For Those Interested in Archaeology

"Paleoanthropologists agree that modern humans evolved in Africa about 200,000 years ago, yet the fossil evidence for the earliest examples of Homo sapiens is scarce. One problem is the difficulty in recognizing true modern humans in the fossil record: At this time, many of the fossils thought to be early members of our species possess a mix of modern and primitive traits. For some paleoanthropologists, it means our species once had a greater range of physical variation than we do today. For others, it means more than one species of Homo may have lived in Africa at this time, sharing some traits in common.
Despite the challenges of identifying early humans, there are several candidates for the earliest known members of our species. Here’s a look at some of the top contenders."
Meet the Contenders for Earliest Modern Human | Hominid Hunting


"An antique gun found buried on a Northern Territory beach may support theories the Portuguese were the first European power to discover Australia, an historical author says.
Christopher Doukas unearthed the gun buried in mud off Dundee Beach, about two hours' drive from Darwin, during a low tide in January 2010.
The Doukas family did some internet research and found it resembled a 16th Century Portuguese swivel gun.
Darwin Museum has now asked to see the item and the family will hand it over for analysis when they return from holidays later this month.
Canberra-based author Peter Trickett told ninemsn the gun, if authentic, may have been dumped during one of two voyages he claims Portuguese seafarer Cristovao de Mendonca made around the coast of Australia in 1521 and 1522."
Did the Portuguese discover Australia?

 

"HONG KONG (Reuters) - Fish hooks and fishbones dating back 42,000 years found in a cave in East Timor suggest that humans were capable of skilled, deep-sea fishing 30,000 years earlier than previously thought, researchers in Australia and Japan said on Friday.
The artefacts -- nearly 39,000 fishbones and three fish hooks -- were found in a limestone cave in Jerimalai in East Timor, 50 metres (165 feet) above sea level, said Sue O'Connor from the Australian National University's department of archaeology and natural history.
"There was never any hint of (what) maritime technology people might have had in terms of fishing gear 40,000 years ago," O'Connor, the study's lead author, told Reuters by telephone from Canberra."
Fishy find shows humans skilled anglers 42,000 years ago - Yahoo! News

"Discovering Idukki, a project to explore and document the rich heritage of the district has been started and in the first phase of the project a heritage museum will be opened at the district headquarters in Painavu by April this year.
The project is being implemented by the district panchayat and the archaeological explorations will be conducted in various sites of dolmen in Marayur and the megalithic sites where the `nannagadies' (burial urns) were excavated especially in the high Ranges. T. Rajesh, officer-in-charge of the project said that the study may open unknown chapters of Kerala spice trade during the Stone Age and later. Kerala Council for Historical Research (KCHR) will provide the technical support for the project, he said adding that the Muzaris heritage has a strong link to the High Ranges because cardamom is indigenous to the hill tracts. In 1341, he said that the water bodies in the Periyar river basin underwent a major transformation. “The prosperous city of Muziris at the mouth of the Periyar overlooking the Arabian Sea suddenly dropped of the map due to a flood or earthquake or both,'' he said. Muzaris was silted over and its site was left to conjecture."
The Hindu : States / Kerala : Project to explore Megalithic sites started

 

"HONG KONG (Reuters) - Fish hooks and fishbones dating back 42,000 years found in a cave in East Timor suggest that humans were capable of skilled, deep-sea fishing 30,000 years earlier than previously thought, researchers in Australia and Japan said on Friday.
The artefacts -- nearly 39,000 fishbones and three fish hooks -- were found in a limestone cave in Jerimalai in East Timor, 50 metres (165 feet) above sea level, said Sue O'Connor from the Australian National University's department of archaeology and natural history.
"There was never any hint of (what) maritime technology people might have had in terms of fishing gear 40,000 years ago," O'Connor, the study's lead author, told Reuters by telephone from Canberra."
Fishy find shows humans skilled anglers 42,000 years ago - Yahoo! News

"Discovering Idukki, a project to explore and document the rich heritage of the district has been started and in the first phase of the project a heritage museum will be opened at the district headquarters in Painavu by April this year.
The project is being implemented by the district panchayat and the archaeological explorations will be conducted in various sites of dolmen in Marayur and the megalithic sites where the `nannagadies' (burial urns) were excavated especially in the high Ranges. T. Rajesh, officer-in-charge of the project said that the study may open unknown chapters of Kerala spice trade during the Stone Age and later. Kerala Council for Historical Research (KCHR) will provide the technical support for the project, he said adding that the Muzaris heritage has a strong link to the High Ranges because cardamom is indigenous to the hill tracts. In 1341, he said that the water bodies in the Periyar river basin underwent a major transformation. “The prosperous city of Muziris at the mouth of the Periyar overlooking the Arabian Sea suddenly dropped of the map due to a flood or earthquake or both,'' he said. Muzaris was silted over and its site was left to conjecture."
The Hindu : States / Kerala : Project to explore Megalithic sites started

 

"They cover Britain and Ireland (6,000 in Ireland alone), and although people have been living around them since the Bronze Age, no one can say for certain what they were used for. The fulacht fiadh (pl. fulachtai fiadh), or 'Burnt Mounds' as they're known in the UK, are rectangular basins anywhere from a meter to two meters wide, about half a meter deep, and surrounded by horseshoe-shaped mounds composed of charcoal, soil and heat-split rocks.
It's the surrounding mound which gives archaeologists one of their main clues as to the troughs' purpose. Almost all believe they were used for boiling water – the other big clue being the availability of water at the sites, which are usually found in wet, boggy areas or where the troughs are fed by streams. The rocks used to construct the troughs are sandstone or limestone, often not found nearby, and which therefore must have been deliberately brought to the sites for that specific use."
http://www.environmentalgraffiti.com/news-mystery-fulacht-fiadh


"Prague, Jan 16 (CTK) - Archaeologists in Prague-Bubenec have uncovered a site with the oldest traces of ploughing and a field in the Czech Lands, that date back to the mid-4th millennium B.C., Archaeological Institute spokeswoman Jana Marikova has told CTK.
The research in two streets, completed late last year, also uncovered a rich evidence on the area's population in later periods, from the Celtic people and German tribes to the early medieval inhabitants, Marikova said.
Probably the most important find is the system of four approximately parallel lines that are nine metres long, ten metres wide and eight centimeters deep, which archeologists say, are furrows.
Experts believe the furrows date back to the earlier phase of Copper Age, i.e. between 3800 and 3500 B.C."
Archaeologists uncover oldest evidence of ploughing in Czech lands | Prague Monitor


"LONDON (AP) — British scientists have found scores of fossils the great evolutionary theorist Charles Darwin and his peers collected but that had been lost for more than 150 years.
Dr. Howard Falcon-Lang, a paleontologist at Royal Holloway, University of London, said Tuesday that he stumbled upon the glass slides containing the fossils in an old wooden cabinet that had been shoved in a "gloomy corner" of the massive, drafty British Geological Survey.
Using a flashlight to peer into the drawers and hold up a slide, Falcon-Lang saw one of the first specimens he had picked up was labeled 'C. Darwin Esq."
"It took me a while just to convince myself that it was Darwin's signature on the slide," the paleontologist said, adding he soon realized it was a "quite important and overlooked" specimen."
UK scientists find 'lost' Darwin fossils - Yahoo! News

 

Head of Archeology Faculty: Henry W. Jones Jnr Ph.D.....

 

Another one....
"A new theory has been put forward by a team from the Arizona State university and the University of Colorado Denver (USA) on the fate of Neanderthals. The team has recently published a paper on their findings, which were the results of computational modelling.
Michael Barton, a pioneer in the area of archaeological applications of computational modelling explains what it means. "To better understand human ecology, and especially how human culture and biology evolved amongst hunter-gatherers in the Late Pleistocene of western Eurasia (approximately 126,000 to 9,500 BCE) we designed theoretical and methodological frameworks that incorporated feedback across three evolutionary systems: biological, cultural and environmental"
Stone Pages Archaeo News: A new theory on the disappearance of Neanderthals

 

There "new theory" seems to be pretty close to one of the two primary theories I was taught in anthropology classes back in the 70's. Sounds like they have a new model and data to support it though.

 

Oh, it's interesting enough. I just expect someone else to contradict it tomorrow!

 

"It is thought by some historians to be legendary Gangaridai, a place belonging to a king considered a "mighty ruler" by Alexander the Great during his quest for conquest. Over many years, its artifacts have found their way on the international antiquities markets, enriching the dealers but robbing archaeologists and historians of valuable information needed to reconstruct and understand the great civilization that developed and flourished in West Bengal for 1500 years.
Since the discovery of its ruins more than a century ago, the 2,500-year-old site of Chandraketugarh has only been partly excavated. Looting, neglect and decay have been the banes of its existence now for decades.
But all that is about to change. According to a report in The Times of India, Bengal’s richest archaeological treasure will be turned into a "heritage village". This means that the West Bengal Heritage Commission (WBHC), in collaboration with the Archaeological Survey of India (ASI), will begin a major excavation of the site within the next year, followed by construction of a museum, research facilities and tourism center at the site. It is considered to hold potential as the oldest early-history site in Bengal. "
Archaeologists to Excavate Great Ancient Center in Bengal | Popular Archaeology - exploring the past


"Stories of Bronze Age Scandinavian invaders killing men and enslaving women may have to be rewritten thanks to discovery of a series of virtual "time capsuals" in the Outer Hebrides.
Archaeologists have published the results of over 20 years of work in South Uist uncovering ancient settlements preserved under sand dunes dating from the Bronze Age to the modern era.
The team said the research challenges the existing belief that the Norse period marked a cataclysmic change in the Hebridean way of life.
Instead of supporting the view that the Scandinavian invaders killed men and enslaved their women and children, the archaeological evidence suggests a greater degree of intermixing and continuity than has previously been accepted.
The team roamed from the grassy coastal machair plains to South Uist's mountains, exploring hundreds of sites including Neolithic tombs, early Bronze Age occupations, Norse dwellings and blackhouses. The research is published in a book entitled From Machair To Mountains.
Editor Professor Mike Parker Pearson said: "South Uist has an extraordinary number of superbly preserved archaeological sites and landscapes from all periods. Best known are the settlement mounds of all periods on the island's machair, the coastal grasslands on shell sand, but the moorlands and mountainous areas also contain remarkable remains.""
The Press Association: 'Time capsuals' history challenge

 

"Altai in southern Siberia sits right at the centre of Russia. But the tiny, mountainous republic has a claim to fame unknown until now - Native Americans can trace their origins to the remote region.
DNA research revealed that genetic markers linking people living in the Russian republic of Altai, southern Siberia, with indigenous populations in North America.
A study of the mutations indicated a lineage shift between 13,000 and 14,000 years ago - when people are thought to have walked across the ice from Russia to America."
'Native Americans' actually came from a tiny mountain region in Russia, DNA research reveals | Mail Online

 

Saw a part of a document on crucifixion, and I had never heard of this before, well there´s alot of things I have not heard of to be honest... But this seems to be proof that they did use nails when people were put on the cross. In the document they say that nails were so rare those days, naturally, so that these were usually removed before the burial, but this one had stuck. It seems also possible that nails were used in instances where the crucifixion was meant to be more cruel than the usual "case"?

Crucifixion in Antiquity -The Anthropological Evidence

In 1968 building contractors working in Giv’at ha-Mivtar, a suburb north of Jerusalem accidentally uncovered a Jewish tomb dated to the first century CE. (Tzaferis 1971) Lying in a Jewish stone ossuary bearing the Hebrew inscription ‘Jehohanan the son of HGQWL’ were the skeletal remains of a man in his twenties whom had been crucified. The evidence for this was based on the right calcaneum (heel bone) of the individual, pierced by an iron nail 11.5 cms. in length. The nail penetrated the lateral surface of the heel bone emerging on the medial surface in which the distal end of the nail had become bent. The bending of the distal end of the nail upon itself suggests that after the nail penetrated the tree or the upright it may have struck a knot in the wood which made it difficult to remove from the heel when the victim was taken from the cross. Remains of olive wood found between the head of the nail and the heel bone suggest that prior to penetrating the heel bone the nail was driven through a wooden plaque so as to increase the head of the nail thus making it difficult for the victim to free his legs from the upright.

 

"Questions surrounding when and where early modern humans first migrated from Africa to populate the rest of the world have long been a focus of debate and study among scientists, where genetic research has played a key role. Now, recent genetic research study results have been released by an international team of scientists. The research, published January 26 by Cell Press in the American Journal of Human Genetics, suggests that modern humans settled first in Arabia more than 60,000 years ago on their way out through the Horn of Africa. "
Arabia the First Stop for Modern Humans Out of Africa, Suggests New Study | Popular Archaeology - exploring the past

 

"The ancient town of Bathonea continues to shed light on life as far back as the 2nd century BC
Droughts are typically bad news, as they can put a strain on a country's people, economy, and infrastructure. But archaeologists are now calling a 2007 drought in Turkey a blessing, after it revealed a piece of history that will yield new information about the country's roots for decades to come.
As lack of rain caused the waters of Turkey's Lake Kucukcekmece to slowly pull away from its shore, the ancient harbor town of Bathonea revealed itself. The ruins of buildings, roads, and a sea wall are thought to date back as far as the 2nd century BC, meaning it would have been a thriving community at a time when Byzantium — now Istanbul — was a sprawling metropolis. "
Archaeology in Europe News Blog: 01/01/2012 - 02/01/2012

 

I've heard the opposite suggested as well. The theory being that one wouldn't last as long on the cross due to the injuries and bleeding from the nails. That doesn't mean that they knew that however. It may also have been used to make a point or simply a matter of style.

 

"The use of manganese and iron oxides by late Neanderthals is well documented in Europe from 60–40,000 years ago, and although they are often interpreted as being used as pigments the exact function is still largely unknown.A new report in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS) has confirmed the use of significantly older iron oxide finds that constitute the earliest documented use of red ochre by Neanderthals."
Neanderthals see red 200,000 years ago | Archaeology News from Past Horizons

"Archaeologists are investigating the truth behind the story that Ice Age Neanderthals in Jersey would push mammoths off cliffs in St Brelade for food.
About 30 years ago, evidence suggested early residents of what is today the island of Jersey chased the giant mammals off the cliffs at La Cotte above Ouaisne."
BBC News - Study into Jersey Neanderthal mammoth hunters

"The discovery of a 3,300-year-old tool has led researchers to the rediscovery of a "lost" 20th-century manuscript and a "geochemically extraordinary" bit of earth.
Discovered on Emirau Island in the Bismark Archipelago (a group of islands off the coast of New Guinea), the 2-inch (5-centimeters) stone tool was probably used to carve, or gouge, wood. It seems to have fallen from a stilted house, landing in a tangle of coral reef that was eventually covered over by shifting sands."
Origin of Ancient Jade Tool Baffles Scientists | Jade Artifact, Mineral Composition & Rocky Mysteries | LiveScience

 

"An ancient spearpoint was found at an excavation site in Connecticut (USA) during a Norwalk Community College-sponsored archaeology dig. Chelsea Dean, senior at Fairfield Ludlowe High School, took the Introduction to Archaeology course with Professor Ernest Wiegand last fall as part of the schools avocation program. During the last dig of the semester, Chelsea found a spearpoint more than 4,000 years old.
"It's like an arrowhead. The section I was working on had a lot of stuff coming up, but nothing was complete. When the actual projectile point came up, it was the first intact artifact I found," she said. "One of the things I learned taking the course is that I want to continue with archaeology, whether it's a career or recreational," Chelsea said."
Stone Pages Archaeo News: 4,000-year-old artifact found in Connecticut

 

"Everybody is African in origin. Barring a smattering of genes from Neanderthals and other archaic Asian forms, all our ancestors lived in the continent of Africa until 150,000 years ago. Some time after that, say the genes, one group of Africans somehow became so good at exploiting their environment that they (we!) expanded across all of Africa and began to spill out of the continent into Asia and Europe, invading new ecological niches and driving their competitors extinct.
There is plenty of dispute about what gave these people such an advantage—language, some other form of mental ingenuity, or the collective knowledge that comes from exchange and specialization—but there is also disagreement about when the exodus began. For a long time, scientists had assumed a gradual expansion of African people through Sinai into both Europe and Asia. Then, bizarrely, it became clear from both genetics and archaeology that Europe was peopled later (after 40,000 years ago) than Australia (before 50,000 years ago).
Meanwhile, the geneticists were beginning to insist that many Africans and all non-Africans shared closely related DNA sequences that originated only after about 70,000-60,000 years ago in Africa. So a new idea was born, sometimes called the "beachcomber express," in which the first ex-Africans were seashore dwellers who spread rapidly around the coast of the Indian Ocean, showing an unexpected skill at seafaring to reach Australia across a strait that was at least 40 miles wide. The fact that the long-isolated Andaman islanders have genes that diverged from other Asians about 60,000 years ago fits this notion of sudden seaside peopling."
Matt Ridley on Early Humans Leaving Africa | Mind & Matter - WSJ.com

 

"LAHORE, Feb 6: The Punjab University archaeology department has discovered a rare Indus seal in steatite material with carved figure of Ibex with two pictographs from Wattoowala, Cholistan, during a survey of different sites near Derawar Fort along the ancient bed of River Hakra.
The seal dates back to 2500-2000 BC.
The seal has been discovered by a six-member team of archaeologists headed by PU archaeology department chairman Dr Farzand Masih, who has just concluded a Unesco-funded US$26,000 project “Sui-Vihar Excavations and Archaeological Reconnaissance of southern Punjab”.
Dr Masih told Dawn that the discovery would open new dimensions for scholars. The seal has a perforated boss in the back with variant style from Harappan seals showing the regional influence and perhaps a separate identity in the Harappan domain. The seal is almost square in shape and slightly broken from the right side but figure of Ibex is almost intact. The muscles, genitalia, hooves and tail of the Ibex were engraved artistically with high proportion of skill and craftsmanship."
Rare Indus seal discovered in Cholistan | Sci-tech | DAWN.COM

 

Don't you just love technical terms?!
"The invention of the toilet accomplished many good things, but it did rob us of the chance at immortality - through our poop. Ancient humans have revealed some of their greatest secrets through paleofeces, the study of the waste they left behind. Top image via Democratic Underground
In studying ancient humanity, there's no more powerful resource than preserved DNA... theoretically. While DNA has evolved to be the molecule of life, it's not built nearly as well to stick around after its organism is dead and gone. There are a few ways to preserve DNA for up to as much as a million years without complete degradation, but these mostly involve being frozen in ice or permafrost. Since most of humanity historically has stayed away from extremely cold climates, that naturally limits our sources of usable ancient human DNA.
That's where poop enters the picture. As one of the great works of Western literature once so cogently observed, everybody does it — and in the 99% or so of human history without sanitation services, humans pretty much just pooped wherever there was space. These "nonhardened fossils", as archaeologists have euphemistically referred to them, account for a shockingly high percentage of the material found in ancient cave sites. There's such a ridiculously high quantity of preserved human poop — paleofeces, if we're being technical — that being able to extract any amount of DNA would make them a massively useful resource."
Ancient Poop Science: Inside the Archaeology of Paleofeces

 

"From the fragment of a finger bone found in a Siberian cave, researchers have created the most accurate genetic map yet of an extinct human relative that, before 2010, was not known to exist.
Thanks to innovations in gene-sequencing technology, molecular geneticist Svante Pääbo and his colleagues at the Max Planck Institute of Evolutionary Anthropology in Leipzig, Germany, and his colleagues have improved their genetic picture of the Denisovans, mapping every position of the genome 30 times over, with an unprecedented level of resolution. “Now we can look at variation,” says Pääbo. “We have a complete catalogue of what makes a fully modern human.”
Yesterday, the researchers released the complete DNA sequence online, with the hopes that the scientific community will start to answer some of the many questions raised by the discovery of this mysterious hominid."
Nature News Blog: Complete Denisovan genome offers glimpse of ancient variation

"According to new dating tests, these are the first paintings ever made by humans. They are seals painted more than 42,000 years ago, located in the Cave of Nerja, in Málaga, Spain. And they may change our ideas about humanity's evolution.
Until now, archeologists thought that the oldest art was created during the Aurignacian period, by modern humans. But these are way older, way more primitive than the ones in Chauvet-Pont-d'Arc Cave, the 32,000-year-old paintings featured in Herzog's Cave of Forgotten Dreams."
These Are the Earliest Human Paintings Ever