Cremation in the Middle East dates as far back as 7,000 B.C.
The gender of the human remains found inside a cremation pyre pit in Beisamoun, Israel remains unknown. What is known is that the individual was a young adult injured by a flint projectile several months prior to their death in spring some 9,000 years ago. Preserved due to it being buried, the pit represents the oldest proof of direct (1) cremation in the Middle East.
© mission Beisamoun
An international team lead by CNRS archaeo-anthropologist Fanny Bocquentin (2)with aid from PhD candidate Marie Anton and several experts in animal, plant, and mineral remains, discovered and studied the bones found inside the pyre. An analysis of the clay used to coat the inside of the pit showed the 355 bone fragments, some of which were burnt, were exposed to temperatures reaching 700°C. The position of the bones and the preserved joints seem to indicate the body was placed seated onto the pyre and was not moved during or after cremation.
© mission Beisamoun
Whether used as fuel, as ornamentation, or as a scent, siliceous traces indicated the presence of flowering plants, which made it possible to identify the season the person died. In addition to the exceptional pyre pit, the cremated remains of five other adults were discovered at the site. They dated back to the same period as burials whose traces were discovered among the ruins of abandoned dwellings.
The use of cremation indicates an evolution of the relationship to death in the region. The veneration of ancestors and lengthy funerary practices seem to have given way to shorter rituals. This could be evidence of a transition phase because, some two to three centuries later, the dead were no longer buried inside or near villages and their traces are much more difficult to find.
The study is based on joint archaeological digs completed between 2007-2016 by the CNRS, the French Ministry for Europe and Foreign Affairs and the Israel Antiquities Authority.
© mission Beisamoun
Emergence of corpse cremation during the Pre-Pottery Neolithic of the Southern Levant: A multidisciplinary study of a pyre-pit burial, Fanny Bocquentin, Marie Anton, Francesco Berna, Arlene Rosen, Hamoudi Khalaily, Harris Greenberg, Thomas C. Hart, Omri Lernau, Liora Kolska Horwitz. PLOS ONE, 12 August 2020. DOI : 10.1371/journal.pone.0235386
Notes
(1) The body was cremated directly, as opposed to other practices where dried exhumed bones were burnt.
(2) Member of the Prehistoric ethnology team at the Archéologies et sciences de l'Antiquité laboratory (CNRS/Université Paris 1 Panthéon-Sorbonne/Université Paris Nanterre/French Ministry of Culture). This study also involved a PhD candidate from the Eco-anthropologie laboratory (CNRS/Museum national d’Histoire naturelle) with support from the Centre de recherche français à Jérusalem (CNRS/French Ministry for Europe and Foreign Affairs/Aix-Marseille Université).
Press release from CNRS on the cremation pyre pit in Beisamoun, Israel, Middle East.
The recovery of fluted points from America and Arabia provides example of independent invention
An Iconic Native American Stone Tool Technology Discovered in Arabia
The recovery of distinctive fluted points from both America and Arabia provides one of the best examples of ‘independent invention’ across continents
A new study led by archaeologists from the CNRS, the Inrap, the Ohio State University and the Max Planck Institute for the Science of Human History, reports on fluted points from the archaeological sites of Manayzah in Yemen and Ad-Dahariz in Oman. Fluted stone tools are a distinctive, technologically advanced form of projectile points, including spearheads and arrowheads. Fluting is a specific technique that involves the extraction of an elongated flake along the length of a projectile point, leaving a distinctive groove or depression at the base of the spearhead or arrowhead.
Fluting is a distinct technological tradition invented by early human cultures that spread across the Americas. Fluted point technology is very well known in North America, evidenced by finds across the continent dating from 13,000 to 10,000 years ago. As lead author Dr. Rémy Crassard of the CNRS notes, "Until the early 2000s, these fluted points were unknown elsewhere on the planet. When the first isolated examples of these objects were recognized in Yemen, and more recently in Oman, we recognized that there could be huge implications."
The sites of Manayzah and Ad-Dahariz yielded dozens of fluted points. The Arabian examples date to the Neolithic period, about 8,000 to 7,000 years ago, at least two thousand years later than the American examples. As Professor Petraglia of the Max Planck explains, "Given their age and the fact that the fluted points from America and Arabia are separated by thousands of kilometers, there is no possible cultural connection between them. This is then a clear and excellent example of cultural convergence, or independent invention in human history."
The new PLOS ONE article carefully examines the fluted points found in south Arabia. Detailed technological analysis, backed up by stone tool experiments and replication by an expert modern flintknapper, illustrate the similarities between the American and Arabian fluting procedures.
In addition to the similarities, the authors of the new study also investigated the contrasts between the technologies of the two regions. Technological differences were apparent in the nature and location of the flute. The authors emphasize that the 'fluting method' was likely a mental conceptualization of stone tool manufacture, more than just a technical way to produce a projectile and hafting zone. Whereas the apparent function of fluting in the Americas is to facilitate hafting, or attaching the point to a shaft, most of the Arabian fluted points do not have hafting as a functional final aim. The fluting concept and the method itself are the same in both American and Arabia, yet the final aim of fluting appears to be different.
Arabian and American fluted point technologies were highly specialized stone tool production methods. The PLOS ONE study of Arabian fluting technology demonstrates that similar innovations and inventions were developed under different circumstances and that such highly-skilled and convergent production methods can have different anthropological implications. As discussed in the article, Professor McCorriston argues that "fluting in Arabia was used as a display of skill, rather than serving a purely functional purpose such as hafting, as is more widely accepted in the Americas."
In Arabian prehistory, southern Arabia experienced developments of local origin, with multiple examples of inventions and innovations not culturally transmitted by outside traditions. The fluting method is then a hallmark of this indigenous development in the south Arabian Neolithic.
Publication
Rémy Crassard, Vincent Charpentier, Joy McCorriston, Jérémie Vosges, Sofiane Bouzid, Michael Petraglia: Fluted-point technology in Neolithic Arabia: An independent invention far from the Americas, PLOS ONE
Press release from the Max Planck Institute for the Science of Human History
In ancient Arabia, some tools were created to show off skills
Fluted projectile points were used like a “peacock’s feathers”
People living in southern Arabia some 8,000 years ago created intricate stone weapons that were not just useful, but designed to “show off” their tool-making skills, a new study suggests.
Researchers from the French National Centre for Scientific Research (CNRS), The Ohio State University and the Max Planck Institute for the Science of Human History excavated and examined projectile points – such as spearheads and arrowheads – created during the Neolithic period in what is now Yemen and Oman.
They found that the Arabians independently invented a process to create projectile points – called fluting – that was first used by people living in North America thousands of years earlier.
But there was one key difference between fluting as it was used in North America and the way it was used in Arabia, said Joy McCorriston, co-author of the study and professor of anthropology at Ohio State.
In North America, fluting was used just to make the arrowhead or spearhead more functional. But in Arabia, people also used it to demonstrate their technical skills.
“It was like a peacock’s feathers – it was all for appearance. They used fluting to show just how skilled they were at using this very difficult technology, with its heightened risk of failure,” McCorriston said.
The study was published today (Aug. 5, 2020) in the journal PLOS ONE.
The scientists studied projectile points from two archaeological sites: Manayzah, in Yemen, and Ad-Dahariz, in Oman. McCorriston and a team from Ohio State oversaw the excavation in Manayzah, which lasted from 2004 to 2008.
Finding fluted points outside of North America was an important discovery, said Rémy Crassard of CNRS, lead author of the study.
“These fluted points were, until recently, unknown elsewhere on the planet. This was until the early 2000s, when the first isolated examples of these objects were recognized in Yemen, and more recently in Oman,” Crassard said.
Fluting involves a highly skilled process of chipping off flakes from a stone to create a distinctive channel. It is difficult and takes much practice to perfect, McCorriston said.
In North America, almost all fluting on projectile points was done near the base, so that the implement could be attached with string to the arrow or spear shaft. In other words, it had a practical application, she said.
But in this study, the researchers found some Arabian points with fluting that appeared to have no useful purpose, such as near the tip.
As part of the study, the researchers had a master technician in flintknapping – the shaping of stones – attempt to create projectile points in a way similar to how researchers believe the ancient Arabians did.
“He made hundreds of attempts to learn how to do this. It is difficult and a flintknapper breaks a lot of these points trying to learn how to do it right,” McCorriston said.
The question, then, is why would these Neolithic people do this when it was so costly and time-consuming and didn’t make the points more useful? In addition, they only used fluting on some points.
“Of course, we can’t say for sure, but we think this was a way for skilled toolmakers to signal something to others, perhaps that one is a good hunter, a quick study, or dexterous with one’s hands,” she said.
“It showed one was good at what one did. This could improve one’s social standing in the community.”
The findings suggested that while there were many similarities between the American and Arabian fluted points, there were also differences. The way that people performed the fluting in the two places was different, which is not surprising since they were separated by thousands of miles and thousands of years, McCorriston said.
Finding the fluted points in Arabia provides one of the best examples of “independent invention” across continents, said co-author Michael Petraglia of the Max Planck Institute.
“Given their age, and the fact that the fluted points from America and Arabia are separated by thousands of kilometers, there is no possible cultural connection between them,” Petraglia said.
“This is a clear and excellent example of cultural convergence, or independent invention, in human history.”
This study is part of the larger Roots of Agriculture in Southern Arabia (RASA) project, co-led by McCorriston. The project, which included 12 years of field work in Yemen, explored the first use of domesticated animals in Arabia and the societies that developed around them.
Their work is featured in a new book co-edited by McCorriston, Landscape History of Hadramawt: The Roots of Agriculture in Southern Arabia (RASA Project 1998-2008). The book won The Jo Anne Stolaroff Cotsen Prize, which honors outstanding studies in archaeology.
Press release from the Ohio State University
Native American stone tool technology found in Arabia
Stone fluted points dating back some 8,000 to 7,000 years ago, were discovered on archaeological sites in Manayzah, Yemen and Ad-Dahariz, Oman. Spearheads and arrowheads were found among these distinctive and technologically advanced projectile points. Until now, the prehistoric technique of fluting had been uncovered only on 13,000 to 10,000-year-old Native American sites. According to a study led by an international team of archaeologists from the CNRS(1), Inrap, Ohio State University and the Max Planck Institute for the Science of Human History, the difference in age and geographic location implies there is no connection between the populations who made them. This is therefore an example of cultural convergence for an invention which required highly-skilled expertise. And yet, despite similar fluting techniques, the final aim appears to be different. Whereas in the Americas the points were used to facilitate hafting, or attaching the point to a shaft, fluting in Arabia was possibly a mere display of knapping skills.
Notes
(1) Researchers based in France are affiliated with the Centre français de recherche de la péninsule arabique (CNRS / Ministry for Europe and Foreign Affairs; formerly CEFAS), the laboratoire Archéorient de la Maison de l'Orient et de la Méditerranée (CNRS / Université Lumière Lyon 2 / AMU / ENS Lyon / Université Claude Bernard Lyon 1 / Université Jean Moulin / Université Jean Monnet) and the laboratoire Archéologies et sciences de l'antiquité (CNRS / Université Panthéon-Sorbonne / Université Paris Nanterre / Ministère de la culture).
Press release from CNRS
3D reconstructions of boats from the ancient port of Rome
Today, Fiumicino in Italy is a busy airport, but 2,000 years ago this area was filled with boats – it was a large artificial harbour only a stone’s throw from the ancient port of Rome (Ostia). To tie in with the opening of the site’s newly refurbished museum, Giulia Boetto, a CNRS researcher at the Camille Jullian Centre (CNRS/Aix-Marseille Université), has coordinated 3D reconstructions of three of the wooden boats found at Fiumicino.
These boats, in use between the 2nd and early 5th centuries AD, were abandoned in the port when they became outdated. At which time, they became waterlogged and covered with a layer of sediment. These oxygen-free conditions enabled the boats to survive until they were excavated, almost 60 years ago. Recovered and initially housed in the museum, which required major structural work, these wooden remains were documented using state-of-the-art digital survey techniques, then analysed and reconstructed in 3D, thanks to Boetto's expertise in naval archaeology.
The researcher also called on Marseille-based start-up Ipso Facto to create 3D models of the remains and on her colleague Pierre Poveda, a CNRS research engineer in the same laboratory, to restore the missing parts using archaeological comparisons and iconographic representations. By the end of the year, these 3D reconstructions will be housed at the new Roman Ship Museum in the Archaeological Park of Ancient Ostia.
This exhibition will enable visitors to discover ancient boat construction techniques and what life was like on board these Roman vessels. It will also allow them to virtually navigate in what was the most important Mediterranean port complex during the Roman Empire.
A video of the fishing boat's 3D reconstruction is available here.
Press release from CNRS (Délégation Paris Michel-Ange)
Neanderthals: pioneers in the use of marine resources
Neanderthals ate mussels, fish, and seals too
International research team with participation from University of Göttingen find it wasn't just Homo sapiens who sourced food from the sea -- impact on cognitive abilities suspected
Over 80,000 years ago, Neanderthals were already feeding themselves regularly on mussels, fish and other marine life. The first robust evidence of this has been found by an international research team with the participation of the University of Göttingen during an excavation in the cave of Figueira Brava in Portugal. Dr Dirk Hoffmann at the Göttingen Isotope Geology Department dated flowstone layers - calcite deposits that form like stalagmites from dripping water - using the uranium-thorium method, and was thus able to determine the age of the excavation layers to between 86,000 and 106,000 years. This means that the layers date from the period in which the Neanderthals settled in Europe. The use of the sea as a source of food at that time has so far only been attributed to anatomically modern humans (Homo sapiens) in Africa. The results of the study were published in the journal Science.
The cave of Figueira Brava is located 30 kilometres south of Lisbon on the slopes of the Serra da Arrábida. Today it is located directly on the waterfront, but at that time it was up to two kilometres from the coast. The research team, coordinated by the first author of the study, Professor João Zilhão from the University of Barcelona, found that the Neanderthals living there were able to routinely harvest mussels and fish, and to hunt seals. Their diet included mussels, crustaceans and fish as well as waterfowl and marine mammals such as dolphins and seals. Food from the sea is rich in omega-3 fatty acids and other fatty acids that promote the development of brain tissue.
Until now, it has always been suspected that this consumption increased the cognitive abilities of the human populations in Africa. "Among other influences, this could explain the early appearance of a culture of modern people that used symbolic artefacts, such as body painting with ochre, the use of ornaments or the decoration of containers made of ostrich eggs with geometric motifs," explains Hoffmann. "Such behaviour reflects human's capacity for abstract thought and communication through symbols, which also contributed to the emergence of more organised and complex societies of modern humans".
The recent results of the excavation of Figueira Brava now confirm that if the habitual consumption of marine life played an important role in the development of cognitive abilities, this is as true for Neanderthals as it is for anatomically modern humans. Hoffmann and his co-authors previously found that Neanderthals made cave paintings in three caves on the Iberian Peninsula more than 65,000 years ago and that perforated and painted shells must also be attributed to the Neanderthals.
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Original publication: J. Zilhão et al., Last Interglacial Iberian Neandertals as fisher-hunter-gatherers, Science, 10.1126/science.aaz7943
See: https:/
Press release from the University of Göttingen
Science publishes study on Neanderthals as pioneers in marine resource exploitation
The journal Science has published a study led by the ICREA researcher João Zilhão, from the University of Barcelona, which presents the results of the excavation in Cueva de Figueira Brava, Portugal, which was used as shelter by Neanderthal populations about between 86 and 106 thousand years ago. The study reveals fishing and shellfish-gathering contributed significantly to the subsistence economy of the inhabitants of Figueira Brava. The relevance of this discovery lies in the fact that so far, there were not many signs of these practices as common among Neanderthals.
Regarding the consequences of this study, João Zilhão notes that "an influent model on our origins suggests the common consumption of water resources -rich in Omega3 and other fatty acids that favour the development of brain tissues- would have increased the cognitive skills of modern anatomy humans. That is, those humans who, in Africa, were contemporaries of Neanderthals and are usually regarded as the only ancestors of the current Homo sapiens". But the results of the excavation of Figueira Brava state that, if this common consumption of marine resources played an important role in the development of cognitive skills, it did so on the entire humanity, including Neanderthals, and not only the African population that spread later".
Zilhão member of the Prehistoric Studies and Research Seminar (SERP-UB), lists the research study in the line of "proof that accumulated over the last decade to show Neanderthals had a symbolic material culture". Two years ago, in 2018, the journals Science and Science Advances published two studies co-led by João Zilhão which showed that more than 65,000 years ago, Neanderthals made cave paintings in at least three caves in the Iberian Peninsula: La Pasiega, Maltravieso and Ardales (Science). Furthermore, more than 115,000 years ago, they used perforated marine shells and with ocher remains, such as the ones from Cueva de los Aviones (Murcia, Spain), as pendants and shell containers with residues of complex mixes of pigment (Science Advances). These findings, the most recent one being the one in Figueira Brava, "support a view on human evolution in which the known fossil variants, such as Neanderthals' in Europe and its African anatomy contemporaries -more similar to ours-, should be understood as remains from our ancestors, not as different higher-lower species", notes Zilhão.
A 50% of the diet of the inhabitants in Figueira Brava was built by coastal resources: molluscs (limpet, mussel and clams; crustaceans (brown crab and spider crab); fish (shark, eel, sea bream, mullet); birds (mallard, common scoter, goose, cormorant, gannet, shag, auk, egret, loon), and mammals (dolphin, seal). This was completed with the hunt of deer, goats, horses, aurochs and other small preys such as tortoises. Among the other carbonised plants were olive trees, vines, fig trees and other Mediterranean climate typical species, among which the most abundant was the stone pine -its wood was used as combustible. Pine forests were exploited as fruit tree gardens: mature pines, albeit closed, were taken from the branches and stored in the cave, where the fire could open them so as to take the pines.
The study also provides other results, such as the idea of the concept of Neanderthals as cold and tundra peoples, experts on hunting mammoths, rhinos, buffalos and reindeers, is biased. "Most Neanderthals would have lived in southern regions, specially in Italy and in the Iberian Peninsula, and its lifestyle would have been very similar to those in Figueira Brava", notes Zilhão.
Another important affirmation in the study is the familiarity of humans with the sea and its resources as something older and wider than what was thought. "This could probably help explain how, between 45,000 and 50,000 years ago, humans could cross the Timor Sea to colonize Australia and New Guinea, and then, about 30,000 years ago, the closest islands to the western Pacific", says Zilhão.
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Article reference:
J. Zilhão, D. E. Angelucci, M. Araújo Igreja, L. J. Arnold, E. Badal, P. Callapez, J. L. Cardoso, F. d'Errico, J. Daura, M. Demuro, M. Deschamps, C. Dupont, S. Gabriel, D. L. Hoffmann, P. Legoinha, H. Matias, A. M. Monge Soares, M. Nabais, P. Portela, A. Queffelec, F. Rodrigues, P. Souto. "Last Interglacial Iberian Neandertals as fisher-hunter-gatherers", Science, 367, March 27, 2020.
Press release from the University of Barcelona
Neanderthals: Pioneers in the use of marine resources
Neanderthals slurping seashells by the seashore? This scene may startle those accustomed to imagining Homo neanderthalensis as a people of cold climes who hunted large herbivores. Yet an international team including scientists from three laboratories affiliated with the CNRS and partner institutions* have just demonstrated that Neanderthals hunted, fished, and gathered prodigious volumes of seafood and other marine animals: they discovered remains of molluscs, crustaceans, fish, birds, and mammals in a Portuguese cave (Figueira Brava) occupied by Neanderthals between 106,000 and 86,000 BCE. The diversity of marine food resources found there even exceeds that observed at other, much more recent Portuguese sites, dated to 9,000-7,500 BCE. The team's findings, published in Science (27 March 2020), suggest that many Neanderthal groups--living in Mediterranean climates far from the mammoth hunts of the frigid steppes--shared these dietary habitats.
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Researchers from Centre de recherche en archéologie, archéosciences, Histoire (CNRS/Université de Rennes), from De la préhistoire à l'actuel : culture, environnement et anthropologie laboratory (CNRS/Université de Bordeaux/Ministère de la Culture) and Travaux de recherches archéologiques sur les cultures, les espaces et les sociétés laboratory (CNRS/Université de Toulouse Jean Jaurès/Ministère de la Culture).
Press release from the CNRS
Traces of Roman-era pollution stored in the ice of Mont Blanc
Traces of Roman-era pollution stored in the ice of Mont Blanc
The deepest layers of carbon-14 dated ice found in the Col du Dôme of the Mont Blanc glacier in the French Alps provide a record of atmospheric conditions in the ancient Roman era. Published in Geophysical Research Letters, the study, led by an international team and coordinated by a CNRS scientist at the Institute for Geosciences and Environmental Research (IGE)(CNRS/IRD/UGA/Grenoble INP)*, reveals significant atmospheric pollution from heavy metals: the presence of lead and antimony (detected in ancient alpine ice for the first time here) is linked to mining activity and lead and silver production by the ancient Romans, well before the industrial age, in fact.
Though less well dated than in Greenland, the Alpine record traces the major periods of prosperity in Roman antiquity (see figure 1), with two very distinct peaks in lead emissions noted during the Republican period (between 350 and 100 B.C.) and Imperial period (between 0 and 200 A.D.) Romans extracted lead ore (containing silver) to produce the lead needed to make plumbing and silver for coins. The silver was extracted from the lead by heating the ore to a temperature of 1200°C, releasing significant amounts of lead into the atmosphere. While this was already documented in continental peat records, obtaining global data at the European level was difficult. This first-ever study of Ancient-era pollution using Alpine ice provides better insight into the impact of these ancient emissions on the present-day environment in Europe, as well as a comparison with more recent pollution linked to the use of lead petrol between 1950 and 1985.
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This research received support from the CNRS, ADEME and the European Alpclim and Carbosol projects.
*- This laboratory is part of the Observatoire de sciences of the Université de Grenoble.
Lead and antimony in basal ice from Col du Dome (French 1 Alps) dated with radiocarbon: A record of pollution during Antiquity Susanne Preunkert, Joseph R. McConnell, Helene Hoffmann, Michel Legrand, Andrew Wilson, Sabine Eckhardt, Andreas Stoh, Nathan Chellman, Monica Arienzo and Ronny Friedrich, Geophysical Research Letters, 7 May 2019. https://doi.org/10.1029/2019GL082641
Press release from CNRS
A genomic tour-de-force reveals the last 5,000 years of horse history
A genomic tour-de-force reveals the last 5,000 years of horse history
Each year on the first Saturday in May, Thoroughbred horses reach speeds of over 40 miles per hour as they compete to win the Kentucky Derby. But the domestic horse wasn't always bred for speed. In fact, an international team now has evidence to suggest that the modern horse is genetically quite different from the horses of even just a few hundred years ago.
Their work, appearing May 2 in the journal Cell, constructs the genetic history of the domestic horse across the world over the last 5,000 years by using the largest genome collection ever generated for a non-human organism. The findings identify two new horse lineages that are now extinct and suggest that familiar traits such as speed were only selected for more recently in their history.
"The horse has impacted human history like no other animal," says Ludovic Orlando (@LudovicLorlando), a research director with CNRS and the University of Toulouse and a Professor of Molecular Archaeology at the University of Copenhagen. "If you look at the historical record from the Bronze Age onward, horses are always part of the equation up until very recent times, connecting civilizations and impacting transportation, warfare, and agriculture. Our goal was to understand how humans and their activities transformed the horse throughout history to fit their purposes--and how these changes in biology influenced human history."
The team responsible for this project consisted of 121 collaborators, including geneticists, archaeologists, and evolutionary biologists from 85 institutions around the world, and examined genome-scale data from 278 horse specimens from across Eurasia over the last 42,000 years.
"Such a large collection of data means that we can build a much more precise understanding of horse domestication and management through space and time," Orlando says. "But it was truly an interdisciplinary effort because of course it takes a lot more than just DNA to understand such a story. We had to integrate all these social, historical, and geographical aspects."
Overall, the team's findings suggest that equine history was much more complex than was previously realized. Today, there are only two known lineages of horses, the domestic horse and the Przewalski's horse. But the researchers here identified two additional now-extinct lineages of horses, one from the Iberian Peninsula and one from Siberia, both of which still existed 4,000-4,500 years ago. "We found two lineages of horses at the far ends of Eurasia that are not related to what we call the domestic horse today, nor to the Przewalski's horse. They are a sort of horse equivalent of what Neanderthals are to modern humans," Orlando says.
The researchers also found a major shift in the genetic makeup of horses in Europe and Central Asia in the 7th to 9th centuries and say this shift probably corresponds to Islamic expansions. The horses common in Europe before that time are now only found in regions such as Iceland; the new European horses after that time were much more similar to horses found in Persia during the Sassanid Empire. When the team performed a scan to identify genes that had been selected for in these Persian horses, they found evidence of selection in genes associated with body shape.
"It was a moment in history that reshaped the landscape of horses in Europe. If you look at what we today call Arabian horses, you know that they have a different shape--and we know how popular this anatomy has been throughout history, including in racing horses. Based on the genomic evidence, we propose that this horse was so successful and influential because it brought a new anatomy and perhaps other favorable traits," he says.
The researchers found that there have been additional significant and recent changes in the domestic horse. Similar selection scans indicate that only in the last 1,500 years did traits such as ambling and speed over short distances become more actively sought. And when they looked at the overall genetic diversity of the domestic horse, the researchers found a sharp decline in the last 200 to 300 years. They believe this decline corresponds with new breeding practices that were introduced with the rise of the concept of "pure" breeds.
"What we picture as a horse today and what we picture as a horse from a thousand years ago or two thousand years ago was likely actually very different. Some of those traits that we are most familiar with are only a modern invention, and in the last few hundred years, we have actually impacted the horse genome a lot more than in the previous 4,000 years of domestication," says Orlando.
He believes that this research can tell us a lot about both the past and the present. "Our findings show that the past is a lot more diverse than we thought it was and that it cannot be imagined or inferred through modern-day variation. But ancient DNA tells us a lot about today as well, because it teaches us about the consequences of some shifts in breeding practices," he says. And that, he believes, can also affect the way we think about conservation and modern agricultural practices.
Of course, our understanding of the domestic horse's history is far from complete. Orlando acknowledges that there are geographic and temporal gaps in his story. Perhaps mostly glaringly, we still don't know when and or where the horse was domesticated. "Horse domestication is central to human history, and in 2019, we still don't understand where it started. That's mind-blowing," he says.
He looks forward to filling in those blanks. "Whenever I'm asked about what finding I'm most excited about, I always say, the next one. Because this research opens the door for so many possibilities to be studied now."
Reconstructing the Acoustics of Notre Dame
Reconstructing the Acoustics of Notre Dame
The April 15 fire that devastated the roof of the 850-year-old Notre Dame de Paris Cathedral left many people around the globe wondering whether it’s possible to rebuild it in a way that can recreate the cultural icon’s complex signature acoustics.
Other cathedrals may seem to have similar acoustics, but no two are the same in the way sound soars and reverberates inside. Myriad nuances and details are unique -- many of which are likely to change during the course of centuries as furnishings and renovations evolve.
Six years ago, on April 24, 2013, Brian FG Katz, a Fellow of the Acoustical Society of America and CNRS research director at Sorbonne Université, and colleagues obtained detailed measurements of the acoustics of the main space within Notre Dame.
Those measurements and the methods his team used to obtained them were detailed in several publications in the ASA's flagship publication, the Journal of the Acoustical Society of America, and one of Katz's students is presenting some of the work later this month at the 177th Meeting of Acoustical Society of America in Louisville, Kentucky.
These measurements hold new significance now, Katz said. They document the acoustic conditions of the cathedral before the fire and can be used during its restoration. He is available to answer questions from reporters about the work and reconstructing the complex acoustics of Notre Dame.
“The acoustics of worship spaces has long been a topic of interest and is an active area of study right now,” said Katz. “Acoustics within churches and places of worship, in general, vary greatly with the associated religious practices. Some emphasize the intelligibility of the spoken word, while others focus on the ritual aspects and musical nature. A grand church organ, for example, played within a dry room suited to speech can sound more like an accordion -- without the reverberation mixing effect of the acoustics.”
How they captured the acoustics of Notre Dame
“The basic practice of measuring the acoustics of rooms is common across spaces,” Katz said. “We don’t use any special cathedral protocols. But for the long reverberation time and the considerable volume, we had to work to get our signal-to-noise level to an adequate level.”
Measurements were made using a collection of omnidirectional, 3D (first order ambisonic), and dummy head (binaural) microphones. Several dodecahedron loudspeakers were situated at key positions inside the cathedral, representing either typical source positions or those measurement positions of a series of measurements carried out by the same lab in 1987.
“We also included several balloon bursts as a safeguard, well aware of their acoustic limitations,” Katz said. That work was published in 2011 in JASA (see https://asa.scitation.org/doi/10.1121/1.3518780).
The researchers use mostly pro-audio hardware because it often provides a better signal-to-noise ratio and the installation is easier than laboratory measurement equipment.
“Technically speaking, we used a 20-second exponential sweep-sine signal, or chip, and deconvolution to obtain the room impulse response. This response, or the acoustic signature, for each source/receiver pair in effect characterizes how the room transforms the sound from source to receiver,” Katz said. “Once set up, the measurements took a little more than one hour and mostly involved moving microphones around.”
Getting access to iconic sites like Notre Dame is always difficult, and the time inside to record measurements always goes by fast. “One advantage of such a space is the relatively flat floor, which allowed us to have the majority of our equipment on a cart that can be rolled down the aisle,” Katz said. “This is in stark contrast to when we do measurements within concert halls with different levels and balconies.”
"Reverberant energy" -- Notre Dame's full sound
With a 6-second reverberation time at mid-frequencies, Katz describes Notre Dame’s sound as being “as full as you can imagine, with the reverberant energy coming from all around. As you move within the space, the acoustics varies due to changes in ceiling height, for example. This is very noticeable and can be heard on our online simulation example as you travel around the cathedral.”
From the measurements and other documentation they were able to obtain at Notre Dame, Katz and colleagues created a geometrical acoustic room model and calibrated it to the measured responses’ acoustic parameters using CATT-Acoustics (http://www.catt.se), a numerical simulation software used by acoustic consultants. That work was published in JASA in 2016 (see https://asa.scitation.org/doi/10.1121/1.4971422).
“Using this model, we simulated new room impulse responses that correspond to an orchestra configuration of a close-mic recording session made within the cathedral by the Conservatoire National Supérieur de Musique et de Danse de Paris (CNSMDP), a college of music and dance,” Katz explained. “By feeding these recordings to the appropriate source positions in the model, we were able to recreate the acoustic performance of this concert -- allowing the listener to move within the cathedral to explore and experience the complex acoustics of this large and historic space.” They described this work in JASA in 2017 (see https://asa.scitation.org/doi/abs/10.1121/1.4987161).
For these simulations, “the sheer size and long reverberation time of the cathedral means longer calculation times, longer impulse responses, longer processing times, and more computational requirements,” Katz added. “These demands were far beyond what we experienced with other sites, and small fluctuations in air temperature resulted in misalignment of impulse responses. This, in turn, resulted in artificially reduced reverberation times for averaged measurements, so we developed a method to correct for it that can also be used as a way to measure small changes in mean temperature” -- work published in 2016 (see https://asa.scitation.org/doi/10.1121/1.4955006).
Play it forward: The reconstruction of Notre Dame
How can Katz’s acoustic measurements help with the reconstruction of Notre Dame Cathedral? First, the existence of acoustic documentation of the cathedral is a huge benefit.
“It can help during renovation works when considering how the impact of any choices might change the acoustics, such as choice of materials,” Katz said. “It’s not clear yet what state the interior finishes are in, but the wooden panels and paintings within the cathedral are not at all insignificant when it comes to acoustics. Compared to the raw stone structure, these small elements act as possible acoustic absorption and diffusion and can have significant impacts on the resulting acoustics.”
The second benefit is virtual reconstruction -- essentially providing a way for people to listen to performances within the “lost” acoustics. “This could be via working with the CNSMDP to process the full recording of the concert we presented an excerpt of on YouTube, or to process other recordings made using the same procedure. This approach can also be used to listen to ‘new’ performances within the cathedral that never occurred there -- enabling even live performances to be broadcast as a concert within the virtual Notre Dame. These could be of interest during the reconstruction, while the building is inaccessible to the public.”
Press release from the American Institute of Physics
