Lost Worlds of Archaeology

Three new papers published in Science, a multi-year research collaboration by the David Reich Institute, Max Planck and several other universities, have helped to bring the murky forces of prehistoric migration into much finer focus. The first focuses on the origins of the Proto-Indo-European and Proto-Indo-Anatolian languages through new genetic data, and the last focuses on the ethnic diversity of cities around the Roman empire and in early medieval Europe, which might be the subject of a future blog post or two. The second, and arguably the most revealing, is a study on the origins of the first farmers: the Pre-Pottery Anatolian Neolithic. It's traditionally been assumed that Levantine hunter-cultivators, hailing from the Natufian culture, moved to Anatolia to build the first Neolithic societies. Gobekli Tepe, Karahan Tepe and other monumental sites have been seen as products of this transition, a 'last hurrah' of the hunters as lifestyles became more sedentary. However,

This week, archaeologists from the University of Huelva, Seville and others discovered an absolutely monumental (pun intended) megalithic site in southwestern Spain in the Lower Guadiana basin. The cluster of sites - collectively called La Torre-La Janera - is incredibly unique in that it contains not just dolmens, not just standing stone alignments, not just stone cists, but all three. In total, more than 500 megaliths, all on what was private land, have been discovered, most only recently revealed due to extremely arid conditions in that part of Spain. It is probably not an understatement to say that even before excavation - which is due to run until 2026 - La Torre could fundamentally reshape our understanding of the megalithic phenomenon in western Europe. A different cromlech circle at  Cáceres, of a similar age and recently exposed due to a historic drought. The well-preserved megalithic complex, containing alignments, cromleches and dolmens, is not just important for its charact

In either the winter of 1041 or the spring of 1042, a Viking chieftain perished in the deserts of Khwarezmia, thousands of miles from his home port of Old Uppsala, Sweden. His name may or may not have been Ingvar, the Far-Traveller, who is last recorded in sagas, local chronicles, and in surviving runic inscriptions as battling Saracens in the territory of modern Georgia. While his feats are comparatively well known in contrast to earlier Viking journeys, it is worth a look at his career to estimate how far Viking and pre-Viking raiders could have travelled.  As told in  Yngvars saga víðförla, Ingvar was the Norse trader and raider Eymundr, whose maternal great-uncle was the legendary king Erik the Victorious, although runestones raise the possibility that he was instead the son of he Christian king of Sweden, Anund Jacob. Whatever the case, the young Ingvar (or Yngvarr) rose through the ranks as a renowned warrior, and was appointed the commander of a leidang, or military company, by

The origins of anatomically modern  Homo Sapiens have always been a mystery, especially as fossils discovered in the past are dated further and further back.  The current consensus is that our species emerged around 250,000 years ago, coexisting with slightly more 'archaic' human groups such as Homo Rhodesiensis in southern Africa and Homo Sapiens Idaltu in Ethiopia. However, the origins of our evolutionary common ancestor with the Neanderthals, dubbed the Last Common Ancestor or LCA (not to be confused with the last common ancestor of chimps and hominids), are starting to be revealed, an ancestral species that would not look out of place today as toddlers.  Recent research and new finds have set this origin between 1.2 million and 800,000 years ago, with a subsequent branching of the 'Neandersovans' into western and eastern halves, the Neanderthals and the Denisovans, dated genetically to 744,000 years ago.  Now, in a open access paper released this week, two palaeoant

Last week, a particularly spectacular discovery was published. Archaeologists working in the arid sticks of New Mexico had explored what was thought to be a Clovis-period mammoth-butchering site, only to reveal something else: that the lowest layers of mammoth bones, bearing traces of butchery marks and other modification, dated to circa 37,000 BP. To put this in context, the other oldest confirmed site in the Americas is only 22,000 years old, also in New Mexico, in the form of ghost footprints. Although it is not clear-cut evidence for direct human exploitation - the bones may have been scavenged well after the mammoths met their end - the presence of bone micro-flakes, localised burnt sediments and percussion-marked lithics all but definitely shows that people were around in New Mexico at the time. Given the sun-drenched state is thousands of miles from the coast, this raises the question: when and where did this mysterious group first originate?  Ancient and modern genomes from Aus

People have fished for thousands and thousands of years: there is abundant evidence for that. The Mesolithic, for instance, is defined entirely in some regions by towering shell middens, recording generations of marine exploitation. Harpoon technology, the primary method of catching fish (other than using your bare hands), have been around for at least 90,000 years, the earliest known found at Semliki in the DRC, produced by the distant ancestors of the Efé pygmies. The age of deep-water fishing, on the other hand - the act of setting offshore for deeper waters, catching larger prey and marine mammals such as whales, sharks and dolphins - is more controversial, because the technology required for it would have direct implications regarding the complexity of their culture and society.  How can archaeologists tell? The easiest piece of the puzzle to find are the remains of deep-water marine species within shell middens, species which are not known today to venture near the shore. More en