Geochronologists from the Centro Nacional de Investigación sobre la Evolución Humana (CENIEH) have led a study published in the journal Quaternary Geochronology about the chronology of the archaeological site of Gran Dolina, situated in the Sierra de Atapuerca (Burgos), whose results confirm a pulse of human dispersion in southern Europe around one million years ago..
TD4 Level at Gran Dolina site [Credit: CENIEH]
This is a paleomagnetic study of the lower stratigraphic levels of this archaeological site in Burgos, whose objective was to determine the possible presence of the Jaramillo subchron, a geological event of normal magnetic polarity about one million years ago, to improve the chronological framework for the lithic industry found at level TD4, and therefore for human presence in Atapuerca.
"Gran Dolina is one of the sites with the best-preserved sedimentary records of the Middle and Early Pleistocene in Europe, and therefore, knowing the chronology of the stratigraphic levels comprising it is an extremely important element in understanding the presence and development of human activity in the zone," explains Claudia Álvarez Posada, lead author of this paper.
Samples from the levels TD4 to TD6 were analyzed using paleomagnetism, a methodology which is increasingly used for establishing absolute datings given its great versatility and the fact that it has an extremely wide chronological register, because the magnetic field remains captured in sediments when they are formed. These days there is a known register covering a timeline of over 180 million years up to the present, so that as Álvarez affirms, "it's a very powerful tool for chronology."
This method, together with the data furnished by biostratigraphy and the recent dating studies using Electron Spin Resonance (ESR) made at the site, has allowed an age later than the Jaramillo Subchron to be definitively established for the level TD4, that is, less than one million years, consistent with with a pulse of human dispersal across southern Europe during the time interval known as the Lower Pleistocene transition.
Dual study
This paper forms part of a dual paleomagnetic study of Gran Dolina, encompassing levels TD1 to TD6, undertaken for better understanding of the ages of the different stratigraphic levels which comprise the fillings of the site.
The second paper, which has just been published in the journal Quaternary Science Reviews, focuses on the chronology of the lower sedimentary fillings, and corroborates the datings found for TD4.
Over 41 000 cultural goods such as coins, paintings and drawings, furniture and musical instruments, porcelain, archaeological and paleontological objects, books and manuscripts and sculptures were seized all over the world as a result of coordinated law enforcement actions. These seizures were made during the first Global Global Customs-Police Operation, codenamed ATHENA and organised by the World Customs Organisation (WCO) in cooperation with INTERPOL, and during the regional Europe-focused Operation PANDORA II, coordinated by the Spanish Guardia Civil and Europol.
Credit: Europol
Both operations took place from October to early December 2017, with a common action phase from 20 to 30 November 2017, and saw the involvement of customs and police forces from 81 countries. Both, ATHENA and PANDORA II, focused on the illicit trafficking of cultural objects, theft, looting as well as internet sales. Most of the actions were developed and coordinated jointly between Customs and Police on the national level with the support and participation of the experts from the Ministries of Culture and other relevant institutions and law enforcement agencies.
Apart from seizures, there have been tens of thousands of checks and controls in various airports, ports, other border crossing points, as well as in the auction houses, museums and private houses. As a result, more than 200 investigations were opened and 53 persons arrested.
Credit: Europol
Given the global nature of this crime, operation coordination units working 24/7 were established by Europol on one side, and the WCO and INTERPOL on the other, to support the exchange of information as well as disseminate alerts, warnings and perform cross- checks in different international and national databases.
Internet as a facilitator for the illicit trafficking of cultural goods
Internet has changed, as in many other fields of our society, the traditional chains of the illicit trade of cultural goods. It is a new challenge for law enforcement authorities especially for the specialized cultural goods crime units. Now the criminals can reach the collector’s (anywhere in the world) without any intermediate, and out of the traditional channels.
Credit: Europol
Facing this threat, the involved law enforcement agencies monitored thousands of market places, internet announcement has in order to detect and seize looted or stolen cultural goods. Only in this area, 63 new criminal investigations have been opened and more than 6 000 cultural objects have been seized.
In a single successful investigation in Spain, Guardia Civil seized more than 2 000 cultural objects. Most of them were coins from Roman and other Empires and archaeological objects made of ceramic, metal and stone. In addition, 88 pieces of ivory were seized during the searches, including a carving of Christ valued at EUR 6 000 , and 39 firearms of different classification, from historical weapons, such as rifles and shotguns, swords, swords, katanas and a crossbow, revolvers and pistols. The investigation started with the checks of various internet pages dedicated to the sale and purchase of objects of historical value, and is still ongoing.
The Hellenic Police conducted a fruitful investigation in the framework of PANDORA II: during the searches in two residences and in two businesses of a national entrepreneur, they found 41 archaeological objects, for which the collector did not have a corresponding license. Additionally, from a legal collection of 1 133 coins of silver, bronze and gold of the 2nd century B.C. until 200 A.C., 15 coins were missing, and from a legal collection of 105 ancient objects, 26 objects were missing. All the possessed objects of archaeological and cultural value were confiscated, namely 1 252 cultural goods.
In an ancient DNA study published this week in the journal Nature, scientists and archaeologists from over 80 different institutions lift the veil on the genomic history of Southeastern Europe, a region from which very little ancient genetic data has been available until now. This is the second-largest ancient DNA study ever reported. (The largest, reported simultaneously in Nature by many of the same authors, focuses on the prehistory of Northwestern Europe.)
Starting around 8,500 years ago, agriculture spread into Europe from the southeast, accompanied by a movement of people from Anatolia. This study reports data from the genomes of 225 ancient people who lived both before and after this transition, and documents the interaction and mixing of these two genetically different groups of people. “Southeastern Europe was the beachhead in the spread of farming from Anatolia into Europe. This study is the first to provide a rich genetic characterization of this process by showing how the indigenous population interacted with incoming Asian immigrants at this extraordinary moment in the past,” says Songül Alpaslan-Roodenberg, a consulting anthropologist at Harvard Medical School, who identified and sampled many of the skeletons.
“In some places, hunter-gatherers and incoming farmers seem to have mixed very quickly,” says first author Iain Mathieson, a geneticist at the University of Pennsylvania, “but mostly the two groups remained isolated, at least for the first few hundred years. These hunter-gatherers had been living there for thousands of years, and it must have been quite a shock to have these new people show up—with a completely different lifestyle and appearance.”
“Three thousand years later, they were thoroughly mixed,” continues David Reich of Harvard Medical School, the Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard and the Howard Hughes Medical Institute, who co-directed the study. “Some populations derived up to a quarter of their ancestry from hunter-gatherers.” In other parts of Europe, this mixing was marked by a so-called sex bias, with most of the hunter-gatherer ancestry contributed by men. In the southeast, however, the pattern was different. “This shows that the mode of interaction between the two groups was different in different places, something we need to try to understand in the context of the archaeological evidence,” added Mathieson.
The new paper also dramatically increases the number of samples from the population of hunter-gatherers that inhabited Europe before the farmers. The study reports a particularly rich sampling of forty hunter-gatherers and early farmers from six archaeological sites from the Iron Gates region, which straddles the border of present-day Romania and Serbia. The genetic results show that the region witnessed intensive interaction between hunter-gatherers and farmers. Out of four individuals from the site of Lepenski Vir, for example, two had entirely Anatolian farmer-related ancestry, fitting with isotope evidence that they were migrants from outside the Iron Gates region, while a third individual had a mixture of ancestries and consumed aquatic resources, as expected if farmers were being integrated into hunter-gatherer groups or were adopting a hunter-gatherer lifestyle.
“These results reveal the relationship between migrations, admixture and subsistence in the this key region and show that even within early European farmers, individuals differed in their ancestry, reflecting a dynamic mosaic of hunter-farmer interbreeding,” adds Ron Pinhasi, an anthropologist at the University for Vienna, who co-directed the study.
The new paper also reports ancient DNA from the people who lived at iconic archaeological sites such as Varna, one of the first places in the world where there is evidence of extreme wealth inequality, with one individual from whom the study obtained data buried with more gold than all other known burials of the period. “The DNA from the famous Varna burial is genetically similar to that of other early European farmers. However, we also find one individual from Varna and several individuals at neighboring sites in Bulgaria who had ancestry from the eastern European steppe. This is the earliest evidence of steppe ancestry this far west—two thousand years before the mass migration from the steppe that replaced more than half of the population of northern Europe,” says Johannes Krause, Director of the Department of Archaeogenetics at the Max Planck Institute for the Science of Human History, who led the work on Varna.
Adds Reich, “These very large ancient DNA studies, involving intense collaboration between geneticists and archaeologists, make it possible to build up a rich picture of key periods of the past that could only be weakly glimpsed before. Studies on this scale represent a coming of age for the field of ancient DNA—I look forward to what we will learn when similar approaches are applied elsewhere in the world.”
Even our earliest human ancestors made and used technology - something we can look back on thanks to the lasting nature of stone tools.
Researchers work on the archaeological site in Spain, known as Porto Maior, where the tool deposits were found [Credit: Eduardo Méndez Quintas, Author provided]
An exceptionally high density of giant handaxes dated to 200,000-300,000 years ago has been uncovered at an archaeological site in Galicia, northwest Spain. The findings are documented in a new article published by our international research team of archaeologists and dating specialists.
The discovery of these handaxes suggests that alternative types of stone tool technologies were simultaneously being used by different populations in this area – supporting the idea that a prehistoric “Game of Thrones” scenario existed as Neanderthals emerged in Europe.
Additional evidence for this idea comes from fossil records showing that multiple human lineages lived in southwest Europe around the same time period.
Stone tool technology
Porto Maior is near the town of As Neves (Pontevedra, Galcia) on a terrace 34m above the current level of the Miño River, which borders northern Portugal and Spain.
The large tools are consistent with a culture known as Acheulean [Credit: Eduardo Mendez Quintas, Author provided]
The archaeological site at Porto Maior preserves an ancient stone tool culture known as the Acheulean. Characterised by symmetrically knapped stones or large flakes (known as bifaces), the Acheulean is the first sophisticated handaxe technology known in the early human settlement record of Europe.
While Acheulean sites are widespread across the continent, Porto Maior represents Europe’s first extensive accumulation of large cutting tools (LCTs) in the Acheulean tradition. Until now, such high densities of LCTs had only been found in Africa. This new finding reinforces an African origin for the Acheulean in Europe, and confirms an overlap in time-frames of distinctly different stone tool cultures on the continent.
At around the same time that handaxes were being used at Porto Maior, a different stone tool tradition (the Early Middle Palaeolithic) was present in Iberia, for example at Ambrona and Cuesta de la Bajada. In central and eastern Europe – where tools were made exclusively on small flakes – the Acheulean tradition has never been found.
Porto Maior introduces further complexity to this overlapping technological pattern, and suggests that distinct early human populations of different geographical origins coexisted during the Middle Pleistocene (between 773,000 and 125,000 years ago).
Abundant large cutting tools
In total, 3,698 discarded artefacts were recovered from river-lain sediments at the site, with 290 of these making up the studied assemblage reported in our new paper.
The stone tool assemblage is composed of 101 LCTs in original position, and that are on average 18cm long, with a maximum length of 27cm. These handaxe dimensions are exceptionally large by European Acheulean standards (typically only 8-15cm long). The assemblage also contains large cleavers, a type of tool typically found in African sites.
At 9.5 pieces per m² in an excavated area of more than 11.8m², the density of the Acheulean stone tool accumulation is one of the highest recorded globally, surpassing previous European findings of smaller Acheulean tools (usually less than 3 artefacts per m²).
Laboratory analyses indicate that the tools were used to process hard materials such wood and bone, in activities that could have included the breaking up of carcasses.
The Spanish site of Porto Maior clearly resembles extensive accumulations of very large tools previously only seen in Africa and the Near East. These similarities reinforce the idea of an African origin for the Acheulean tradition of southwest Europe.
They also raise new questions regarding the origin and mobility of prehistoric human populations – the ancestors of Neanderthals – that occupied the European continent during the Middle Pleistocene period before the arrival of our own species, Homo sapiens.
Luminescence dating samples being measured under controlled lighting conditions at the University of Adelaide’s Prescott Environmental Luminescence Laboratory [Credit: Lee Arnold]
These techniques provide an estimate of the last time sand grains within sediments were exposed to sunlight, by looking at their luminescence or paramagnetic properties – that is, they can tell us the timing of sediment burial. This, in turn, can be used to determine when the site was last occupied and when the artefacts discarded by prehistoric populations were subsequently buried by sediment accumulation.
In the study of Porto Maior, pIR-IRSL and ESR dating were applied to grains that had been carefully collected from the sediment layers hosting the stone tools, without exposing the sample material to daylight.
The two methods, which were applied independently at two different Australian institutions (University of Adelaide and Griffith University), produced remarkably similar ages.
This confirms the reliability of the dating results, and indicates that the archaeological record spanned the time period from 200,000 to 300,000 years ago.
Migration from Africa
The Acheulean tool-making tradition originated in Africa about 1.7 million years ago, and disappeared on that continent by 500,000 years ago. The specific type of Acheulean tools described at Porto Maior is exclusive to southwest Europe, suggesting that the technology was brought into the region by an “intrusive” population.
Acheulean tools in their primary position at Porto Maior, Spain [Credit: Eduardo Mendez-Quintas, CC BY]
The age of Porto Maior is consistent with previous findings from Iberia that suggest that the Acheulean culture experienced an expansion in the region between 400,000 to 200,000 years ago.
This latest discovery supports the increasingly complex narrative developing from ongoing studies of human fossils from Europe; namely that human groups of potentially different origins and evolutionary stages coexisted across the continent during a time when the emergence of Neanderthals was taking place.
While it is clear that more human fossil and stone tool sites need to be reliably dated across the region, a picture appears to be emerging of a turbulent “Game of Thrones” style scenario of hominin evolution in Eurasia during the Middle Pleistocene period.
Scientists have found the first major evidence that Neanderthals, rather than modern humans, created the world's oldest known cave paintings -- suggesting they may have had an artistic sense similar to our own.
Panel 3 in Maltravieso Cave showing 3 hand stencils (centre right, centre top and top left). One has been dated to at least 66,000 years ago and must have been made by a Neanderthal (colour enhanced) [Credit: H. Collado]
A new study led by the University of Southampton and the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology shows that paintings in three caves in Spain were created more than 64,000 years ago -- 20,000 years before modern humans arrived in Europe.
This means that the Palaeolithic (Ice Age) cave art -- including pictures of animals, dots and geometric signs -- must have been made by Neanderthals, a 'sister' species to Homo sapiens, and Europe's sole human inhabitants at the time.
It also indicates that they thought symbolically, like modern humans.
Published in the journal Science, the study reveals how an international team of scientists used a state-of-the-art technique called uranium-thorium dating to fix the age of the paintings as more than 64,000 years.
Until now, cave art has been attributed entirely to modern humans, as claims to a possible Neanderthal origin have been hampered by imprecise dating techniques. However, uranium-thorium dating provides much more reliable results than methods such as radiocarbon dating, which can give false age estimates.
Panel 78 in La Pasiega. The scalariform (ladder shape) composed of red horizontal and vertical lines dates to older than 64,000 years and was made by Neanderthals [Credit: C.D Standish, A.W.G. Pike and D.L. Hoffmann]
The uranium-thorium method involves dating tiny carbonate deposits that have built up on top of the cave paintings. These contain traces of the radioactive elements uranium and thorium, which indicate when the deposits formed -- and therefore give a minimum age for whatever lies beneath.
Joint lead author Dr Chris Standish, an archaeologist at the University of Southampton, said: "This is an incredibly exciting discovery which suggests Neanderthals were much more sophisticated than is popularly believed.
"Our results show that the paintings we dated are, by far, the oldest known cave art in the world, and were created at least 20,000 years before modern humans arrived in Europe from Africa -- therefore they must have been painted by Neanderthals."
A team of researchers from the UK, Germany, Spain and France analysed more than 60 carbonate samples from three cave sites in Spain -- La Pasiega (north-eastern Spain), Maltravieso (western Spain) and Ardales (south-western Spain).
All three caves contain red (ochre) or black paintings of groups of animals, dots and geometric signs, as well as hand stencils, hand prints and engravings.
According to the researchers, creating the art must have involved such sophisticated behaviour as the choosing of a location, planning of light source and mixing of pigments.
Alistair Pike, Professor of Archaeological Sciences at the University of Southampton and co-director of the study, said: "Soon after the discovery of the first of their fossils in the 19th century, Neanderthals were portrayed as brutish and uncultured, incapable of art and symbolic behaviour, and some of these views persist today.
"The issue of just how human-like Neanderthals behaved is a hotly debated issue. Our findings will make a significant contribution to that debate."
Joint lead author Dirk Hoffmann, of the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology, added that symbolic material culture -- a collection of cultural and intellectual achievements handed down from generation to generation -- has, until now, only been attributed to our species.
Drawing of Panel 78 in La Pasiega by Breuil et al (1913). The red scalariform (ladder) symbol has a minimum age of 64,000 years but it is unclear if the animals and other symbols were painted later [Credit: Breuil et al.]
"The emergence of symbolic material culture represents a fundamental threshold in the evolution of humankind. It is one of the main pillars of what makes us human," he said.
"Artefacts whose functional value lies not so much in their practical but rather in their symbolic use are proxies for fundamental aspects of human cognition as we know it."
Early symbolic artefacts, dating back 70,000 years, have been found in Africa but are associated with modern humans.
Other artefacts including cave art, sculpted figures, decorated bone tools and jewellery have been found in Europe, dating back 40,000 years. But researchers have concluded that these artefacts must have been created by modern humans who were spreading across Europe after their arrival from Africa.
There is evidence that Neanderthals in Europe used body ornamentation around 40,000 to 45,000 years ago, but many researchers have suggested this was inspired by modern humans who at the time had just arrived in Europe.
Study co-author Paul Pettitt, of Durham University, commented: "Neanderthals created meaningful symbols in meaningful places. The art is not a one-off accident.
"We have examples in three caves 700km apart, and evidence that it was a long-lived tradition. It is quite possible that similar cave art in other caves in Western Europe is of Neanderthal origin as well."
New archaeological finds unearthed from the excavations for the Thessaloniki Metro include a headless statue of Aphrodite and floor mosaics from the 4th century AD.
Credit: Yiannis A. Mylopoulos
The Aphrodite statue was found on the site of Hagia Sophia station, near a fountain complex discovered only a few weeks ago.
Chairman of Attiko Metro SA, Yiannis Mylopoulos, posted the picture of the headless statue on Facebook. As he pointed out, this is the latest find among the 300,000 antiquities that came to light during the archaeological excavations in Thessaloniki.
Earlier, well-preserved mosaic floors from the 4th century were brought to light. The mosaics, which are of great aesthetic value, were also found at the southern entrance of the Hagia Sophia station, according to Voria.gr website.
Credit: Yiannis A. Mylopoulos
Archaeologists believe the multicolored mosaics belong to either a large public building complex or urban villas of the 4th century AD.
The mosaics are in good condition and they are typical geometric decorations, believed to have adorned the floor of the west portico gallery.
From the saved floor, a medal with a woman’s figure stands out. She is in a seated position but her face is destroyed; the face of a small child can be seen too, the Voria.gr report says.
Credit: Voria.gr
Apart from the floors, wall ruins and part of a bath that was in the complex have been saved. From the excavations that are still in progress, it turns out there was also a tank that supplied the bath with water. Glass fragments at the site likely belong to bottles with aromatic oils used by the bathers.
It is estimated that the complex was built in the 4th century and was used until the 5th century. Then it was wrecked and the marble-lined square was built on top.
The Attiko Metro chairman told Voria.gr the finds do not change the timetable of the project. “The findings will be evaluated by a special committee of the Ministry of Culture, in which we also participate to find the best way to exhibit them,” he said. Mylopoulos reiterated that for the Attiko Metro administration, the antiquities are not treated like obstacles that hinder the project but as part of this great work.
Archaeologists have discovered a new example of one of the world's earliest writing systems near Nova Zagora, a town in the south-eastern plains of Bulgaria, the Sofia News Agency reports.
Credit: Novinite
In October 2017, researchers from Bulgaria's National History Museum and colleagues found a well-preserved clay tablet, dating back to the 6th millennium BC, which features inscriptions of a set of symbols known as the Vinča signs.
"This tablet is a high form of information transmission and is very complex," said archaeologist Tanja Kaneva.
The symbols on the tablet - which are thought to carry information about calendar and ritual events - are one of the earliest forms of proto-writing in the world, and perhaps the oldest in Europe. They were created by the so-called Vinča culture of central and south-eastern Europe in Neolithic times between the 6th and 5th millennia BC.
The first examples of these mysterious symbols were uncovered by Hungarian archaeologists in 1875 near Turdas, in Romania, while further excavations in Serbia near Vinča - a suburb of Belgrade - in 1908 revealed a similar cache.
Since then, thousands of fragments with similar inscriptions have been found across the region, bearing symbols denoting animal-like creatures and abstract signs, such as crosses, swastikas and chevrons.
The oldest of the finds, known as the Tărtăria tablets - which were discovered in 1961 - have been the subject of considerable controversy, in particular, because they date to 5300 BC. Some experts claim this would make them one of the earliest known forms of writing in the world.
However, many experts do not consider the Vinča symbols to be a true writing system - which can be defined as a visual representation of language through an established selection of markings. Instead, most researchers define them as proto-writing (early writing) - a system of glyphs (simplified pictures) which represent objects and concepts, conveying information.
The first true writing systems are widely considered to have emerged in Sumer - now modern-day Iraq - during the 4th millennium BC and Egypt slightly later (although some scholars say Egyptian hieroglyphs developed before the Sumerian pre-Cuneiform script).
Alongside the clay tablet, archaeologists also found a variety of artefacts, including sculptures and jewellery, indicating the existence of a prehistoric settlement at the site.
Work is proceeding at a fast pace to prepare the magnificent palace of Aigai in the region of Pella, northern Greece, for its opening to the public in May, with its walls restored to a height of 1.6 metres and the rich mosaics uncovered on the hall floors.
Credit: ANA-MPA
The palace, constructed during the reign of Philip II (359-336 BC), father of Alexander the Great, is three times the size of the Parthenon and belongs to a complex that includes royal burial clusters and a fortified town. The complex is in a strategic location defined by two rivers and the Pieria mountains.
Stonemasons have been working on the palace reconstruction, slowly reassembling the nearly 30 columns in the palace’s peristyle (a colonnade surrounding the main court), on the facade and elsewhere.
Credit: ANA-MPA
Sixteen columns of the peristyle’s southern section and the frieze will be reconstructed, to a height of eight metres. “This will allow us to get a comprehensive view of the building,” as archaeologist Angeliki Kottaridi, also head of the antiquities ephorate in the region of Imathia, explained to Athens-Macedonia News Agency (ANA).
Another 7,000 stone-cut blocks – measuring 1m long by a maximum 0.70m wide and 0.50m in height – are being prepared to augment original ones and to shore up the massive buttress on which the palace foundation rests. The surfaces of these stones are hand-carved, using tools like those of ancient stonemasons.
Credit: ANA-MPA
The floor mosaics, which will be visible in May, include the mythological theme of the rape of Europa and scenes of nature.
“The palace of Philip II was destroyed in the middle of the 2nd century BC, following the conquest of Macedonia by the Romans. Many of its architectural stone parts were used in constructing other buildings,” Kottaridi told ANA. “It’s characteristic that many of the stones from the building uncovered by the French excavators in the 19th century were used to build homes housing [Greek] refugees in the nearby village of Vergina,” she added.
Credit: ANA-MPA
Meanwhile, part of the upper floor at the palace’s entrance way (propylon) and a 30m part of a colonnade have been set up inside the new museum at Aigai, because they could not be reconstructed in situ. Kottaridi said the museum will be ready to open fully by the spring of 2020.
Funding for the project comes from the EU’s NSRF business programme on “Competitiveness, Entrepreneurship and Innovation”, which will provide 10 million euros in total for the reconstruction, expected to be completed by end-2022.
Credit: ANA-MPA
The increased funding from EU and Greek state sources will help support the wall the ancient Macedonians started building and to stabilize the eroded hillside, Kottaridi said.
“The reconstruction of the Aigai palace complex is particularly significant, as it will provide Macedonia with the most important example of classical-era architecture in the whole of northern Greece,” she concluded.
Two University of Wyoming researchers contributed to a new study in which DNA of ancient skeletal remains of people from southeastern Europe were used to determine migration patterns across Europe during prehistoric times.
This field excavation photo shows a double burial in Kargadur, located in Istria County, Croatia. The skeletal remains are among 225 skeletal remains sampled in a study of two major migrations across southeastern Europe during prehistoric times [Credit: Darko Komšo]
Ivor Jankovic, an associate adjunct professor, and Ivor Karavanic, an adjunct professor, both in UW's Department of Anthropology, contributed to the new study that is highlighted in a paper, titled "The Genomic History of Southeastern Europe," published in Nature, an international weekly journal of science.
"The study confirmed that the region of southeastern Europe was a major nexus and a genetic contact zone between the East and West during prehistoric times," says Jankovic, whose full-time job is assistant director of the Institute for Anthropological Research in Zagreb, Croatia. "Two major migrations passing through southeastern Europe were confirmed by the means of archaeo-genetic studies."
The first migration was the early Neolithic Period -- 6,000 Before Common Era (BCE) -- when the first farmers, from Anatolia -- Asia Minor -- spread through Europe. The second migration occurred during the early Bronze Age (3,000-2,500 BCE) when the so-called "steppe population," from the Eurasian steppe, replaced much of northern Europe's previous population.
The first farmers of northern and western Europe passed through southeastern Europe with limited hunter-gatherer genetic admixture, which occurs when two or more previously isolated populations begin interbreeding. However, some groups that remained mixed extensively -- without the male-biased, hunter-gatherer admixture that prevailed later in the North and West, according to the paper. Southeastern Europe continued to be a nexus between East and West, with intermittent genetic contact with the Steppe people up to 2,000 years before the migrations that replaced much of northern Europe's population.
"In some places, hunter-gatherers and incoming farmers seem to have mixed very quickly," says Iain Mathieson, a geneticist at the University of Pennsylvania, who was first author of the paper. "But, mostly, the two groups remained isolated, at least for the first few hundred years. These hunter-gatherers had been living there for thousands of years, and it must have been quite a shock to have these new people show up -- with a completely different lifestyle and appearance."
Karavanic, a professor in the University of Zagreb's Department of Archaeology, was the leader of archaeological excavations of the Paleolithic/Neolithic site of Zemunica cave, from which several human remains were unearthed and used in the study. The discoveries gave needed information on origin and background research.
Jankovic, along with Mario Novak, a research associate at the Institute for Anthropological Research in Zagreb, were involved in the bio-archaeological study of human remains from several of the study samples.
The involvement of Jankovic and Karavanic in this study started through Novak, who visited UW last year to present a talk. Jankovic and James Ahern, former head of UW's Department of Anthropology and now a UW associate provost, collaborated with Novak on several previous publications.
Before the arrival of farming in southeastern Europe, the region saw interactions between diverged groups of hunter-gatherers. This interaction continued after farming arrived. After the first appearance of agriculture in the mid-seventh millennium B.C., farming spread westward via a Mediterranean route and northwestward via a Danubian route. Farming was established in both Iberia (Portugal and Spain) and central Europe by 5,600 B.C.
Ancient DNA studies have shown that the spread of farming across Europe was accompanied by a massive movement of people closely related to the farmers of northwestern Anatolia. But, nearly all of the ancient DNA from Europe's first farmers is from central and Western Europe, with only three farmers reported from southeastern Europe, the paper says.
To understand the dynamics of this migration process, Jankovic, Karovanic, Novak and many other researchers contributed to the analysis of genome-wide ancient DNA data from 225 skeletal remains of individuals who lived in southeastern Europe and surrounding regions between 12,000 and 500 B.C. These areas included the Balkan Peninsula, the Carpathian Basin, the North Pontiac Steppe and surrounding regions.
"These results reveal the relationship between migrations, admixture and subsistence in this key region and show that, even within early European farmers, individuals differed in their ancestry, reflecting a dynamic mosaic of hunter-farmer interbreeding," says Ron Pinhasi, co-director of the study and an anthropologist at the University of Vienna in Austria.
While the study has clarified the genomic history of southeastern Europe from the Mesolithic to the Bronze Age, the processes that connected these populations to those living today remain largely unknown, the paper states. An important direction for future research will be to sample populations from the Bronze Age, Iron Age, and Roman and medieval periods, and compare them to present-day populations to understand how these population transitions occurred, according to the paper.
Prehistoric Iberians 'exported' their culture throughout Europe, reaching Great Britain, Sicily, Poland and all over central Europe in general. However, they did not export their genes. The Beaker culture, which probably originated in Iberia, left remains in those parts of the continent.
Iberian beakers [Credit: Museo de Almeria]
However, that diffusion was not due to large migrations of populations that took this culture with them. These are the conclusions of an international study in which the Spanish National Research Council (CSIC) was involved. Its findings, published in the journal Nature, indicate no evidence of any genetic outflow from Iberia to those areas has been discovered.
"Therefore, the diffusion of the Beaker culture from Iberia is the first example of a culture being transmitted as an idea, basically due to a question of social prestige (since it was associated with the virtues of being virile and of being warriors), which is why it is adopted by other populations," indicates researcher Carles Lalueza-Fox, from the Institute of Evolutionary Biology, a mixed research centre run by CSIC and the Pompeu Fabra University, in Barcelona, Spain.
Between 4,700 and 4,400 years ago, a new type of bell-shaped beaker pottery was introduced throughout western and central Europe. For more than a century, archaeologists have been trying to determine whether the spread of this beaker pottery -- and the (Beaker) culture associated with it -- represented a large-scale migration or whether it was due simply to the exchange of new ideas.
Now, this new study, which includes DNA data from 400 prehistoric skeletons collected from sites across Europe, resolves the debate of whether the spread was due to migrations or ideas, indicating that both arguments are correct. The findings show that the culture which produced these bell-shaped beakers extended from Iberia to central Europe without a significant movement of populations, although the Beaker culture would spread to other places through migrations at a later date.
The study, whose first author is the Spanish researcher Inigo Olalde, a geneticist at Harvard Medical School, shows that once the (Bell) Beaker culture reaches the centre of Europe (around Germany and its surrounding area), it expands backwards to other places, notably to the British Isles. Yet, in this case, it does represent a migration, replacing around 90% of the population with it.
"That is to say, the Neolithic people who built Stonehenge (and who had a greater genetic similarity with Neolithic Iberians than with those from Central Europe) almost disappear and are replaced by the populations from the Beaker culture from the Netherlands and Germany. This replacement is almost absolute in terms of the Y chromosome, which is transmitted by the paternal line, indicating an extreme reproductive bias, and therefore a previously unheard of social dominance. The backward flow also reaches other places such as Italy (at least in the north) and Iberia. I believe it is possible that this is also associated with the expansion of the Celtic or Proto-Celtic languages," Mr. Lalueza-Fox points out.
Coordinated by researcher David Reich from Harvard University, the study was developed by an international team of 144 archaeologists and geneticists from institutions in Europe and the United States.
After a five-month-long restoration, parts of the Room of Achilles at Skyros in the Domus Aurea (Golden House in Latin), the vast palace built by Emperor Nero after the great fire of 64 AD in the heart of ancient Rome, are back to their original splendor. The work was carried out thanks to the sponsorship worth 100,000 Swiss francs, or nearly 90,000 euros, provided by the Foundation Isabel & Balz Baechi.
Credit: ANSA
The foundation has previously donated money for renovation work at the sanctuary Sacro Monte di Varallo and at Rome's Villa Farnesina.
The partial restoration started at the Domus Aurea provides an insight into what the palace will look like when more work has been completed, said Alfonsina Russo, the new director of the archaeological area of the Colosseum.
Credit: ANSA
The restoration is "a taste of what we will be able to find at the Domus Aurea", said Russo, referring to work planned for all of the 30,000 square meters of painted surface at the palace. "This palace was a great laboratory of experimentation".
"Here worked architecture masters, painters like Fabullo who had Greek painting as great examples".
Credit: ANSA
Russo also said that the specific restoration work carried out so far has revealed the use of precious materials like the golden leaf, a symbol of the "ostentation and luxury that 'Princeps' Nero loved to surround himself with". Specifically, restorer Claudia Fiorani said that only by cleaning the room's tassels - one on a vault and another on a wall - "the results are surprising".
"We were able to bring back to life characters and anatomic details that surely inspired Renaissance masters", she said.
Credit: ANSA
"This room truly showed all of Nero's luxury", not only "for the extensive use of gold" but also because one of the figures that is not yet entirely visible is shrouded in mystery and has raised the interest of art historians, the restorer explained.
"It is surely a woman and very important because of the use of purpurrissumum to paint her, a very precious and expensive pigment made by crushing millions of mollusks", also said Fiorani, adding that her identity is yet to be discovered.
Credit: ANSA
The partial restoration so far carried out, said the director of the renovation work Maria Bartoli, "is also useful to get an idea on the timing and cost" of the work necessary on the entire building.
Alessandro D'Alessio, the scientific director of the monument, said the past year has been "difficult" but there is hope restoration work will gain new momentum with the appointment of the new director.
Credit: ANSA
"So far we have secured 80% of the painted walls, which was urgent".
The culture ministry has already allocated 13 million euros for more restoration work expected to start by the end of the year, including on the vaults of Trajan, which collapsed in 2010, said D'Alessio.
Credit: ANSA
The director said additional work is already being planned for all of the "16,000 square meters of ceiling surface", possibly with more private sponsors.
The archaeologists working in the excavations of the defensive moat of Puig de Sant Andreu in the Iberian city of Ullastret (a small historic village on the Bay of Empordà in Catalonia) have discovered a small lead object with an Iberian inscription. This "exceptional" find is currently being restored in the laboratory of the Archaeological Museum of Catalonia in Girona, where an initial evaluation and a more detailed study will be carried out.
Credit: Museu d' Arqueologia de Catalunya
The object found in the levels that covered the moat, weighs 65 grams and measures 40 centimetres long and is approximately 25 centimetres wide. According to a preliminary study by the researcher Joan Ferrer, the inscription of 16 signs is structured in two lines and belongs to the northeastern 'dual' script.
Credit: Museu d' Arqueologia de Catalunya
The excavations of the Ullastret site's defensive moat began last November 2017 with a planned duration of four months. They are part of the restoration project of the walls of the Iberian city carried out by the Direccio General de Patrimoni Cultural del Departament de Cultura, which will recover 130 linear metres of the moat that protected the southwestern band of the fortification.
The restoration of the wall and the excavated part of the moat will present one of the most important defensive systems in the Iberian world and is expected to enhance the appearance of the site, which is managed by the Archaeological Museum of Catalonia.
The Dental Anthropology Group of the Centro Nacional de Investigación sobre la Evolución Humana (CENIEH) forms part of the team which has just published a paper in American Journal of Physical Anthropology on the morphological analysis of the dentin in the lower molars of the population of the archaeological site of Sima de los Huesos (Atapuerca, Burgos), using three-dimensional geometric morphometry, in order to study the origin of the Neanderthals.
Dentine surface illustrating the landmarks used to capture their shape [Credit: Hanegraef et al.]
In this innovative study, in which scientists from University College London have also participated, 85 molars have been analyzed using computerized axial microtomography in the laboratories of the CENIEH, which has allowed high-resolution virtual sections to be obtained.
Geometric morphometric analyses performed hitherto have been based on using two-dimensional images such as photographs, although the application of new technologies such as micro-CT and the 3D reconstruction software Amira have made possible the first work of geometric morphometry using three-dimensional images.
“With the results obtained, we have been able to ratify once again the similarities found between the population of Sima de los Huesos and the Neanderthals, and the differences between these and Homo sapiens”, explains the director of the CENIEH María Martinón-Torres, co-author of this work.
Nevertheless, despite the notable affinities with Homo neanderthalensis, the population of Sima de los Huesos displays lower intra-population variability and has certain features even more derived than the Neanderthals themselves.
Neanderthal accretion
The principal objective of the authors, in addition to reviewing the current hypotheses which explain the origin of the Neanderthals, has been to verify the reliability of the Neanderthal accretion model, which suggests that Neanderthal characteristics did not develop in a linear and continuous manner, but rather accreted abruptly at different periods.
“The results of this investigation favor the theory of a more complex evolutionary scenario for the European continent during the Middle Pleistocene, with the coexistence of different populations and without rejecting possible hybridization between them”, concludes Martinón-Torres. Source: CENIEH [February 19, 2018]
The French Archaeological Mission of Kition conducted a second campaign of excavations in the Northern part of the site of Kition-Bamboula in October 2017 under the direction of S. Fourrier (MEAE-CNRS-Lyon2 University).
Oval structure of Roman date cut into the Classical floor level [Credit: Department of Antiquities, Republic of Cyprus]
Fieldwork was resumed in the two trenches opened in 2016. Sondage 11, located at the highest point, to the northwest of the site, was enlarged. Under a series of late Hellenistic and Roman layers heavily disturbed by modern activities, with no distinct building phases, excavation reached a Classical floor level with associated walls. The walls are made of irregular calcareous stones with plaster lining. This Classical floor level, which yielded a fragmentary but rich ceramic assemblage (with Phoenician, East Greek and Attic imports), had been cut, in the Northwestern part of the trench, by an oval structure of Roman date. This structure, which was dug until absolute level 2,59 m above sea, without reaching its bottom, was presumably a well. Its shape and other special features suggest that it was designed to host a water-pump machine. It can be dated to the 2nd-3rd c. AD.
In the main trench (Sondage 10), located on the hill slope, the Late Bronze Age–Early Iron Age settlement has been further cleared. In the Western part of the trench, a heavy remodelling of the site, which can be dated to the Late Geometric–Early Archaic period, had obliterated all earlier built structures. Early Geometric walls and floors were preserved to the North and East. Floors were usually made of compacted clay, in some cases one finds patches of pavements made of stone or of ceramic pieces. The walls consisted of one or two rows of roundish stones with a superstructure made of mudbricks and wooden elements. The fill of the rooms consisted of a compact reddish layer with ashes patches resulting from the destruction.
Infant inhumation in a Canaanite jar found under a floor level [Credit: Department of Antiquities, Republic of Cyprus]
To the Northwest of the trench, an infant inhumation in a Canaanite jar was found under a floor level. The neck of the jar had been cut and protected the body. The child wore a bronze fibula and an amber bead. A skyphos and a juglet of Proto-White Painted ware, which were deposited with the jar, suggest a dating to the beginning of the 11th c. BC. The early Geometric floor levels rested on earlier, Late Bronze Age floors. At the present state of research, they can be dated to the 12th c. B.C. They yielded fragmentary material dated to the 13th c. BC. Some luxury pieces (ivory boxes, Egyptian faience vases, high quality Mycenaean ceramic imports) are noteworthy. They confirm an early occupation of the site, whose nature has still to be established.
The preliminary results of this second field campaign demonstrate a much longer occupational phase of the site than previously thought: The Northern part of Bamboula was inhabited since at least the 13th c. BC and continued to be frequented until at least the 2nd or 3rd c. AD. The unexpected discovery of a well has to be interpreted in relation with the numerous Roman amphora fragments found in the harbour basin, which show that Bamboula continued to serve as a major commercial harbour in Roman times. The successive Early Iron and Late Bronze Age floor levels document a chronological sequence poorly known in Cyprus where most sites were abandoned towards the end of the Bronze Age; the ceramic material retrieved so far is thus of utmost importance to gain a clear typo-chronological sequence and better understand the beginning of the new Geometric era.
