For Those Interested in Archaeology

Aye, fascinating stuff. Really want to hear their theory on how the indigenous population was replaced though.

 

Doggerland back in the news.
"Part of a prehistoric human skull found beneath the North Sea has been dubbed the 'oldest ever Dutchwoman'.
Alongside a carved bison bone found at a nearby site, the skull fragment is around 13,000 years old, archaeologists found.
The finds form the oldest known modern human from the Netherlands and the earliest artwork ever recovered from the North Sea.
The discoveries highlight a sunken treasure trove of human archaeology beneath the body of water that was once a land bridge between Britain and Northern Europe, researchers said.
Dutch fishermen found the partial skull and bison bone on separate occasions in recent years around Dogger Bank, a large sandbank in a shallow area of the North Sea about 62 miles (100km) off the east coast of England.
The bank was not always underwater, forming a land bridge that linked continental Europe and the British Isles until around 9,000 years ago.
Scientists believe the partial skull once belonged to a young or middle-age adult woman who died when she was between 22 and 45 years old.
The prehistoric hunter-gatherer lived on the North Sea landmass when it stood around 260 feet (80m) above sea level - a region scientists call Doggerland.
'These hunter-gatherers must have roamed these plains and perhaps one season they visited what is now the UK and the next season stayed in what are now the Netherlands,' study coauthor archaeologist Dr Marcel Niekus told Live Science.
'This now-submerged landscape is of crucial importance to our understanding of our past. It is, so to speak, a treasure chest of archaeological finds.'
Chemical analysis of the skull suggests that meat from hunted animals made up a significant portion of the woman's daily diet."
13,000-year-old skull of oldest Dutchwoman found | Daily Mail Online

 

"In a multidisciplinary study published in PNAS, an international team of researchers combined archaeological, genetic and stable isotope data to encapsulate 4000 years of Iberian biomolecular prehistory.
The team analyzed human remains of 13 individuals from the north and south of Spain, including the rich archaeological site of El Portalón, which forms part of the well-known site of Atapuerca in Burgos and in itself harbors four millennia of Iberian prehistory. The study also involved important sites like Cueva de los Murciélagos in Andalusia, from which the genome of a 7,245 year-old Neolithic farmer was sequenced, making it the oldest sequenced genome in southern Iberia representing the Neolithic Almagra Pottery Culture—the early agriculturalists of southern Spain.
Prehistoric migrations have played an important role in shaping the genetic makeup of European populations. After the last glacial maximum about 20,000 years ago, Europe was inhabited by hunter-gatherer groups and two major migrations during the last 10,000 years had massive impacts on lifestyle and gene pool of European populations. First, groups originally coming from the Middle East and Anatolia introduced farming practices to Europe during the Neolithic. Less than 5,000 years ago, herder groups from the Pontic-Caspian steppe spread over the European continent. As both of these movements originated in the east, the most western parts of the continent were last to be reached by these migrations. While archaeogenetic studies have shown that both of these migrations have replaced more than half of the gene pool in Central and Northern Europe, much less is known about the influence of these events in Iberian populations, particularly in the most southern areas such as Andalusia.
The first farmers mainly reached Iberia following a coastal route through the northern Mediterranean Sea. The new study demonstrates that Neolithic Iberians show genetic differences to the migrant farmers that settled in Central and Northern Europe. "This suggests that all early farmers in Iberia trace most of their ancestry to the first Neolithic people that migrated into the peninsula and that later contributions from their central European counterparts were only minor," says archaeogeneticist Cristina Valdiosera from La Trobe University in Australia, one of the lead authors of the study."
https://phys.org/news/2018-03-genetic-prehistory-iberia-differs-central.html#jCp

 

Another cracker.
"Human footprints found off Canada's Pacific coast may be 13,000 years old, according to a study published March 28, 2018 in the open-access journal PLOS ONE by Duncan McLaren and colleagues from the Hakai Institute and University of Victoria, Canada.
Previous research suggests that, during the last ice age (which ended around 11,700 years ago), humans moved into the Americas from Asia across what was then a land bridge to North America, eventually reaching what is now the west coast of British Columbia, Canada as well as coastal regions to the south. Along the pacific coast of Canada, much of this shoreline is today covered by dense forest and only accessible by boat, making it difficult to look for the archaeological evidence which might support this hypothesis. In this study, the research team excavated intertidal beach sediments on the shoreline of Calvert Island, British Columbia, where the sea level was two to three meters lower than it is today at the end of the last ice age.
The researchers uncovered 29 human footprints of at least three different sizes in these sediments, which radiocarbon dating estimated to be around 13,000 years old. Measurements and digital photographic analyses revealed that the footprints probably belonged to two adults and a child, all barefoot. The findings suggest that humans were present on the west coast of British Columbia about 13,000 years ago, as it emerged from the most recent ice age.
This finding adds to the growing body of evidence supporting the hypothesis that humans used a coastal route to move from Asia to North America during the last ice age. The authors suggest that further excavations with more advanced methods are likely to uncover more human footprints in the area and would help to piece together the patterns of early human settlement on the coast of North America."
https://phys.org/news/2018-03-year-human-footprints-canada-pacific.html#jCp

 

Why do they assume the potters were female?

 

It appears they're making the assumption based on the allocation of work in current traditional society. Basically 5000 years ago in Europe the men were needed for more dangerous tasks while the women worked safer jobs like pottery.

Ninja'ed

 

So they are mixing facts and assumptions in the same sentence and not making clear. Sounds like bad practice to me. They may indeed be right but ....

 

There's a big difference between a fact i.e. they found a piece of pottery at a specific location and an assumption model based or not. That said I hadn't read the article at that point and they do go into why they make the assumption that the potters were females. However looking at:
Scandinavian prehistory - Wikipedia
The cordware showed up about the same time as metal which brings to question whether or not the stone age model really applies. Incidentally:
Corded Ware culture - Wikipedia
mentions that the culture was diverse and widely scattered which would tend to support your concept of knowledge as a trade good and perhaps the dissemination of the craft via women.

I find their argument plausible but not totally convincing. There assumption of the mechanism being marriage is also in question. Some cultures of the period were also matriarchal I believe with the women staying home and the men marrying into other communities.

 

Some news from Skye-
"New light has been shed on a little understood period of dinosaur evolution after giant prehistoric footprints were discovered on the Isle of Skye.
Researchers, including some from Edinburgh University, have been analysing dozens of the footprints, left about 170 million years ago.
They found that the tracks belonged to sauropods and therapods from the Middle Jurassic period.
The discovery has been described as being "globally important".
Few fossil sites have been found around the world from the Middle Jurassic period.
The footprints, left in a muddy, shallow lagoon, are helping the researchers build a more accurate picture of an important period in dinosaur evolution.
Most of the prints were made by long-necked sauropods - which stood up to 2m (6.5ft) tall - and by theropods, which were the older cousins of Tyrannosaurus Rex.
Researchers measured, photographed and analysed about 50 footprints in a tidal area at Brothers' Point - Rubha nam Brathairean - a headland on Skye's Trotternish peninsula."
Skye dinosaur prints 'globally important'

 

Reminded me...Many think the crocodile is the closest thing we have today to a living dinosaur...but many scientists believe the Cassowary is the closest thing...


Look at those feet! Similar to Velocer raptor's feet, instead of a claw, the Cassowary has a dagger for a middle toe...quite deadly...more attacks from Cassowaries than most other predators in Australia...yes, another animal to watch out for!

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Scarey...but funny too.

 

Hmm...last I heard dinosaurs were reptiles too...