Anthropology.net

Despite headlines proclaiming that it has been ‘definitively’ proven that all humans alive today arose from a single population of south-central Africans from the Rift Valley around 50,000 bp, John Hawks, Erik Trinkaus and others would beg to differ, claiming that the research conducted into skull morphology by Andrea Manica, of Cambridge University, doesn’t indicate what the authors claim. Here’s what National Geographic have to say on the matter…

Scientists who compared the skulls and DNA of human remains from around the world say their results point to modern humans (Homo sapiens) having a single origin in Africa.

The study didn’t find any evidence to suggest that human species living elsewhere in the world contributed to our direct ancestors’ make-up.

A team led by Andrea Manica at the University of Cambridge, England, combined analysis of global genetic variations with comparisons of more than 6,000 skulls from more than a hundred ancient human populations.

The team found that loss of genetic diversity was very closely mirrored by reduced physical variation the farther away people lived from Africa.

Regardless of what morphological or genetic data are offered, I’m automatically sceptical of any research that claims final proof of a single origin for modern humankind, particularly at the date of 50,000 bp, as there are clear indications from Eurasia, Australia and possibly even America, that by this date, modern humans were already living at all these locations, thousands of miles from Africa, and could not possibly have been part of this presumed African exodus. Here’s a look at why Manica et al believe they have identified the origin of their single exodus… Read the rest of this entry »

Here’s an article written by Freeman Dyson for The New York Review Of Books, in which he embarks on a fascinating discussion on a range of topics including how biology is now bigger business than physics, and how he believes that over the next 50 years, biotechnology will revolutionise our lives in much the same way as computers have done over the previous 50 years. Here’s his take on the current state of play…

I see a close analogy between John von Neumann‘s blinkered vision of computers as large centralized facilities and the public perception of genetic engineering today as an activity of large pharmaceutical and agribusiness corporations such as Monsanto. The public distrusts Monsanto because Monsanto likes to put genes for poisonous pesticides into food crops, just as we distrusted von Neumann because he liked to use his computer for designing hydrogen bombs secretly at midnight. It is likely that genetic engineering will remain unpopular and controversial so long as it remains a centralized activity in the hands of large corporations.

He makes mention of how genetically modified tropical fish have been given a makeover which has enabled vendors to sell in a new range of colours, and even an establishment that specialises in the production of different snakes and lizards. He contends that although creating new breeds of animals, plants etc has largely been confined to specialist breeders, biotechnology will, in a similar way to the personal computer, become available to the domestic consumer, with the possibility that all sorts of weird and wonderful animals and plants will begin to appear in our very homes, their actual places of invention, conception and birth. Read the rest of this entry »

Just a quick post to announce that the latest edition of Current Anthropology is now online, and here’s a list of the articles included…

Cori Hayden
A Generic Solution? Pharmaceuticals and the Politics of the Similar in Mexico

Carlos Fausto
Feasting on People: Eating Animals and Humans In Amazonia

Maria Gropas
The Repatriotization of Revolutionary Ideology
and Mnemonic Landscape in Present-Day Havana

Charles L. Briggs
Anthropology, Interviewing, and Communicability
in Contemporary Society

John Parkington/Judith Sealy
On Diet and Settlement in Holocene South Africa

Bruce Albert and François-Michel Le Tourneau
Ethnogeography and Resource Use among the Yanomami: Toward a Model of “Reticular Space”

Flora Lu
Integration into the Market among Indigenous Peoples: A Cross-Cultural Perspective from the Ecuadorian Amazon

Gregory S. Gullette
Migration and Tourism Development in Huatulco, Oaxaca

Andrei Soficaru, Catalin Petrea, Adrian Dobos, and Erik Trinkaus
The Human Cranium from the Pestera Cioclovina Uscata, Romania: Context, Age, Taphonomy, Morphology, and Paleopathology

All of which looks like a fairly impressive set of papers over an extensive range of topics, and although a subscription is required for full access, it’s not vastly expensive and gives very good value for money, especially as you also get access to at least 60 of the most recent issues dating back to Spring 1996.

One excellent feature is that in many of the presented papers, peers of the authors are invited to submit their own comments, and in some cases these can be just as illuminating as the papers themselves. Read the rest of this entry »

Here’s a story looking into the possibility that people were regularly putting to sea back in the Upper Palaeolithic, detailing research of the Cyprus Department of Antiquities, and the Cyprus American Archaeological Research Institute (CAARI) in Nicosia; their discovery of lithic artefacts is described here…

The discovery at a coastal site on the island’s northwest has revealed chipped tools submerged in the sea and made with local stone which could be the earliest trace yet of human activity in Cyprus.

U.S. and Cypriot archaeologists conducting the research have known since 2004 that Cyprus was used by small groups of voyagers on hunting expeditions for pygmy elephants.

But the newly discovered expanse of the Aspros dig in the Akamas peninsula, which stretches into the sea, suggests the site held larger numbers of people, possibly for months.

The find, archaeologists told Reuters on Wednesday, could also suggest the island of Cyprus, tucked in the northeast corner of the Mediterranean and about 30 miles away from the closest land mass, may have been gradually populated about that time, and up to 2,000 years earlier than previously thought.

I assume that the researchers are currently basing their 14,000 bp dates by the fact that the submerged tools have been found at a location that was known to have been above water at the time, and was subsequently inundated as post-glacial sea-levels rose – it’s possible that if the search was conducted even further offshore at deeper levels, stone tools or other traces of human activity might also be found there, pushing back the date of the first people on Cyprus still further. Read the rest of this entry »

Although people alive at the time probably didn’t appreciate the benefits to posterity of their contemporary troubles and wars, their efforts to hide and preserve those objects they considered to be of value, have inadvertently become their gift, a legacy of artifacts that have come down through the years, enabling us in many cases to appreciate the true extent of skills in manufacture and design that existed in the past.

The most important Viking treasure find in Britain for 150 years has been unearthed by a father and son while metal detecting in Yorkshire... The ancient objects come from as far afield as Afghanistan in the East and Ireland in the West, as well as Russia, Scandinavia and continental Europe. The hoard contains 617 silver coins and 65 other objects, including a gold arm-ring and a gilt silver vessel.

As we can see, finds like these also bear testament to the wide network of trade and commerce that existed across the world at 927 AD, although we know from prehistory that many objects and materials were traded across distances of thousands of miles for some considerable time before the Vikings graced these shores with their presence. (TJ)

see also: ‘Becalmed Viking Ship Takes A Tow‘ (update on the ‘Sea Stallion’ project)

It’s not often we hear much in the way of good news from Africa – for Africans – (n.b. this post has since been amended, please see below) but the news that one of the prime drivers of the civil war in Sudan, namely a scarcity of water, may have been halted, or at least slowed, will give encouragement to those wishing for an end to the conflict…

The (Boston University Center for Remote Sensing) team used radar data to find the ancient lake, which was 30,750 km2 – the size of Lake Erie in North America – the 10th largest lake in the world. A similar discovery was made in Sudan’s neighbour Egypt, where wells have been used to irrigate 150,000 acres of farmland, the researchers say.

The discovery is “very significant”, Hafiz Muhamad from the lobby group Justice Africa told the BBC’s Focus on Africa programme. “The root cause of the conflict is resources – drought and desertification in North Darfur.”

He says this led the Arab nomads to move into South Darfur, where they came into conflict with black African farmers. He also said that it has long been known there was water in the area but the government had not paid for it to be exploited.

I would have thought that a government aware of plentiful water supplies which could potentially palliate a war in which 200,000 people are estimated to have dies, with a further 2 million being displaced, would have been keen to exploit this resource – and if they didn’t have the money to do so, I would further have thought they’d at least have announced it to the outside world, from where financial and other aid may well have been forthcoming.

Of course, it will need more than the discovery of this vast underground lake to end hostilities – it will have to be shown that both sides, the farmers and nomads, are being treated equally and being given sufficient access for their needs – I’m not sure if this lake is being fed and constantly replenished, or whether it will simply be sucked dry, merely for war to break out once more. And as in any war, there are many side issues, such as the deep resentment and mistrust between the two sides that has built up over the years, that will need to be addressed, for any long lasting peace to be able to take hold – but at least this discovery offers some sort of foundation on which a better future can be built. (TJ)

n.b. Update 20/07/07 – It now transpires that this lake may have no water after all – please see this link from BBC News – Ancient Darfur Lake ‘Is Dried Up’

See also: this report from 2005 – Radar Finds Water For Sudan Refugees

International Journal Of Remote Sensing.

Whilst the Mesolithic people living in the huntin’, shootin’ and fishin’ paradise that was Doggerland at the end of the last Ice Age, had little idea of the watery world it would one day become as Britain became cut off from mainland Europe, it’s improbable they realised that similar events had happened in their own distant past. This from BBC News, who describe one event at around 400,000 – 425,000 bp…

It is believed that hundreds of thousands of years ago, when ice sheets had pushed down from Scotland and Scandinavia, there existed a narrow isthmus linking Britain to continental Europe.This gently upfolding chalk ridge was perhaps some 30m higher than the current sea level in the English Channel.

Palaeo-researchers think it bounded a large lake to the northeast that was filled by glacial meltwaters fed by ancient versions of the rivers Thames and Rhine. Then – and they are not sure of the precise date – something happened to break the isthmus known as the Weald-Artois ridge.

“Possibly this was just the build-up of water behind. Possibly something triggered it; it’s well known today that there are small earthquakes in the Kent area,” explained Imperial’s Dr Jenny Collier. Either way, once the ridge was broken, the discharge would have been spectacular.

One can imagine the effect such a deluge would have had on anything living in its path – maybe there were a few archaic humans dotted here and there across the landscape, along with a suite of Pleistocene wildlife to accompany them – which if caught in the sudden release of countless millions of tons of water from the breached ridge would have been swept up and destroyed in the cataclysmic torrent.

At its peak, it is believed that the megaflood could have lasted several months, discharging an estimated one million cubic metres of water per second. And from the way some features have been cut, it is likely there were at least two distinct phases to the flooding.

“I was frankly astonished,” said Dr Collier. “I’ve worked in many exotic places around the world, including mid-ocean ridges where you see very spectacular features; and it was an enormous surprise to me that we should find something with a worldwide-scale implication offshore of the Isle of Wight. It was completely unexpected.” Read the rest of this entry »

Martin at Aardvarchaeology has posted his archaeoblogging carnival, currently comprising 9 entries, but he’s still accepting submissions which can be added to the present complement.

When we think of archaeological sites, however, we usually like them to be pretty old and really dense in information. We don’t just want a piece of land where someone’s sheep grazed and shat in 1950. We want a settlement, a cemetery, a fort, a well-preserved field system, we want artefacts and structural remains. And such sites are also extremely common. I have asked fellow bloggers and archaeology buffs to write something about the nearest archaeological site they’re aware of. The following one-off blog carnival showcases the kind of sites bloggers live around.

I haven’t been able to get mine written up as yet, but I’m sure there are plenty of people out there with sites near them that would be worth a mention – and if that’s the case, Martin would love to hear from you. (TJ)

image: “Men of the Wall” – Hadrian’s Wall 1905 from here

Many thanks to Amanda at Sherd Nerd for hosting this latest edition, and it’s good once again to see a good and impressive set of contributions from far and wide – my advice would be to head on over, and have yourself a good read.

The next edition of FSH, the twentieth, is being hosted by Afarensis, on August 1st, so there’s plenty of time to read the current edition and write something for the next.

For those interested in submitting relevant material, Martin at Aardvarchaeology is hosting the next Carnival of the Godless, on Sunday, June 22nd. (TJ)

image of Karnak from here

News from Abu Dhabi, where the recent find of some Levallois stone tools has pushed back the earliest known human occupation of the region from 7,500 years to somewhere between 35,000 and 150,000 years. I assume from these dates that the people responsible were either Neanderthals, or else early modern humans who were not part of the putative African exodus of around 50,000 bp, but who had either left Africa long before, or to go down the multi-regional route, humans that had evolved in Asia from Homo erectus populations dating to the Middle or Lower Palaeolithic, although this last idea is currently out of favour with the main body of palaeo-anthropological opinion. Here are some details of the finds, made by Dr Walid Yasin, manager of the archaeology division at the Abu Dhabi Authority for Culture and Heritage…

He (Dr. Walid Hasin) said that a number of flint cores and flakes of Levallois technique were collected from the site. Artifacts made of this technique were first discovered in the nineteenth century at the archaeological site of Levallois, near Paris.

Similar artifacts have been found in Europe, Africa and Asia. In the Near East, they are usually associated with Neanderthal man.

The dating of Abu Dhabi artifacts is, however, estimated to fall in the Middle Palaeolithic (150,000-35,000 years ago), according to Dr Ganim Wahida, a pre-historian from Cambridge University, UK, who specialises in this period.

“The significance of this major discovery lies in the fact that it alters our understanding of the beginning of first human activities in Abu Dhabi which seem to go back to the Old Stone Age, as opposed to the New Stone Age, some 7,500 years ago,” Yasin added. Read the rest of this entry »