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Dishing the dirt on Denisova cave: A refuge for hominins and a home to bears, wolves and hyenas

Flinders University
Phys.org
Thu, 26 Sep 2019 12:00 UTC
denisova
© Dr Mike Morley, Flinders UniversityMicroscopic studies of sediment left in the cave includes fossil droppings left by predatory animals such as hyenas and wolves.
Fossil animal droppings, charcoal from ancient fires and bone fragments litter the ground of one of the world's most important human evolution sites, new research reveals.

The latest evidence from southern Siberia shows that large cave-dwelling carnivores once dominated the landscape, competing for more than 300,000 years with ancient tribes for prime space in cave shelters.

A team of Russian and Australian scientists have used modern geoarchaeological techniques to unearth new details of day-to-day life in the famous Denisova Cave complex in Siberia's Altai Mountains.

Large carnivores such hyena, wolves and even bears and at least three early nomadic human groups (hominins) - Denisovans, Neanderthals, and early Homo sapiens - used this famous archaeological site, the researchers say in a new Scientific Reports study examining the dirt deposited in the cave complex over thousands of years.

Comment: See also: And check out SOTT radio's: MindMatters: America Before: Comets, Catastrophes, Mounds and Mythology

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The earliest evidence for spears in Europe


Tohoku University
Fri, 27 Sep 2019 18:16 UTC
A team of Japanese and Italian researchers, including from Tohoku University, have evidenced mechanically delivered projectile weapons in Europe dating to 45,000-40,000 years - more than 20,000 years than previously thought. This study, entitled "The earliest evidence for mechanically delivered projectile weapons in Europe" published in Nature Ecology & Evolution, indicated that the spearthrower and bow-and-arrow technologies allowed modern humans to hunt more successfully than Neanderthals - giving them a competitive advantage. This discovery offered important insight to understand the reasons for the replacement of Neanderthals by modern humans.
Stone Artifact
© K.SanoA backed piece with an impact fracture from Grotta del Cavallo. The impact fracture demonstrates that this small stone artifact was used as a hunting weapon.
Apparently, Neanderthals and modern humans coexisted in Europe for at least 5,000 years. However, little is known about why modern humans could increase their population size after migrating to Europe and successfully occupy new territories, while autochthonous Neanderthals went extinct ~ 40,000 years ago.

The research team included 17 scientists from Italy and Japan, coordinated by the archaeologists Katsuhiro Sano (Center for Northeast Asian Studies, Tohoku University) and Adriana Moroni (Department of Environment, Earth and Physical Sciences, University of Siena), and the paleoanthropologist Stefano Benazzi (Department of Cultural Heritage, University of Bologna).
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Butterfly

420,000 years ago archaic humans collected swan feathers in Qesem Cave, Israel

Ruth Schuster
Haaretz
Mon, 23 Sep 2019 12:00 UTC
swan wing bone
© Ruth BlascoA swan wing found at Qesem Cave has marks that can only be from defeathering: Like among the ancient Owl People of Louisiana, feather-based ritual may have been a mark of respect, says Tel Aviv University's Ran Barkai.
Over a million years ago, archaic humans ate of the rat, did not shrink at the shrew and somehow caught and consumed birds too. No sign has yet been found that they harbored ritualistic or symbolic regard for micro-mammals, but regarding the birds at least — these ancient hominins didn't just eat them.

New evidence found at Qesem Cave, a Paleolithic site occupied on and off from about 420,000 years to 200,000 years ago, indicates that the hominids living there were going to some effort to remove the feathers from their prey.

That practice adds to indications from other sites throughout the history of human evolution that our ancestors not only exploited their environment but appreciated it too, says the team.

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Question

Körtik Tepe - Older than Göbekli Tepe?

Chuck
YouTube/cfapps7865
Sun, 29 Sep 2019 21:12 UTC
Older than Gobekli Tepe, ...Located on the Tigris River, Körtik Tepe to me provides part of the answer to who built Gobekli Tepe...and were they hunter gatherers? This site was occupied 12,500 years ago to 11,700 years ago, right in the window of the Younger Dryas cataclysms 12,800 years ago and 11,600 years ago.
Kortik Tepe Excavations
© Hurriyet Daily NewsExcavations in Körtik Hill (Körtik Tepe) in the southeastern province of Diyarbakır’s Bismil district have unearthed more than 30,000 artifacts in 17 years.

Comment: Körtik Tepe, a new Pre-Pottery Neolithic A site in south-eastern Anatolia

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Flashlight

Wemyss: The Scottish caves housing mysterious carvings from the Bronze Age to the Picts

Amanda Ruggeri & Adam Proctor
BBC
Fri, 27 Sep 2019 12:00 UTC
Wemyss Caves
Wemyss Caves
The Wemyss Caves house mysterious carvings from as early as 300AD. In the face of natural and human threats, archaeologists are racing to decode them before they vanish.

Hidden beneath the medieval ruins of Macduff's Castle in Fife, Scotland, lies an even more ancient wonder: a series of 4,000- to 1,500-year-old carvings that archaeologists have yet to fully comprehend.

Inside the shadowy, red-tinged Wemyss Caves hide ancient etchings of animals, hunting scenes and what might be the first rendering of a Scottish ship. As archaeologists and historians work to unravel the meanings of these mysterious drawings, environmental and human threats are forcing them into a high-stakes race against time.

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SOTT Focus: MindMatters: Origins of the Power Elite: Inequality and "The 1%"

Elan Martin, Harrison Koehli, Corey Schink
Sott.net
Sat, 28 Sep 2019 00:00 UTC
inequality
© SOTT
According to Walter Scheidel in The Great Leveler, the only ways to equalize the distribution of wealth effectively have involved violence on a massive scale: famine, war, state collapse, revolution. But how did things get so inequal in the first place? Today on MindMatters we discuss the first chapter of Scheidel's book, which provides an overview of the history of inequality. From chimps and hunter-gatherers to the first farmers and the emergence of classes of elites, there has always been - and arguably always will be - inequality. But certain circumstances and practices have made things perhaps more extreme than they need to be. Especially since the advent of agriculture and the possibility of surplus production, elite classes of thieves and thugs (otherwise known as governments) have greatly exacerbated wealth inequality, and created new means accruing even more wealth and power to themselves. Join us today as we begin our discussion of inequality: is it good or bad, or both? And if it's inescapable, what can be done about its negative consequences?


Running Time: 01:15:12

Download: MP3 — 68.9 MB

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The temple of Queen Amastris possibly found at Black Sea coastal town


Arkeolojik Haber
Thu, 26 Sep 2019 18:40 UTC
Ancient Ruins 2
© Arkeolojik Haber
Apparently belonging to a temple of columns and marble pedestals were found at Drilling excavations in the Amasra district of Bartın. It is estimated that the temple may belong to the temple of Queen Amastris, who gave the district its name.

Archeologists have discovered ancient pillars and pillar bases believed to be from the sanctuary of Princess Amastris in Turkey's northern Bartın province.

The pillars were found during drilling launched by Amasra Museum Directorate in the Amasra district in the port town.
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Dig

Pictish human remains found in Highlands may be of high status woman

Alison Campsie
The Scotsman
Tue, 24 Sep 2019 16:54 UTC
pictish
© James McComas/TarradaleIt is believed the 1,400-year-old remains could be that of a woman.
A Pictish skeleton thought to be around 1,400-years-old has been found in the Highlands with the archaeologist who found the human remains speaking of his "eureka moment".

The bones were found at the site of what is believed to be a Pictish-era cemetery near Muir of Ord on the Black Isle.

Archaeologists did not expect to find any human remains given the acidic properties of the soil at the site.

But Steven Birch, who led the excavation on behalf of the North of Scotland Archaeological Society (NOSAS) made the discovery on the final day of the dig.

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Info

Mysterious megastructures unearthed in Ukraine

Stephanie Pappas
Live Science
Wed, 25 Sep 2019 18:56 UTC
Magnetic Anomaly
© Robert Hofmann, et al/CC by 4.0These magnetic anomalies in the soil at a site called Maidanetske clued the researchers into the existence of the megastructure that they eventually decided to excavate.
The excavation of a Stone Age community center in Ukraine is helping explain why large groups of tens of thousands of people flourished and then fell more than 5,000 years ago.

The "megastructure" excavated in Ukraine was large compared with the houses around it, though not particularly huge by modern standards. At 2,045 square feet (190 square meters), the structure was the size of a modest American home. However, some Eastern European megastructures were up to 18,000 square feet (1,680 square m) in size. Archaeologists have puzzled over these buildings, many of which have been discovered through methods that use magnetic anomalies in the soil to detect ancient structures. Now, the actual excavation of this one megastructure at a site called Maidanetske reveals that these buildings were used for everyday activities, like food preparation, storage and meals.

"It is similar to activities performed in normal houses," said Robert Hofmann, an archaeologist at Christian-Albrechts University in Kiel, Germany, who led the new research. "Somehow the intensity of these activities between normal houses and these megastructures is completely different."
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Sherlock

Time to axe the Anglo-Saxons? Rethinking the 'migration period'

Chris Catling
Archaeology.co.uk
Wed, 25 Sep 2019 20:23 UTC
anglo saxon pendant
© Steve SherlockThis circular pendant and gold and glass beads come from Grave 70 at Street House – a 7th-century cemetery near Loftus (see CA 281).
Did 'the Anglo-Saxon migrations' take place, and were Romano-British leaders replaced by those of Germanic descent? Susan Oosthuizen's new book, The Emergence of the English, is a call to rethink our interpretations of the 5th and 6th centuries AD, reflecting on whether many of the assumptions we make about the period are actually supported by evidence. Interpretations that cannot be upheld should be discarded, she says, and all viable alternative interpretations should be explored for the strongest arguments to be identified. Chris Catling reports.
In the early 1970s, cherished ideas about the character of Roman Britain were systematically challenged by a generation of archaeologists who rejected the simple story they had inherited of armed conquest, rule from Rome, and the conversion of primitive Celts - dressed in nothing but woad and a torque - into Latin-speaking, bath-addicted, villa-dwelling Roman citizens who dined off Samian platters, drank watered-down wine, and ate food flavoured with fish sauce. Instead, they insisted that Romanisation began long before the Claudian invasion of AD 43, that it had many regional variations, and that it took many different forms over the 350-year period of Roman occupation. But they also argued that much of Britain lay outside the main sphere of Roman influence, and that life for many people in Roman Britain changed little from what they had known before - and, yes, they continued to drink beer.

Comment: Laura Knight-Jadczyk in Meteorites, Asteroids, and Comets: Damages, Disasters, Injuries, Deaths, and Very Close Calls writes:
Until that point in time, the Britons had held control of post-Roman Britain, keeping the Anglo-Saxons isolated and suppressed. After the Romans were gone, the Britons maintained the status quo, living in towns, with elected officials, and carrying on trade with the empire. After AD 536, the year reported as the "death of Arthur", the Britons, the ancient Cymric empire that at one time had stretched from Cornwall in the south to Strathclyde in the north, all but disappeared, and were replaced by Anglo-Saxons. There is much debate among scholars as to whether the Anglo-Saxons killed all of the Britons, or assimilated them. Here we must consider that they were victims of possibly many overhead cometary explosions which wiped out most of the population of Europe, plunging it into the Dark Ages which were, apparently, really DARK, atmospherically speaking.
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