Striking Patterns: Skill for Forming Tools and Words Evolved Together

A meeting in the mind? In a test of how toolmaking and language activate the brain, an expert knapper made an Acheulean hand ax (above) while researchers monitored the flow of blood to his brain (see video).

When did humans start talking? There are nearly as many answers to this perplexing question as there are researchers studying it. A new brain imaging study claims to support the hypothesis that language emerged long before Homo sapiens and coevolved with the invention of the first finely made stone tools nearly 2 million years ago. However, some experts think it’s premature to draw sweeping conclusions.

Unlike ancient bones and stone tools, language does not fossilize. Researchers have to guess about its origins based on proxy indicators. Does painting cave walls indicate the capacity for language? How about the ability to make a fancy tool? Yet, in recent years, scientists have made some progress. 

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Melting Snow Reveals Iron Age Sweater

A boat neck sweater made of warm wool and woven in diamond twill was a dominating fashion trend among reindeer hunters 1,700 years ago, according to researchers who have investigated an extremely well preserved Iron Age tunic found two years ago under melting snow in Norway.

Announced last March, the finding has been detailed in the current issue of the journal Antiquity.

“Due to global warming, rapid melting of snow patches and glaciers is taking place in the mountains of Norway as in other parts of the world, and hundreds of archaeological finds emerge from the ice each year,” Marianne Vedeler, from the University of Oslo, Norway, and Lise Bender Jørgensen, from the Norwegian University of Science and Technology in Trondheim, wrote.

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Bronze Age boats older than was first thought

Eight Bronze Age boats discovered in a deep Cambridgeshire quarry are much older than it was first thought, carbon-dating research has revealed.

Experts have discovered the boats are made of oak, lime and field maple [Credit: BBC]

The vessels, found by archaeologists at Must Farm near Peterborough in 2011, have now been dated to about 1500 BC, 200 years older than was first thought.

Samples taken during the conservation process have revealed the boats to be made from oak, lime and field maple.

The vessels are undergoing a two-year preservation programme at Flag Fen.

The wooden craft are being sprayed with a special wax to stop the timbers from degrading, the same technique that was applied to the 16th Century Mary Rose warship.

It is hoped the process will reveal more about the Must Farm log boats, one of which is almost 30ft (9m) long.

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Final excavations underway at Ham Hill

Archaeologists from the Universities of Cambridge and Cardiff are currently undertaking their third, and final, round of excavations at Ham Hill, Britain’s biggest Iron-Age hill fort.

An excavation at Ham Hill, the largest Iron-Age hill fort in Britain, has revealed more about how the ancient structure was developed by its defenders in response to the Roman invasion.

Researchers have been studying the fort, which covers more than 80 hectares of the Somerset countryside, for the past three years in an attempt to understand more about its function, and how such a large structure was defended by the local population.

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Bone dates 'earliest northerner', say archaeologists in Liverpool

Archaeologists discovered the remains of humans and animals in the early 1990s but they have been dated following a study into the findings.

Archaeologists have dated bones found in the 1990s as the earliest known human remains from northern Britain.

Liverpool John Moores University and the University of Nottingham analysed a leg bone found in Cumbria and found it to be more than 10,000 years old.

The bone and other fragments were excavated from Kents Bank Cavern on the edge of Morecambe Bay and are stored at The Dock Museum in Barrow.

The results have been published in the Journal of Quaternary Science.

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Oxford Experience 2014

The programme for the Oxford Experience Summer School is now online.  Registration will not begin until late September, but now is the time to start planning your courses for next summer.

You can find the programme here...

Earliest Specialized Neanderthal Bone Tools Discovered

Excavations at two cave sites in southwestern France have yielded bone fragments that show intentional shaping, likely by Neanderthals, to create specialized tools. Dated to before the known advent of modern humans in Europe, researchers suggest that they are the earliest specialized bone tools produced by Neanderthals, implying the need to re-assess elements of current theoretical models of Neanderthals and modern humans in Europe.   

Excavating at the Pech-de-l’Azé I and Abri Peyrony sites, both located at separate tributaries of the Dordogne river in southwestern France, co-leader Shannon P. McPherron of the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology and colleagues recovered and analyzed assemblages of Mousterian of Acheulian Tradition (MTA) stone artifacts, which also included specially shaped deer rib bone artifacts known as Lissoirs not usually associated with MTA finds. Lissoirs are a specialized tool type made by grinding and polishing, and are thought to have been used on hides to make them tough, impermeable, and lustrous. Three specimens were found at Abri Peyrony and were dated to 47,710 - 41,130 Cal BP using radiocarbon accelerator mass spectrometry, and one specimen at Pech-de-l’Azé I, dated to 51,400 ka using optically stimulated luminescence dating techniques. The researchers identified the rib bone fragments as coming from medium-sized ungulates, specifically red deer or reindeer.

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Drought drove collapse of Late Bronze Age civilizations

Climate change may have driven the collapse of once-flourishing Eastern Mediterranean civilizations towards the end of the 13th century BC, according to research published August 14 in the open access journal PLOS ONE by David Kaniewski from the University of Paul Sabatier, Toulouse, France and colleagues from other institutions.

This is the region where the study was performed (Salt Lake and the Hala Sultan Tekke in the background) [Credit: Geological Survey of Belgium/ David Kaniewski]

Ancient civilizations flourished in regions of the Eastern Mediterranean such as Greece, Syria and neighboring areas, but suffered severe crises that led to their collapse during the late Bronze Age. 

Here, researchers studied pollen grains derived from sediments of an ancient lake in the region to uncover a history of environmental changes that likely drove this crisis. 

Shifts in carbon isotopes in the Eastern Mediterranean and in local plant species suggest that this lake was once a flourishing harbor that gradually dried into a land-locked salt lake. 

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Laois ‘bog body’ said to be world’s oldest

The bog body found by Jason Phelan at the Bord Na Mona Cashel Bog, in Co Laois. The body is estimated to be over 4,000 years old, and is possibly the result of a human sacrifice. Photograph: Alan Betson/The Irish Times.

The mummified remains of a body found in a Laois bog two years ago have been found to date back to 2,000BC, making it the oldest “bog body” discovered anywhere in the world.

The 4,000-year-old remains, which predate the famed Egyptian pharaoh Tutankhamun by nearly 700 years, are those of a young adult male.

He is believed to have met a violent death in some sort of ritual sacrifice.

The body was unearthed in the Cúl na Móna bog in Cashel in 2011 by a Bord na Móna worker operating a milling machine.

Initially, experts thought it dated from the Iron Age period (500BC-400AD), placing it on a par with similar finds in other Irish bogs.

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Head of a goddess statue discovered in Aegean province

The head of a mother goddess statue is the first of its kind in Turkey. AA photo

The head of an 8,000-year-old statue of a goddess has been found during excavations in İzmir’s Yeşilova tumulus. 

Associate Professor Zafer Derin said they had found very important pieces during this year’s excavations, adding that the four-centimeter head of the statue had a special meaning as it was the first of its kind discovered in Turkey. 

Women and fertility were sacred in western Anatolian culture, Derin said, adding that the area was the center of the mother goddess culture. “We have the head of a mother goddess figure. We know that worship of mother goddesses was common in this region in the past, but we have found the four-centimeter head of a goddess statue for the first time in Turkey. People used to put this statue in their home to have healthier children. This small piece is a very beautiful one from 6000 B.C.”

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5,000-year-old gaming tokens found in Turkey

Small carved stones unearthed in a nearly 5,000-year-old burial site could represent the earliest gaming tokens ever found, according to Turkish archaeologists who are excavating early Bronze Age graves.

These sculpted stones unearthed from an early Bronze Age grave in Turkey could be the earliest gaming tokens ever found [Credit: Haluk Sağlamtimur]

Found in a grave at Başur Höyük, a 820- by 492-foot mound near Siirt in southeast Turkey, the elaborate pieces consist of 49 small stones sculpted in different shapes and painted in green, red, blue, black and white.

"Some depict pigs, dogs and pyramids, others feature round and bullet shapes. We also found dice as well as three circular tokens made of white shell and topped with a black round stone," Haluk Sağlamtimur of Ege University in İzmir, Turkey, told Discovery News.

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Uraltes Erbe: Heutige Schleifwerkzeuge zur Lederbearbeitung wurden in ähnlicher Form schon von den Neandertalern gefertigt

Vier Ansichten des am vollständigsten erhaltenen Lissoirs, der bei Ausgrabungsarbeiten in der Neandertalerfundstätte Abri Peyroni entdeckt wurde. © Abri Peyrony & Pech-de-l’Azé I Projects

Noch heute, 50.000 Jahre nach den Neandertalern und der Ankunft der ersten anatomisch modernen Menschen in Europa, werden sogenannte Lissoirs zur Verarbeitung von Tierhäuten benutzt. Die aus den Rippen von Rehwild hergestellten Schleifgeräte machen Leder weicher, glatter und wasserbeständiger. Wissenschaftler vom Max-Planck-Institut für evolutionäre Anthropologie in Leipzig und von der Universität Leiden in den Niederlanden haben in zwei einander benachbarten altsteinzeitlichen Ausgrabungsstätten im Südwesten Frankreichs Neandertaler-Werkzeuge aus Knochen entdeckt, die solchen Lissoirs sehr ähnlich sind. Die Werkzeuge unterscheiden sich von allen zuvor in Neandertaler-Stätten gefundenen Geräten.

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Ancient treasures found at Russian burial site

Archaeologists have found the intact burial chamber of a noble woman from a powerful tribe that roamed the Eurasian steppes 2,500 years ago in southern Russia, an official said Tuesday.

The woman's skeleton covered with jewelry and decorations [Credit: State Teachers
Training University of Bashkortostan]

The Sarmatians were a group of Persian-speaking tribes that controlled what is now parts of southern Russia, Ukraine and Central Asia from around 500 BC until 400 AD. They were often mentioned by ancient Greek historians and left luxurious tombs with exquisite golden and bronze artifacts that were often looted by gravediggers.

But the burial site found near the the village of Filippovka in the Orenburg region has not been robbed – and contained a giant bronze kettle, jewelry, a silver mirror and what appears to be containers for cosmetics, said history professor Gulnara Obydennova who heads the Institute of History and Legal Education in the city of Ufa.

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Crossrail unearths evidence humans lived on Thames in 7,000 BC

Lead archaeologist Jay Carver said the flint factory was an "exciting find"

Rare evidence that humans lived on the River Thames 9,000 years ago has been discovered by archaeologists working on the Crossrail project.

A Mesolithic tool-making factory featuring 150 pieces of flint was found at the tunnelling worksite in Woolwich.

Archaeologists said prehistoric Londoners were using the site to prepare river cobbles which were then made into flint tools.

Gold has also been discovered at its site in Liverpool Street.

Archaeologists said they were mystified as to how such a precious and expensive gold item made its way to what was then regarded as a deprived area.

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Archaeologists find treasures at ancient Russian burial cite

Archaeologists have found the intact burial chamber of a noble woman from a powerful tribe that roamed the Eurasian steppes 2,500 years ago in southern Russia, an official said Tuesday, Aug 6, according to RIA Novosti.

The Sarmatians were a group of Persian-speaking tribes that controlled what is now parts of southern Russia, Ukraine and Central Asia from around 500 BC until 400 AD. They were often mentioned by ancient Greek historians and left luxurious tombs with exquisite golden and bronze artifacts that were often looted by gravediggers.

But the burial site found near the village of Filippovka in the Orenburg region has not been robbed – and contained a giant bronze kettle, jewelry, a silver mirror and what appears to be containers for cosmetics, said history professor Gulnara Obydennova who heads the Institute of History and Legal Education in the city of Ufa.

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Neanderthals Found in Greece

Scientists have uncovered new evidence of Neanderthal occupation at the Kalamakia cave site on the western coast of the Mani peninsula in Greece, adding to previously recovered finds at other sites in the area. The finds lend additional support to the theory that Greece and the Southern Balkans served as a dispersal corridor and refugium for Pleistocene era human populations.

The Middle Paleolithic (300,000 to 30,000 BP) cave site was excavated in 1993 - 2006 by an interdisciplinary team from the Ephoreia of Paleoanthropology and Speleology (Greek Ministry of Culture) and the Muséum national d’Histoire naturelle (Paris). The cave yielded lithic (stone tool) remains, an abundance of fauna (animal remains), and human remains of at least 8 and possibly 14 individuals consisting of 10 isolated teeth, a cranial (skull) fragment and three postcranial (other skeletal) elements, as well as several hearths. 

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Oldest Human Fossil in Western Europe Found in Spain

An international team of researchers have announced the discovery of the oldest hominin (early or archaic human) fossil ever found in Western Europe, pushing back the clock on when early humans first colonized Western Europe after their exodus from Africa.

The find, a fossil tooth (molar) uncovered through excavations at the site of Barranco León in the Orce region of southeastern Spain, was dated to about 1.4 million years ago using several combined dating techniques, including Electron Spin Resonance (ESR) in combination with paleomagnetic and biochronological data.  

"While the range of dates obtained from these various methods overlaps with those published for the Sima del Elefante hominin locality (1.2 Ma), the overwhelming majority of evidence points to an older age," reports study author Dr. Isidro-Moyano and colleagues. "Thus, at the moment, the Barranco León hominin is the oldest from Western Europe."* Until now, Sima del Elefante, a rockshelter located in the Sierra de Atapuerca mountain range of northern Spain, held the record for the earliest human fossils in Western Europe.

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Researchers Shed New Light on Genetic Adam and Eve

Previous genetic research has indicated the existence of two ancient modern human individuals who passed their genes along to all humans living today, what scientists have referred to as our most recent common ancestors, or MRCAs. The first, designated "Mitochondrial Eve", lived between 190,000 and 200,000 years ago, and the second, "Y-chromosomal Adam", between 50,000 and 115,000 years ago.

Now, a team of researchers led by Stanford University's Carlos Bustamente and David Poznik have redefined the ranges for Y-chromosomal Adam and Mitochondrial Eve, placing them at 120,000 to 156,000 years ago and 99,000 to 148,000 years ago, respectively. The most significant finding relates to the relative timing of their existence.

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Irish 'bog body' may be world’s oldest

The mummified remains of a body found in a Laois bog two years ago have been found to date back to 2,000BC, making it the oldest “bog body” discovered anywhere in the world.

The bog body found by Jason Phelan at the Bord Na Mona Cashel Bog, in Co Laois. The body is estimated to be over 4,000 years old, and is possibly the result of a human sacrifice [Credit: Alan Betson/The Irish Times]

The 4,000-year-old remains, which predate the famed Egyptian pharaoh Tutankhamun by nearly 700 years, are those of a young adult male. He is believed to have met a violent death in some sort of ritual sacrifice.

The body was unearthed in the Cúl na Móna bog in Cashel in 2011 by a Bord na Móna worker operating a milling machine.

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5,000-year-old art found in Orkney dig

An intricately-inscribed stone was discovered by excited archaeologists at the Ness of Brodgar on Wednesday.

The carved stone unearthed from the Ness of Brodgar site
in Orkney [Credut: Nick Card]

Nick Card, the excavation team director at the dig – which lies in the heart of Neolithic Orkney, between the Ring of Brodgar and the Stones of Strenness – said the latest find had created a “huge buzz” on the site. The stone is unusual as it is artistically decorated on both sides and has impressive deep incisions.

Mr Card, of the Orkney Research Centre for Archaeology and based at the University of the Highlands and Islands in the islands, said: “It is perhaps the finest piece of art we have recovered from the site, and one of the finest from the UK ever – amazing and awe-inspiring.”

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