Neandertals went underwater to collect clam shells and pumice for their tools
Neandertals went underwater for their tools
Neandertals collected clam shells and pumice from coastal waters to use as tools
Neandertals collected clam shells and volcanic rock from the beach and coastal waters of Italy during the Middle Paleolithic, according to a study published January 15, 2020 in the open-access journal PLOS ONE by Paola Villa of the University of Colorado and colleagues.
Neandertals are known to have used tools, but the extent to which they were able to exploit coastal resources has been questioned. In this study, Villa and colleagues explored artifacts from the Neandertal archaeological cave site of Grotta dei Moscerini in Italy, one of two Neandertal sites in the country with an abundance of hand-modified clam shells, dating back to around 100,000 years ago.
The authors examined 171 modified shells, most of which had be retouched to be used as scrapers. All of these shells belonged to the Mediterranean smooth clam species Callista chione. Based on the state of preservation of the shells, including shell damage and encrustation on the shells by marine organisms, the authors inferred that nearly a quarter of the shells had been collected underwater from the sea floor, as live animals, as opposed to being washed up on the beach. In the same cave sediments, the authors also found abundant pumice stones likely used as abrading tools, which apparently drifted via sea currents from erupting volcanoes in the Gulf of Naples (70km south) onto the Moscerini beach, where they were collected by Neandertals.
These findings join a growing list of evidence that Neandertals in Western Europe were in the practice of wading or diving into coastal waters to collect resources long before Homo sapiens brought these habits to the region. The authors also note that shell tools were abundant in sediment layers that had few stone tools, suggesting Neandertals might have turned to making shell tools during times where more typical stone materials were scarce (though it's also possible that clam shells were used because they have a thin and sharp cutting edge, which can be maintained through re-sharpening, unlike flint tools).
The authors add: "The cave opens on a beach. It has a large assemblage of 171 tools made on shells collected on the beach or gathered directly from the sea floor as live animals by skin diving Neandertals. Skin diving for shells or fresh water fishing in low waters was a common activity of Neandertals, according to data from other sites and from an anatomical study published by E. Trinkaus. Neandertals also collected pumices erupted from volcanoes in the gulf of Naples and transported by sea to the beach."
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Citation: Villa P, Soriano S, Pollarolo L, Smriglio C, Gaeta M, D'Orazio M, et al. (2020) Neandertals on the beach: Use of marine resources at Grotta dei Moscerini (Latium, Italy). PLoS ONE 15(1): e0226690. https:/
Funding: National Science Foundation Grant 1118143, BCS Archaeology, to PV (PI) and SS (co-PI). The funders had no role in study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish, or preparation of the manuscript.
Competing Interests: The authors have declared that no competing interests exist.
Press release from the Public Library of Science
Beach-combing Neanderthals dove for shells
Did Neanderthals wear swimsuits? Probably not. But a new study suggests that some of these ancient humans might have spent a lot of time at the beach. They may even have dived into the cool waters of the Mediterranean Sea to gather clam shells.
The findings come from Grotta dei Moscerini, a picturesque cave that sits just 10 feet above a beach in what is today the Latium region of central Italy.
In 1949, archaeologists working at the site dug up some unusual artifacts: dozens of seashells that Neanderthals had picked up, then shaped into sharp tools roughly 90,000 years ago.
Now, a team led by Paola Villa of the University of Colorado Boulder has uncovered new secrets from those decades-old discoveries. In research published today (editor's note: January 15) in the journal PLOS ONE, she and her colleagues report that the Neanderthals didn't just collect shells that were lying out on the beach. They may have actually held their breath and went diving for the perfect shells to meet their needs.
Villa, an adjoint curator in the CU Museum of Natural History, said the results show that Neanderthals may have had a much closer connection to the sea than many scientists thought.
"The fact they were exploiting marine resources was something that was known," Villa said. "But until recently, no one really paid much attention to it."
Cave discoveries
When archaeologists first found shell tools in Grotta dei Moscerini, it came as a surprise. While Neanderthals are well-known for crafting spear tips out of stone, few examples exist of them turning shells into tools.
But the find wasn't a fluke. The 1949 excavation of the cave unearthed 171 such tools, all valves from shell belonging to a local species of mollusk called the smooth clam (Callista chione). Villa explained that the ancient humans used stone hammers to chip away at these shells, forming cutting edges that would have stayed thin and sharp for a long time.
"No matter how many times you retouch a clam shell, its cutting edge will remain very thin and sharp," she said.
But did the Neanderthals, like many beachgoers today, simply collect these shells while taking a stroll along the sand?
To find out, Villa and her colleagues took a closer look at those tools. In the process, they found something they weren't expecting. Nearly three-quarters of the Moscerini shell tools had opaque and slightly abraded exteriors, as if they had been sanded down over time. That's what you'd expect to see, Villa said, on shells that had washed up on a sandy beach.
The rest of the shells had a shiny, smooth exterior.
Those shells, which also tended to be a little bit bigger, had to have been plucked directly from the seafloor as live animals.
"It's quite possible that the Neanderthals were collecting shells as far down as 2 to 4 meters," Villa said. "Of course, they did not have scuba equipment."
Researchers also turned up a large number of pumice stones from the cave that Neanderthals had collected and may have used as abrading tools. The stones, Villa and her colleagues determined, washed onto the Moscerini beach from volcanic eruptions that occurred more than 40 miles to the south.
Going for a dip
She's not alone in painting a picture of beach-loving Neanderthals.
In an earlier study, for example, a team led by anthropologist Erik Trinkaus identified bony growths on the ears of a few Neanderthal skeletons. These features, called "swimmer's ear," can be found in people who practice aquatic sports today.
For Villa, the findings are yet more proof that Neanderthals were just as flexible and creative as their human relatives when it came to eking out a living--a strong contrast to their representation in popular culture as a crude cavemen who lived by hunting or scavenging mammoths.
"People are beginning to understand that Neanderthals didn't just hunt large mammals," Villa said. "They also did things like freshwater fishing and even skin diving."
Other coauthors on the new study included researchers from the French National Centre for Scientific Research, the University of Geneva, Roma Tre University, Sapienza University of Rome and the University of Pisa.
Press release from the University of Colorado at Boulder
The colors of the Pachacamac idol, an Inca god, finally revealed
Pachacamac Idol of ancient Peru was symbolically painted
Chemical analysis of the statue reveals its age and original polychromatic design
The Pachacamac Idol of ancient Peru was a multicolored and emblematic sacred icon worshipped for almost 700 hundred years before Spanish conquest, according to a study published January 15, 2020 in the open-access journal PLOS ONE by Marcela Sepúlveda of the University of Tarapacá, Chile and colleagues.
The Pachacamac Idol is a symbolically carved wooden statue known from the Pachacamac archaeological complex, the principal coastal Inca sanctuary 31 km south of Lima, Peru during the 15th-16th centuries. The idol was reportedly damaged in 1533 during Spanish conquest of the region, and details of its originality and antiquity have been unclear. Also unexplored has been the question of whether the idol was symbolically colored, a common practice in Old World Antiquity.
In this study, Sepúlveda and colleagues obtained a wood sample from the Pachacamac Idol for chemical analysis. Through carbon-dating, they were able to determine that the wood was cut and likely carved approximately 760-876 AD, during the Middle Horizon, suggesting the statue was worshipped for almost 700 years before Spanish conquest. Their analysis also identified chemical traces of three pigments that would have conferred red, yellow, and white coloration to the idol.
This nondestructive analysis not only confirms that the idol was painted, but also that it was polychromatic, displaying at least three colors and perhaps others not detected in this study. The fact that the red pigment used was cinnabar, a material not found in the local region, demonstrates economic and symbolic implications for the coloration of the statue. The authors point out that coloration is a rarely discussed factor in the symbolic, economic, and experiential importance of religious symbols of the pre-Columbian periods, and that more studies on the subject could illuminate unknown details of cultural practices of the Andean past in South America.
The authors add: "Here, polychromy of the so-called Pachacamac Idol is demonstrated, including the presence of cinnabar."
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Citation: Sepúlveda M, Pozzi-Escot D, Angeles Falcón R, Bermeo N, Lebon M, Moulhérat C, et al. (2020) Unraveling the polychromy and antiquity of the Pachacamac Idol, Pacific coast, Peru. PLoS ONE 15(1): e0226244. https:/
Funding: This work was support by the National Research Agency under the program Future Investments bearing the reference ANR-11-IDEX-0004-02 (programs INCA and ARCIC of Sorbonne Universités)(MS,PW). We thank the financial support from the Ile-de-France region (DIM Analytics, project IMAPAT) for the building of new instruments for a mobile laboratory for art studies (PW), and the NASA PICASSO program for funding the MapX instrument development (PS,PW). The funders had no role in study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish, or preparation of the manuscript.
Competing Interests: The authors have declared that no competing interests exist.
Press release from the Public Library of Science
The colors of the Pachacamac idol, an Inca god, finally revealed
The legend of Pachacamac will not soon die. Since the 16th century, Spanish chroniclers have said that Hernando Pizarro had destroyed the idol of the deity when he conquered the Inca Empire in the Andes. But a carved wooden post representing Pachacamac was discovered on the archaeological site of the same name in 1938, so it was considered that the Spaniards may have been wrong in thinking that the idol had been completely destroyed. Now we have a new mystery! What is the nature of the red colour observed on the object? Is it blood residue, the remnants of sacrificial practices?
Thanks to close collaboration with the museum at the Pachacamac archaeological site in Peru, an international research team* has been able to conduct never-before-seen analysis -- non-invasive and non-destructive analysis -- of the idol's polychromy. They first revealed that red was not the only colour present on the piece of wood: we see white on the teeth of a personage and yellow on some headdresses.
What is even more interesting is that the researchers were able to determine the chemical composition of the pigments and show that red is not blood but mercury, no doubt from cinnabar, a mercury mineral known in that region for over 2000 years. Cinnabar sources in the Andes are 400 km from Pachacamac, at high altitude. So the idol was painted intentionally, no doubt to show economic and political power by carrying a pigment from a faraway region even though others were available on site.
Finally, the Pachacamac idol was carbon-14 dated for the first time. The object was made around 731 AD, probably by the Waris, i.e. about 700 years before the height of the Incan empire. This confirms that the Pachacamac site already had local ritual importance before the Incas arrived. They then made it one of their main pilgrimage centres, to the point that it housed an oracle that advised the emperor himself.
These results are part of a broad study of painted objects and walls at the Pachacamac archaeological site that aims to better understand the materials, practices and knowledge related to colour in the Andes during the pre-Hispanic period.
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*- French participants were from the Laboratoire d'Archéologie Moléculaire et Structurale (Lams - CNRS/Sorbonne Université), the Laboratoire Archéologie des Amériques (Archam - CNRS/Université Paris 1 Panthéon-Sorbonne), the Laboratoire Histoire Naturelle de l'Homme Préhistorique" (CNRS/Muséum National d'Histoire Naturelle/Université de Perpignan - Via Domitia) and the Musée du quai Branly - Jacques Chirac.
The Met Acquires Works by Pakistani Artist Lala Rukh
About the Artist
Press release from the Metropolitan Museum of Art.
"Arctic: culture and climate", an exhibition on the history of the Arctic people
British Museum announces major exhibition on the Arctic
The Citi exhibition Arctic: culture and climate
28 May – 23 August 2020
Sainsbury Exhibitions Gallery
Lead supporter Citi
Supported by
Julie and Stephen Fitzgerald
AKO Foundation
In May 2020 the British Museum will open the first major exhibition on the history of the Arctic and its indigenous peoples, through the lens of climate change and weather. The Arctic has been home to resilient communities for nearly 30,000 years, cultures that have lived with the opportunities and challenges of one of the most dramatic and dynamic environments on the planet. Today climate change is transforming the Arctic at the fastest rate in human history. The Citi exhibition Arctic: culture and climate is the first to look at the circumpolar region through the eyes of contemporary Arctic communities, revealing how Arctic peoples have adapted to climate variability in the past and addresses the global issue of changing climate through their stories in a transforming world.
Bringing together the largest and most diverse circumpolar collection ever displayed in the UK, including objects from the British Museum’s world-class Arctic collection and international lenders and commissions, this exhibition will reveal a wealth of artistic expression and ecological knowledge, from the past right up to the present day. From rare 28,000 year old archaeological finds excavated from the thawing ground in Siberia, unique tools and clothing adapted for survival, artworks reflecting the respectful relationship between Arctic people and the natural world, to stunning photography of contemporary daily life, the exhibition will show the great diversity of cultures and ingenuity of communities responding to dramatic changes in seasonal weather and human-caused climate change.
The Arctic Circle is the most northern region in the world encompassing the area of midnight sun in summer and the polar night in winter that covers 4% of the Earth. It is home to 4 million people including 400,000 indigenous peoples belonging to one or more of 40 different ethnic groups with distinct languages and dialects. Most of the Arctic’s indigenous inhabitants rely on hunting, fishing and reindeer herding. These subsistence resources are supplemented by employment in industries such as government infrastructures, energy, commercial fishing and tourism.
Arctic peoples have traded and engaged across the Circumpolar North for millennia. From Russia, Greenland, Canada and the USA to the Scandinavian nations, the peoples of the region have thrived within this ever-changing and evolving landscape. Scientists predict that the Arctic will be ice-free in 80 years, which will bring dramatic and profound change to the people that live there and will affect us all.
Twyla Thurmond, tribal coordinator, from Shishmaref, Alaska says “Shishmaref and other Alaska Native communities are demonstrating how people can stay strong and unified in their search for answers to climate change, the most challenging problem of the 21st century.”
The exhibition will feature many highlight objects from across the circumpolar region, including an 8-piece Igloolik winter costume made of caribou (wild reindeer) fur, illustrating the relationship between humans and animals in the Arctic. The hunted animal provides food for the community as well as clothing, perfectly adapted to help humans survive the extreme cold. All available natural materials are put to use. A delicate and unique household bag from western Alaska, crafted from tanned salmon skin, demonstrates the beautiful properties that emerge from fishskin when skilled practitioners work and expose material to particular weather conditions.
Over the past 300 years, Arctic peoples have faced dramatic social, economic, and political changes as a result of European and Russian exploration to the region, quests for the Northwest Passage, and the global fur trade. A key object from this period is the Inughuit (Greenlandic) sled made from narwhal and caribou bone and pieces of driftwood. It was traded to Sir John Ross on his 1818 expedition, marking the first encounter between Inughuit and Europeans. Arctic peoples’ responses to the establishment of colonial governments and state-sponsored religions in the Arctic will feature, including a bronze carved Evenki spirit mask that was made from a 17th century Russian Orthodox icon. Today, Arctic peoples are transforming traditional heritage to meet contemporary needs and safeguard their culture. From performances adapted from ritual practices to commercial artwork inspired by storytelling and material traditions.
Stunning contemporary photography of the Arctic landscape and local communities will form part of the immersive exhibition design. There will be a number of new artworks commissioned for the exhibition. These include a limestone Inuksuk, an iconic Arctic monument of stacked stones used to mark productive harvesting locations or to assist in navigation, built by Piita Irniq, from the Kivalliq Region of Nunavut, Canada. A new installation from the art collective Embassy of Imagination will present traditional clothing made from Japanese paper and printmaking by Inuit youth in Kinngait (Cape Dorset) and Puvirnitug, Nunavut, Canada.
The Citi exhibition Arctic: culture and climate will tell inspirational stories of human achievement while celebrating the region’s natural beauty. It will encourage debate about the future of this globally significant landscape in the light of the global climate change. Arctic peoples have faced different kinds of change, developing strategies and tools to mitigate the disruptive effects of social and environmental change from which we can all learn.
Lead supporter Citi
Supported by Julie and Stephen Fitzgerald, and AKO Foundation
Amber Lincoln, Curator, Americas Section, British Museum, said ‘Through the generosity of indigenous Arctic people and Arctic scholars, this exhibition weaves together compelling stories, objects and landscapes of the Circumpolar North, at a time when the Arctic is changing before our very eyes.’
Hartwig Fischer, Director of the British Museum, said ‘The Citi exhibition Arctic: culture and climate is a bold and ambitious exhibition that reflects the expanding vision of the British Museum. The show directly addresses the essential question of how humans can live with the impacts of extreme weather. The future and past come together in the present, united by the shared experiences of Arctic peoples. I would like to thank Citi, whose on-going support has allowed the Museum to realise this ground-breaking exhibition.’
James Bardrick, Citi Country Officer, United Kingdom says: “As a global bank, we play an essential role in financing a sustainable economy and supporting indigenous peoples’ rights. We are particularly proud to partner with the British Museum for the forthcoming Arctic: culture and climate exhibition that sheds light on the formidable artistic expression and ecological knowledge of the Arctic populations. We are committed to financing and facilitating clean energy, infrastructure and technology projects that support environmental solutions and reduce the impacts of climate change, on rich and diverse communities such as those that inhabit the circumpolar Arctic.”
If you want to read more about Arctic: culture and climate, follow the British Museum blog at blog.britishmuseum.org
Press release from the British Museum
Pictures courtesy of the British Museum
The Vikings erected the Rök runestone out of fear of a climate catastrophe
The Vikings erected a runestone out of fear of a climate catastrophe
Several passages on the Rök stone - the world's most famous Viking Age runic monument - suggest that the inscription is about battles and for over a hundred years, researchers have been trying to connect the inscription with heroic deeds in war. Now, thanks to an interdisciplinary research project, a new interpretation of the inscription is being presented. The study shows that the inscription deals with an entirely different kind of battle: the conflict between light and darkness, warmth and cold, life and death.
The Rök runestone, erected in Östergötland around 800 CE, is the world's most famous runestone from the Viking Age, but has also proven to be one of the most difficult to interpret. This new interpretation is based on a collaboration between researchers from several disciplines and universities.
"The key to unlocking the inscription was the interdisciplinary approach. Without these collaborations between textual analysis, archaeology, history of religions and runology, it would have been impossible to solve the riddles of the Rök runestone," says Per Holmberg, professor in Swedish at the University of Gothenburg, who led the study.
A previous climate catastrophe
The study is based on new archaeological research describing how badly Scandinavia suffered from a previous climate catastrophe with lower average temperatures, crop failures, hunger and mass extinctions. Bo Gräslund, professor in Archaeology at Uppsala University, points to several reasons why people may have feared a new catastrophe of this kind:
"Before the Rök runestone was erected, a number of events occurred which must have seemed extremely ominous: a powerful solar storm coloured the sky in dramatic shades of red, crop yields suffered from an extremely cold summer, and later a solar eclipse occurred just after sunrise. Even one of these events would have been enough to raise fears of another Fimbulwinter," says Bo Gräslund.
Nine riddles
According to the researchers' new interpretation now being published, the inscription consists of nine riddles. The answer to five of these riddles is "the Sun". One is a riddle asking who was dead but now lives again. The remaining four riddles are about Odin and his warriors.
Olof Sundqvist, professor in History of Religions at Stockholm University, explains the connection:
"The powerful elite of the Viking Age saw themselves as guarantors for good harvests. They were the leaders of the cult that held together the fragile balance between light and darkness. And finally at Ragnarök, they would fight alongside Odin in the final battle for the light."
Parallels with other Old Norse texts
According to the researchers, several points in the inscription have clear parallels with other Old Norse texts that no one has previously noted.
"For me, it's been almost like discovering a new literary source from the Viking Age. Sweden's answer to the Icelandic Poetic Edda!" says Henrik Williams, professor in Scandinavian Languages with a specialty in Runology at Uppsala University.
Links to article and other media
The Rök runestone and the end of the world (Futhark: International Journal of Runic Studies): https:/
English translation of the inscription, with the answer to the nine riddles with textual parallels on Old Norse or Anglo-Saxon poetry (CC-BY: Henrik Williams, Per Holmberg, Bo Gräslund, Olof Sundqvist)
(Choose English): https:/
Audio recording of Henrik Williams reading the inscription (CC-BY: Henrik Williams): https:/
Press release from the University of Gothenburg.
Researchers learn more about teen-age T.Rex
Researchers learn more about teen-age T.Rex
A study of two juvenile T.rex skeletons show how the large predator grew up
Without a doubt, Tyrannosaurus rex is the most famous dinosaur in the world. The 40-foot-long predator with bone crushing teeth inside a five-foot long head are the stuff of legend. Now, a look within the bones of two mid-sized, immature T. rex allow scientists to learn about the tyrant king's terrible teens as well.
In the early 2000s, the fossil skeletons of two comparatively small T. rex were collected from Carter County, Montana, by Burpee Museum of Natural History in Rockford, Illinois. Nicknamed "Jane" and "Petey," the tyrannosaurs would have been slightly taller than a draft horse and twice as long.
The team led by Holly Woodward, Ph.D., from Oklahoma State University Center for Health Sciences studied Jane and Petey to better understand T. rex life history.
The study "Growing up Tyrannosaurus rex: histology refutes pygmy 'Nanotyrannus' and supports ontogenetic niche partitioning in juvenile Tyrannosaurus" appears in the peer-reviewed journal Science Advances.
Co-authors include Jack Horner, presidential fellow at Chapman University; Nathan Myhrvold, founder and CEO of Intellectual Ventures; Katie Tremaine, graduate student at Montana State University; Scott Williams, paleontology lab and field specialist at Museum of the Rockies; and Lindsay Zanno, division head of paleontology at the North Carolina Museum of Natural Sciences. Supplemental histological work was conducted at the Diane Gabriel Histology Labs at Museum of the Rockies/Montana State University.
"Historically, many museums would collect the biggest, most impressive fossils of a dinosaur species for display and ignore the others," said Woodward. "The problem is that those smaller fossils may be from younger animals. So, for a long while we've had large gaps in our understanding of how dinosaurs grew up, and T. rex is no exception."
The smaller size of Jane and Petey is what make them so incredibly important. Not only can scientists now study how the bones and proportions changed as T. rex matured, but they can also utilize paleohistology-- the study of fossil bone microstructure-- to learn about juvenile growth rates and ages. Woodward and her team removed thin slices from the leg bones of Jane and Petey and examined them at high magnification.
"To me, it's always amazing to find that if you have something like a huge fossilized dinosaur bone, it's fossilized on the microscopic level as well," Woodward said. "And by comparing these fossilized microstructures to similar features found in modern bone, we know they provide clues to metabolism, growth rate, and age."
The team determined that the small T. rex were growing as fast as modern-day warm-blooded animals such as mammals and birds. Woodward and her colleagues also found that by counting the annual rings within the bone, much like counting tree rings, Jane and Petey were teenaged T.rex when they died; 13 and 15 years old, respectively.
There had been speculation that the two small skeletons weren't T. rex at all, but a smaller pygmy relative Nanotyrannus. Study of the bones using histology led the researchers to the conclusion that the skeletons were juvenile T. rex and not a new pygmy species.
Instead, Woodward points out, because it took T. rex up to twenty years to reach adult size, the tyrant king probably underwent drastic changes as it matured. Juveniles such as Jane and Petey were fast, fleet footed, and had knife-like teeth for cutting, whereas adults were lumbering bone crushers. Not only that, but Woodward's team discovered that growing T. rex could do a neat trick: if its food source was scarce during a particular year, it just didn't grow as much. And if food was plentiful, it grew a lot.
"The spacing between annual growth rings record how much an individual grows from one year to the next. The spacing between the rings within Jane, Petey, and even older individuals is inconsistent - some years the spacing is close together, and other years it's spread apart," said Woodward.
The research by Woodward and her team writes a new chapter in the early years of the world's most famous dinosaur, providing evidence that it assumed the crown of tyrant king long before it reached adult size.
