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Scientists accused of distorting theory of human evolution by misdating bones

Robin McKie
The Guardian
Sat, 09 Jun 2012 00:00 UTC
Image
© Paul Hanna/ReutersA skull from one of the bodies found in a pit in Spain.
Briton says Spanish researchers are out by 200,000 years and have even got the wrong species

It is the world's biggest haul of human fossils and the most important palaeontology site in Europe: a subterranean chamber at the bottom of a 50ft shaft in the deepest recesses of the Atapuerca cavern in northern Spain. Dozens of ancient skeletons have been unearthed.

La Sima de los Huesos - the Pit of Bones - has been designated a Unesco world heritage site because of its importance to understanding evolution, and millions of euros, donated by the EU, have been spent constructing a museum of human antiquity in nearby Burgos.

But Britain's leading expert on human evolution, Professor Chris Stringer, of the Natural History Museum, has warned in the journal Evolutionary Anthropology that the team in charge of La Sima has got the ages of its fossils wrong by 200,000 years and has incorrectly identified the species of ancient humans found there.

Far from being a 600,000-year-old lair of a species called Homo heidelbergensis, he believes the pit is filled with Neanderthal remains that are no more than 400,000 years old. The difference in interpretation has crucial implications for understanding human evolution.

"The Atapuerca finds are hugely important," said Stringer. "There is no other site like it in terms of numbers of bones and skulls of our ancient predecessors. It is the world's biggest collection of ancient human fossils and the team there has done a magnificent job in excavating the site. However, if we cannot correctly fix the age and identity of the remains then we are in trouble. Getting that wrong even affects how we construct our own evolution."

Comment: For more information of the difficulties faced by scientists in understanding our evolution see:
The Hidden History of Human Evolution

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Hourglass

What the Romans didn't do for us

Mike Pitts
The Guardian
Wed, 16 Mar 2011 21:10 UTC
Briton road
© Caroline Malim/James Reed PRA reconstruction of the different levels of the road discovered at Bayston Hill quarry in Shropshire.
The discovery that a Roman road may in fact have been made by Iron Age Britons offers a glimpse of a far more sophisticated society than previously thought

It's not a question often asked, but perhaps it should be. What did the Druids do for us? The discovery of a road in Shropshire that was built by pre-Roman engineers suggests that indigenous Britons may have been much more accomplished than we - or the Romans - liked to imagine. The road itself tells the story well.

The route had long been known as a lost Roman road, named Margary No 64 after the man who first mapped what everyone assumed to be the country's earliest network. It was visible as a low earthwork and as marks in ploughed fields, and in 1995 archaeologists dug up a bit. Sure enough, it looked Roman.

But in 2009, quarrying by Tarmac was due to destroy 400m of it, giving archaeologists a rare opportunity to expose a long section of road, some of it, crucially, very well preserved. At first, it still looked Roman, from its cambered, cobbled surface on a metre of hardcore and a clay base, to the ditches at the sides with a thin scatter of Roman rubbish. However, dig director Tim Malim noticed that the road had twice been rebuilt, and knew its history could be dated using a technique that tells you when buried mineral grains were last exposed to sunlight.
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Rainbow

UK experts say Stonehenge was place of healing

Raphael G. Satter
USA Today
Mon, 22 Sep 2008 21:01 UTC
stonehedge
© Kirsty Wigglesworth, Associated PressIn this Monday March 31, 2008 file photo, archaeology students Steve Bush, right, and Sam Ferguson, left, sieve through earth amongst the stones at Stonehenge, England. Two British archeologists say the first excavation at the site of Stonehenge in more than 40 years has shed new light on the purpose of the landmark. Professors Geoffrey Wainwright and Timothy Darvill told journalists Monday, Sept. 22, 2008, that Stonehenge was a kind of primeval Lourdes. They say the stone circle was a center of healing which attracted the sick and infirm from all over prehistoric Europe. They also say they have dated the first stone monuments at the site to about 2,300 B.C.
The first excavation of Stonehenge in more than 40 years has uncovered evidence that the stone circle drew ailing pilgrims from around Europe for what they believed to be its healing properties, archeologists said Monday.

Archaeologists Geoffrey Wainwright and Timothy Darvill said the content of graves scattered around the monument and the ancient chipping of its rocks to produce amulets indicated that Stonehenge was the primeval equivalent of Lourdes, the French shrine venerated for its supposed ability to cure the sick.

An unusual number of skeletons recovered from the area showed signs of serious disease or injury. Analysis of their dental records showed that about half were from outside the Stonehenge area.

"People were in a state of distress, if I can put it as politely as that, when they came to the Stonehenge monument," Darvill told journalists assembled at London's Society of Antiquaries.

He pointed out that experts near Stonehenge have found two skulls that showed evidence of primitive surgery, some of just a few known cases of operations in prehistoric Britain.

"Even today, that's the pretty serious end of medicine," he said. Also found near Stonehenge was the body of a man known as the Amesbury Archer, who had a damaged skull and badly hurt knee and died around the time the stones were being installed. Analysis of the Archer's bones showed he was from the Alps.

Darvill cautioned, however, that the new evidence did not rule out other uses for Stonehenge.
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Info

New hints into human ancestry could lead to rethink of 'Out Of Africa' theory

Brett Smith
RedOrbit
Fri, 14 Dec 2012 12:24 UTC
Artifacts
© Pamela Willoughby, University of Alberta This 2012 image shows a structure used by inhabitants of the region for well over 200,000 years.
Research and excavations by a Canadian researcher from sites in southern Tanzania could lead to a rethinking of the 'Out of Africa' narrative that describes the human diaspora around the globe, according to a new report in the journal Quaternary International.

Led by Pamela Willoughby, the Iringa Region Archaeological Project has uncovered artifacts that suggest a constant human occupation between today and at least 200,000 years ago at two sites, Mlambalasi and nearby Magubike.

"Some of these sites have signs that people were using them starting around 300,000 years ago. In fact, they're still being used today," said Willoughby, from the University of Alberta's Department of Anthropology. "But the idea that you have such ancient human occupation preserved in some of these places is pretty remarkable."

The finding also supports the so-called "bottleneck theory", which says that all humans are descended from one genetic lineage of people who left Africa around 50,000 years ago.

Within the Magubike site is a large rock shelter with an intact overhanging roof. Excavations of the shelter yielded unique artifacts and fossils that date from the Stone Age to the Iron Age. Earlier artifacts from the shelter include human teeth, animal bones, shells and thousands of stone tools.
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Document

Hans Christian Andersen's first fairy tale discovered

Rossella Lorenzi
Discovery News
Fri, 14 Dec 2012 09:27 UTC
Hans Christian Handersen
© Thora Hallager/Wikimedia CommonsHans Christian Handersen. The photo was taken in October 1867 by photographer Thora Hallager.
Danish experts believe they have found the first fairy tale written by Hans Christian Andersen (1805-1875).

Titled Tællelyset (The Tallow Candle), the ink-written manuscript was found by local historian Esben Brage at the bottom of an archive box. Brage made the discovery in October in the historical archive on the island of Funen, where the Danish author was born.

Two months later, historians confirmed that the six-page manuscript was indeed written by Andersen. They dated the document to the mid-1820s, when the writer was in his late teens.

"I am in no doubt that it has been written by Andersen," Ejnar Stig Askgaard of the Odense City Museum told the Danish daily Politiken.

The newspaper has translated and published a version of the story in English.

The front page of the document reads "To Madam Bunkeflod from her devoted H.C. Andersen."

A vicar's widow, Mme Bunkeflod lived opposite Andersen's childhood home. Historians know that the writer visited her often as a child, borrowing her books.

"The fairy tale was a present. A present of thanks to a woman whose home had been very important to him," Askgaard said.
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Info

Brain-removal tool left in mummy's skull

Owen Jarus
LiveScience
Fri, 14 Dec 2012 07:03 UTC
Brain Removal Tool
© RSNA RadioGraphicsCT scans of a 2,400-year-old female mummy revealed a tubular object embedded in its skull between the brain's left parietal bone and the resin filled back of the skull. It would turn out to be a tool used for the removal of the brain. This is only the second time that such a tool has been reported in the skull of an ancient Egyptian mummy.
A brain-removal tool used by ancient Egyptian embalmers has been discovered lodged in the skull of a female mummy that dates back around 2,400 years.

Removal of the brain was an Egyptian mummification procedure that became popular around 3,500 years ago and remained in use in later periods.

Identifying the ancient tools embalmers used for brain removal is difficult, and researchers note this is only the second time that such a tool has been reported within a mummy's skull.

The discovery

Located between the left parietal bone and the back of the skull, which had been filled with resin, the object was discovered in 2008 through a series of CT scans.

Researchers then inserted an endoscope (a thin tube often used for noninvasive medical procedures) into the mummy to get a closer look and ultimately detach it from resin to which it had gotten stuck.

"We cut it with a clamp through the endoscope and then removed it from the skull," said lead researcher Dr. Mislav Čavka, of the University Hospital Dubrava in Zagreb Croatia, in an interview with LiveScience.

They found themselves peering at an object more than 3 inches (8 centimeters) long that would have been used for liquefying and removing the brain. "It almost definitely would have been used in excerebration [brain removal] of the mummy," Čavka said.
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Sherlock

Archaeologists uncover Europe's first civilization?


Popular Archaeology
Fri, 14 Dec 2012 10:51 UTC
Image
© Balkan Heritage Field School.
A team of archaeologists have unearthed additional evidence of what may have been Europe's first civilization at a site located near the town of Pazardzhik in southern Bulgaria. Known as Yunatsite, it is a Tell (mound containing archaeological remains) about 110 meters in diameter and 12 meters high, rising above fields next to a small Bulgarian village by the same name. The Tell contains remains of an urbanized settlement dated at its earliest to the early fifth millenium BC.

Directed by Yavor Boyadzhiev of the National Institute of Archaeology and Museums, Bulgarian Academy of Sciences, excavators have unearthed artifacts such as weapons, Spondylus jewels, decorated fineware pottery, shards marked by characters/pictograms, and evidence of structures dated to 4900 BC, including fortifications and a recently discovered wooden platform that was likely the floor of a building that had been destroyed by fire.

The excavations are revealing an age-old story of warfare and human cruelty. Writes Boyadzhiev, et. al. at their website: "The Copper age settlement was destroyed by invaders around 4200-4100 cal. BC. Among the ruins of the last Chalcolithic horizon are found the skeletons of its last inhabitants (mainly children and elderly men and women): a testimony of a cruel massacre. Those who survived returned and resettled for a while the devastated settlement but soon even they left it and Tell Yunatsite was abandoned for more than 1000 years". [1]
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Flashlight

Archaeologists at 'Pompeii of Japan' site find a 1,400-year-old warrior still wearing his armour


io9.com
Thu, 13 Dec 2012 19:32 UTC
Japanese Pompeii warrior armour
Archaeologists working at Japan's Kanai Higashiura site have unearthed the remains of a Kofun-period warrior and infant - both of whom were killed in a volcanic eruption. The bodies were covered in a layer of volcanic ash that dates to the early 6th century. The discovery, which is a first of its kind, is particularly remarkable in that the warrior is still wearing his lamellar suit. Though 600 armoured suits have been recovered by archaeologists over the years, none were worn by its owner.

Typically, suits like this one, what are called kozaneko or keiko, are found in tombs placed next to the owner, along with various burial goods. But this one is clearly unique.

Archaeologists believe that the Kanai Higashiura site was buried after the eruption of Harunayama Futatsudake in the early part of the 500's. And in fact, nearby sites Kuroimine and Nakasuji were also hit by the disaster. As a result, the team has started to call these sites the "Pompeii of Japan."
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Info

Prehistoric farmers made cheese

Emily Sohn
Discovery News
Wed, 12 Dec 2012 12:24 UTC
Cheese
© iStockPhotoEvidence reveals people made cheese some 7,000 years ago.
About 7,000 years ago, dairy farmers in modern-day Poland used clay strainers to turn cow's milk into cheese.

The new discovery offers the earliest evidence yet of cheese-making, which began before people developed the ability to digest the lactose sugars in unprocessed milk.

Not only did cheese, which contains very little lactose, provide a valuable source of nutrition for prehistoric Europeans. It also allowed them to store milk in a form that was easy to transport and would keep for months without spoiling.

"The interesting thing is that people at that stage could not digest the lactose in the milk, so processing milk into cheese would have given them the benefit from the nutritious effects of milk without having the side-effect of being ill," said Mélanie Salque, a chemist at the University of Bristol in the United Kingdom.

"It was a very good product for them because you don't have to kill animals to get the milk out of them," she added. "Milk was a big development and cheese was as well."

Some 30 years ago, archaeologists described sieve-like pottery fragments found in a region of north-central Poland, where some of the region's earliest farmers settled. The shards dated back to between 7,200 and 6,800 years ago. And the holes in the sieves were tiny, just two or three millimeters (about a tenth of an inch) wide.
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Info

Iron Age feast found in England

Jennifer Viegas
Discovery News
Wed, 12 Dec 2012 06:17 UTC
Cauldron
© British Museum, John Winterburn, Wessex Archaeology; Stephen Crummy
Remnants of an Iron-Age feast, including cattle skulls and 13 cauldrons, have been unearthed in Chiseldon, United Kingdom, according to a report in the latest British Archaeology.

The discovery marks the largest grouping of early cauldrons ever found in Europe. One cauldron features a handle plate in the form of a cow's head; zoomorphic decoration is otherwise unknown on a British cauldron.

"Analysis of the interiors of the cauldrons has even revealed traces of animal fats, a tantalizing suggestion that these objects might have been used in cooking and serving meat-rich stews at Iron-Age feasts over 2,000 ago," Julia Farley, curator of European Iron Age collections at the British Museum, told Discovery News.

Farley's colleague Jody Joy, as well as Alexandra Baldwin and Jamie Hood from the museum, are still studying the artifacts, which were found buried in a 6.6-feet-wide pit. The cauldrons were made from iron and copper alloy in the second or first century B.C.

Given that these cauldrons survived for over 2,000 years, it should come as no surprise that they were built to last.

Each was built to last, with an iron rim and band supporting circular suspension handles. The main body of the cauldrons consisted of a central band and bowl of sheet copper alloy riveted together. "The iron rim and handles gave strength and rigidity, while the copper-alloy bowl acted as an excellent heat conductor," the researchers note.
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