred to choose just one specific type of location has surprised the archaeologists."
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/science/archaeology/revealed-how-prehistoric-des-res-gave-stone-age-brits-a-perfect-diet-8995918.html

They just keep pushing the clock back.

"Two footprints -- one left and one right -- stamped in the Mexican desert over 10,000 years ago are the oldest known human footprints in North America. According to new analysis, the tracks, discovered 190 miles south of the Texas border, predate any previous discovery by some 5,000 years.












The footprints tell the story of a hunter-gatherer who marched through a marshy basin in the Chihuahuan Desert long before the Mesoamerican civilizations like the Mayans dominated the Mexican landscape.








“To my knowledge the oldest human prints previously reported in North America are around 6,000 years old,” Nicholas Felstead, a geoarchaeologist at Durham University in the U.K., said in a statement, according to Western Digs. Felstead, who spearheaded the new study of the tracks, was able to date the footprints because they were preserved in travertine, a sedimentary rock containing small traces of uranium. Since scientists know the rate at which uranium decays, becoming thorium, researchers were able to determine the footprints’ age by measuring the ratios of the two elements."
http://www.ibtimes.com/oldest-human-footprints-north-america-discovered-tracks-preserved-10550-years-1503492?

 

Seem to have the motherlode today.
"Fossils discovered in Tunisia challenge several hypotheses concerning the origin of toothcombed primates (Malagasy lemurs, Afro-Asian lorises and African galagos). The fossils are of a small primate called Djebelemur, which lived around 50 million years ago. They were discovered by a French-Tunisian team from the Institut des Sciences de l'Evolution in Montpellier (CNRS/Université Montpellier 2/IRD) and the Office National des Mines (ONM) in Tunis. According to the paleontologists, Djebelemur was probably a transitional form leading to the appearance of tooth-combed primates. However, according to genetic data, these primates appeared at least 15 million years earlier. Djebelemur therefore challenges the hypotheses put forward by molecular biology. The work, which has just been published in Plos One, makes it possible to reconstruct a chapter in the evolutionary history of this lineage. In addition, it may help to refine genetic models.

Tooth-combed primates, also called strepsirrhines, comprise lemurs and lorisiforms (small primates which include lorises and galagos). In these primates, the anterior teeth of the lower jaw take the form of a comb. This is mainly used for grooming, but also, in some species, for procuring the natural gums that make up part of their diet.
A key question debated by primatologists concerns the time when strepsirrhine primates first appeared. Recent genetic data dates the origin of lemurs and lorises to the onset of the Tertiary period, just after the disappearance of the dinosaurs (approximately 65 million years ago). Some molecular biologists even believe that divergence of the two groups occurred 80 million years ago. However, paleontological data does not corroborate these hypotheses: the oldest known lorisiform fossil dates from a mere 37 million years ago. Could this simply be due to a gap in the fossil record? The fossils discovered by the Institut des Sciences de l'Evolution in Montpellier (CNRS/Université Montpellier 2/IRD) and the ONM in Tunis suggest otherwise: it is the genetic models that may need to be revised."
http://phys.org/news/2013-12-fossil-primate-history-strepsirrhines.html

"Artefacts discovered at an excavation site in Cyprus suggest that humans inhabited Mediterranean at least a thousand years earlier than thought before.
Archaeologists at the University of Toronto, Cornell University and the University of Cyprus have found a complete female figurine, the earliest complete human figurine ever found on the small Mediterranean island.
The discovery was made at the early Neolithic site of Ayia Varvara-Asprokremnos (AVA), which is carbon-dated to between 8800-8600 BC.
The Late Stone Age site, discovered in the early 1990s, was established when the economies throughout the Middle East was seeing a transition from hunting to farming.
The figurine was found in a collection of igneous stone objects, including two flat stone tools, one with extensive red ochre residue, which indicate evidence of manufacturing activities in the region.
“This tells us that Cyprus was very much a part of the Neolithic revolution that saw significant growth in agriculture and the domestication of animals,” Sally Stewart, a research fellow at University of Toronto Archaeology Centre, said in a release."
http://www.ibtimes.co.uk/articles/529296/20131211/cyprus-early-neolithic-settlement-late-stone-age.htm?

 

"VERO BEACH, Fla. -- For 100 years there has been a large, troubling asterisk next to Vero Beach in archaeological literature.
The sleepy oceanside town best known for its oranges and former spring training camp of the Los Angeles Dodgers is also believed by some archaeologists to be the only site in North America where human bones have been found with extinct Ice Age animals — proof that humans were in North America at least 13,000 years ago.
No one knows exactly how long humans have lived in North America. Tools and artifacts found at other sites indicate that humans may have been in North America that long ago, but the bones of what has come to be known as Vero Man could finally prove it.
"It needs to be done," said Barbara Purdy, professor emerita of anthropology at the University of Florida who has long argued that the Vero Man site should be excavated again. Purdy, 86, jokingly calls the site the Old Girl site rather than the Vero Man site because the first bones found belonged to a woman.
Although she "won't be going down and getting in the pit," she received credit for her advocacy recently during a news conference announcing a partnership between Mercyhurst Archaeological Institute at Mercyhurst University in Erie, Pa., and the Old Vero Ice Age Sites Committee, an Indian River County nonprofit, that will begin digging at the site in January. "They've got the whole world watching."
The dig is as much about proving whether Vero Man lived during the Ice Age as it is about settling a century-old tiff between Dr. Elias Howard Sellards, Florida's state geologist from 1907-1918, and Arles Hrdlicka, curator of the Physical Anthropology Department at the Smithsonian Institution National Museum of Natural History from 1910-1940."
http://www.miamiherald.com/2013/12/14//v-fullstory/3817670/vero-may-hold-clue-to-americas.html?

Read more here: http://www.miamiherald.com/2013/12/14//v-fullstory/3817670/vero-may-hold-clue-to-americas.html?#storylink=cpy

 

Feast your eyes, mes braves, feast your eyes...
"A SINK hole discovered by archaeologists in Damerham may hold vital information about the plant species thriving there 6,000 years ago.
An archaeology team led by a Kingston University academic has been working on the Neolithic site for six years.
Four areas of the temple complex were excavated during the summer, and in the largest of the openings, which was about 40 metres long, careful extractions revealed a layer of uncharacteristic orange sand and clay.
Usually the archaeological survey would involve mapping and cataloguing finds such as bone, pottery and tool-making waste fragments. Instead the team, led by Dr Helen Wickstead, found plant remains.
Dr Wickstead said the find was completely unexpected and had initially confused the team digging on the farmland.
She said: “The site at Damerham is on chalk land, so we don’t often find materials like this that capture and preserve the plant remains from a specific time period.”"
http://www.salisburyjournal.co.uk/news/10870621._/?

"An ancient flute thought to be the world’s oldest musical instrument has been found in a cave in Germany. Made of vulture bone, the instrument dates from around the time that humans began colonising Europe, around 33,000BC. The discovery by a group of scientists has led them to believe humans played music much earlier than previously thought. Fragments of three flutes were found in the Hohle Fels cavern in southwest Germany by a team from Tubingen University. The near-complete vulture bone flute is 20cm long, has five finger holes and v-shaped notches that would have acted as a mouthpiece. Scientists think the instrument would have been held like a recorder, but the player would have blown across it like a flute."
http://www.classical-music.com/news/world%E2%80%99s-%E2%80%98oldest-musical-instrument%E2%80%99-found?

 

"Neanderthals buried their dead in a relatively “human” manner according to a new detailed analysis conducted by an international team of archaeologists led by William Rendu, a researcher at the Center for International Research in the Humanities and Social Sciences (CIRHUS) in New York City, that was reported in the Dec. 16, 2013, edition of the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences
The researchers focused on a depression in the cave where a Neanderthal skeleton was unearthed in 1908. The researchers propose that the depression was made by Neanderthals based on geological analysis.
The researchers examined the Neanderthal site in La Chapelle-aux-Saints in southwestern France that was originally discovered in 1908. The 13-year endeavor employed instrumentation and techniques that were not available when the site was first discovered.
An examination of the Neanderthal remains found in 1908 show a high state of preservation that indicates the early human ancestor was buried and covered with earth soon after his demise. Comparison with animal bones found in the site that are of the same age showed less wear from exposure in the Neanderthal skeleton."
http://www.examiner.com/article/first-conclusive-evidence-that-neanderthals-buried-their-dead-unearthed?

 

How about that DNA? Just keeps getting deeper. Allah akbar. http://www.washington.edu/news/2013/12/12/scientists-discover-double-meaning-in-genetic-code/

 

Great find, pop.

 

A freind and I have been corresponding on the affect of chaperone proteins. I'll see if I can find some articles on them. Essentially they can negate the affects of minor mutations but if something removes or changes them the results can be quite dramatic.

Here's one link that is fairly easy to understand:
This has become a more significant issue recently due it having been determined to have an effect on a species of zebra fish as some found the fruit fly experiment less than convincing.
http://inspiringscience.net/2012/12/16/hsp90-translating-environmental-stress-into-evolutionary-change/


Found some more info on it:
http://www.sciencemag.org/content/342/6164/1304.summary?sid=ca3b11e7-0b49-4ccf-a97f-1fa08975bba5
http://www.sciencemag.org/content/342/6164/1372.abstract

 

Interesting LWD, but about 75% of that article was Greek....Amazing how much knowledge is out there...Thinking I'd be super smart back in the 1850's.

 

It came up in recently in a conversation with the friend I mentioned that most of what we learn due to science is how much more there is to learn.

 

Let's hope the canal construction left enough to be discovered.
"ERIE, PENNSYLVANIA—A team led by Mercyhurst University archaeologist James Adavasio will excavate a site in Vero Beach, Florida, that is one of North America's most controversial. In 1915, workers dredging a canal in Vero Beach unearthed a trove of bones belonging to extinct Ice Age animals such as saber tooth cats, ground sloths, and mammoths. Among those remains were a human skull, and dozens of other human bones that could have belonged to a man who lived 13,000 years ago. Dubbed "Vero Man," the remains became a flashpoint in the debate over the antiquity of humans in the New World. “From the beginning, Vero was one of the more infamous archaeological sites in North America because it was seen as such a threat to the then perceived wisdom that no humans had lived here during the last Ice Age,” said Adovasio."
http://www.archaeology.org/news/1660-131218-vero-beach-site-to-be-reexcavated?

 

"HAIDERSHOFEN, AUSTRIA—A quartzite hammerstone found at the site of Lehberg in Austria could bear the handprint of an ancient human ancestor that lived 500,000 years ago. Lehberg has offered up Acheulean axes and a phallus-shaped item that's splattered in ochre, but the new find ties the activities of Homo erectus in Europe to the hand painting done by its descendants 450,000 years later in caves like Rouffignac."
http://www.archaeology.org/news/1674-lehberg-homo-erectus-ochre-quartzite-hammerstone?

"The ischyromyids are the most primitive rodents that have a Holarctic Paleogene distribution. Members of the family are predominant in Paleogene rodents of North America, but are relatively rare in both Asia and Europe. In a study published in the latest issue of Vertebrata PalAsiatica 51(4), Drs. LI Qian and MENG Jin, Institute of Vertebrate Paleontology and Paleoanthropology (IVPP), Chinese Academy of Sciences, reported some new findings of the Eocene ischyromyids from the Huheboerhe area in the Erlian Basin, Nei Mongol, China. These include Asiomys dawsoni from the basal strata of the Irdin Manha Formation and Ischyromyidae gen. et sp. indet. from the basal strata of the Arshanto Formation. The new materials include fragmentary mandibles and numerous cheek teeth, which provide new evidence for the mammal's dispersal between Asia and North America during the Middle Eocene.

Asiomys is similar to species of both paramyines and reithroparamyines in size. The mandible of Asiomys is similar to that of Paramys delicatus in many features. Dental characteristics of Asiomys are similar to those of paramyines, but quite different from those of reithroparamyines. Researchers tentatively assigned Asiomys to Paramyinae based on the fragmentary mandible and the cheek teeth."
http://phys.org/news/2013-12-ischyromyid-rodents-eocene-erlian-basin.html

 

Amazing.
"It was its odd shape that made the fossilised piece of bone stand out on the sea floor. Seasoned amateur diver Ross Wilkie hadn't seen anything like it before. So he did what any collector would do. He plucked it from its watery world and took it home.
Little did he know that what he had just retrieved off Beaumaris Beach in Melbourne would cast a new light on what scientists knew about seals in the southern hemisphere.
The 12-centimetre-long piece of bone, a flipper bone belonging to a seal, dates back between 5 million and 6 million years ."
http://www.smh.com.au/environment/animals/fossilised-seal-bone-discovered-off-beaumaris-beach-is-about-six-million-years-old-20131227-2zzfg.html#ixzz2ohC0upvd

 

"Russian scientists are seeking to unlock the secrets of 3,500 year old Bronze Age graves where couples are buried together in a seemingly loving embrace - amid suspicions of a macabre explanation.
These images show ancient burials in Staryi Tartas village in Siberia where experts have examined some 600 tombs.
Dozens contain the bones of couples, facing each other, some with male and female skeletons, their hands held together seemingly for eternity.




[SIZE=1.2em]'Archeologists are struggling for explanations and believe DNA tests will provide the answers to these remarkable burials,' said [/SIZE]The Siberian Times[SIZE=1.2em].[/SIZE]


One writer, Vasiliy Labetskiy, described the scenes in the graves poignantly as skeletons in 'post-mortal hugs with bony hands clasped together'.
One theory is that these Andronovo burials show the start of the nuclear family, but another version that after the man died, his wife was killed and buried with him.
[SIZE=1.2em]Still another suggests that some of the couples were deliberately buried as if in a sexual act, possibly with a young woman sacrificed to play this role in the grave.[/SIZE]
Other graves at the site in Novosibirsk region in western Siberia show adults buried with children.
Professor Vyacheslav Molodin, director of research of the Institute of Archeology and Ethnography of the Siberian branch of the Russian Academy of Sciences, said: 'We can fantasise a lot about all this.
'We can allege that husband died and the wife was killed to be interred with him as we see in some Scythian burials, or maybe the grave stood open for some time and they buried the other person or persons later, or maybe it was really simultaneous death."

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2530790/Till-death-Scientists-discover-mysterious-3-500-year-old-male-female-skeletons-buried-facing-holding-hands-Siberia.html#ixzz2ovRrQiVO

 

Ancient Egyptian brewer's tomb found in Luxor: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-middle-east-25593526
The man buried in it was "head of beer production", archaeologists say.

Experts say the tomb's wall paintings are well preserved and depict daily life as well as religious rituals.

 

First posts for a while.
"Paleontologists in Peru have uncovered the fossils of a "walking whale," remains believed to be at least 40 million years old. The whale fossils were found in the Ocucaje desert, one of the richest sources of fossils in the world, and may be evidence of a link between sea mammals and their ancestors living on land.
Large_5068-walking-whale
Above, an artist's rendering of the Rodhocetus, a horrifying ancient creature related to the recently discovered whale. (Photo: Wikimedia Commons)
"We already knew about the paleontological richness of Ocucaje dating back 10-12 million years," said Rodolfo Salas, a paleontologist who was part of the discovery team. "Now we can say that the most important primitive sea mammal deposit in South America is at Ocucaje.""
http://www.richarddawkins.net/news_articles/2014/1/4/-walking-whale-fossil-discovered-in-peru-40-million-year-old-specimen-may-be-link-between-aquatic-and-land-mammals


"You might not have to go the circus or zoo to spot an elephant; you might be standing on one.
Or, if you were to dig deep enough, you might uncover the bones of a saber-toothed tiger, an oversized wolf, a cave bear, a Florida lion or one of many other prehistoric animals that roamed this region more than 10,000 years ago.
Although it's an urban jungle now, South Florida was once a vast savannah resembling Africa's Serengeti, and the bones of thousands of species remain buried below the surface.

• 
  

"People don't even realize there's an extensive fossil landscape here," said Bob Carr, a local archaeologist who on occasion finds ancient bones in the course of checking development sites for historic items.
Over the past four decades, Carr has found the teeth and bones of mastodons, mammoths and other prehistoric animals in Coral Springs, Parkland, south Miami-Dade County, at an Everglades airport and, somewhat coincidentally, in the Savannah subdivision of Weston.
The bones are evidence that Florida was dramatically different during the end of the Pleistocene Epoch — about twice as large, with its western shoreline extending up to 125 miles out into the Gulf of Mexico.
"I like to say that Florida 11,000 years ago was a Realtor's dream; the peninsula was at least 100 percent larger than it is today," said Carr, of the Archaeological and Historical Conservancy, a nonprofit organization based in Davie."
http://www.sun-sentinel.com/news/broward/fl-ancient-elephants-20140112,0,3172259.story?

 

"PHILADELPHIA — University of Pennsylvania archaeologists say they have found the tomb of a previously unknown Egyptian pharaoh who ruled more than 3,600 years ago, the first discovery of what they predict could be more than a dozen tombs from a forgotten dynasty.
The tomb, found last week, was heavily looted, but hieroglyphs on the chamber walls clearly identified it as belonging to a ruler named Woseribre Senebkay, the Penn team announced Wednesday in conjunction with the Egyptian government.
The researchers already have begun excavating several nearby sites that appear to be from the same dynasty, at the site of the ancient city of Abydos, more than 300 miles south of Cairo, said Josef Wegner, a Penn associate professor of Egyptology.
"It looks like there's a whole royal necropolis of this lost dynasty," said Wegner, an associate curator at Penn's Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology.
Archaeologists had suspected the existence of the unknown pharaohs from an ancient list of rulers called the Turin King List, portions of which are torn and decayed. By analyzing fragmented parts of the list, a Danish researcher named Kim Ryholt proposed years ago that 16 unknown kings belonged to the Abydos dynasty.
The name of Senebkay matches one of the partial names on the list, said Wegner, who identified the tomb's occupant with the help of graduate student Kevin Cahail. Some other names on the list are obliterated.
"They basically were forgotten to history," Wegner said. "In the later king lists, they don't appear. They just kind of vanish."
The tomb, dated to 1650 B.C., appears to have been raided by tomb robbers in ancient times, Wegner said. Even the king's bodily remains were ripped apart."
http://www.mcclatchydc.com/2014/01/16/214733/tomb-of-previously-unknown-pharaoh.html?

"The bones of King Alfred the Great or his son, Edward the Elder, are believed to have been found in a box stored in a museum - and not buried in an unmarked grave as previously thought.
Archaeologists carried out an exhumation of the grave at St Bartholomew's Church in Winchester, Hampshire, last March in a bid to find the last resting place of the ninth-century king.
Tests have shown that those remains were not the influential warrior king but further investigations have uncovered a pelvis bone which had been in storage at Winchester City Museum from a previous excavation carried out at the end of the 1990s."
[SIZE=.867em]http://www.itv.com/news/meridian/update/2014-01-17/museum-bones-could-belong-to-alfred-the-great-or-son/?[/SIZE]

Read more here: http://www.mcclatchydc.com/2014/01/16/214733/tomb-of-previously-unknown-pharaoh.html?#storylink=cpy

 

"Malta’s Ħal Saflieni Hypogeum, a Unesco World Heritage Site, will be the key location studied at the up­coming Archaeoacoustics Conference between February 19 and 22.
Researchers are increasingly taking note of particular sound effects that are created in some of the world’s earliest buildings, including Malta’s megalithic temples.
As a result, experts from across the globe will gather in Malta, where they have been granted special access to test the Hypogeum’s acoustic behaviour with a vocalist in the so-called Oracle Chamber.
“This acoustic phenomenon, together with the Hypogeum’s mysterious nature and its suggestive ambience, resulted in the site becoming associated with a number of fantastic stories, urban myths and legends,” says Katya Stroud of Heritage Malta, which granted permission for this research.
“Among these are stories of serpent priests, genetic mutation, humanoid beings and screams of children lost in caves underneath the site. Despite their dubious origins and unfounded nature, these stories still appear in local and foreign media. It is now up to science to help us zoom back onto the real questions about the nature of the Hypogeum, particularly its acoustic design and effects.”
Linda Eneix, the conference organiser, who is based in the US, also believes there is good reason to look more closely."
http://www.timesofmalta.com/articles/view/20140119/business-news/Experts-set-to-tune-in-to-sound-effects-of-archaeological-sites-in-Malta.503223?#.UtwP-xDFLIU

 

Nice. Sound is cool. Didn't they levitate something lately? http://phys.org/news/2014-01-levitate-dimensions.html

 

"Divers in Sweden have discovered a rare collection of Stone Age artefacts buried deep beneath the Baltic Sea.
Archaeologists believe the relics were left by Swedish nomads 11,000 years ago and the discovery may be evidence of one of the oldest settlements ever found in the Nordic region.
Some of the relics are so well preserved, reports have dubbed the find 'Sweden’s Atlantis' and suggested the settlement may have been swallowed whole by the sea in the same way as the mythical island in the Atlantic Ocean.
Divers in Sweden have discovered a rare collection of Stone Age artefacts buried beneath the Baltic Sea, pictured. Archaeologists believe the relics were left by Swedish nomads 11,000 years ago and the discovery may be evidence of one of the oldest settlements ever found in the Nordic region, dubbed 'Sweden's Atlantis'
The artefacts were discovered by Professor Bjorn Nilsson from Soderton University, and a team from Lunds University, during an archaeological dive at Hano, off the coast of Skane County in Sweden.
Buried 16 metres below the surface, Nilsson uncovered wood, flint tools, animal horns and ropes.
Among the most notable items found include a harpoon carving made from an animal bone, and the bones of an ancient animal called aurochs.
Aurochs are ancestors of modern-day cattle and lived through Europe before becoming extinct in the early 1600s. The last reported auroch died in Poland in 1627.
This find is significant because it suggests a date for when these items would have been used.
Many of the artefacts have been preserved because the diving location is rich in a sediment called gyttja."
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-2546720/Swedish-divers-unearth-Stone-Age-Atlantis-11-000-year-old-ancient-settlement-discovered-Baltic-Sea.html#ixzz2reXqHIbt