Three Artifacts Found in Pagar Alam Back

rack of ancient relics (artifacts), probably derived from the megalithic era, was discovered by residents Pagar Alam, South Sumatra, Sunday (4/3/3012). Up to now, has not expressed by certain types of artifacts found. Identification is still needed.

Information from local residents mentioned that the city and surrounding region known as Besemah with a lot of ancient relics.

It is a concern of researchers to trace the history of archeology and remember to this day still no reports of new findings that heritage is priceless.

Generally, these relics are still to be investigated and treated properly in order not damaged or stolen as a result of ignorance of citizens and local government indifference.

Piltdown Man: British archaeology's greatest hoax

In a few weeks, a group of British researchers will enter the labyrinthine store of London's Natural History Museum and remove several dark-coloured pieces of primate skull and jawbone from a small metal cabinet. After a brief inspection, the team will wrap the items in protective foam and transport them to a number of laboratories across England. There the bones and teeth, which have rested in the museum for most of the last century, will be put through a sequence of highly sensitive tests using infra-red scanners, lasers and powerful spectroscopes to reveal each relic's precise chemical make-up.

The aim of the study, which will take weeks to complete, is simple. It has been set up to solve a mystery that has baffled researchers for 100 years: the identities of the perpetrators of the world's greatest scientific fraud, the Piltdown Hoax. Unearthed in a gravel pit at Piltdown in East Sussex and revealed to the outside world exactly a century ago, those shards of skull were part of a scientific scam that completely fooled leading palaeontologists. For decades they believed they were the remains of a million-year-old apeman, an individual who possessed a large brain but primitive jawbone and teeth.

The news of the Piltdown find, first released in late 1912, caused a sensation. The first Englishman had been uncovered and not only was he brainy, he was sporty. A sculpted elephant bone, found near the skull pieces and interpreted by scientists as being a ceremonial artefact, was jokingly claimed by many commentators to be an early cricket bat. The first Englishman with his own cricket bat – if nothing else it was one in the eye for French and German archaeologists whose discoveries of Cro-Magnons, Neanderthals and other early humans had been making headlines for several decades. Now England had a real fossil rival.

It was too good to be true. As decades passed, scientists in other countries uncovered more and more fossils of early apemen that differed markedly from Piltdown Man. "These had small skulls but relatively humanlike teeth – the opposite of Piltdown," says Professor Chris Stringer of the Natural History Museum, who is leading the new study. "But many British scientists did not take them seriously because of Piltdown. They dismissed these discoveries which we now know are genuine and important. It really damaged British science."

In the end, the Piltdown Man began to look so out of kilter with other fossil discoveries that a team led by geologist Kenneth Oakley, anatomist Wilfrid Le Gros Clark and anthropologist Joseph Weiner took a closer look and in 1953 announced that Piltdown's big braincase belonged to a modern human being while the jawbone came from an orangutan or chimpanzee. Each piece had been stained to look as if they were from the same skull while the teeth had been flattened with a metal file and the "cricket bat" carved with a knife. As Bournemouth University archaeologist Miles Russell puts it: "The earliest Englishman was nothing more than a cheap fraud." It had taken almost 40 years to find that out, however.

Read on:  http://www.guardian.co.uk/science/2012/feb/05/piltdown-man-archaeologys-greatest-hoax

Old Jawbone Found Near Kennewick Man Site

Bone turned over to U.S. Army Corps of Engineers
Federal archaeologists are investigating a very old jawbone that turned up Monday along the Columbia River in Kennewick.

The human remains were found a short distance from where Kennewick Man was discovered in 1996. Those ancient remains sparked a decade of legal conflict.

The jawbone with six worn teeth was spotted in shallow water by a jail work crew doing routine park cleanup. Kennewick police and the Benton County, Washington, coroner quickly determined that the bone is that of an adult human, but is too old to connect to a modern crime. Archaeologists from the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, which owns the land, took jurisdiction.

Army Corps spokeswoman Gina Baltrusch says it is pure "speculation" to connect the single bone to any era or people at this point.

"Basically, too soon to know. We'll follow the law. And we're treating these remains with respect," Baltrusch says.

A retired archaeologist who investigated the ancient Kennewick Man fears the Army Corps will quickly turn the bone over to a local tribe for reburial without sufficient study. Tribal leaders argue strenuously that their spiritual traditions demand such remains be put back to rest as soon as possible.

Tom Banse
http://news.opb.org/article/old-jawbone-found-near-kennewick-man-site/

Homo Erectus travelled the high seas

Early manlike creatures may have been smarter than we think. Recent archaeological finds from the Mediterranean show that human ancestors traveled the high seas.

A team of researchers that included an N.C. State University geologist found evidence that our ancestors were crossing open water at least 130,000 years ago. That's more than 100,000 years earlier than scientists had previously thought.

Their evidence is based on stone tools from the island of Crete. Because Crete has been an island for eons, any prehistoric people who left tools behind would have had to cross open water to get there.

The tools the team found are so old that they predate the human species, said Thomas Strasser, an archaeologist from Providence College who led the team. Instead of being made by our species, Homo sapiens, the tools were made by our ancestors, Homo erectus.

The tools are very different from any others found on Crete, Strasser said. They're most similar to early Stone Age tools from Africa that are about 700,000 years old, he said.

Initially the team didn't have any way to date the tools.

That's where NCSU geologist Karl Wegmann came in.

At the time, Wegmann didn't know much about archaeology, but he did know quite a bit about Crete's geology. He had been figuring out the ages of Crete's rock formations to study earthquakes.

A few of the stone tools the team had discovered were embedded in those same rock formations. Those rocks were formed from ancient beach sands, Wegmann said.

Today, the rocks and the tools embedded in them are hundreds of feet above the shore.

The same process that drives the region's strong earthquakes - colliding continents - is pushing Crete upward out of the sea at a rate of less than 1/20 of an inch every year.

The island's slow rise has preserved beaches from many eras as terraces along the coast.

The lower terraces are the easiest to date. Scientists can measure the age of seashells embedded in the rock using radioactive carbon dating.

This method estimates the age of those terraces at about 45,000 and 50,000 years old.

"We know that (the tools) are tens of meters above the terrace we dated at 50,000 years old, so we know right off the bat that they have to be at least that old," Wegmann said.

But 50,000 years ago is carbon dating's limit. Anything older has to be dated using another method.

Dating by terraces

Crete's rise from the sea gives a fairly simple way of doing that. Once they know the age of lower terraces, geologists can calculate the age of higher terraces just by measuring the difference in the beaches' elevation.

If geologists know how much farther the older terrace traveled upward from the newer, and they know how fast it was going, they can figure out how long it took to get there.

Or, in other words, its age, in this case a record-smashing 130,000 years old.

"The thing to me that really makes this unique and exciting is ... these other sister species maybe weren't entirely stupid like we portray them," Wegmann said. "They were capable of really complex things."

Author: Helen Chappell | Source: The Charlotte Observer [August 16, 2011]
http://archaeologynewsnetwork.blogspot.com/2011/08/homo-erectus-travelled-high-seas.html?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=Feed:+TheArchaeologyNewsNetwork+(The+Archaeology+News+Network)

World's oldest ritual discovered

A startling archaeological discovery that may have gone un-noticed changes our understanding of human history. While, up until now, scholars have largely held that man's first rituals were carried out over 40,000 years ago in Europe, it now appears that they were wrong about both the time and place.
Associate Professor Sheila Coulson, from the University of Oslo, has shown that modern humans, Homo sapiens, have performed advanced rituals in Africa for 70,000 years. She has, in other words, discovered mankind's oldest known ritual.


The archaeologist made the surprising discovery several years ago while she was studying the origin of the San people. A group of the San live in the sparsely inhabited area of north-western Botswana known as Ngamiland.

Coulson made the discovery while searching for artifacts from the Middle Stone Age in the only hills present for hundreds of kilometers in any direction. This group of small peaks within the Kalahari Desert is known as the Tsodilo Hills and is famous for having the largest concentration of rock paintings in the world.

The Tsodilo Hills are still a sacred place for the San, who call them the Mountains of the Gods and the Rock that Whispers. The python is one of the San's most important animals. According to their creation myth, mankind descended from the python and the ancient, arid streambeds around the hills are said to have been created by the python as it circled the hills in its ceaseless search for water.

Sheila Coulson's find shows that people from the area had a specific ritual location associated with the python. The ritual was held in a little cave on the northern side of the Tsodilo Hills. The cave itself is so secluded and access to it is so difficult that it was not even discovered by archaeologists until the 1990s.

When Coulson entered the cave in the summer of 2007 with her three master's students, it struck them that the mysterious rock resembled the head of a huge python. On the six-meter long by two-meter tall rock, they found three-to-four hundred indentations that could only have been man-made.

"You could see the mouth and eyes of the snake. It looked like a real python. The play of sunlight over the indentations gave them the appearance of snake skin. At night, the firelight gave one the feeling that the snake was actually moving".

They found no evidence that work had recently been done on the rock. In fact, much of the rock's surface was extensively eroded. When they saw the many indentations in the rock, the archaeologists wondered about more than when the work had been done. They also began thinking about what the cave had been used for and how long people had been going there. With these questions in mind, they decided to dig a test pit directly in front of the python stone.

At the bottom of the pit, they found many stones that had been used to make the indentations. Together with these tools, some of which were more than 70,000 years old, they found a piece of the wall that had fallen off during the work.

In the course of their excavation, they found more than 13,000 artifacts. All of the objects were spearheads and articles that could be connected with ritual use, as well as tools used in carving the stone. They found nothing else.

As if that were not enough, the stones that the spearheads were made from are not from the Tsodilo region but must have been brought from hundreds of kilometers away.

The spearheads are better crafted and more colorful than other spearheads from the same time and area. Surprisingly enough, it was only the red spearheads that had been burned.

"Stone age people took these colorful spearheads, brought them to the cave, and finished carving them there. Only the red spearheads were burned. It was a ritual destruction of artifacts. There was no sign of normal habitation. No ordinary tools were found at the site. Our find means that humans were more organized and had the capacity for abstract thinking at a much earlier point in history than we have previously assumed. All of the indications suggest that Tsodilo has been known to mankind for almost 100,000 years as a very special place in the pre-historic landscape." says Sheila Coulson.

Sheila Coulson also noticed a secret chamber behind the python stone. Some areas of the entrance to this small chamber were worn smooth, indicating that many people had passed through it over the years.

"The shaman, who is still a very important person in San culture, could have kept himself hidden in that secret chamber. He would have had a good view of the inside of the cave while remaining hidden himself. When he spoke from his hiding place, it could have seemed as if the voice came from the snake itself. The shaman would have been able to control everything. It was perfect."

The shaman could also have disappeared from the chamber by crawling out onto the hillside through a small shaft. While large cave and wall paintings are numerous throughout the Tsodilo Hills, there are only two small paintings in this cave: an elephant and a giraffe. These images were rendered, surprisingly, exactly where water runs down the wall.

Sheila Coulson thinks that an explanation for this might come from San mythology.

In one San story, the python falls into a body of water and cannot get out by itself. The python is pulled from the water by a giraffe. The elephant, with its long trunk, is often used as a metaphor for the python.

"In the cave, we find only the San people's three most important animals: the python, the elephant, and the giraffe. That is unusual. This would appear to be a very special place. They did not burn the spearheads by chance. They brought them from hundreds of kilometers away and intentionally burned them. So many pieces of the puzzle fit together here. It has to represent a ritual." concludes Sheila Coulson.

It was a major archaeological find years ago that made it possible for Sheila Coulson to date the finds in this little cave in Botswana. Up until the turn of the century, archaeologists believed that human civilization developed in Europe after our ancestors migrated from Africa. This theory was crushed by Archaeologist Christopher Henshilwood when he published his find of traces from a Middle Stone Age dwelling in the Blombos Cave in Southern Cape, South Africa.

Author: Lori Henshey
Source: Examiner [July 11, 2011]
http://archaeologynewsnetwork.blogspot.com/2011/07/worlds-oldest-ritual-discovered.html?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=Feed:+TheArchaeologyNewsNetwork+(The+Archaeology+News+Network)

Study to create the first archive of human evolution at Mungo

A foundational project is currently underway at Lake Mungo and those lakes that abound it to document the history of human settlement, past environmental change and landscape evolution that has occurred in this area. This immense undertaking comes after a long hiatus of research being conducted here and hopes to provide the first systematic archive of its archaeological traces.


Documenting the history of human settlement seems like an epic task in any part of the world; in the stark beauty of the Willandra Lakes World Heritage Area, it involves tracing back no less than 45,000 years.


Upon arriving to the now dry lake bed which lies at the heart of Mungo National Park, it is not hard to appreciate the ancient nature of this part of the world - it is one of the oldest places outside of Africa to have been occupied by modern humans.

The site of the world's oldest known cremation and ritual ochre burial, as well as the longest trail of ancient human footprints, surprisingly little is known about the people who lived here.

Enter La Trobe University's palaeolithic archaeologist, Dr Nicola Stern, whose Mungo Archaeology Project hopes to redress this shortfall in our collective knowledge.

"There's an untold story at Mungo; Mungo is famous because of Mungo Lady, Mungo Man; a trail of fossil footprints," says Dr Stern.

"We know surprisingly little about how people actually lived in this landscape over 45,000 years - and that's really what I'm trying to document by looking at the archaeological traces in the Mungo lunette."

The Mungo lunettes are half-moon shaped sand dunes built from ancient layers of the earth's surface and form the 'Walls of China' - a major drawcard for visitors to the World Heritage site that is Mungo National Park.

Containing rich deposits of information, the lunettes have preserved hundreds of rare, snapshot images of Australia's earliest history and provide a unique record of the ways in which the first settlers may have adapted to the changes to their climate over time.

They form the basis for Dr Stern's foundational research into this narrative of human evolution.

"It's the foundation - there's a lot that we could do if we had already had this information," she says.

It is not only the scientific community who have longed for this work to be done; elders from the region's Aboriginal tribal groups are also supportive of the project and are working in collaboration with Dr Stern's team to monitor it.

"Finding out what's there, and then monitoring what's happening to what's there, is something that the elders tell me they have wanted for a very long period of time."

With such an endeavour, Dr Stern has a loyal team of around 20 others working with her and says there will be more to come on board in the future.

"Over time we will be training people and hope that they will pick this up and carry it on into the future - but there is a certain, you know knowledge and expertise that is required to figure out how to tackle a record on this scale."

Author: Charlotte King
Source: ABC News Website [July 14, 2011]
http://archaeologynewsnetwork.blogspot.com/2011/07/study-to-create-first-archive-of-human.html

Charnel house gives up its secret: 1,000 human bones

http://thescotsman.scotsman.com/scotland/Charnel-house-gives-up-its.6786940.jp

A STONE AGE burial chamber in Orkney has yielded a gruesome haul of more than 1,000 human bones, it was revealed yesterday. The 5,000-year-old human bones - numbering at least 1,000, but possibly as many as 2,000 - were found in just one of the five chambers of the Banks Tomb on South Ronaldsay.

Read on...

University archaeologists to dig for Tregaron elephant

10 March 2011

Archaeologists are to dig up the garden of a Ceredigion pub in the search for a legendary Victorian circus elephant.

The Tregaron Elephant has long had its place in local folklore - a beast that died while on tour rumoured to be buried behind the town's Talbot Hotel.

A small-scale excavation in April will search for clues in the hope of revealing its final resting place.

The elephant was said to have fallen ill after drinking contaminated water in the town in 1848.

It is believed to have been part of Batty's Travelling Menageries, a circus troupe which entertained widely in the area that year.

The dig is part of a wider project by the University of Wales Trinity St David's archaeology department.

Dr Jemma Bezant of the School of Archaeology, History and Anthropology is heading it up.

She said: "This story belongs to the community of Tregaron and the project will involve local people in gathering local evidence and histories as well as providing the opportunity to engage in some pilot archaeological excavation.

"This project is about celebrating the story of the Tregaron Elephant and less about 'finding out the truth'."

She added that it was likely the effort would generate more questions than answers.

"The main aim is to engage the local community in the construction and telling of their own stories and histories."

'Poisoned'

Dr Bezant is hoping the public contribution will add to the area's history and provide content for the community web-site

Michael Freeman, curator of Ceredigion Museum, said he was delighted the dig was going ahead.

He told BBC Wales: "It would be fabulous if the story was confirmed as true - it is such a great local story.

"To have seen a live elephant in 1848 walking through Tregaron must have been astounding."

John Watkin, part-owner of The Talbot, said the legend was "very important" to local people.

He said: "We don't know if the elephant is here but it's a lovely hypothetical question.

"But even if it was once, the acid water here may mean the proof has disappeared.

"We are looking forward to finding out."

The elephant was believed to have been poisoned by lead-contaminated water, later dying in stables next to the pub.

An extract from The History of Tregaron by D C Rees reads:

"An Elephant. On the 10th July 1848, 'Batty's Menagerie' visited Tregaron.

"One of the elephants quenched its thirst at Bronmwyn, which proved fatal owing to lead poisoning. It died in the Ivy Bush stable.

"Its burying place was in the field at the rear of the Talbot Hotel."

Local poet Iorwerth Glyndwr is said to have written an "englyn" - a short Welsh poem - on the death, which read: "Oh vain man, neither you nor I can avoid death. The grave is the end of us all."

The excavation will take place from Saturday 9 April for approximately five to seven days.

Local people are encouraged to visit the site during the weekend.

Further information will be available at a later date on the university's website and on twitter/trinitystdavid

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-wales-12697207

Finding Would Reveal Contact between Humans and Gomphotheres in North America

Tuesday, February 1, 2011

MEXICO CITY.- Mexican Archaeologists discovered 3 Clovis projectile heads associated to remains of gomphotheres with an age of at least 12,000 years, in the northern region of the Mexican state of Sonora. The finding is relevant because these are the first evidences in North America of this extinct animal linked to the human species.

The finding opens the possibility of the coexistence of humankind with gomphotheres, animals similar to mammoths, but smaller, in this region of America, which contrasts with theories that declare that this species disappeared 30,000 years ago in this region of America and did not coexist with humans.

The discovery took place in early January 2011 in El Fin del Mundo, Sonora by researchers from the National Institute of Anthropology and History (INAH), during the third field season at the site identified as a hunting and quartering area during the Pleistocene.

This finding completes a scene in which archaeologists visualized how Clovis groups hunted this elephant ancestor. “This is an unprecedented finding in Mexico since it is the first time that projectile heads are found associated to a bone bed of this kind of proboscides.

“There is no other Clovis archaeological site where gomphotheres have been found, not even in the United States, where most important Clovis Culture findings have been registered, and these vestiges are dated between 10,600 and 11,600 years” informed archaeologist Guadalupe Sanchez, director of the Fin del Mundo Research Project.

“The discovery took place in the same archaeological context where in 2008 gomphothere bones and different lithic tools were found on the surface, among them, a quartz crystal Clovis head”.

Clovis people are also known as hunters of mammoths, one of 3 proboscide species that lived in America, being the other 2 the mastodon and the gomphothere. The last was the smallest and the earliest to appear in the Americas.

Gomphotheres have only been found associated to humans in South America, and the southernmost Clovis heads were found in Costa Rica; human evidence associated with proboscides was limited mastodons and mammoths, until now.

The INAH archaeologist Natalia Martinez, head of the field research, explained that Clovis projectile heads were discovered in the point named Localidad 1, the remainder of a swamp with deposits of the Pleistocene and Holocene eras, and were freed by scraping carefully a hard soil block.

The lithic artifacts manufactured by Clovis people to hunt great animals, were located a few centimeters under the gomphothere discovered in previous field seasons part of the research project conducted by the INAH, the University of Arizona and the National Geographic Society.

http://www.artdaily.org/index.asp?int_sec=2&int_new=44345
(Submitted by Terry W. Colvin)

Finding Would Reveal Contact between Humans and Gomphotheres in North America

Tuesday, February 1, 2011

MEXICO CITY.- Mexican Archaeologists discovered 3 Clovis projectile heads associated to remains of gomphotheres with an age of at least 12,000 years, in the northern region of the Mexican state of Sonora. The finding is relevant because these are the first evidences in North America of this extinct animal linked to the human species.

The finding opens the possibility of the coexistence of humankind with gomphotheres, animals similar to mammoths, but smaller, in this region of America, which contrasts with theories that declare that this species disappeared 30,000 years ago in this region of America and did not coexist with humans.

The discovery took place in early January 2011 in El Fin del Mundo, Sonora by researchers from the National Institute of Anthropology and History (INAH), during the third field season at the site identified as a hunting and quartering area during the Pleistocene.

This finding completes a scene in which archaeologists visualized how Clovis groups hunted this elephant ancestor. “This is an unprecedented finding in Mexico since it is the first time that projectile heads are found associated to a bone bed of this kind of proboscides.

“There is no other Clovis archaeological site where gomphotheres have been found, not even in the United States, where most important Clovis Culture findings have been registered, and these vestiges are dated between 10,600 and 11,600 years” informed archaeologist Guadalupe Sanchez, director of the Fin del Mundo Research Project.

“The discovery took place in the same archaeological context where in 2008 gomphothere bones and different lithic tools were found on the surface, among them, a quartz crystal Clovis head”.

Clovis people are also known as hunters of mammoths, one of 3 proboscide species that lived in America, being the other 2 the mastodon and the gomphothere. The last was the smallest and the earliest to appear in the Americas.

Gomphotheres have only been found associated to humans in South America, and the southernmost Clovis heads were found in Costa Rica; human evidence associated with proboscides was limited mastodons and mammoths, until now.

The INAH archaeologist Natalia Martinez, head of the field research, explained that Clovis projectile heads were discovered in the point named Localidad 1, the remainder of a swamp with deposits of the Pleistocene and Holocene eras, and were freed by scraping carefully a hard soil block.

The lithic artifacts manufactured by Clovis people to hunt great animals, were located a few centimeters under the gomphothere discovered in previous field seasons part of the research project conducted by the INAH, the University of Arizona and the National Geographic Society.

http://www.artdaily.org/index.asp?int_sec=2&int_new=44345
(Submitted by Terry W. Colvin)

Scientists find evidence discrediting theory Amazon was virtually unlivable

SAN MARTIN DE SAMIRIA, PERU -- To the untrained eye, all evidence here in the heart of the Amazon signals virgin forest, untouched by man for time immemorial--from the ubiquitous fruit palms to the cry of howler monkeys, from the air thick with mosquitoes to the unruly tangle of jungle vines.


Archaeologists, many of them Americans, say the opposite is true: This patch of forest, and many others across the Amazon, was instead home to an advanced, even spectacular civilization that managed the forest and enriched infertile soil to feed thousands.

The findings are discrediting a once-bedrock theory of archaeology that long held that the Amazon, unlike much of the Americas, was a historical black hole, its environment too hostile and its earth too poor to have ever sustained big, sedentary societies.

from the Washington Post
http://ow.ly/2BFdW

Scientists find evidence discrediting theory Amazon was virtually unlivable

SAN MARTIN DE SAMIRIA, PERU -- To the untrained eye, all evidence here in the heart of the Amazon signals virgin forest, untouched by man for time immemorial--from the ubiquitous fruit palms to the cry of howler monkeys, from the air thick with mosquitoes to the unruly tangle of jungle vines.


Archaeologists, many of them Americans, say the opposite is true: This patch of forest, and many others across the Amazon, was instead home to an advanced, even spectacular civilization that managed the forest and enriched infertile soil to feed thousands.

The findings are discrediting a once-bedrock theory of archaeology that long held that the Amazon, unlike much of the Americas, was a historical black hole, its environment too hostile and its earth too poor to have ever sustained big, sedentary societies.

from the Washington Post
http://ow.ly/2BFdW

Mexican Archaeologists Extract 10,000 Year-Old Skeleton from Flooded Cave in Quintana Roo

The Young Man of Chan Hol, named after the cenote it was found in, was recovered in a 542 meters long and 8.3 deep cave where stalagmites abound, and is reached after going through flooded, dark and difficult labyrinths.

MEXICO CITY.- One of the earliest human skeletons of America, which belonged to a person that lived more than 10,000 years ago, in the Ice Age, was recovered by Mexican specialists from a flooded cave in Quintana Roo. The information it has lodged for centuries will reveal new data regarding the settlement of the Americas.

The Young Man of Chan Hol, as the skeleton is known among the scientific community, due to the slight tooth wear it presents, which indicates an early age, is the fourth of our earliest ancestors found in the American Continent, and has been studied as part of a National Institute of Anthropology and History (INAH) project.

After 3 years of studies conducted In Situ to prevent information loss, the Chan Hol skeleton was subtracted from the water by a team of specialists headed by biologist Arturo Gonzalez, coordinator of the project Study of Pre Ceramic Men of Yucatan Peninsula and director of Museo del Desierto de Coahuila (Museum of the Desert of Coahuila), with the participation of speleodivers Eugenio Acevez, Jeronimo Aviles and Luis Garcia, part of the recently founded Instituto de la Prehistoria de America (Institute for American Prehistory), funded by INAH.

The Young Man of Chan Hol, named after the cenote it was found in, was recovered in a 542 meters long and 8.3 deep cave where stalagmites abound, and is reached after going through flooded, dark and difficult labyrinths.

UNAM (National University of Mexico) physical anthropologists that studied the remains think they were placed in the cave after a funerary ceremony that took place by the end of Pleistocene, when the sea level was 150 meters lower, before the caves, probably walked by this person, got flooded.

Sixty per cent of the skeleton was collected: representative bones of 4 extremities, vertebrae, ribs and the skull, as well as several teeth. Physical anthropologists find this “great,” since in cases of 10,000 years old samples usually only the skull or jawbone is found, and sometimes, 20 or 30 percent of the skeleton.

Along with the skeletons of the Woman of Naharon, Woman of Las Palmas and Man of El Templo, discovered as well in flooded caves near Tulum, Quintana Roo in recent years, the Young Man of Chan Hol is a key factor to understand the settlement of the Americas, since its finding strengthens the hypothesis of the American Continent being populated by several migrations from Asia.

Arturo Gonzalez, paleo biology specialist, mentioned that the 4 skeletons found in Quintana Roo flooded caves “reveal that migrations from Southeast Asia happened earlier than Clovis groups’ ones, who would have crossed from Northern Asia through Bering Strait as well, by the end of the Ice Age.

“Our dating confirmed that skeletons collected in Quintana Roo caves belonged to members of Pre Clovis groups and are part of the few human rests found from the American Terminal Pleistocene, with physical features similar to those of people from Central and South Asia, suggesting there were several migrations to our continent”.

The first physical anthropology report, conducted by physical anthropologists Alejandro Terrazas and Martha Benavente, from the UNAM (National University of Mexico) Institute of Anthropological Investigations, indicates the skeleton belonged to a young adult, probably a male; legs were flexed to the left and arms extended to both sides of the body, which is a “new fact to be studied”, since no skeleton had been found before in this position.

The skeleton of the Young Man of Chan Hol must stay as they are for several months until their consolidation, before undergoing morphoscopical studies (of the skull and bones) to verify if it shares morphological and physical features with the other 3 skeletons found in the caves; gender, age, cause of death and age at the time of death will be confirmed too. Carbon 14 Dating will be conducted as well as Computed Axial Tomography (CAT) studies to determine composition, density and interior form of the bones.

Ancestors Underwater
In 2006, two German speleodivers named Thursten discovered the skeleton while exploring the Chan Hol (small hole in Maya) cave, aiming to lengthen the life line (guide placed by divers to avoid getting lost inside caves). They saw the osseous rests and informed the Quintana Roo INAH Center, which specialists began registration immediately.

Taking the Joven de Chan Hol out of the water context was not easy. It took 3 years after the Thurstens found it to conduct In Situ archaeological and physical anthropology studies that finally allowed the extraction with minimum conservation risks.

Studies include photographic and video registration of the remains and their context; more than 50 exploration immersions in the cave were conducted to study the possibilities of moving the skeleton, since each centimeter of the skeleton and its context represented an irreplaceable piece of the millenary history puzzle.

Investigations are being conducted by INAH, UNAM, Museum of the Desert of Coahuila and the Institute for American Prehistory in a project –now inter-institutional- that originated 10 years ago in INAH: the Underwater Archaeological Atlas for the Register, Study and Protection of Cenotes in the Peninsula of Yucatan, headed by the pioneer of underwater archaeology in Mexico, Pilar Luna Erreguerena.

Recovery of the fourth Ice Age skeleton was conducted by biologist Arturo Gonzalez, director of the project, with the collaboration of physical anthropologists Alejandro Terrazas and Martha Benavente, who gave indications from the surface to take the bones out without loosing important information for the reconstruction of their identity.

Inside the cave, Arturo Gonzalez was accompanied by speleodivers Jeronimo Aviles, Eugenio Acevez and Luis Martinez. The four of them carried 80 kilograms of equipment, among oxygen tanks, lamps and snorkels, as well as waterproof cameras (a photographic camera and 2 camcorders), a tripod, lighting devises, and 3 plastic boxes with protection inside to carry the millenary human remains.

Recollection was conducted in 2 days, with a total submersion time of 5 hours, during which the last registration took place. Bones were placed in plastic bags with water from the cave to avoid temperature and acidity changes, and after it, in previously numbered boxes, where the remains were brought to the surface.

A stalagmite was collected with the bones, since it had fell on the left humerus of the skeleton; this is important for anthropologists because it allows assuming that the human rests were placed in the cave more than 10,000 years ago, since this mineral formations are not found in flooded caves.

Arturo Gonzalez detailed that in the Ice Age the Peninsula of Yucatan must have been a desert pastureland that turned into rainforest due to climate change. Young Man of Chan Hol and his peers found refugee in the caves and drank rainwater that filtered to the most profound caves.

Since 2002 evidences of such lifestyle have been found: lithic tools, fireplaces, rests of extinct animals from the Pleistocene, as well as other 3 human skeletons named: Woman of Naharon, Woman of Las Palmas and Man of El Templo, with ages that vary between 10,000 and 14,000 years old.

Placing of these 4 skeletons is evidence of the funerary use given to caves, since the arrangement of the remains do not correspond to natural positions, but to a Post Mortem ritual assemblage.

Mexican Archaeologists Extract 10,000 Year-Old Skeleton from Flooded Cave in Quintana Roo

The Young Man of Chan Hol, named after the cenote it was found in, was recovered in a 542 meters long and 8.3 deep cave where stalagmites abound, and is reached after going through flooded, dark and difficult labyrinths.

MEXICO CITY.- One of the earliest human skeletons of America, which belonged to a person that lived more than 10,000 years ago, in the Ice Age, was recovered by Mexican specialists from a flooded cave in Quintana Roo. The information it has lodged for centuries will reveal new data regarding the settlement of the Americas.

The Young Man of Chan Hol, as the skeleton is known among the scientific community, due to the slight tooth wear it presents, which indicates an early age, is the fourth of our earliest ancestors found in the American Continent, and has been studied as part of a National Institute of Anthropology and History (INAH) project.

After 3 years of studies conducted In Situ to prevent information loss, the Chan Hol skeleton was subtracted from the water by a team of specialists headed by biologist Arturo Gonzalez, coordinator of the project Study of Pre Ceramic Men of Yucatan Peninsula and director of Museo del Desierto de Coahuila (Museum of the Desert of Coahuila), with the participation of speleodivers Eugenio Acevez, Jeronimo Aviles and Luis Garcia, part of the recently founded Instituto de la Prehistoria de America (Institute for American Prehistory), funded by INAH.

The Young Man of Chan Hol, named after the cenote it was found in, was recovered in a 542 meters long and 8.3 deep cave where stalagmites abound, and is reached after going through flooded, dark and difficult labyrinths.

UNAM (National University of Mexico) physical anthropologists that studied the remains think they were placed in the cave after a funerary ceremony that took place by the end of Pleistocene, when the sea level was 150 meters lower, before the caves, probably walked by this person, got flooded.

Sixty per cent of the skeleton was collected: representative bones of 4 extremities, vertebrae, ribs and the skull, as well as several teeth. Physical anthropologists find this “great,” since in cases of 10,000 years old samples usually only the skull or jawbone is found, and sometimes, 20 or 30 percent of the skeleton.

Along with the skeletons of the Woman of Naharon, Woman of Las Palmas and Man of El Templo, discovered as well in flooded caves near Tulum, Quintana Roo in recent years, the Young Man of Chan Hol is a key factor to understand the settlement of the Americas, since its finding strengthens the hypothesis of the American Continent being populated by several migrations from Asia.

Arturo Gonzalez, paleo biology specialist, mentioned that the 4 skeletons found in Quintana Roo flooded caves “reveal that migrations from Southeast Asia happened earlier than Clovis groups’ ones, who would have crossed from Northern Asia through Bering Strait as well, by the end of the Ice Age.

“Our dating confirmed that skeletons collected in Quintana Roo caves belonged to members of Pre Clovis groups and are part of the few human rests found from the American Terminal Pleistocene, with physical features similar to those of people from Central and South Asia, suggesting there were several migrations to our continent”.

The first physical anthropology report, conducted by physical anthropologists Alejandro Terrazas and Martha Benavente, from the UNAM (National University of Mexico) Institute of Anthropological Investigations, indicates the skeleton belonged to a young adult, probably a male; legs were flexed to the left and arms extended to both sides of the body, which is a “new fact to be studied”, since no skeleton had been found before in this position.

The skeleton of the Young Man of Chan Hol must stay as they are for several months until their consolidation, before undergoing morphoscopical studies (of the skull and bones) to verify if it shares morphological and physical features with the other 3 skeletons found in the caves; gender, age, cause of death and age at the time of death will be confirmed too. Carbon 14 Dating will be conducted as well as Computed Axial Tomography (CAT) studies to determine composition, density and interior form of the bones.

Ancestors Underwater
In 2006, two German speleodivers named Thursten discovered the skeleton while exploring the Chan Hol (small hole in Maya) cave, aiming to lengthen the life line (guide placed by divers to avoid getting lost inside caves). They saw the osseous rests and informed the Quintana Roo INAH Center, which specialists began registration immediately.

Taking the Joven de Chan Hol out of the water context was not easy. It took 3 years after the Thurstens found it to conduct In Situ archaeological and physical anthropology studies that finally allowed the extraction with minimum conservation risks.

Studies include photographic and video registration of the remains and their context; more than 50 exploration immersions in the cave were conducted to study the possibilities of moving the skeleton, since each centimeter of the skeleton and its context represented an irreplaceable piece of the millenary history puzzle.

Investigations are being conducted by INAH, UNAM, Museum of the Desert of Coahuila and the Institute for American Prehistory in a project –now inter-institutional- that originated 10 years ago in INAH: the Underwater Archaeological Atlas for the Register, Study and Protection of Cenotes in the Peninsula of Yucatan, headed by the pioneer of underwater archaeology in Mexico, Pilar Luna Erreguerena.

Recovery of the fourth Ice Age skeleton was conducted by biologist Arturo Gonzalez, director of the project, with the collaboration of physical anthropologists Alejandro Terrazas and Martha Benavente, who gave indications from the surface to take the bones out without loosing important information for the reconstruction of their identity.

Inside the cave, Arturo Gonzalez was accompanied by speleodivers Jeronimo Aviles, Eugenio Acevez and Luis Martinez. The four of them carried 80 kilograms of equipment, among oxygen tanks, lamps and snorkels, as well as waterproof cameras (a photographic camera and 2 camcorders), a tripod, lighting devises, and 3 plastic boxes with protection inside to carry the millenary human remains.

Recollection was conducted in 2 days, with a total submersion time of 5 hours, during which the last registration took place. Bones were placed in plastic bags with water from the cave to avoid temperature and acidity changes, and after it, in previously numbered boxes, where the remains were brought to the surface.

A stalagmite was collected with the bones, since it had fell on the left humerus of the skeleton; this is important for anthropologists because it allows assuming that the human rests were placed in the cave more than 10,000 years ago, since this mineral formations are not found in flooded caves.

Arturo Gonzalez detailed that in the Ice Age the Peninsula of Yucatan must have been a desert pastureland that turned into rainforest due to climate change. Young Man of Chan Hol and his peers found refugee in the caves and drank rainwater that filtered to the most profound caves.

Since 2002 evidences of such lifestyle have been found: lithic tools, fireplaces, rests of extinct animals from the Pleistocene, as well as other 3 human skeletons named: Woman of Naharon, Woman of Las Palmas and Man of El Templo, with ages that vary between 10,000 and 14,000 years old.

Placing of these 4 skeletons is evidence of the funerary use given to caves, since the arrangement of the remains do not correspond to natural positions, but to a Post Mortem ritual assemblage.

Archaeology: Central Europe’s Oldest Cave Drawings Found in Romania

BalkanTravellers.com

16 June 2010 | A group of Romanian speleologists recently discovered in a cave in north-western Romania a series of drawings from the Palaeolithic Period, thought to be the oldest of their kind in Central Europe.

The cave drawings were found in the Coliboaia cave in the Bihorului Mountains, on the territory of the Apuseni National Park, the Mediafax news agency reported recently.

According to the speleology experts, the newly discovered drawings portray a variety of animals, including a bison, a horse, a bear’s head, two rhinoceroses and members of the cat family. An image of a female torso was also found, which is throught to have a symbolic role.

The drawings’ authenticity, according to the publication, was confirmed by a team of specialists.

“This is the first time in Central Europe that such old cave art has been found,” the president of the Romanian Speleology Federation, Viorel Lascu, told the publication.

According to him, the drawings belong to the Gravettian or the Aurignacian culture, which puts them at between 23,000 and 35,000 years of age. “This find is especially valuable,” Lascu concluded.

http://www.balkantravellers.com/en/read/article/2038
(Submitted by Chad Arment)

'Hobbit' Island Shows Signs of Ancient Civilization

Gregory Mone
Contributor

(March 17) -- In 2005, archaeologist Adam Brumm was in the midst of a dig on the sweltering Indonesian island of Flores when he decided to embark on a midday walk. While the rest of the crew was napping to stay out of the heat, Brumm, from Australia's University of Wollongong, came across a large, deep gully and ventured down. "I found some stone tools lying around on the surface," he recalled. But these weren't just any tools. Brumm suspected they were very, very old. "I quickly realized the significance and brought the rest of the team back."

Now, after painstakingly excavating a section of the gully over several years, Brumm and his colleagues reveal in a new paper in the journal Nature that the site is indeed important. Their findings suggest that ancient humans occupied the island as long as 1 million years ago, or 120,000 years earlier than previously believed. The species that used these simple tools could be the ancestors of the famous so-called "hobbits of Flores," the tiny, small-brained species discovered there in 2003 and named after the little folk of the "Lord of the Rings" books.

The work has also overturned the going theory on what happened to certain species of animal life on the island and sparked new questions about when premodern humans actually reached Flores.

Before this discovery, scientists believed that ancient humans appeared there 880,000 years ago. Archaeological discoveries from around that period reveal a significant change in animal life. Several species, including a small elephantlike creature and a giant tortoise, were wiped out. "We always thought the premodern humans arrived on Flores and caused the extinction," archaeologist Gert van den Bergh, a co-author of the Nature paper, told AOL News.

While no actual bones or fossilized remains were found at the site Brumm wandered across, the presence of the tools suggests that ancient humans were on Flores long before that extinction. So this idea that they arrived and killed off the giant tortoise and pygmy elephant no longer holds. "Either this means that the first humans to arrive didn't have an enormous impact," van den Bergh said, "or maybe the extinctions were caused by other events, like volcanic eruptions."

If volcanic activity killed off the two species, he explained, its effects on the island's ancient humans is hard to determine. They may have survived the event. Or they might have been wiped out as well. In this case, van den Bergh said, it could be that the island was colonized later, by another group.

"The find is exciting," Brumm told AOL News, "but it's also really frustrating because now we have absolutely no idea when hominins first reached Flores."

One way out of this evolutionary maze would be to dig deeper into the past. But that is not going to happen at the site Brumm discovered. The archaeologists literally hit rock bottom on their dig. Now they're in search of a new hot spot of ancient activity.

"We want to look for other places on the same island for sequences that may be older than 1 million years," van den Bergh said. "We might be able to see there when the first humans actually arrived."

To put it another way, the time has come for Brumm to go for another stroll.

http://www.aolnews.com/science/article/hobbit-island-shows-evidence-of-million-year-old-civilization/19403582
(Submitted by T. Peter Park)

Ancient site reveals signs of mass cannibalism

Sunday, 6 December 2009

By Victoria Gill
Science reporter, BBC News

Archaeologists have found evidence of mass cannibalism at a 7,000-year-old human burial site in south-west Germany, the journal Antiquity reports.

The authors say their findings provide rare evidence of cannibalism in Europe's early Neolithic period.

Up to 500 human remains unearthed near the village of Herxheim may have been cannibalised.

The "intentionally mutilated" remains included children and even unborn babies, the researchers say.

The German site was first excavated in 1996 and then explored again between 2005 and 2008.

Team leader Bruno Boulestin, from the University of Bordeaux in France, told BBC News that he and his colleagues had found evidence the human bones were deliberately cut and broken - an indication of cannibalism.

"We see patterns on the bones of animals indicating that they have been spit-roasted," he said. "We have seen some of these same patterns on the human bones [at this site]."

But Dr Boulestin stressed it was difficult to prove that these bones had been deliberately cooked.

Some scientists have rejected the cannibalism theory, suggesting that the removal of flesh could have been part of a burial ritual.

But Dr Boulestin said the human remains had been "intentionally mutilated" and that there was evidence many of them had been chewed.

The early Neolithic was the period when farming first spread in central Europe and the team believes that cannibalism in Europe was likely to have been exceptional - possibly carried out during periods of famine.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/8394802.stm

(Submitted by Tim Chapman)

Ancient site reveals signs of mass cannibalism

Sunday, 6 December 2009

By Victoria Gill
Science reporter, BBC News

Archaeologists have found evidence of mass cannibalism at a 7,000-year-old human burial site in south-west Germany, the journal Antiquity reports.

The authors say their findings provide rare evidence of cannibalism in Europe's early Neolithic period.

Up to 500 human remains unearthed near the village of Herxheim may have been cannibalised.

The "intentionally mutilated" remains included children and even unborn babies, the researchers say.

The German site was first excavated in 1996 and then explored again between 2005 and 2008.

Team leader Bruno Boulestin, from the University of Bordeaux in France, told BBC News that he and his colleagues had found evidence the human bones were deliberately cut and broken - an indication of cannibalism.

"We see patterns on the bones of animals indicating that they have been spit-roasted," he said. "We have seen some of these same patterns on the human bones [at this site]."

But Dr Boulestin stressed it was difficult to prove that these bones had been deliberately cooked.

Some scientists have rejected the cannibalism theory, suggesting that the removal of flesh could have been part of a burial ritual.

But Dr Boulestin said the human remains had been "intentionally mutilated" and that there was evidence many of them had been chewed.

The early Neolithic was the period when farming first spread in central Europe and the team believes that cannibalism in Europe was likely to have been exceptional - possibly carried out during periods of famine.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/8394802.stm

(Submitted by Tim Chapman)

Extinct bison could rewrite Canadian archaeological record

27 October 2009

The carcass of an extinct steppe bison, discovered two years ago melting out of a cliff in a remote village in the Northwest Territories, is shedding new light on the Ice Age species - and could rewrite the history of human migration in Canada as glaciers began retreating in the region nearly 14,000 years ago.

An analysis showed the specimen was one of the last of its kind in ancient Beringia - the ice-free, northwest corner of the continent that was once linked to eastern Siberia. But the rare find, documented by a team of Canadian, British and American scientists in the latest edition of the journal Quaternary Science Reviews, has wider implications for dating the retreat of the glaciers in northern Canada and the possible entry of human hunters from Asia - the ancestors of today's aboriginal
Canadians - into the continental interior.

The 'partially mummified' steppe bison was found two years ago in Tsiigehtchic, N.W.T. The animal's distinctive skull and wide horns were largely intact, but more tantalizing were portions of preserved limbs, hide and intestines - that permitted detailed genetic analysis allowing scientists to accurately situate the specimen in the evolutionary history of North America's bison populations.

"Based on the genetics, this animal was one of the last of the remaining steppe
bison in Beringia," Yukon government paleontologist Grant Zazula said.

"Shortly after this, populations in the North are completely replaced by bison that evolved in the mid-continent."

What the find also shows is that the post-glacial ecosystem inhabited by the steppe bison must have supported large mammals earlier than previously known. That, say the scientists, suggests human hunters may well have entered the area around this time and - potentially - left traces of their own activities at sites still waiting to be found by archeologists.

"Given that steppe bison inhabited the northern portal to the 'ice-free corridor,' data from the Tsiigehtchic bison raises the potential for discovery of archaeological sites in the lower Mackenzie River Valley," the study states.

Sources: Canwest News Service, Calgary Herald (27 October 2009)

http://www.calgaryherald.com/technology/Bison+could+rewrite+Canada+archaeological+record/2150110/story.html

(Submitted by Terry Colvin)

Extinct bison could rewrite Canadian archaeological record

27 October 2009

The carcass of an extinct steppe bison, discovered two years ago melting out of a cliff in a remote village in the Northwest Territories, is shedding new light on the Ice Age species - and could rewrite the history of human migration in Canada as glaciers began retreating in the region nearly 14,000 years ago.

An analysis showed the specimen was one of the last of its kind in ancient Beringia - the ice-free, northwest corner of the continent that was once linked to eastern Siberia. But the rare find, documented by a team of Canadian, British and American scientists in the latest edition of the journal Quaternary Science Reviews, has wider implications for dating the retreat of the glaciers in northern Canada and the possible entry of human hunters from Asia - the ancestors of today's aboriginal
Canadians - into the continental interior.

The 'partially mummified' steppe bison was found two years ago in Tsiigehtchic, N.W.T. The animal's distinctive skull and wide horns were largely intact, but more tantalizing were portions of preserved limbs, hide and intestines - that permitted detailed genetic analysis allowing scientists to accurately situate the specimen in the evolutionary history of North America's bison populations.

"Based on the genetics, this animal was one of the last of the remaining steppe
bison in Beringia," Yukon government paleontologist Grant Zazula said.

"Shortly after this, populations in the North are completely replaced by bison that evolved in the mid-continent."

What the find also shows is that the post-glacial ecosystem inhabited by the steppe bison must have supported large mammals earlier than previously known. That, say the scientists, suggests human hunters may well have entered the area around this time and - potentially - left traces of their own activities at sites still waiting to be found by archeologists.

"Given that steppe bison inhabited the northern portal to the 'ice-free corridor,' data from the Tsiigehtchic bison raises the potential for discovery of archaeological sites in the lower Mackenzie River Valley," the study states.

Sources: Canwest News Service, Calgary Herald (27 October 2009)

http://www.calgaryherald.com/technology/Bison+could+rewrite+Canada+archaeological+record/2150110/story.html

(Submitted by Terry Colvin)