schopenhauerjr
12-24-2007, 04:03 PM
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Solar Observatory at Chankillo, Peru Volume 61 Number 1, January/February 2008
by Roger Atwood
Travelers have noticed the 13 stone towers rising over Peru's coastal desert since at least the nineteenth century. But researchers only last year discovered the structures' purpose: they make up a sophisticated solar observatory, one of the earliest known in the Americas.
Iván Ghezzi of Peru's National Institute of Culture and Clive Ruggles of the University of Leicester showed that the arc of the 13 Towers of Chankillo, built by a still unnamed culture, corresponds almost exactly to the rising and setting sun's range of movement over a year. On the December 15 solstice, for example, the sun would have risen directly over the southernmost tower, when viewed from the west. Wooden lintels embedded in the towers date to about 300 B.C.
Tracking the sun's progress would have helped Chankillo's builders time the planting of their crops. But the towers were probably also meant to express rulers' mystical kinship with the sun, and their ability to influence its movement. "If you were just measuring seasons, there would be no need to make such great structures," says Ghezzi. "The idea was to transmit a political and ideological message about a ruler's close relationship with the sun." An enormous, circular "fortress" near the towers may have played a role in the display.
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Nebo-Sarsekim Cuneiform Tablet
Last June, Austrian Assyriologist Michael Jursa was doing what he has done since 1991, poring over the more than 100,000 undeciphered cuneiform tablets in the British Museum. But while analyzing records from the Babylonian city of Sippar, he made a startling discovery with Biblical implications. It came in the unlikely form of a tablet noting a one-and-a-half pound gold donation to a temple made by an official, or "chief eunuch," Nebo-Sarsekim.
"At first I was just pleased to have found a reference to the title 'chief eunuch,' as these officials are mentioned very rarely in the sources," says Jursa. "Then it suddenly came to me that this text was very close chronologically to an episode narrated in Jeremiah 39 in which Nebo-Sarsekim is mentioned, and that I might actually have found the very man. So then I got quite excited and instantly went and checked (and double-checked) the exact spelling of the name in the Hebrew Bible and saw that it matched what I had found in the Babylonian text!"
The tablet is dated 595 B.C., the ninth year of Nebuchadnezzar II's reign. The Book of Jeremiah relates that after Nebuchadnezzar took Jerusalem in 587 B.C., he committed the prophet Jeremiah to Nebo-Sarsekim's care.
"It is so incredibly rare to find people appearing in the Bible, who are not kings, mentioned elsewhere," says Jursa. "Something like this tablet, where we see a person mentioned in the Bible making an everyday payment to the temple in Babylon and quoting the exact date, is quite extraordinary."
New Dates for Clovis Sites
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New radiocarbon dates kept the controversy over the peopling of the Americas simmering in 2007. An analysis of dates for the best-documented Clovis sites suggests the culture arose later and was shorter-lived than once thought, a finding that some say deals a blow to the "Clovis first" theories that maintain the big-game-hunting people were the first immigrants to the New World. Michael Waters, director of the Center for the Study of the First Americans, and Thomas Stafford of Stafford Research Laboratories in Colorado, used modern radiocarbon methods to re-date more than 20 previously known Clovis sites which had been dated with older, less precise techniques. All of the sites now seem to fall between 13,050 to 12,800 years ago. Most archaeologists still believe the Clovis people inhabited North America for at least 500 years, starting about 13,300 years ago.
Waters and Stafford contend this new 250-year window for Clovis in America is too brief for any founding population of hunter-gatherers to have dispersed across the Americas. Instead, they argue, such tightly spaced dates reflect the spread of Clovis technology and its signature fluted points through a preexisting population. But in a letter to Science, more than a dozen prominent archaeologists, including some who are open to the notion of a pre-Clovis culture in the Americas, insist there is no basis for Waters and Stafford's theory that technology may have spread more swiftly across the continent than humans themselves. What's really needed, they say, is more rigorous dating of all Paleolithic sites in the Americas.
"We'll be happy to date any Clovis site anyone wants," says Waters. "But the idea that Clovis was first just doesn't make any sense. Unless they had a time machine, there isn't any way for them to have spread across two continents that fast."
Early Squash Seeds, Peru
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New research favors the idea that agriculture began in the New World shortly after it first appeared in the Old World. Tom Dillehay of Vanderbilt University has the squash seeds to prove it.)
Found in buried house floors in the northern Andean Ñanchoc Valley, the seeds were discovered near other floral remains, including peanut shells, quinoa grains, and cotton bolls, as well as stone hoes, grinding stones, plots for planting, and small-scale canals for irrigation. With accelerated mass spectrometry, Dillehay's team dated the remains to between 6,000 and 10,000 years ago, with the 10,000-year-old cultivated squash seeds being the oldest. Similarly old evidence of other species of squash has also been found in Mexico and Ecuador. )
Across the world, in the Fertile Crescent, the domestication of rye, wheat, and barley between 12,000 and 10,000 years ago helped mark the transition from nomadic lifestyles to sedentary agricultural communities that would lead to more complex societies. Plant cultivation appears to have played a similarly central role in the tropical dry forest of the Ñanchoc Valley. Over several thousand years, the people settled down, planted more, managed their water supply, and built ritual mounds--steps toward the more advanced Andean cultures to come. According to Dillehay, "Not only do people domesticate plants, but the plants in some ways domesticate people."
Ancient Chimpanzee Tool Use
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Archaeologists led by Julio Mercader of the University of Calgary have uncovered the first known ancient chimpanzee archaeological site, a grouping of stone hammers that were used by apes 4,300 years ago to smash open nuts. By analyzing pollen grains embedded in the stones, the team was able to identify five species of nuts the tools were used to open, four of which are not eaten by humans. The discovery shows that stone tool use is not a behavior that chimpanzees learned recently by watching the farmers who live in the area, as some skeptics believe. Mercader thinks that humans and chimpanzees may have inherited stone tool use from an ancestral species of ape that lived as long as 14 million years ago.
Although using a big rock to smash open a nut may seem like a simple task, Mercader sees the stones as clues to much more complex behavior. "There is clear evidence that chimpanzees understand what raw materials they need," he says, pointing out that the apes prefer specific, durable types of stone, such as quartzite or granite. Knowing where to find the stones also requires planning and a good memory in a thick jungle where visibility is only about 40 feet.
The number of behaviors that are uniquely human has been steadily dwindling as scientists learn more about our primate cousins, but producing cutting tools still seems to be beyond the abilities of chimpanzees living in the wild.
"If you go to a nut-cracking site today, you would find there are flakes that come off of the hammers," Mercader says. "What we haven't seen is a chimp picking up any of those by-products and using them.
Urbanization at Tell Brak, Syria
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Archaeologists have long believed that the world's oldest cities lay along the fertile riverbanks of southern Mesopotamia, in what is now Iraq. There, in a land of plenty, went the idea, powerful kings began coercing their subjects to live together some 6,000 years ago. Their great invention--the city--later spread throughout the Near East. But last August, Harvard University archaeologist Jason Ur and two British colleagues turned that idea on its head. Their intensive field survey and surface collection of potsherds at the site of Tell Brak in northern Syria revealed that an ancient city rose there at exactly the same time as urban centers first sprouted up in southern Mesopotamia, but followed a very different model of development. "Urbanism," says Ur, "is not one brilliant idea that occurred one place and then diffused."
Tell Brak first came to scientific attention in the 1930s when British archaeologist Max Mallowan and his wife Agatha Christie started excavations there. But recently, a team led by Cambridge University archaeologist Joan Oates has unearthed new clues to the city's early years. By 3900 B.C., the ancient metropolis sprawled across some 130 acres and boasted a flourishing bureaucracy and skilled artisans turning out fine marble chalices and other luxury goods for the ruling class.
Intriguingly, Tell Brak seems to have grown from the outside in. In the south, cities began as a central settlement--under a single authority--that grew outward. But Ur's field survey shows that Tell Brak started as a central community ringed by smaller satellite settlements that expanded inward. "There isn't a very tight control over these surrounding villages, at least at this beginning period," says Ur. "So the assumption that we're making is that people were coming in under their own volition."
Lismullin Henge, Tara, Ireland
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Early last year, archaeologists working on the route of a controversial highway near the village of Lismullin, Ireland, stumbled across a vast Iron Age ceremonial enclosure, or henge, surrounded by two concentric walls. The 2,000-year-old site is just over a mile from the Hill of Tara, traditional seat of the ancient Irish kings and site of St. Patrick's conversion of the Irish to Christianity in the fifth century A.D. The discovery of the massive henge, measuring more than 260 feet in diameter, confirms the long-held belief that the area around the hill contains a rich complex of monuments.
The extraordinary amount of archaeological remains on the Hill of Tara--burial mounds, religious enclosures, stone structures, and rock art dating from the third millennium b.c. to the twelfth century A.D.--makes it Ireland's most spiritually and archaeologically significant site. Construction of the new M3 highway, meant to ease traffic congestion around Dublin, threatens not only the Hill of Tara's timeless quality, but also newly discovered archaeological sites in the surrounding valley.
Lismullin, seen at right in an aerial shot taken during excavations, and other sites that stand in the way of the new road are now approved for destruction. Although archaeologists and concerned Irish politicians are rallying support worldwide for the protection of the Hill of Tara (see www.savetara.com to learn more about the effort), the iconic site remains in great peril. At press time, the European Commission had initiated legal action against the Irish government over the M3, charging Ireland with failing to protect its own heritage.
Polynesian Chickens in Chile
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Scholars have long assumed the Spaniards first introduced chickens to the New World along with horses, pigs, and cattle. But now radiocarbon dating and DNA analysis of a chicken bone excavated from a site in Chile suggest Polynesians in oceangoing canoes brought chickens to the west coast of South America well before Europe's "Age of Discovery."
An international team, including bioarchaeologist Alice Storey of the University of Auckland, made the startling discovery after analyzing a recently excavated chicken bone from the Chilean site of El Arenal, a settlement of the Mapuche, a people who lived on the southern fringe of the Inca empire from about A.D. 1000 to 1500.
The team found that the chicken's DNA sequence was related to that of chickens whose remains were unearthed from archaeological sites on the Polynesian islands of Tonga and American Samoa. Radiocarbon dating shows the El Arenal chicken lived sometime between a.d. 1321 and 1407, well after Polynesians first settled Easter Island and the other easternmost islands of the Pacific.
In 1532, Spanish conquistador Francisco Pizarro recorded the presence of chickens in Peru, where the Inca used them in religious ceremonies. "That suggests chickens had already been there for a while," says Storey. "It's possible there are stylized chickens in the iconography that we have not recognized because we did not know they were there. I'm fascinated to see what [archaeologists] are going to do with this information."
Homo habilis & Homo erectus
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Whether they are mother-and-daughter species or two sisters, the relationship between Homo habilis and Homo erectus is becoming strained. A pair of discoveries near Lake Ileret in Kenya call into question the idea that H. erectus, the species from which modern humans evolved, is descended from H. habilis, the earliest hominid known to use stone tools.
A team of paleoanthropologists led by Meave and Louise Leakey of the Koobi Fora Research Project uncovered the upper jawbone of a H. habilis dated to 1.44 million years ago, and the skull of a H. erectus dated to 1.55 million years ago. H. habilis was thought to have gradually evolved into H. erectus over hundreds of thousands of years, fading out of existence around 1.65 million years ago. A previously discovered H. erectus fossil dated to 1.9 million years combined with the new finds show the two species lived together in the same lake basin for close to 500,000 years.
The discovery of a Homo habilis jawbone and a Homo erectus skull that are close in age has paleontologists rethinking the idea that H. habilis evolved into H. erectus. (National Museums of Kenya/Fred Spoor)
"I think increasingly they will be recognized as sister species that lived in the same area and did different things," says Fred Spoor of University College London and a member of the team. H. erectus' smaller teeth and less powerful jaws suggest it was probably eating more meat. If the two species both evolved from a common ancestor, it changes the human race's relationship to H. habilis. "Strictly speaking, if our scenario is correct," says Spoor, "Homo habilis, as we know the species, seems to be a dead branch."
Greater Angkor, Cambodia
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The capital of a Khmer state that flourished between the ninth and fifteenth centuries, Cambodia's Angkor is one of the most intensively studied sites in the world. But it continues to inspire more questions than answers, the most fundamental being why the sophisticated Khmer Empire collapsed. In 2007, research into the mysteries of the world's largest preindustrial city reached a milestone with the completion of a 10-year mapping project, which yielded clues suggesting that the sprawling metropolis may have collapsed under self-induced environmental pressures related to overpopulation and deforestation.
"Angkor was a vast inhabited landscape...larger than anything previously known," says Damian Evans, deputy director of the Greater Angkor Project (GAP) and lead author of the group's findings. Their map covers more than 1,100 square miles, detailing thousands of features that were part of an elaborate irrigation system.
The GAP team combined previously existing ground surveys, aerial photos, and radar remote-sensing data provided by NASA's Jet Propulsion Lab to create the comprehensive map. It shows an urban center surrounded by dispersed agricultural villages, local temples, and small reservoirs. The team found evidence of silted canals and breached waterworks that suggest the people of Angkor were eventually unable to maintain the vast irrigation system because of erosion and increased flooding. The map also shows the metropolis extended miles beyond the ruins within today's Angkor Archaeological Park. "Extremely valuable archaeological material stretches far beyond the World Heritage zone," Evans says.
2007's other most important finds
Baby Mammoth, Russia
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What counts as archaeology? It's a question we're constantly asking ourselves when we decide what stories to cover. Basically, any discovery connected to the human past made by people who call themselves archaeologists is considered fair game. And when paleontologists find the remains of our hominid ancestors, we cover that too.
That rule of thumb left this year's amazing discovery of "Lyuba" out in the cold when we assembled our list. A six-month-old baby mammoth, Lyuba was found last May eroding out of a riverbank in Russia's Yamal Peninsula by Yuri Khudi, a Nenets reindeer herder. Russian paleontologist Alexei Tikhonov and French explorer Bernard Buiges (see "Mammoth Distortions") soon learned of the find, and they quickly organized a scientific study of the remarkably well-preserved specimen, bringing in mammoth expert Daniel Fisher from the University of Michigan, among others.
The most complete mammoth carcass every found, Lyuba (named after Khudi's wife) weighs about 110 pounds and is the size of a large dog. X-rays of her body revealed heartbreaking details, like the fact that she had nascent tusks no larger than a human finger. More discoveries are likely to come in 2008, when the baby mammoth travels to Japan for CT-scanning.
Strictly speaking, Lyuba is a paleontological, not archaeological, discovery. But every piece of information she can tell us about her brief life brings us closer to re-creating her world, a landscape she shared with our Paleolithic ancestors.
Alexander's Isthmus, Tyre, Lebanon
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There is no shortage of stories about Alexander the Great's military accomplishments. One of them, his 332 B.C. conquering of the seemingly impenetrable Phoenician island fortress of Tyre, was revised a bit this year. History tells us that Alexander, after laying siege to the massive fort for seven months, made his final assault by having his engineers build a half-mile causeway connecting the island to the mainland--a stunning feat.
Geoarchaeological analysis of today's isthmus at the Lebanese city of Tyre shows that Alexander the Great took advantage of a natural sandbank during his celebrated siege of the city. (Alexander: photos.com, Graphic: Courtesy Nick Marriner, CNRS)
But a study published in May posits that Alexander got assistance from a submerged sandbar, so he crossed water only a yard or two deep. Geoarchaeologist Nick Marriner, of France's National Center of Scientific Research, and his colleagues also theorize that the bridge or causeway that Alexander's army built altered coastal currents and the flow of sand, helping permanently join the island of Tyre with the mainland. It's always fascinating when archaeology and other forms of science can be applied to the historical record. In this case, geoarchaeology explains not only how Alexander made his assault, but also how he actually reshaped Lebanon's coastline.
Ötzi's Final Moments, Italy
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The 5,300-year-old mummy--dubbed "Ötzi the Iceman"--found frozen in the Alps in 1991 made headlines again in 2007. Researchers at the South Tyrol Museum of Archaeology in Bolzano, Italy, where Ötzi's remains are housed, conducted CT scans that revealed exactly how he died: an arrow to the back pierced an artery; basically, he bled to death. Although X-rays and CT scans carried out in 2001 showed that an arrow had been wedged in his shoulder, this new evidence suggests the arrow inflicted the fatal blow (after which, the poor guy fell, hit his head, and suffered a brain hemorrhage).
For more than 15 years, scientists have been reconstructing every detail of Ötzi's life, down to the contents of his last meal. One of their most interesting findings was that the Iceman sports some of the world's oldest tattoos, most of which resemble blue-black hash marks. Many tattoo artists feel they are carrying on his tradition even today, a phenomenon that may have had a role in another significant story this year.
Neolithic Mural, Syria
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In the fall of 2006, French archaeologists digging at the Neolithic site of Djade al Mugahara in northern Syria announced the discovery of a remarkable mural. Made up of red, black, and white geometric shapes painted 11,000 years ago, the small panel bore an uncanny resemblance to the early work of modernist masters Wassily Kandinsky and Paul Klee.
The discovery didn't make our list last year, but further excavation this past summer revealed that the team had only uncovered the very top of the mural in 2006. "During the 2007 campaign we excavated the complete panel, about three and a half feet by six feet," says expedition leader Eric Coqueugniot. "We also discovered a new wall with similar geometric patterns in a very good state of preservation." The paintings decorate the walls of a round communal building about 25 feet wide that probably served some ritual purpose. In the same structure Coqueugniot's team discovered anthropomorphic figurines made of gypsum and chalk.
An abstract Neolithic mural at the Syrian site of Djade al Mugahara was fully exposed in 2007 by a French team led by Eric Coqueugniot. A detail of a similar mural that the expedition discovered during last summer's field season. (E. Coqueugniot, CNRS, Dja'de Excavations, Ministere Francais des Affaires Etrangeres)
The rules guiding our selection of the top discoveries of 2007 disqualified the Djade al Mugahara mural from being included, since archaeologists announced the discovery of the masterwork in 2006. But archaeology is an incremental science, every season of excavation builds on the one before it, and the significance of a discovery made one year may only become apparent after further work. This year Coqueugniot's team not only gave us a more vivid glimpse into the ritual life of Djade al Mugahara, but a sense of just how close Neolithic aesthetic sensibilities were to those of early European modernists, the kind of eerie connection with the past that only archaeology can make.
Imperial Standards, Rome
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It isn't often that classical archaeologists make a discovery that fills a gap in our knowledge of the Greco-Roman past. But the recent find of a poplar case containing a set of the ancient Roman signa imperii (imperial standards) and the scepter of a Roman emperor did just that.
Clementina Panella, an archaeologist from Rome's Univeristy La Sapienza, discovered the ancient box and its unprecedented contents while digging in an underground chamber on the northeast slope of the Palatine hill. Until the discovery, classical archaeologists, including myself (!), were only able to read about these objects in the ancient sources and see them on coins and sculptures. But Panella's discovery allows us to actually see the precious signa that functioned like regimental colors on the battlefield and as symbols of the emperor's power and authority off it.
Until last year no imperial signa and only five fragments of military signa had ever been found. We didn't know, for example, that the shafts of the javelins were decorated, or that the globes that sometimes sat on top of the shafts were colored. The incredibly well preserved gold and green glass and blue chalcedony globes were a complete surprise. The discovery invites us to envision a Roman emperor marching on to the battlefield or parading through Rome wielding these extraordinary emblems of empire.
Building the Great Pyramid, Giza
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Of the seven wonders of the ancient world, only the Great Pyramid of Giza remains. An estimated 2 million stone blocks weighing an average of 2 1/2 tons went into its construction. When completed, the 481-foot-tall pyramid was the world's tallest structure, a record it held for more than 3,800 years. We know who built the Great Pyramid: the pharaoh Khufu, who ruled Egypt about 2547-2524 B.C. And we know who supervised its construction: Khufu's brother, Hemienu. The pharaoh's right-hand man, Hemienu was "overseer of all construction projects of the king" and his tomb is one of the largest in a cemetery adjacent to the pyramid. What we don't know is exactly how it was built, a question that has been debated for millennia.
In April this year, a radical new idea was presented by Jean-Pierre Houdin, a French architect who has devoted the last seven years of his life to making detailed computer models of the Great Pyramid. Houdin has concluded that a ramp was indeed used to raise the blocks to the top, and that the ramp still exists--inside the pyramid! (See "How to Build a Pyramid") There's some evidence to support the idea, enough to make a non-invasive study of the Great Pyramid a reasonable next step.
Paleolithic Tools, India
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South Asia isn't often part of the discussion regarding human origins, but a study published in July shows that early humans living in India were amazingly adaptive and resilient.
When Toba Volcano in Indonesia blew its top 74,000 years ago--the largest known volcanic eruption--it caused a "volcanic winter" and may have decimated human populations worldwide. So few early human foragers survived the event that it caused genetic bottleneck that researchers claim is still detectable in our DNA today. In addition to affecting climate, it blanketed the Indian subcontinent in four to six inches of ash. But new finds in south India's Jwalapuram Valley suggest that humans there endured. In deposits above and below the ash layer, archaeologists found similar sets of stone tools, suggesting that people there survived the massive catastrophe with their culture intact, despite being relatively close to the source of the devastation.
The tools do show minor changes, so the humans may have altered their behavior to cope. That these tools also closely resemble those made by modern humans in Africa implies that modern humans may have occupied South Asia thousands of years earlier than previously thought.
5,800-Year-Old Mass Grave, Syria
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Horrifying acts of violence in the Middle East dominate today's news cycles, and the two 5,800-year-old mass graves that were excavated at Tell Majnuna this year may offer unique insights into how it all began. The site lies in the suburbs of the world's most ancient cities, Nagar, also known as Tell Brak, near Syria's border with Iraq and Turkey.
A team of excavators led by Joan Oates and Augusta McMahon of Cambridge University began work at the site this year uncovering about 12 square yards of the oldest known evidence of mass violence. "It's a very slow excavation," said Oates, "you have to record the position of all the bones and there are just piles of them." The remains of more than 79 people have been unearthed so far. The graves include "armloads" of long bones and clusters of skulls, while the hands and feet are absent, showing that the corpses had been left to decay for weeks or possibly months before they were buried.
Evidence of the massacre comes in part from the people who are missing from the grave. Elderly people, infants, and, with few exceptions, women were not buried there, only men of fighting age. Other than two skulls, very few bones show evidence of fatal wounds. Oates believes the age and gender of the dead are a clear indication of a massacre. Scattered through the upper layers of the grave were fragments of pottery and cattle bones, evidence that whoever buried these people celebrated the occasion with an elaborate feast.
The massacre at Tell Majnuna may have resulted from the first invasion of the north by city-states in southern Mesopotamia. The archaeological evidence from Tell Brak and another nearby ancient center known as Tell Hamoukar shows both cities were burned. Pottery from southern Mesopotamia replaced northern style pottery 200 to 300 years after the mass burials at Tell Majnuna. Even though we know how it turns out, the story isn't complete... "Tell Majnuna is just one aspect of what is going on," Oates said, "Until we know whether the grave belongs to friend or foe, we don't know what this mass burial actually means."
Polynesian Breakthroughs
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There was no doubt about including in our 2007 Top Ten the discovery that chicken bones from ancient Polynesian sites in Tonga and Samoa and El Arenal, a Chilean site occupied between A.D. 700 and 1390, had identical DNA. The chicken was domesticated in Southeast Asia, but how it arrived in the New World before Europeans arrived was a mystery. Now it seems that Polynesian seafarers brought them, adding to the evidence for trans-Pacific contacts. The presence of South American sweet potatoes and bottle gourds on Pacific islands had already hinted at this, along with some (to my mind less convincing) evidence that complex fishhooks and sewn plank canoes used by southern California Indians had Polynesian origins.
But the chicken story was just one of several breakthroughs made--or reported--this year that attest Polynesian seafaring abilities and provide new evidence about the origins and culture of the Lapita people, the ancestors of the Polynesians who colonized the Pacific. Taken together these findings could justify calling 2007 the Year of the Lapita.
Archaeologists Kenneth Collerson and Marshall Weisler from the University of Queensland analyzed 19 stone adzes collected early last century in the Tuamotu Archipelago, more than 1,000 miles southeast of Tahiti. By comparing the chemical signatures of the stone with basalt sources throughout the Pacific, they traced the artifacts to the Marquesas, Austral and Society Islands, and Pitcairn. One adze came from Kaho'olawe, a Hawaiian island far to the northwest. It supports a Hawaiian oral tradition of voyages across the southeast Pacific, and at 2,500 miles it's the longest known non-stop sea voyage in prehistory. These results suggest that trade was widespread within eastern Polynesia, but it, like the chicken DNA study, doesn't necessarily indicate the intensity of such interactions.
Where these formidable navigators came from has been debated for years. One model is that the Lapita originated in Taiwan and traveled south and east to New Guinea, then out into the Pacific islands. An alternative is that about 3,500 years ago various aspects of the Lapita--people, language, and culture--came together in Indonesia, then spread.
In a pig DNA study, geneticist Greger Larson and his colleagues analyzed 781 modern and ancient pig specimens along possible migration routes and in the Pacific. They found no evidence along the Taiwan-Philippines route for early pigs with the same genetic signature as those that dominate in the Pacific today (instead they found only recently introduced East Asian domestic pigs). Larson says that if the Lapita spread from Taiwan, they didn't bring pigs with them. Larson's team did find another type of pig, which spread at an earlier date from a more southern route, out of Vietnam, through the Malay Peninsula into the Indonesian islands, to New Guinea, and into Polynesia. So, the pig DNA evidence suggests a more complex process for the formation of the Lapita cultural complex and Pacific colonization of than a simple "out of Taiwan" model.
One reason the Lapita have been so debated is that, although we have their artifacts, such as distinctive pottery, we haven't had the people--until now. Matthew Spriggs of the Australian National University, with the Vanuatu National Museum, has excavated a Lapita cemetery at Teouma, on the south coast of the island of Efate. It's a major piece or research, but one shortcoming of our Top Ten list is a question of dates. The cemetery was actually dug in 2004-2006, so, while preliminary results reached the public in February 2007, we didn't include it in our list this year.
What did Spriggs find? Or, just as important, what didn't he find? Try 70 burials, all of adults and none of children. Try only seven skulls. DNA analysis of the remains may give reveal the genetic background of the Lapita, and pinpoint their origins, whether only in Taiwan or a mix of populations. But biology and culture are two different things, and what we are learning about Lapita culture from this site is fascinating. Take the missing children. Spriggs says it could be that children below 16 were not considered full members of society and were buried elsewhere. The skulls? Perhaps the missing ones were removed after burial and placed in a shrine or house, practices known historically in the Pacific (the head was believed to be the seat of the soul). Of the seven skulls found, three were on one man's chest, three more were between the legs of a second man, and the seventh was in a pot. Three comes up elsewhere at the cemetery--a pile of bones atop three jaws, pots with three handles--and it could be the number had special significance to the Lapita.
No matter how you date discoveries or publication of archaeological research, we will likely look back on 2007 as a watershed year for our understanding of the Lapita and the colonization of the Pacific.
Solar Observatory at Chankillo, Peru Volume 61 Number 1, January/February 2008
by Roger Atwood
Travelers have noticed the 13 stone towers rising over Peru's coastal desert since at least the nineteenth century. But researchers only last year discovered the structures' purpose: they make up a sophisticated solar observatory, one of the earliest known in the Americas.
Iván Ghezzi of Peru's National Institute of Culture and Clive Ruggles of the University of Leicester showed that the arc of the 13 Towers of Chankillo, built by a still unnamed culture, corresponds almost exactly to the rising and setting sun's range of movement over a year. On the December 15 solstice, for example, the sun would have risen directly over the southernmost tower, when viewed from the west. Wooden lintels embedded in the towers date to about 300 B.C.
Tracking the sun's progress would have helped Chankillo's builders time the planting of their crops. But the towers were probably also meant to express rulers' mystical kinship with the sun, and their ability to influence its movement. "If you were just measuring seasons, there would be no need to make such great structures," says Ghezzi. "The idea was to transmit a political and ideological message about a ruler's close relationship with the sun." An enormous, circular "fortress" near the towers may have played a role in the display.
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Nebo-Sarsekim Cuneiform Tablet
Last June, Austrian Assyriologist Michael Jursa was doing what he has done since 1991, poring over the more than 100,000 undeciphered cuneiform tablets in the British Museum. But while analyzing records from the Babylonian city of Sippar, he made a startling discovery with Biblical implications. It came in the unlikely form of a tablet noting a one-and-a-half pound gold donation to a temple made by an official, or "chief eunuch," Nebo-Sarsekim.
"At first I was just pleased to have found a reference to the title 'chief eunuch,' as these officials are mentioned very rarely in the sources," says Jursa. "Then it suddenly came to me that this text was very close chronologically to an episode narrated in Jeremiah 39 in which Nebo-Sarsekim is mentioned, and that I might actually have found the very man. So then I got quite excited and instantly went and checked (and double-checked) the exact spelling of the name in the Hebrew Bible and saw that it matched what I had found in the Babylonian text!"
The tablet is dated 595 B.C., the ninth year of Nebuchadnezzar II's reign. The Book of Jeremiah relates that after Nebuchadnezzar took Jerusalem in 587 B.C., he committed the prophet Jeremiah to Nebo-Sarsekim's care.
"It is so incredibly rare to find people appearing in the Bible, who are not kings, mentioned elsewhere," says Jursa. "Something like this tablet, where we see a person mentioned in the Bible making an everyday payment to the temple in Babylon and quoting the exact date, is quite extraordinary."
New Dates for Clovis Sites
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New radiocarbon dates kept the controversy over the peopling of the Americas simmering in 2007. An analysis of dates for the best-documented Clovis sites suggests the culture arose later and was shorter-lived than once thought, a finding that some say deals a blow to the "Clovis first" theories that maintain the big-game-hunting people were the first immigrants to the New World. Michael Waters, director of the Center for the Study of the First Americans, and Thomas Stafford of Stafford Research Laboratories in Colorado, used modern radiocarbon methods to re-date more than 20 previously known Clovis sites which had been dated with older, less precise techniques. All of the sites now seem to fall between 13,050 to 12,800 years ago. Most archaeologists still believe the Clovis people inhabited North America for at least 500 years, starting about 13,300 years ago.
Waters and Stafford contend this new 250-year window for Clovis in America is too brief for any founding population of hunter-gatherers to have dispersed across the Americas. Instead, they argue, such tightly spaced dates reflect the spread of Clovis technology and its signature fluted points through a preexisting population. But in a letter to Science, more than a dozen prominent archaeologists, including some who are open to the notion of a pre-Clovis culture in the Americas, insist there is no basis for Waters and Stafford's theory that technology may have spread more swiftly across the continent than humans themselves. What's really needed, they say, is more rigorous dating of all Paleolithic sites in the Americas.
"We'll be happy to date any Clovis site anyone wants," says Waters. "But the idea that Clovis was first just doesn't make any sense. Unless they had a time machine, there isn't any way for them to have spread across two continents that fast."
Early Squash Seeds, Peru
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New research favors the idea that agriculture began in the New World shortly after it first appeared in the Old World. Tom Dillehay of Vanderbilt University has the squash seeds to prove it.)
Found in buried house floors in the northern Andean Ñanchoc Valley, the seeds were discovered near other floral remains, including peanut shells, quinoa grains, and cotton bolls, as well as stone hoes, grinding stones, plots for planting, and small-scale canals for irrigation. With accelerated mass spectrometry, Dillehay's team dated the remains to between 6,000 and 10,000 years ago, with the 10,000-year-old cultivated squash seeds being the oldest. Similarly old evidence of other species of squash has also been found in Mexico and Ecuador. )
Across the world, in the Fertile Crescent, the domestication of rye, wheat, and barley between 12,000 and 10,000 years ago helped mark the transition from nomadic lifestyles to sedentary agricultural communities that would lead to more complex societies. Plant cultivation appears to have played a similarly central role in the tropical dry forest of the Ñanchoc Valley. Over several thousand years, the people settled down, planted more, managed their water supply, and built ritual mounds--steps toward the more advanced Andean cultures to come. According to Dillehay, "Not only do people domesticate plants, but the plants in some ways domesticate people."
Ancient Chimpanzee Tool Use
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Archaeologists led by Julio Mercader of the University of Calgary have uncovered the first known ancient chimpanzee archaeological site, a grouping of stone hammers that were used by apes 4,300 years ago to smash open nuts. By analyzing pollen grains embedded in the stones, the team was able to identify five species of nuts the tools were used to open, four of which are not eaten by humans. The discovery shows that stone tool use is not a behavior that chimpanzees learned recently by watching the farmers who live in the area, as some skeptics believe. Mercader thinks that humans and chimpanzees may have inherited stone tool use from an ancestral species of ape that lived as long as 14 million years ago.
Although using a big rock to smash open a nut may seem like a simple task, Mercader sees the stones as clues to much more complex behavior. "There is clear evidence that chimpanzees understand what raw materials they need," he says, pointing out that the apes prefer specific, durable types of stone, such as quartzite or granite. Knowing where to find the stones also requires planning and a good memory in a thick jungle where visibility is only about 40 feet.
The number of behaviors that are uniquely human has been steadily dwindling as scientists learn more about our primate cousins, but producing cutting tools still seems to be beyond the abilities of chimpanzees living in the wild.
"If you go to a nut-cracking site today, you would find there are flakes that come off of the hammers," Mercader says. "What we haven't seen is a chimp picking up any of those by-products and using them.
Urbanization at Tell Brak, Syria
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Archaeologists have long believed that the world's oldest cities lay along the fertile riverbanks of southern Mesopotamia, in what is now Iraq. There, in a land of plenty, went the idea, powerful kings began coercing their subjects to live together some 6,000 years ago. Their great invention--the city--later spread throughout the Near East. But last August, Harvard University archaeologist Jason Ur and two British colleagues turned that idea on its head. Their intensive field survey and surface collection of potsherds at the site of Tell Brak in northern Syria revealed that an ancient city rose there at exactly the same time as urban centers first sprouted up in southern Mesopotamia, but followed a very different model of development. "Urbanism," says Ur, "is not one brilliant idea that occurred one place and then diffused."
Tell Brak first came to scientific attention in the 1930s when British archaeologist Max Mallowan and his wife Agatha Christie started excavations there. But recently, a team led by Cambridge University archaeologist Joan Oates has unearthed new clues to the city's early years. By 3900 B.C., the ancient metropolis sprawled across some 130 acres and boasted a flourishing bureaucracy and skilled artisans turning out fine marble chalices and other luxury goods for the ruling class.
Intriguingly, Tell Brak seems to have grown from the outside in. In the south, cities began as a central settlement--under a single authority--that grew outward. But Ur's field survey shows that Tell Brak started as a central community ringed by smaller satellite settlements that expanded inward. "There isn't a very tight control over these surrounding villages, at least at this beginning period," says Ur. "So the assumption that we're making is that people were coming in under their own volition."
Lismullin Henge, Tara, Ireland
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Early last year, archaeologists working on the route of a controversial highway near the village of Lismullin, Ireland, stumbled across a vast Iron Age ceremonial enclosure, or henge, surrounded by two concentric walls. The 2,000-year-old site is just over a mile from the Hill of Tara, traditional seat of the ancient Irish kings and site of St. Patrick's conversion of the Irish to Christianity in the fifth century A.D. The discovery of the massive henge, measuring more than 260 feet in diameter, confirms the long-held belief that the area around the hill contains a rich complex of monuments.
The extraordinary amount of archaeological remains on the Hill of Tara--burial mounds, religious enclosures, stone structures, and rock art dating from the third millennium b.c. to the twelfth century A.D.--makes it Ireland's most spiritually and archaeologically significant site. Construction of the new M3 highway, meant to ease traffic congestion around Dublin, threatens not only the Hill of Tara's timeless quality, but also newly discovered archaeological sites in the surrounding valley.
Lismullin, seen at right in an aerial shot taken during excavations, and other sites that stand in the way of the new road are now approved for destruction. Although archaeologists and concerned Irish politicians are rallying support worldwide for the protection of the Hill of Tara (see www.savetara.com to learn more about the effort), the iconic site remains in great peril. At press time, the European Commission had initiated legal action against the Irish government over the M3, charging Ireland with failing to protect its own heritage.
Polynesian Chickens in Chile
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Scholars have long assumed the Spaniards first introduced chickens to the New World along with horses, pigs, and cattle. But now radiocarbon dating and DNA analysis of a chicken bone excavated from a site in Chile suggest Polynesians in oceangoing canoes brought chickens to the west coast of South America well before Europe's "Age of Discovery."
An international team, including bioarchaeologist Alice Storey of the University of Auckland, made the startling discovery after analyzing a recently excavated chicken bone from the Chilean site of El Arenal, a settlement of the Mapuche, a people who lived on the southern fringe of the Inca empire from about A.D. 1000 to 1500.
The team found that the chicken's DNA sequence was related to that of chickens whose remains were unearthed from archaeological sites on the Polynesian islands of Tonga and American Samoa. Radiocarbon dating shows the El Arenal chicken lived sometime between a.d. 1321 and 1407, well after Polynesians first settled Easter Island and the other easternmost islands of the Pacific.
In 1532, Spanish conquistador Francisco Pizarro recorded the presence of chickens in Peru, where the Inca used them in religious ceremonies. "That suggests chickens had already been there for a while," says Storey. "It's possible there are stylized chickens in the iconography that we have not recognized because we did not know they were there. I'm fascinated to see what [archaeologists] are going to do with this information."
Homo habilis & Homo erectus
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Whether they are mother-and-daughter species or two sisters, the relationship between Homo habilis and Homo erectus is becoming strained. A pair of discoveries near Lake Ileret in Kenya call into question the idea that H. erectus, the species from which modern humans evolved, is descended from H. habilis, the earliest hominid known to use stone tools.
A team of paleoanthropologists led by Meave and Louise Leakey of the Koobi Fora Research Project uncovered the upper jawbone of a H. habilis dated to 1.44 million years ago, and the skull of a H. erectus dated to 1.55 million years ago. H. habilis was thought to have gradually evolved into H. erectus over hundreds of thousands of years, fading out of existence around 1.65 million years ago. A previously discovered H. erectus fossil dated to 1.9 million years combined with the new finds show the two species lived together in the same lake basin for close to 500,000 years.
The discovery of a Homo habilis jawbone and a Homo erectus skull that are close in age has paleontologists rethinking the idea that H. habilis evolved into H. erectus. (National Museums of Kenya/Fred Spoor)
"I think increasingly they will be recognized as sister species that lived in the same area and did different things," says Fred Spoor of University College London and a member of the team. H. erectus' smaller teeth and less powerful jaws suggest it was probably eating more meat. If the two species both evolved from a common ancestor, it changes the human race's relationship to H. habilis. "Strictly speaking, if our scenario is correct," says Spoor, "Homo habilis, as we know the species, seems to be a dead branch."
Greater Angkor, Cambodia
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The capital of a Khmer state that flourished between the ninth and fifteenth centuries, Cambodia's Angkor is one of the most intensively studied sites in the world. But it continues to inspire more questions than answers, the most fundamental being why the sophisticated Khmer Empire collapsed. In 2007, research into the mysteries of the world's largest preindustrial city reached a milestone with the completion of a 10-year mapping project, which yielded clues suggesting that the sprawling metropolis may have collapsed under self-induced environmental pressures related to overpopulation and deforestation.
"Angkor was a vast inhabited landscape...larger than anything previously known," says Damian Evans, deputy director of the Greater Angkor Project (GAP) and lead author of the group's findings. Their map covers more than 1,100 square miles, detailing thousands of features that were part of an elaborate irrigation system.
The GAP team combined previously existing ground surveys, aerial photos, and radar remote-sensing data provided by NASA's Jet Propulsion Lab to create the comprehensive map. It shows an urban center surrounded by dispersed agricultural villages, local temples, and small reservoirs. The team found evidence of silted canals and breached waterworks that suggest the people of Angkor were eventually unable to maintain the vast irrigation system because of erosion and increased flooding. The map also shows the metropolis extended miles beyond the ruins within today's Angkor Archaeological Park. "Extremely valuable archaeological material stretches far beyond the World Heritage zone," Evans says.
2007's other most important finds
Baby Mammoth, Russia
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What counts as archaeology? It's a question we're constantly asking ourselves when we decide what stories to cover. Basically, any discovery connected to the human past made by people who call themselves archaeologists is considered fair game. And when paleontologists find the remains of our hominid ancestors, we cover that too.
That rule of thumb left this year's amazing discovery of "Lyuba" out in the cold when we assembled our list. A six-month-old baby mammoth, Lyuba was found last May eroding out of a riverbank in Russia's Yamal Peninsula by Yuri Khudi, a Nenets reindeer herder. Russian paleontologist Alexei Tikhonov and French explorer Bernard Buiges (see "Mammoth Distortions") soon learned of the find, and they quickly organized a scientific study of the remarkably well-preserved specimen, bringing in mammoth expert Daniel Fisher from the University of Michigan, among others.
The most complete mammoth carcass every found, Lyuba (named after Khudi's wife) weighs about 110 pounds and is the size of a large dog. X-rays of her body revealed heartbreaking details, like the fact that she had nascent tusks no larger than a human finger. More discoveries are likely to come in 2008, when the baby mammoth travels to Japan for CT-scanning.
Strictly speaking, Lyuba is a paleontological, not archaeological, discovery. But every piece of information she can tell us about her brief life brings us closer to re-creating her world, a landscape she shared with our Paleolithic ancestors.
Alexander's Isthmus, Tyre, Lebanon
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There is no shortage of stories about Alexander the Great's military accomplishments. One of them, his 332 B.C. conquering of the seemingly impenetrable Phoenician island fortress of Tyre, was revised a bit this year. History tells us that Alexander, after laying siege to the massive fort for seven months, made his final assault by having his engineers build a half-mile causeway connecting the island to the mainland--a stunning feat.
Geoarchaeological analysis of today's isthmus at the Lebanese city of Tyre shows that Alexander the Great took advantage of a natural sandbank during his celebrated siege of the city. (Alexander: photos.com, Graphic: Courtesy Nick Marriner, CNRS)
But a study published in May posits that Alexander got assistance from a submerged sandbar, so he crossed water only a yard or two deep. Geoarchaeologist Nick Marriner, of France's National Center of Scientific Research, and his colleagues also theorize that the bridge or causeway that Alexander's army built altered coastal currents and the flow of sand, helping permanently join the island of Tyre with the mainland. It's always fascinating when archaeology and other forms of science can be applied to the historical record. In this case, geoarchaeology explains not only how Alexander made his assault, but also how he actually reshaped Lebanon's coastline.
Ötzi's Final Moments, Italy
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The 5,300-year-old mummy--dubbed "Ötzi the Iceman"--found frozen in the Alps in 1991 made headlines again in 2007. Researchers at the South Tyrol Museum of Archaeology in Bolzano, Italy, where Ötzi's remains are housed, conducted CT scans that revealed exactly how he died: an arrow to the back pierced an artery; basically, he bled to death. Although X-rays and CT scans carried out in 2001 showed that an arrow had been wedged in his shoulder, this new evidence suggests the arrow inflicted the fatal blow (after which, the poor guy fell, hit his head, and suffered a brain hemorrhage).
For more than 15 years, scientists have been reconstructing every detail of Ötzi's life, down to the contents of his last meal. One of their most interesting findings was that the Iceman sports some of the world's oldest tattoos, most of which resemble blue-black hash marks. Many tattoo artists feel they are carrying on his tradition even today, a phenomenon that may have had a role in another significant story this year.
Neolithic Mural, Syria
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In the fall of 2006, French archaeologists digging at the Neolithic site of Djade al Mugahara in northern Syria announced the discovery of a remarkable mural. Made up of red, black, and white geometric shapes painted 11,000 years ago, the small panel bore an uncanny resemblance to the early work of modernist masters Wassily Kandinsky and Paul Klee.
The discovery didn't make our list last year, but further excavation this past summer revealed that the team had only uncovered the very top of the mural in 2006. "During the 2007 campaign we excavated the complete panel, about three and a half feet by six feet," says expedition leader Eric Coqueugniot. "We also discovered a new wall with similar geometric patterns in a very good state of preservation." The paintings decorate the walls of a round communal building about 25 feet wide that probably served some ritual purpose. In the same structure Coqueugniot's team discovered anthropomorphic figurines made of gypsum and chalk.
An abstract Neolithic mural at the Syrian site of Djade al Mugahara was fully exposed in 2007 by a French team led by Eric Coqueugniot. A detail of a similar mural that the expedition discovered during last summer's field season. (E. Coqueugniot, CNRS, Dja'de Excavations, Ministere Francais des Affaires Etrangeres)
The rules guiding our selection of the top discoveries of 2007 disqualified the Djade al Mugahara mural from being included, since archaeologists announced the discovery of the masterwork in 2006. But archaeology is an incremental science, every season of excavation builds on the one before it, and the significance of a discovery made one year may only become apparent after further work. This year Coqueugniot's team not only gave us a more vivid glimpse into the ritual life of Djade al Mugahara, but a sense of just how close Neolithic aesthetic sensibilities were to those of early European modernists, the kind of eerie connection with the past that only archaeology can make.
Imperial Standards, Rome
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It isn't often that classical archaeologists make a discovery that fills a gap in our knowledge of the Greco-Roman past. But the recent find of a poplar case containing a set of the ancient Roman signa imperii (imperial standards) and the scepter of a Roman emperor did just that.
Clementina Panella, an archaeologist from Rome's Univeristy La Sapienza, discovered the ancient box and its unprecedented contents while digging in an underground chamber on the northeast slope of the Palatine hill. Until the discovery, classical archaeologists, including myself (!), were only able to read about these objects in the ancient sources and see them on coins and sculptures. But Panella's discovery allows us to actually see the precious signa that functioned like regimental colors on the battlefield and as symbols of the emperor's power and authority off it.
Until last year no imperial signa and only five fragments of military signa had ever been found. We didn't know, for example, that the shafts of the javelins were decorated, or that the globes that sometimes sat on top of the shafts were colored. The incredibly well preserved gold and green glass and blue chalcedony globes were a complete surprise. The discovery invites us to envision a Roman emperor marching on to the battlefield or parading through Rome wielding these extraordinary emblems of empire.
Building the Great Pyramid, Giza
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Of the seven wonders of the ancient world, only the Great Pyramid of Giza remains. An estimated 2 million stone blocks weighing an average of 2 1/2 tons went into its construction. When completed, the 481-foot-tall pyramid was the world's tallest structure, a record it held for more than 3,800 years. We know who built the Great Pyramid: the pharaoh Khufu, who ruled Egypt about 2547-2524 B.C. And we know who supervised its construction: Khufu's brother, Hemienu. The pharaoh's right-hand man, Hemienu was "overseer of all construction projects of the king" and his tomb is one of the largest in a cemetery adjacent to the pyramid. What we don't know is exactly how it was built, a question that has been debated for millennia.
In April this year, a radical new idea was presented by Jean-Pierre Houdin, a French architect who has devoted the last seven years of his life to making detailed computer models of the Great Pyramid. Houdin has concluded that a ramp was indeed used to raise the blocks to the top, and that the ramp still exists--inside the pyramid! (See "How to Build a Pyramid") There's some evidence to support the idea, enough to make a non-invasive study of the Great Pyramid a reasonable next step.
Paleolithic Tools, India
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South Asia isn't often part of the discussion regarding human origins, but a study published in July shows that early humans living in India were amazingly adaptive and resilient.
When Toba Volcano in Indonesia blew its top 74,000 years ago--the largest known volcanic eruption--it caused a "volcanic winter" and may have decimated human populations worldwide. So few early human foragers survived the event that it caused genetic bottleneck that researchers claim is still detectable in our DNA today. In addition to affecting climate, it blanketed the Indian subcontinent in four to six inches of ash. But new finds in south India's Jwalapuram Valley suggest that humans there endured. In deposits above and below the ash layer, archaeologists found similar sets of stone tools, suggesting that people there survived the massive catastrophe with their culture intact, despite being relatively close to the source of the devastation.
The tools do show minor changes, so the humans may have altered their behavior to cope. That these tools also closely resemble those made by modern humans in Africa implies that modern humans may have occupied South Asia thousands of years earlier than previously thought.
5,800-Year-Old Mass Grave, Syria
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Horrifying acts of violence in the Middle East dominate today's news cycles, and the two 5,800-year-old mass graves that were excavated at Tell Majnuna this year may offer unique insights into how it all began. The site lies in the suburbs of the world's most ancient cities, Nagar, also known as Tell Brak, near Syria's border with Iraq and Turkey.
A team of excavators led by Joan Oates and Augusta McMahon of Cambridge University began work at the site this year uncovering about 12 square yards of the oldest known evidence of mass violence. "It's a very slow excavation," said Oates, "you have to record the position of all the bones and there are just piles of them." The remains of more than 79 people have been unearthed so far. The graves include "armloads" of long bones and clusters of skulls, while the hands and feet are absent, showing that the corpses had been left to decay for weeks or possibly months before they were buried.
Evidence of the massacre comes in part from the people who are missing from the grave. Elderly people, infants, and, with few exceptions, women were not buried there, only men of fighting age. Other than two skulls, very few bones show evidence of fatal wounds. Oates believes the age and gender of the dead are a clear indication of a massacre. Scattered through the upper layers of the grave were fragments of pottery and cattle bones, evidence that whoever buried these people celebrated the occasion with an elaborate feast.
The massacre at Tell Majnuna may have resulted from the first invasion of the north by city-states in southern Mesopotamia. The archaeological evidence from Tell Brak and another nearby ancient center known as Tell Hamoukar shows both cities were burned. Pottery from southern Mesopotamia replaced northern style pottery 200 to 300 years after the mass burials at Tell Majnuna. Even though we know how it turns out, the story isn't complete... "Tell Majnuna is just one aspect of what is going on," Oates said, "Until we know whether the grave belongs to friend or foe, we don't know what this mass burial actually means."
Polynesian Breakthroughs
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There was no doubt about including in our 2007 Top Ten the discovery that chicken bones from ancient Polynesian sites in Tonga and Samoa and El Arenal, a Chilean site occupied between A.D. 700 and 1390, had identical DNA. The chicken was domesticated in Southeast Asia, but how it arrived in the New World before Europeans arrived was a mystery. Now it seems that Polynesian seafarers brought them, adding to the evidence for trans-Pacific contacts. The presence of South American sweet potatoes and bottle gourds on Pacific islands had already hinted at this, along with some (to my mind less convincing) evidence that complex fishhooks and sewn plank canoes used by southern California Indians had Polynesian origins.
But the chicken story was just one of several breakthroughs made--or reported--this year that attest Polynesian seafaring abilities and provide new evidence about the origins and culture of the Lapita people, the ancestors of the Polynesians who colonized the Pacific. Taken together these findings could justify calling 2007 the Year of the Lapita.
Archaeologists Kenneth Collerson and Marshall Weisler from the University of Queensland analyzed 19 stone adzes collected early last century in the Tuamotu Archipelago, more than 1,000 miles southeast of Tahiti. By comparing the chemical signatures of the stone with basalt sources throughout the Pacific, they traced the artifacts to the Marquesas, Austral and Society Islands, and Pitcairn. One adze came from Kaho'olawe, a Hawaiian island far to the northwest. It supports a Hawaiian oral tradition of voyages across the southeast Pacific, and at 2,500 miles it's the longest known non-stop sea voyage in prehistory. These results suggest that trade was widespread within eastern Polynesia, but it, like the chicken DNA study, doesn't necessarily indicate the intensity of such interactions.
Where these formidable navigators came from has been debated for years. One model is that the Lapita originated in Taiwan and traveled south and east to New Guinea, then out into the Pacific islands. An alternative is that about 3,500 years ago various aspects of the Lapita--people, language, and culture--came together in Indonesia, then spread.
In a pig DNA study, geneticist Greger Larson and his colleagues analyzed 781 modern and ancient pig specimens along possible migration routes and in the Pacific. They found no evidence along the Taiwan-Philippines route for early pigs with the same genetic signature as those that dominate in the Pacific today (instead they found only recently introduced East Asian domestic pigs). Larson says that if the Lapita spread from Taiwan, they didn't bring pigs with them. Larson's team did find another type of pig, which spread at an earlier date from a more southern route, out of Vietnam, through the Malay Peninsula into the Indonesian islands, to New Guinea, and into Polynesia. So, the pig DNA evidence suggests a more complex process for the formation of the Lapita cultural complex and Pacific colonization of than a simple "out of Taiwan" model.
One reason the Lapita have been so debated is that, although we have their artifacts, such as distinctive pottery, we haven't had the people--until now. Matthew Spriggs of the Australian National University, with the Vanuatu National Museum, has excavated a Lapita cemetery at Teouma, on the south coast of the island of Efate. It's a major piece or research, but one shortcoming of our Top Ten list is a question of dates. The cemetery was actually dug in 2004-2006, so, while preliminary results reached the public in February 2007, we didn't include it in our list this year.
What did Spriggs find? Or, just as important, what didn't he find? Try 70 burials, all of adults and none of children. Try only seven skulls. DNA analysis of the remains may give reveal the genetic background of the Lapita, and pinpoint their origins, whether only in Taiwan or a mix of populations. But biology and culture are two different things, and what we are learning about Lapita culture from this site is fascinating. Take the missing children. Spriggs says it could be that children below 16 were not considered full members of society and were buried elsewhere. The skulls? Perhaps the missing ones were removed after burial and placed in a shrine or house, practices known historically in the Pacific (the head was believed to be the seat of the soul). Of the seven skulls found, three were on one man's chest, three more were between the legs of a second man, and the seventh was in a pot. Three comes up elsewhere at the cemetery--a pile of bones atop three jaws, pots with three handles--and it could be the number had special significance to the Lapita.
No matter how you date discoveries or publication of archaeological research, we will likely look back on 2007 as a watershed year for our understanding of the Lapita and the colonization of the Pacific.