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he Tangier Peninsula sits at a geologic and cultural hinge. On maps, it's a narrow wedge of land pressing into the Strait of Gibraltar, with Europe just a short ferry ride to the north. But from 3000 to 500 BCE, this peninsula was more than a waystation. It was a ritual landscape shaped by the living and the dead.
Recent archaeological work—led by Hamza Benattia, Jorge Onrubia-Pintado, and Youssef Bokbot—has brought the peninsula's past into sharper focus. Their excavations and GIS analysis reveal a once-thriving landscape of cemeteries, painted rock shelters, and standing stones, challenging long-standing assumptions about North Africa's role in the prehistoric Mediterranean.
A Complex Ritual Geography
Between the third and first millennia BCE, the Tangier Peninsula hosted a surprising diversity of burial practices: pit graves, hypogea, tumuli, and stone-lined cists. These were not isolated phenomena. Instead, they were part of a broader network of symbolic and territorial practices, often concentrated at high points near ancient routes.
One of the most striking findings comes from Daroua Zaydan. Here, a single cist burial—constructed from upright slabs capped with a heavy stone—was radiocarbon dated to ca. 2000 BCE. It is the first such date for a cist in northwestern Africa. The grave was found on a modest hill near a long-silted bay, alongside scattered bones and flint flakes. Though modest, this tomb signals a milestone for regional chronology.
"This marks the first radiocarbon dated cist burial in northwestern Africa," write the authors. "It provides a terminus post quem for a burial tradition often assumed to be older but previously undated."
Burial Traditions Across Time and Terrain
Cist burials, like the one at Daroua Zaydan, were not unique to Morocco. Similar tombs exist across the Iberian Peninsula, often grouped into cemeteries on hilltops or beside ancient roads. But in Tangier, they take on local signatures. Some contain ochre, tortoiseshell, or copper awls. Others are empty, perhaps cenotaphs, echoing Iberian precedents.
Hypogea—rock-cut tombs—appear in the early first millennium BCE. These subterranean chambers, often reused across generations, reflect Mediterranean influences, likely tied to Phoenician contact. Yet they appear alongside older traditions, suggesting a layered ritual continuity rather than abrupt replacement.
And then there are the tumuli: stone mounds sometimes topped by megaliths. Some are solitary; others cluster into hilltop cemeteries. At Mzoura, 176 standing stones form a massive circle around a central mound, reaching five meters in height. The site, though only partially excavated, hints at ceremonial functions tied to memory, territory, and perhaps kingship.
Rock Art and Symbolic Space
The ritual landscape of Tangier was not limited to burial. Painted rock shelters—some featuring dots, grids, and anthropomorphic forms—dot the peninsula. At sites like Magara Sanar, red and white pigments were used to create compositions whose meanings remain opaque but whose placement suggests spiritual or communal significance.
Standing stones appear near routes and crossroads, as at Oued Ksiar, where cist cemeteries crown several hills. Their orientation and location suggest not just boundary markers, but places where paths, people, and stories converged.
"These were not isolated shrines," the authors note, "but integral components of a larger ritualized terrain."
Mediterranean Threads, African Roots
What emerges from this research is a vivid, deeply textured image of late prehistoric life in northwestern Africa. Long dismissed in favor of Roman ruins or Nilotic splendor, the Tangier Peninsula turns out to be a key locus of cultural interaction. Its cemeteries and rock art show echoes of both Saharan and Iberian styles. Its burial practices shift slowly over time, absorbing new elements while maintaining older forms.
The authors suggest that this mosaic of traditions reflects not fragmentation but connectivity. The peninsula, after all, was not a periphery but a junction—linking sea and land, Africa and Europe, desert and forest.
"The funerary and symbolic landscapes of Tangier demonstrate a persistent and evolving dialogue between local traditions and trans-regional networks," they conclude.
And so the stones speak—not just of death, but of belonging, identity, and deep time. Beneath the hills and in the hollows of painted caves, the ancestors of Tangier left more than bones. They left a record of how they saw the world.
Further Reading and Related Research
* González-Toraya, L., et al. (2010). La necrópolis de Loma del Puerco (Chiclana de la Frontera, Cádiz): nuevas perspectivas para el estudio del Bronce Final en el Suroeste peninsular. Mainake, 32, 231–276.
* Lillios, K. T. (2015). The Archaeology of the Iberian Peninsula: From the Paleolithic to the Bronze Age. Cambridge University Press. https://doi.org/10.1017/CBO9781139023815
* Broodbank, C., & Lucarini, G. (2019). The dynamics of Mediterranean Africa, ca. 9600–700 BC: An interpretive synthesis of knowns and unknowns. Journal of Mediterranean Archaeology, 32(2), 129–186. https://doi.org/10.1558/jmea.40187
* Benattia, H., Onrubia-Pintado, J., & Bokbot, Y. (2025). Cemeteries, rock art and other ritual monuments of the Tangier Peninsula, northwestern Africa, in wider trans-regional perspective (c. 3000–500 BC). African Archaeological Review. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10437-025-09621-z
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In the shallow seafloor of Indonesia's Madura Strait, just off the coast of Java, an ancient landscape long hidden beneath the waves is beginning to come into focus. Through a combination of dredging operations, geological analysis, and fossil discovery, researchers have reconstructed a prehistoric river valley that once carried the Solo River eastward across what is now submerged Sundaland. And with it, they’ve uncovered an unexpected chapter in the life of Homo erectus.
A River Runs Through It
The Solo River has long been central to the story of Homo erectus in Southeast Asia. From the classic sites of Trinil and Ngandong, where early skullcaps reshaped our understanding of human origins, to the middle Pleistocene terraces that mark the species' last known traces, this river has yielded critical clues to our evolutionary past. But a new study, led by H.W.K. Berghuis and colleagues, shifts attention downstream—into the seabed itself.
In 2014–2015, dredging crews working to reclaim land near Surabaya extracted over 5 million cubic meters of sediment from the Madura Strait. What they found embedded in the sands stunned researchers: thousands of vertebrate fossils, including the skull fragments of Homo erectus. These remains represent the first direct evidence of Pleistocene hominin activity in submerged Sundaland.
“The fossils provide a rare and unprecedented insight into the Pleistocene vertebrate fauna of submerged Sundaland,” the authors wrote.
Careful geological analysis revealed that these fossils were embedded within a fluvial sediment sequence, part of a sand-filled paleovalley carved into marine clays. This valley was dated using optically stimulated luminescence (OSL) techniques to between 162,000 and 119,000 years ago—placing it squarely in the Marine Isotope Stage 6 (MIS6) glacial period, when sea levels were dramatically lower.
Fossils in a Drowned Landscape
The paleovalley fill preserves a complex transition: from terrestrial river sediments at its base to estuarine sandstones at its top, deposited as rising seas inundated the valley. This geological layering mirrors other known Homo erectus contexts on Java, but in this case, the fossiliferous layers lie underwater. What makes the discovery especially compelling is its temporal overlap with the Homo erectus fossils from Ngandong, previously considered the species' youngest population.
The sedimentological and faunal evidence suggests that this coastal lowland—at the time a vast grassland traversed by meandering rivers—was not only habitable but actively occupied by hominins. Among the fossil assemblage were bones bearing cut marks, evidence of butchery, and a suite of extinct and extant fauna, from water turtles to bovids.
“This earliest incisive stage of the Solo... is probably the equivalent of the lowest, partly preserved paleovalley of the Madura Strait north of Surabaya,” the team wrote, tying the submerged valley to broader patterns of fluvial incision during glacial periods.
Connecting Ngandong to the Coast
Berghuis and his co-authors draw a compelling link between the Madura Strait site and the better-known inland terraces of the Solo River. Both appear to have undergone similar cycles of incision and aggradation driven by glacial-interglacial sea-level fluctuations. The study suggests that during MIS6, the Solo River extended well beyond its present mouth, cutting across now-drowned plains to empty into a much more distant sea.
That coastal zone, rich in resources and ecological diversity, would have offered opportunities for Homo erectus populations to thrive. The river system connected upland and lowland environments, potentially serving as a corridor for dispersal—and perhaps, for interaction with other archaic hominins.
“The valley was probably cut during the preceding stage of falling sea level, in the run-up to the lowstand of MIS6,” the authors explain, anchoring their dating to a precise climatic moment.
Rethinking Isolation
One of the long-standing views in paleoanthropology has been that Homo erectus in Java persisted in isolation, marooned by rising seas. The Madura Strait discoveries challenge that assumption. They show Homo erectus was not only present in coastal environments during the late Middle Pleistocene but possibly adapted to a dynamic, shifting landscape shaped by repeated sea-level change.
Moreover, the rich bone assemblages suggest active subsistence behaviors more complex than once thought. Researchers documented signs of marrow extraction from bovids, a pattern more typically associated with later hominins. Whether these practices reflect independent innovation or contact with other groups remains an open question.
Toward a Submerged Prehistory
The drowned shelf of Sundaland has long been considered archaeologically silent. This research offers a new direction—both literally and conceptually. The ancient river valley now submerged under 30 meters of seawater might be one of many such features preserving vital chapters of hominin prehistory.
“This makes our discoveries truly unique,” Berghuis remarked in a related interview. “The fossils come from a drowned river valley, which filled up over time with river sand.”
As geologists and archaeologists continue to collaborate, sediment by sediment, we may find that the missing pieces of Southeast Asia’s human story lie offshore, in landscapes carved by ancient rivers and drowned by time.
Related Research
* Rizal, Y., Westaway, K. E., Zaim, Y., van den Bergh, G. D., et al. (2020). Last appearance of Homo erectus at Ngandong, Java, 117,000–108,000 years ago. Nature, 577(7792), 381–385. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41586-019-1863-2
* Joordens, J. C. A., et al. (2015). Homo erectus at Trinil on Java used shells for tool production and engraving. Nature, 518, 228–231. https://doi.org/10.1038/nature13962
* Louys, J., & Kealy, S. (2024). Faunal corridors and hominin dispersal routes in Pleistocene Sundaland. Quaternary Science Reviews, 318, 107171. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.quascirev.2023.107171
* Hilgen, F. J., et al. (2023). Age constraints on the Trinil H. erectus fossils and the implication for hominin evolution in Southeast Asia. Science Advances, 9(2), eadd3147. https://doi.org/10.1126/sciadv.add3147
* Brasseur, B., et al. (2011). Geochemical weathering patterns in the Pleistocene clays of eastern Java. Sedimentary Geology, 239(1–2), 51–66. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.sedgeo.2011.05.002
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In the deep past, long before written records or monumental architecture, human groups took part in a migration that would come to define the edges of our species' range. From the icy expanses of North Asia to the farthest tip of South America, early humans embarked on a journey that would span 20,000 kilometers and thousands of years. A new genomic study, led by Elena Gusareva and colleagues from the GenomeAsia100K consortium, provides the clearest map yet of this extraordinary movement, revealing both the scope of ancient human adaptability and the hidden costs of isolation.
A map etched in DNA
By analyzing the genomes of 1,537 individuals across 139 ethnic groups in North Eurasia and the Americas, the research team reconstructed ancient migratory paths that once wound through Siberian tundra, over the Bering Land Bridge, and down the spine of the Americas. The project offers unprecedented resolution of how populations split, adapted, and declined across millennia.
One of the study's starkest revelations: all contemporary Indigenous populations of South America derive from just four ancestral groups—Amazonians, Andeans, Chaco Amerindians, and Patagonians—who branched off from a shared lineage in Mesoamerica roughly 13,900 to 10,000 years ago.
"Migration through the Isthmus of Panama acted like a funnel," the authors explain. "Once groups entered South America, they were immediately separated by geography, and thus by genetics."
That separation, over thousands of years, came at a cost. Unlike the genetic richness seen in Africa and Eurasia, the South American groups show signs of pronounced genetic bottlenecks: lower diversity, high homozygosity, and reduced variation in key immune system genes. This was especially true for isolated populations like the Kawésqar in Patagonia, whose ancestors made it to the southernmost tip of the continent.
Isolation and immune vulnerability
The Kawésqar, who once navigated the fjords of southern Chile in bark canoes, now carry some of the lowest genetic diversity recorded in any human group. Genomic data shows that their effective population size has shrunk by nearly 80% over the past 10,000 years. The causes were both environmental and demographic. The Andes, the Amazon, and the arid Chaco region all contributed to genetic isolation.
That isolation impacted health. Reduced variation in human leukocyte antigen (HLA) genes, which regulate immune responses, could help explain why Indigenous communities across the Americas have historically suffered disproportionately from infectious disease outbreaks introduced by outsiders.
"Founder effects and long-term population isolation appear to have eroded immunogenetic diversity," the authors note, raising the stakes for public health measures tailored to Indigenous needs.
Echoes from the north
While South American diversity constricted, the populations of North Eurasia show a very different story. The Kets and Nenets of West Siberia, once widespread, share ancestry with many northern Eurasian groups and contributed significantly to the gene pool of modern Siberians.
Meanwhile, Beringian populations like the Inuit and Koryaks reveal adaptations to Arctic life at the genetic level: variations linked to cold resistance, lipid metabolism, and even sensory perception. One gene, CPT1A, which plays a role in fat metabolism, appears to have been favored in Arctic groups despite being associated with metabolic disorders in other contexts. Such trade-offs underscore how evolution is shaped by local environments.
The genetic data also confirm what archaeological footprints in New Mexico and ancient bones in Patagonia have long suggested: that human arrival in the Americas predates the Ice-Free Corridor and follows a rapid dispersal along the Pacific coast.
The human cost of endurance
Migration to South America wasn't just long; it was also final. The narrow isthmus that allowed entry also restricted return. Once populations spread south, they remained genetically marooned.
"This migration wasn’t a highway. It was a one-way path into isolation," said one of the co-authors. "And over time, that isolation took a toll on genomic resilience."
Some groups like the Andean highlanders, who developed adaptations to low oxygen environments, show more robust genetic diversity, likely due to later regional growth during the spread of maize horticulture. But many others did not rebound.
A future for ancient lineages
The study doesn’t just reconstruct the past—it also carries urgent implications for the present. As Indigenous populations face ongoing threats from environmental degradation, climate change, and health disparities, the genomic insights offer a roadmap for medical and cultural preservation.
"Understanding how long-term isolation affects immune gene diversity can inform vaccine development, public health outreach, and conservation of vulnerable communities."
Crucially, the study also challenges the long-held assumption that Europe holds the bulk of human genetic diversity. Instead, much of that richness resides in Asia—and is now fading in parts of the Americas. Protecting it, researchers argue, is not only a matter of heritage, but of survival.
Related Research
* Moreno-Mayar, J. V., et al. (2018). Early human dispersals within the Americas. Science, 362(6419), eaav2621. https://doi.org/10.1126/science.aav2621
* Campelo Dos Santos, A. L., et al. (2022). Genomic evidence for ancient human migration routes along South America's Atlantic coast. Proc. Biol. Sci., 289(1980), 20221078. https://doi.org/10.1098/rspb.2022.1078
* Castro E Silva, M. A., et al. (2022). Population Histories and Genomic Diversity of South American Natives. Mol. Biol. Evol., 39(1), msab339. https://doi.org/10.1093/molbev/msab339
* Flegontov, P., et al. (2019). Palaeo-Eskimo genetic ancestry and the peopling of Chukotka and North America. Nature, 570(7760), 236–240. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41586-019-1251-y
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Domestication as a Turning Point in Human Evolution
The domestication of plants and animals is often framed as a cornerstone of civilization. It’s the moment, we’re told, when our ancestors turned from the unpredictability of foraging to the structured stability of farming. Domestication allowed for permanent settlements, surplus food, the rise of states—and ultimately, the birth of what we call “history.”
But what if this story gets it backwards?
A growing number of archaeologists and evolutionary biologists now argue that domestication wasn’t simply something humans did to other species. Rather, it was something that happened between us—over generations, unconsciously, through evolutionary feedback loops in which both humans and other species co-evolved.
Three recent papers—two in Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B and one in PNAS—bring this radical reinterpretation into sharper focus. Taken together, they shift domestication from a narrative of human conquest to one of ecological entanglement.
A New Definition: Not Domination, but Co-evolution
In a provocative paper published in PNAS, evolutionary biologist Kathryn A. Lord and her colleagues propose a redefinition of domestication as an evolutionary process, rather than an intentional act of human control. According to their framework, species adapt to anthropogenic niches—the ecological spaces humans unintentionally or intentionally create.
“Domestication is not just about humans taming nature,” Lord explains. “It's about how species evolve in response to the environments we create.”
This means animals like free-ranging dogs or urban pigeons—long marginalized in discussions of domestication—may be more representative of the domestication process than previously thought.
Lord’s team introduces a spectrum of domestication, from species that adapt peripherally to human environments to those that become completely dependent on us. This model accounts for both the deliberate breeding of livestock and the evolutionary drift of animals that simply learned to live with us.
Unintentional Origins: Domestication Without Design
In a second paper, archaeobotanist Robert N. Spengler and collaborators press further. Their argument, published in Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B, contends that most domestication was unintentional.
“Domestication is the foundation of modern civilization,” says Spengler. “Understanding how it really happened—across species, regions, and millennia—reshapes our sense of what it means to be human today.”
Rather than viewing domestication as a singular invention, they propose that it unfolded gradually across generations as humans and species entered into increasingly tight co-dependencies.
The article challenges scholars to reconsider how archaeological evidence—such as grain size, seed dispersal traits, or animal morphology—is interpreted. Instead of looking for a single domestication “event,” we might better understand the process as a series of micro-adaptations.
Parallel Histories: Cereal Domestication Across Eurasia
A third study, also in Philosophical Transactions B, looks at one of the most iconic examples of domestication—grain agriculture. Rita Dal Martello and colleagues conducted a sweeping analysis of archaeological cereal grain data from across Eurasia.
They found something remarkable: the evolutionary traits we associate with domesticated cereals—such as increased grain size—emerged independently in multiple regions.
“Our findings highlight how similar evolutionary patterns emerged independently across Eurasia,” Dal Martello notes. “This suggests that domestication was not a singular event but a series of parallel processes influenced by various environmental and cultural factors.”
In other words, domestication didn't spread like a spark catching fire. It emerged repeatedly in different places under similar conditions—wherever humans and plants became entangled in each other's life cycles.
Toward a New Archaeology of Entanglement
These new frameworks compel archaeologists and anthropologists to rethink domestication not as the product of ancient genius, but as an evolutionary dialogue—an emergent outcome of long-term interaction.
As our species continues to alter the biosphere at an unprecedented scale—urbanizing ecosystems, redirecting evolution via CRISPR, and domesticating microbiomes—the stakes of understanding these deep-time relationships grow ever higher.
“The archaeological record offers essential insights into how long-term human-plant-animal relationships unfold,” says Spengler. “These lessons could inform more sustainable practices today and tomorrow.”
We didn’t just domesticate the dog or the wheat. In a sense, they domesticated us too.
Related Reading
* Zeder, M. A. (2012). The domestication of animals, Philosophical Transactions B
* Larson, G. et al. (2014). Current perspectives and the future of domestication studies, PNAS
* Arbuckle, B., & Makarewicz, C. (2009). The origins and spread of animal domestication, Journal of Anthropological Archaeology
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Reconsidering the Prehistoric Dead of Northwest Africa
For decades, the prehistoric heritage of North Africa has lived in the shadow of its pharaonic and Roman successors. The sands of Egypt and ruins of Carthage dominate popular and scholarly imagination alike. But what if we turned west, to the windswept ridges and limestone caves of the Tangier Peninsula, where ancient communities carved their beliefs into rock, built cemeteries atop hills, and placed standing stones in deliberate alignment with terrestrial crossroads?
Recent work by Hamza Benattia, Jorge Onrubia-Pintado, and Youssef Bokbot sheds new light on the complex ritual life of this region between 3000 and 500 BCE. Their study, published in African Archaeological Review combines GIS mapping, radiocarbon analysis, and field excavation to reveal a dense mosaic of funerary monuments, symbolic structures, and art. It's a reminder that the Tangier Peninsula was not a cultural periphery but a hub of prehistoric innovation.
"It is a sad reality that the later prehistoric funerary and ritual landscapes of North Africa west of Egypt remain [...] the least widely known and understood in the Mediterranean region."
A Peninsula at the Edge of Continents
Geographically, the Tangier Peninsula is a geological and cultural hinge. It sits on the African side of the Strait of Gibraltar, where the Mediterranean kisses the Atlantic and where Europe lies only 14 kilometers away. This unique position shaped human activity for millennia. By analyzing known cemeteries and monuments alongside probable mobility corridors, the research team identified previously undocumented crossroads that anchored burial grounds and standing stones.
In the surrounding hills, they found everything from pit graves and hypogea to megalithic cists and tumuli. The use of ochre, placement of pottery, and inclusion of metal tools speak to ritual continuities and innovations across three millennia.
The First Dated Cist Grave in Northwest Africa
Among the team's most significant discoveries is the site of Daroua Zaydan. There, a solitary cist grave constructed of sandstone slabs revealed not just architectural consistency with Iberian burials but also radiocarbon-dated human remains. The date? Somewhere between 2119 and 1890 BCE.
"This marks the first radiocarbon-dated cist burial in northwestern Africa," the authors note, "and correlates with contemporaneous burials across the Strait in southern Iberia."
Such dating helps situate North African burial practices within wider Bronze Age networks. The grave goods and burial style echo Early Bronze Age Iberia, particularly the Argaric and Ferradeira traditions, suggesting either sustained contact or shared cultural logics across the water.
From Pit Graves to Tumuli: A Diversity of Deathscapes
The study documents multiple funerary practices, often coexisting within the same regional landscapes. Early pit graves, flexed burials, and cists represent different modes of bodily treatment. Later periods introduce tumuli and even hypogea—rock-cut subterranean tombs—with grave goods that include copper awls, ostrich eggshells, and gold ornaments.
The diversity of mortuary architecture suggests a complex social fabric. Rather than a top-down system of elite interments, the data imply small-scale, kin-based societies with shared symbolic vocabularies. At Mzoura, a massive circle of standing stones encircles a tumulus. Despite centuries of looting and amateur excavation, enough remains to suggest it once functioned as a long-used ceremonial center.
"The presence of standing stones, rock art, and monumental tombs at transportation crossroads points to their role as territorial and symbolic markers."
Rock Art, Figurines, and Forgotten Cultures
While cemeteries offer skeletal evidence of the dead, the living left other clues. Painted shelters, carved cup-marks, and clay figurines litter the caves of the Tangier Plateau. One particularly intriguing site—"Idol's Cave"—held hundreds of low-fired figurines, some with solar or fertility motifs.
Stylistic comparisons suggest that these forms had ties to both Saharan and Iberian rock art traditions. At Magara Sanar, anthropomorphs painted in red and yellow connect to broader visual traditions across North Africa and into southern Iberia. Such shared symbology underscores the peninsula's long-standing place within Mediterranean and trans-Saharan exchange networks.
Colonial Bias and Archaeological Erasure
That it took until 2025 to publish the first radiocarbon date for a cist grave in northwest Africa is not an accident. As Benattia and colleagues argue, colonial-era archaeology privileged Roman ruins and pharaonic temples while treating North Africa's prehistoric record as either derivative or irrelevant.
Looting, neglect, and uneven funding have left entire swaths of the Moroccan archaeological record undocumented. What does survive is often mislabeled or decontextualized, residing in archives and underfoot in expanding cities. The authors call for more targeted excavation, particularly of the cemeteries near the now-urbanized Tahadart region.
"The Tangier Peninsula's burial traditions offer a regional alternative to cremation-dominated funerary customs in the contemporary Iberian Iron Age."
Interpreting the Ritual Landscape
What emerges from this study is not a simple timeline, but a palimpsest. Cist cemeteries give way to tumuli, which in turn neighbor standing stones and painted caves. Routes wind through them all, suggesting a lived landscape where ritual, memory, and mobility intertwined.
Some burial sites may have served as cenotaphs—symbolic tombs with no human remains. Others likely had seasonal or pilgrimage functions. While genetic and isotopic data remain limited, preliminary results suggest mostly terrestrial diets with minor marine input and likely local ancestry.
More importantly, these findings challenge us to rethink what constitutes the "core" of prehistoric Mediterranean life. The evidence here is not peripheral; it is foundational.
Final Thoughts
The Tangier Peninsula is no longer a forgotten periphery. Through careful excavation and contextualization, its ritual landscape emerges as a central node in prehistoric Africa and its links to the wider Mediterranean. The dead do speak—when we finally begin to listen.
Related Research
* Benattia, H., Onrubia-Pintado, J., & Bokbot, Y. (2025). Cemeteries, rock art and other ritual monuments of the Tangier Peninsula, northwestern Africa, in wider trans-regional perspective (c. 3000–500 BC). African Archaeological Review. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10437-025-09621-z
* Lillios, K. T. (2015). The Archaeology of the Iberian Peninsula: From the Paleolithic to the Bronze Age. Cambridge University Press.
* Broodbank, C., & Lucarini, G. (2019). The dynamics of Mediterranean Africa 10,000–1000 BC. In The Cambridge World History, Vol. 2.
* González-Toraya, I., et al. (2010). Population dynamics and ancestry in prehistoric southern Iberia: A case study from Loma del Puerco. Journal of Human Evolution. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jhevol.2010.03.005
* Daugas, J. P., et al. (2006). Le Cromlech de Mzoura. Bulletin d’Archéologie Marocaine.
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In the story of human evolution, our hands often play a supporting role—literally and metaphorically. Yet what if the fingers of ancient hominins could tell us more than just when our ancestors picked up a stone tool? What if the bone beneath the surface preserved traces of not just what our relatives could do—but how they actually did it?
A new study led by Samar Syeda and colleagues, published in Science Advances digs deep—into the finger bones of two fossil hominins from South Africa—and finds that Australopithecus sediba and Homo naledi used their hands in markedly different ways. This difference, preserved in the thickness and shape of their phalangeal cortical bone, hints at evolutionary "experiments" in how to balance climbing and manipulation long before the emergence of Homo sapiens.
Internal Histories Written in Bone
To understand how ancient hominins used their hands, Syeda’s team turned to a part of the body often overlooked in paleoanthropology: the internal structure of finger bones. Specifically, they analyzed the cortical bone—dense, load-bearing tissue that thickens or thins in response to how fingers are used in life. A lifetime of grasping, manipulating, or climbing leaves an imprint in the form of bone thickness and stress patterns, particularly in the phalanges.
The study focused on two remarkable fossils: the nearly complete hand of Australopithecus sediba (MH2), dated to about 2 million years ago from Malapa, and the equally well-preserved hand of Homo naledi, dated to about 250,000 years ago from the Rising Star cave system. While previous analyses highlighted similarities in hand proportions to modern humans, this study reveals critical differences below the surface.
"The phalangeal cortical structure demonstrates diversity in Plio-Pleistocene hand use, with A. sediba and H. naledi each indicating different dexterous abilities and different climbing strategies," the authors write.
Australopithecus sediba: A Climber with a Curious Thumb
At first glance, A. sediba's hands seem to reflect a blend of human and ape features. The thumb is long and relatively human-like, and yet the overall curvature of the fingers and their internal bone structure resemble those of modern apes—especially orangutans.
Syeda and colleagues found that cortical bone in A. sediba's fingers was thickest along the palmar (grasping) side, especially near the flexor sheath ridges. This pattern closely mirrors that of tree-climbing primates and implies the fingers bore heavy loads from locomotion—particularly climbing.
But not all digits told the same story. The thumb and little finger showed patterns more consistent with human-like manipulation. Combined with the hand’s external anatomy—such as its long thumb—this suggests that A. sediba retained a capacity for grasping and manipulating objects, perhaps including early tools, while still regularly climbing.
"These two digits are more likely to reflect potential signals of manipulation because they are less often used or experience less load during climbing or suspensory locomotion," the authors note.
The fifth digit (the pinky) in particular may have played a role in tool use, a hypothesis strengthened by its internal thickening and external shape—though A. sediba has not yet been directly associated with stone tools.
Homo naledi: A Rock Climber in the Shadows?
If A. sediba walked the line between tree and tool, H. naledi seems to have invented its own playbook.
Despite living hundreds of thousands of years after A. sediba, and contemporaneously with early Homo sapiens, H. naledi retained ape-like features—especially in the curvature of its intermediate finger bones. But inside those bones lay a surprise.
Unlike any modern primate or fossil hominin yet studied, H. naledi showed a hybrid cortical pattern. The proximal finger bones had thick dorsal cortices, like those of modern humans, suggesting loads consistent with manipulation or forceful precision grips. Meanwhile, the intermediate phalanges retained thick palmar cortices and pronounced curvature, indicating continued use in climbing or heavy grasping.
"This distinct pattern was unexpected and indicates that H. naledi likely used and loaded different regions of its fingers in different ways," writes Syeda.
One hypothesis? Crimp grips. Common in modern rock climbers, this grip involves strong loading of the fingertips and requires precise coordination of flexor muscles and tendons. In H. naledi, the cortical thickness patterns resemble what’s seen in these climbing adaptations, though more research is needed to confirm whether vertical rock faces were part of this species’ daily routine.
The Nonlinear Evolution of Human Hands
The fossil hands of A. sediba and H. naledi offer a corrective to oversimplified narratives of human evolution. Rather than a straight path from climbing ape to tool-wielding human, these species exemplify different evolutionary strategies for navigating a world that required both dexterity and mobility.
"This work offers yet more evidence that human evolution is not a single, linear transition from upright walking to increasingly better tool use, but is rather characterized by different 'experiments' that balanced the need to both manipulate and to move," notes Tracy Kivell, senior author on the study.
The key innovation here is methodological. By moving beyond surface anatomy and probing the internal structure of fossil bones, researchers are better able to infer actual behavior, not just potential. These "ecophenotypic" signals—plastic traits shaped by life experience—may bridge the gap between morphology and motion.
A Final Grip
While neither A. sediba nor H. naledi has been found with tools in hand, their bones suggest they could have used them—perhaps not in the same ways, or for the same purposes, but with dexterity nonetheless. The hand, like the brain, is a canvas for behavioral evolution. And sometimes, the most telling features lie just beneath the surface.
Related Research
This study builds upon a growing body of literature focused on hand use, locomotion, and bone plasticity in hominin evolution:
* Bird, E. E., et al. (2024). Trabecular bone structure of the proximal capitate in extant hominids and fossil hominins with implications for midcarpal joint loading and the dart-thrower’s motion. American Journal of Biological Anthropology, 183(2), e24824. DOI: 10.1002/ajpa.24824
* Skinner, M. M., et al. (2015). Human-like hand use in Australopithecus africanus. Science, 347(6220), 395–399. DOI: 10.1126/science.1261735
* Tocheri, M. W., et al. (2008). The evolutionary history of the hominin hand since the last common ancestor of Pan and Homo. Journal of Anatomy, 212(4), 544–562. DOI: 10.1111/j.1469-7580.2008.00865.x
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“The archaeological record shows shifts in empires and cultures. But beneath the soil, the genetic signal told a different story—of people staying put, generation after generation.”
A Long Memory in the Zagros
On the northern edges of the Iranian Plateau, where the foothills of the Alborz Mountains give way to fertile valleys and ancient caravan trails, archaeologists and geneticists have uncovered an unexpected thread in the human story. This is not a tale of invasion or conquest, nor of radical demographic upheaval. Instead, it is a portrait of long-term continuity—one that stretches over 3,000 years of human occupation, from the Copper Age through the rule of the Sassanid Empire.
In a new study published in Scientific Reports, researchers analyzed ancient DNA from 50 individuals recovered at nine archaeological sites across northern Iran. These genomes, some dating back to 4700 BCE, reveal a remarkable degree of genetic stability across time. Despite profound cultural shifts, shifting trade networks, and the arrival and fall of empires, the underlying genetic profile of people in this region remained strikingly consistent. The result is one of the most extensive and well-supported cases of diachronic genetic continuity ever documented in the ancient world.
Continuity in a Crossroads
The Iranian Plateau has long been described as a crossroads of civilizations. Nestled between Mesopotamia, Central Asia, the Caucasus, and the Indian subcontinent, this region has seen waves of migration, commerce, and political upheaval for millennia. Yet the latest findings from Amjadi and colleagues complicate this long-held view. While it is true that the region was anything but isolated, the genetic data from its inhabitants suggest that movement and cultural exchange did not necessarily equate to population turnover.
The study focused primarily on northern Iran, particularly the Caspian region—a zone that played host to the Achaemenid, Parthian, and Sassanid empires. These empires were expansive, multiethnic, and deeply embedded in the trade routes of the ancient Silk Roads. And yet, even under these dynamic circumstances, the DNA tells a quieter story: one of people who stayed rooted, generation after generation. These ancient individuals, some buried with goods from distant lands, nonetheless belonged to a lineage that had persisted locally for thousands of years.
A Genetic Tether Through Time
The researchers sequenced 23 mitochondrial genomes and 13 nuclear genomes from remains spanning more than three millennia. From sites such as Gol Afshan Tepe, Liarsangbon, and Vestemin, the sampled individuals ranged in time from the early Chalcolithic to the early second millennium CE. What emerged from their genetic profiles was a consistent ancestral signature tracing back to the early Neolithic farmers of Ganj Dareh—a well-known archaeological site in the central Zagros.
Maternal lineages were dominated by West Eurasian haplogroups such as H, J, U, T, and HV, which continue to appear in modern Iranian populations today. Paternal lineages also showed deep roots, with J1 and J2 haplogroups—often linked to Near Eastern Neolithic expansions—maintaining a strong presence across the centuries. In supervised ADMIXTURE analyses and principal component plots, the majority of the newly sampled individuals clustered closely with Neolithic Iranian genomes. This alignment held steady from the Chalcolithic through the Sassanid period.
The study also uncovered subtle evidence of diversity: minor contributions from South-Central Asia, Anatolia, and the Levant, particularly during the Bronze Age. However, these contributions were not large enough to disrupt the underlying genetic continuity. They appear more as traces of interaction—markers of trade or intermittent movement—than signs of large-scale population replacement.
When Culture Changes, But People Stay
This genetic continuity finds an echo in the archaeological record. For instance, catacomb-style burial traditions, first seen around 3000 BCE in southeastern Iran, appear again in Parthian contexts more than two thousand years later. This suggests a cultural persistence across time and space, likely reinforced by long-term regional occupation. Similarly, artificial cranial deformation—a deliberate reshaping of skulls seen as a cultural marker—was found in individuals from Gol Afshan Tepe, linking them with earlier Neolithic sites in the Zagros, such as Ali Kosh.
In many other regions of Eurasia, the rise of new technologies or elites has been tied to demographic change—pastoralist expansions from the Pontic Steppe, for example, reshaped the genetic landscape of Bronze Age Europe. But in the case of the Iranian Plateau, empire did not equate to erasure. The Achaemenids, Seleucids, Parthians, and Sassanids introduced new governance, material cultures, and systems of trade. Yet they governed a people who remained, in large part, genetically consistent with their distant ancestors.
Methods That Look Beyond Bones
To piece together this long arc of continuity, the team combined cutting-edge ancient DNA techniques with robust comparative datasets. Sequencing strategies included shotgun sequencing and hybridization capture using the 1240k SNP panel. Comparative analysis drew from the Allen Ancient DNA Resource and modern reference genomes, alongside statistics like qpAdm and f4 tests to estimate admixture proportions.
The researchers also examined runs of homozygosity to evaluate population structure and inbreeding. Most individuals exhibited low ROH signals, suggesting relatively large and outbred local populations. Even as cultural centers like Shahr-i Sokhta rose and fell, the genetic makeup of surrounding communities showed remarkable resilience.
Why Continuity Matters
This study doesn’t just contribute another ancient genome to the global dataset. It shifts how we interpret cultural transformation in archaeology. The assumption that major shifts in material culture, urbanization, or empire correspond to new populations is often implicit in archaeological narratives. But here, the evidence points in a different direction. People may adopt new languages, practices, and technologies while remaining, genetically, descendants of long-standing local populations.
The Iranian Plateau, particularly in its northern reaches, thus becomes a test case for cultural resilience. Rather than viewing human history as a succession of replacements, the findings from this study invite us to see it as a process of adaptation and continuity. The Silk Road didn’t erase these communities. Empires didn’t overwrite them. Instead, they absorbed and were shaped by them.
Related Research and Further Reading
* Lazaridis, I. et al. (2016). Genomic insights into the origin of farming in the ancient Near East. Nature, 536, 419–424. https://doi.org/10.1038/nature19310
* Narasimhan, V. M. et al. (2019). The formation of human populations in South and Central Asia. Science, 365(6457). https://doi.org/10.1126/science.aat7487
* Jeong, C. et al. (2019). The genetic history of admixture across Inner Eurasia. Nature Ecology & Evolution, 3, 966–976. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41559-019-0878-2
* Allentoft, M. E. et al. (2024). Population genomics of post-glacial Western Eurasia. Nature, 625, 301–311. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41586-024-07040-2
* Amjadi, M. A. et al. (2025). Ancient DNA indicates 3,000 years of genetic continuity in the Northern Iranian Plateau. Scientific Reports, 15, 16530. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41598-025-99743-w
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In the remote northern reaches of the Isle of Skye, archaeologists have unearthed compelling evidence that challenges long-held beliefs about the extent of human migration during the Late Upper Paleolithic period. Recent findings indicate that groups associated with the Ahrensburgian culture, known for their reindeer hunting prowess, may have traversed the harsh landscapes of post-glacial Scotland, reaching areas once thought uninhabitable during the Younger Dryas.
Ahrensburgian Culture: Reindeer Hunters of the Late Paleolithic
The Ahrensburgian culture, dating from approximately 12,900 to 11,700 years ago, is characterized by distinctive tanged points and blade tools. Originating in northern Europe, these nomadic hunter-gatherers adapted to the tundra environments that emerged following the last glacial period, primarily subsisting on reindeer. Their presence has been well-documented across the North German Plain and into southern Scandinavia, but recent discoveries suggest their reach extended further into the British Isles than previously recognized.
Discoveries on the Isle of Skye
At South Cuidrach in northern Skye, a team led by Professor Karen Hardy from the University of Glasgow excavated a 30 m² area, uncovering a lithic assemblage comprising 196 artifacts. These included tanged points, blades, burins, and scrapers, predominantly fashioned from locally sourced baked mudstone. The typology of these tools aligns with Ahrensburgian technology, indicating a Late Upper Paleolithic presence in the region.
Further investigations at Sconser in central Skye revealed approximately 20 intertidal stone circular alignments, each measuring between 3 to 5 meters in diameter. While lacking direct radiocarbon dates, their positioning within the intertidal zone suggests construction during periods of lower sea levels, potentially in the Early Holocene. These structures may have served as fish traps or tidal hunting features, akin to similar installations found in Scandinavia.
Implications for Human Migration and Settlement
These findings imply that Late Upper Paleolithic groups, likely following migratory reindeer herds, ventured into the challenging terrains of post-glacial Scotland. The presence of Ahrensburgian artifacts on Skye suggests that these hunter-gatherers adapted to the volatile landscapes shaped by retreating glaciers and rising sea levels. Their ability to exploit coastal and riverine resources indicates a level of resilience and adaptability that may have facilitated their expansion into previously uninhabited regions.
Broader Context and Future Research
The discoveries on Skye contribute to a growing body of evidence indicating a more widespread Late Upper Paleolithic presence in Scotland. Similar tanged points and lithic assemblages have been identified in other parts of the country, including Orkney, Tiree, Islay, and the Highlands. These findings challenge earlier assumptions that the region was largely uninhabited during the Younger Dryas due to its harsh climatic conditions.
Further research is needed to establish a more comprehensive understanding of the extent and nature of Ahrensburgian settlement in Scotland. This includes obtaining direct radiocarbon dates for artifacts and structures, as well as conducting paleoenvironmental studies to reconstruct the landscapes these early humans navigated.
The archaeological evidence from the Isle of Skye offers valuable insights into the movements and adaptations of Late Upper Paleolithic hunter-gatherers. The presence of Ahrensburgian artifacts in such a northerly location underscores the capacity of these groups to traverse and inhabit challenging environments. These findings not only enrich our understanding of prehistoric human migration but also highlight the dynamic interplay between humans and their changing environments during the terminal Pleistocene.
Related Research
* Ballin, T. B., & Wickham-Jones, C. R. (2017). Rethinking the Scottish Late Upper Palaeolithic: New evidence for human presence in the north-west during the Younger Dryas. Scottish Archaeological Journal, 39(1), 1–17
* Mithen, S. J., Wicks, K., & Pirie, A. (2015). A Lateglacial archaeological site in the far north-west of Europe at Rubha Port an t-Seilich, Isle of Islay, western Scotland: Ahrensburgian-style artefacts, absolute dating and geoarchaeology. Journal of Quaternary Science, 30(4), 396–416. https://doi.org/10.1002/jqs.2781
* Saville, A., & Ballin, T. B. (2009). Upper Palaeolithic evidence from Kilmelfort Cave, Argyll: A re-evaluation of the lithic assemblage and its significance. Proceedings of the Society of Antiquaries of Scotland, 139, 9–45.
* Ballin, T. B., & Saville, A. (2003). An Ahrensburgian-style tanged point from Shieldaig, Wester Ross, Scotland: A re-evaluation of its significance. Lithics, 24, 45–52.
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In a quiet room humming with server stacks, a genomic dataset from nearly 300,000 Americans is doing something anthropologists have long tried to accomplish: capturing a living mosaic of human ancestry at a scale once unimaginable.
The participants belong to the All of Us Research Program, an ambitious effort by the National Institutes of Health to create a biomedical database that actually reflects the population of the United States—not just those whose ancestry traces back to Northern Europe.
The result? A genomic map layered not only with centuries of migrations and admixture, but also with lessons for how ancestry—understood through the language of DNA—shapes and is shaped by human history, cultural geography, and inequality.
“What emerges is a complex web of similarity clusters,” notes the study’s senior author I. King Jordan. “They reflect not just where people come from, but how populations have blended, diverged, and lived together over time.”
Clusters Within Clusters
The researchers used principal component analysis (PCA) and a rapid ancestry estimation method called Rye to identify distinct patterns of population structure. This wasn’t simply a technical exercise. Their findings showed clusters of closely related individuals embedded in a much broader tapestry of admixture. Seven major clusters emerged from PCA, but further analysis using another method (UMAP) revealed up to 13 groupings—suggesting layers of population complexity.
While the majority of participants had significant European ancestry (~66.4%), almost 20% showed African ancestry, and over 13% carried lineages from Indigenous American, South Asian, East Asian, or West Asian origins.
“We’re not just seeing neat little bins of ancestry,” said Jordan. “We’re seeing gradients, overlaps, mosaics—and that’s important because this is how real human populations exist.”
This granular structure offers more than genealogical trivia. It challenges how researchers traditionally categorize populations. Many of these ancestry components do not align cleanly with socially constructed racial or ethnic identities, exposing the limits of fixed labels in science, medicine, and society.
Admixture as a Time Machine
Genetic ancestry doesn’t just map where someone’s relatives lived—it can also hint at when they lived and migrated. The study revealed a striking generational pattern: younger Americans tend to be more genetically admixed than their elders.
In other words, the country’s population isn’t just becoming more diverse—it’s becoming more genomically entangled.
This has implications beyond genomics. It speaks to cultural fluidity, the erosion of categorical boundaries, and the demographic reality that human identity has always been more braided than boxed.
Geography of DNA
The research team also mapped these ancestry components across all 50 states and Puerto Rico. Predictably, African ancestry is most concentrated in the southeastern United States, while Indigenous American ancestry is more prominent in the Southwest and in California. European ancestry dominates throughout but shows the highest concentration in the northern Midwest and New England.
Importantly, the northeast corridor and Florida showed higher levels of admixture, highlighting urban regions as mixing zones for human histories.
“This isn’t just about ancestry,” explains co-author Robert Meller. “It’s about how geography, migration, and policy have shaped—and continue to shape—what it means to be American.”
Archaeogenetics for the Living
Although typically the domain of ancient DNA, this study demonstrates how archaeological thinking—about movement, kinship, and cultural entanglement—can be applied to contemporary populations.
It also underscores the limitations of using a Eurocentric reference framework. For about 3% of the participants, especially those with South or West Asian ancestry, ancestry estimates were sensitive to the choice of reference populations. This is a call to action: geneticists need to expand and diversify their reference datasets, much like how archaeologists must question whose stories get preserved in the record.
The team is aware of these pitfalls.
“Reference populations are idealized,” said Jordan. “They represent snapshots in time, often shaped by modern national boundaries or linguistic identities, which don’t always reflect deeper historical processes.”
A Different Kind of Deep Time
Anthropologists often work with bones, tools, and ancient genomes to tell the story of our species. But here, in the swabbed cheeks and sequenced blood of nearly 300,000 living people, another archive emerges—one that extends deep into the past but remains entirely alive.
The All of Us cohort is both a mirror and a time capsule. It shows how genetic variation echoes ancient human movements, colonial entanglements, the transatlantic slave trade, Indigenous resilience, and waves of global migration—all the while pointing to the future of a society where genetic boundaries are increasingly hard to draw.
A Note on the Future
This project is only the beginning. With every new genome added, the picture sharpens. But so does the need to think critically about how we use ancestry labels, who gets represented in the data, and what stories we choose to tell.
Precision medicine can’t be truly “precise” if it leaves out large swaths of humanity. This research is a reminder that the diversity of the human story must be matched by the diversity of our science.
Related Research
* Abul-Husn, N. S., & Kenny, E. E. (2019). Personalized medicine and the power of electronic health records. Cell, 177(1), 58–69. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cell.2019.02.039
* Hellenthal, G., et al. (2014). A genetic atlas of human admixture history. Science, 343(6172), 747–751. https://doi.org/10.1126/science.1243518
* Maples, B. K., et al. (2013). RFMix: A discriminative modeling approach for rapid and robust local-ancestry inference. Am. J. Hum. Genet., 93(2), 278–288. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ajhg.2013.06.020
* Bryc, K., et al. (2015). The genetic ancestry of African Americans, Latinos, and European Americans across the United States. Am. J. Hum. Genet., 96(1), 37–53. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ajhg.2014.11.010
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A Subtle Scourge in the Bones
In the hills of northern Oman, beneath the collapsed stones of a 4,000-year-old tomb, archaeologists uncovered something that hadn’t been seen before in this part of the world: the unmistakable signs of leprosy.
It wasn’t a complete skeleton that told the story. It was fragments—broken jaws, scattered teeth, a porous nasal cavity eroded by years of silent bacterial assault. Pieced together from over 180,000 bone shards at the Umm an-Nar period site of Dahwa, the evidence pushed back the known boundary of Mycobacterium leprae’s reach. And in doing so, it also redefined what it means to diagnose disease in the archaeological record.
“When that damage fits key signs of leprosy, the diagnosis becomes very clear.”
So said bioarchaeologist Gwen Robbins Schug of the University of North Carolina at Greensboro, who led the team that identified lepromatous lesions in 12 individuals using micro-CT imaging—marking the earliest confirmed cases of leprosy outside of South Asia.
The Trade Route Nobody Wanted
The site of Dahwa wasn’t just a burial ground. It was a hub. Located along the copper-rich Al-Hajar Mountains and facing the Arabian Sea, it sat astride trade routes that once linked the Arabian Peninsula to the Indus Valley. Pottery fragments imported from South Asia—nearly three-quarters of the ceramic assemblage—testify to robust commercial ties. But alongside copper and crafted wares, it seems, another traveler moved: disease.
Leprosy is not easily transmitted. It requires extended, close contact. Most people have natural immunity. But in tightly packed settlements and among mobile traders moving between ecological zones and populations, it had the conditions it needed.
“The idea that sailors could have brought it on a crowded boat with them, or that merchants traveled from the Indus Valley toward Oman and spread it? Yeah, that makes a lot of sense,” said environmental historian Eric Strahorn, who was not involved in the study.
Seeing Beneath the Surface
Unlike many other cases of paleopathology, which rely on fully intact skeletons showing obvious signs of disease, the remains at Dahwa were fragmented and commingled. Traditional methods could only go so far. To push beyond them, the team used micro-computed tomography (micro-CT), scanning three preserved maxillae to look for the microstructural signatures of chronic infection.
What they found matched what has long been considered pathognomonic for leprosy:
* Resorption of the anterior nasal spine
* Rounded erosion of the pyriform aperture
* Bilateral alveolar bone loss in the upper jaw
* Subperiosteal new bone formation on the palate
These changes were not random damage. They were patterned. And when compared to a control sample from modern anatomical collections, the distinctions became undeniable.
“Micro-CT lets us see what the eye can’t—subtle, patterned damage across multiple faces,” said Schug.
A New Tool for an Old Problem
Diagnosing leprosy has never been easy—not in antiquity, and not even today. Some modern patients present with atypical forms, delaying recognition until nerve damage and deformity have taken hold. In archaeology, the problem is compounded by time, taphonomy, and incomplete remains.
But Dahwa’s finds suggest a path forward.
“This paper adds to the limited number of studies evaluating rhinomaxillary changes using micro-CT in fragmentary and commingled assemblages,” the team wrote.
And beyond paleopathology, the implications stretch toward clinical medicine. In living patients, CT scans focused on the nasal aperture and ventral maxilla could supplement standard diagnostics—especially in ambiguous cases where microbial assays fall short.
Disease and the Human Condition
This isn’t just a story of pathogens. It’s a story of how humans adapt, organize, and endure. The people buried in Dahwa’s tombs were part of a larger economic and social landscape—one that spanned oceans and deserts, and that brought not just goods but biological entanglements.
As Robbins Schug puts it, “We’re learning how health, environment, and movement are deeply intertwined—even four millennia ago.”
The micro-CT data, stored and shared for future researchers, may help resolve other puzzles. And as climate change, migration, and zoonotic threats rise today, insights from ancient disease landscapes have renewed relevance.
Related Research
* Robbins, G., et al. (2009). Ancient skeletal evidence for leprosy in India (2000 BC). PLoS ONE, 4(5):e5669. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0005669
* Köhler, K., et al. (2017). Possible cases of leprosy from the Late Copper Age (3780–3650 cal BC) in Hungary. PLoS ONE, 12(11):e0185966. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0185966
* Pfrengle, S., et al. (2021). Mycobacterium leprae diversity and population dynamics in Medieval Europe from novel ancient genomes. BMC Biology, 19:1–18. https://doi.org/10.1186/s12915-021-01120-2
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In a soggy pit on the shores of an ancient lake in what is now central Germany, a cache of wooden spears lay hidden for nearly a quarter of a million years. When they were first unearthed in the 1990s from the Schöningen site, archaeologists believed these weapons might have been crafted by Homo heidelbergensis—a hominin species ancestral to Neanderthals and perhaps to us. But thanks to a refined dating technique that analyzes proteins preserved in fossilized snail shells and horse teeth, the spears have lost about 100,000 years of age.
This subtle shift in chronology has profound consequences. The weapons, along with butchered horse remains and other artifacts, now appear to date to around 200,000 years ago. That’s squarely within the Middle Paleolithic and within the evolutionary range of Neanderthals—not some proto-human cousin, but the real thing.
And that makes the Schöningen spears more than just some of the oldest preserved wooden weapons in the world. It casts them as evidence of a species capable of cooperation, planning, and precision.
“Rather than a few individuals taking on dangerous animals, they’re coming together in larger groups and pooling the risk,” said Olaf Jöris of the Leibniz Center for Archaeology.
A Timeline in the Mud
The challenge with dating early Paleolithic sites lies in the lack of organic material amenable to radiocarbon methods. Those techniques top out around 60,000 years. Schöningen, however, offered another opportunity. Researchers measured the rate of racemization—how amino acids in mollusk shells and horse molars switch between molecular forms—allowing for a chemical clock to date the sediments.
That clock pointed to 200,000 years ago, not 300,000 as previously estimated. It’s a modest revision numerically, but one with dramatic implications.
The reassignment situates the spears in a period where Neanderthals (Homo neanderthalensis) had firmly established themselves across much of Europe. Their skeletal remains, beginning around this time, show increasing lifespans, suggesting rising survival rates and, by extension, changes in behavior, sociality, or both.
“Something is changing in how they organize and cooperate,” said Jöris. “And hunting is central to that.”
A Scene from the Middle Paleolithic
Imagine the scene: A shallow lake, thick with reeds. A herd of wild horses moves along its banks. A group of Neanderthals, each armed with a carefully carved wooden spear, works in silent coordination. Their objective is not simply to bring down a horse, but to manipulate the entire herd—to drive them toward a kill zone, perhaps a natural bottleneck or the muddy shallows where escape is harder.
This wasn’t a random ambush. It was strategy.
At Schöningen, archaeologists uncovered more than 50 horse remains, many of them juveniles and adults from the same species. That demographic profile resembles what’s seen in mass kills—targeted slaughters where hunters select and isolate prey in vulnerable clusters. The team found not only spears, but also double-pointed sticks and stone cutting tools—evidence of butchery, not just scavenging.
And the spears themselves are remarkable. Carefully worked from spruce and pine, they are balanced like modern javelins and exhibit signs of deliberate shaping at both ends.
“The craftsmanship reflects a deep understanding of wood as a material,” said Jarod Hutson, a zooarchaeologist and lead author on the study.
The tools, combined with the site’s layout and faunal remains, suggest not just individuals with weapons, but groups with roles, timing, and goals. Cooperation wasn't optional—it was essential.
What It Means for Human Evolution
If Neanderthals organized coordinated horse hunts 200,000 years ago, then key elements of human social behavior—planning, communication, and perhaps even symbolic thinking—may not be exclusive to Homo sapiens. They could stretch deeper into our shared past.
We often frame Neanderthals as rugged, clever cousins—capable of fire, stone tools, and perhaps the occasional symbolic act—but distinct from ourselves in social or cognitive nuance. The Schöningen site softens that boundary. These weren’t brutish loners lobbing sticks. They were teams of hunters leveraging collective action to maximize return and minimize risk.
“This puts them on par with early Homo sapiens in terms of social coordination,” said Hutson.
It also calls into question the neat divisions we’ve drawn between species and behaviors. Was Homo heidelbergensis truly so different from early Neanderthals? Was cooperative hunting a one-off innovation, or a broader trait among late Middle Pleistocene hominins?
For now, what Schöningen offers is a window—a small, murky one—into a scene of remarkable clarity: Neanderthals, working together, not merely to survive, but to thrive.
Additional Related Research
Here are a few studies that provide broader context for cooperative behavior and hunting among Neanderthals:
* Gaudzinski-Windheuser, S., et al. (2018). Evidence for close-range hunting by last interglacial Neanderthals. Nature Ecology & Evolution, 2(7), 1087–1092. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41559-018-0586-2
* Roebroeks, W., & Villa, P. (2011). On the earliest evidence for habitual use of fire in Europe. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 108(13), 5209–5214. https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.1018116108
* Stout, D., et al. (2015). Cognitive demands of Lower Paleolithic toolmaking. Nature, 508, 503–506. https://doi.org/10.1038/nature13264
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Somewhere high in the Andean highlands, over 9,000 years ago, a young woman was laid to rest with the tools of her trade: stone projectile points, scrapers, and bone-processing implements. Her burial was not an anomaly. It was a statement. And it’s forcing archaeologists to reconsider long-held beliefs about gender and labor in early human societies.
The grave was unearthed at Wilamaya Patjxa, a site more than 3,900 meters above sea level in southern Peru. The burial, designated WMP6, contained the remains of a 17-to-19-year-old woman. She was interred with a toolkit that included six finely crafted projectile points, a possible knife, ochre nodules, and tools for scraping hides. Taken together, these objects suggest that she was not simply buried with prestige goods. She was buried with the implements of her daily work: hunting large animals.
"The objects that accompany people in death tend to be those that accompanied them in life," the authors of the study note, pushing back on assumptions that female burials with hunting tools must reflect symbolic rather than practical roles.
The evidence from WMP6 is not alone. In their review of 107 sites across the Americas dating to the Late Pleistocene and Early Holocene, the researchers identified 27 individuals buried with big-game hunting tools. Of those, 11 were female. That level of participation, they argue, suggests that early big-game hunting was not a male-exclusive activity. Statistical models based on this data estimate that women may have comprised 30 to 50 percent of big-game hunters during this period.
"The empirically observed counts are highly unlikely to have come from a population in which average female participation in big-game hunting was less than 30%," the authors write.
Toolkits and Technologies: What the Burials Reveal
The burial of WMP6 included a remarkably complete toolkit. Projectile points—likely for use with an atlatl or spear-thrower—suggested active participation in dispatching large animals. End scrapers and choppers point to butchery and hide preparation. Cobbles stained with red ochre indicate hide tanning activities. The clustering and preservation of these tools suggest they were buried as an integrated set, perhaps wrapped in a leather pouch.
The technology matters. The atlatl, compared to later bows and arrows, required less upper body strength and could be mastered at a younger age. That means the hunting tools buried with WMP6 were consistent with an inclusive hunting practice, one that didn’t exclude women based on physical constraints.
This distinction may help explain why gender roles in more recent hunter-gatherer societies, which often relied on bow and arrow technologies, were more sharply divided. The shift in tools may have contributed to a cultural shift in who did the hunting.
Not an Anomaly
Skepticism around female hunters in prehistory has a long pedigree. In many earlier interpretations, tools found in female burials were dismissed as symbolic or misidentified as domestic rather than hunting implements. But WMP6 and the other 10 female-associated hunting burials from across the Americas challenge that narrative. The weight of the evidence suggests these women were not exceptions to the rule—they were part of it.
The implication is that early human societies in the Americas were more flexible, more fluid in their division of labor than many contemporary analogs suggest. Communal hunting and alloparenting (shared child-rearing) likely allowed individuals—including women—to participate fully in subsistence activities like hunting.
The Broader Evolutionary Picture
Understanding gender roles in prehistoric societies is not just about correcting old assumptions. It’s about tracing the evolution of human cooperation, labor, and culture. If women hunted big game in the early Americas, that speaks to a social world that was organized differently from many that came after it.
Recent archaeological research, including that at Wilamaya Patjxa, helps reframe the way we think about the past. Rather than simply project modern gender binaries backward in time, it demands we look at the evidence—and ask harder questions about how labor, identity, and technology shaped one another in human evolution.
Related Research:
* Geller, P. L. (2017). The Bioarchaeology of Socio-Sexual Lives. Springer International Publishing. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-56194-0
* Estioko-Griffin, A., & Griffin, P. B. (1981). Woman the Gatherer. Yale University Press.
* Dyble, M., Salali, G. D., Chaudhary, N., et al. (2015). Sex equality can explain the unique social structure of hunter-gatherer bands. Science, 348(6236), 796–798. https://doi.org/10.1126/science.aaa5139
* Hedenstierna-Jonson, C., et al. (2017). A female Viking warrior confirmed by genomics. American Journal of Physical Anthropology, 164(4), 853–860. https://doi.org/10.1002/ajpa.23308
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An Unexpected Legacy in Our Blood
In a quiet bone lab in Copenhagen, researchers have traced a modern genetic shield against HIV to a single ancient ancestor—someone who lived thousands of years ago, near the shores of the Black Sea. The story of this mutation is not one of modern medicine alone. It's a story of migration, survival, and the biological cost of living together in large, sedentary communities.
Known as the CCR5-Δ32 deletion, this genetic variant disrupts a receptor used by HIV to enter human cells. About one in five people in Denmark carry it. Some are resistant to HIV infection; a smaller number are functionally immune. But this mutation did not emerge in response to HIV, which only appeared in humans in the 20th century.
So why does this mutation exist at all?
A Mutation Born of Crisis
The new study, published in Cell, maps the origin and spread of the CCR5-Δ32 deletion using a combination of modern genomes and ancient DNA. The mutation, researchers report, first appears in an individual who lived between 6,700 and 9,000 years ago in the vicinity of the Black Sea.
“By looking at this large dataset, we can determine where and when the mutation arose,” said Kirstine Ravn, a senior researcher at the Novo Nordisk Foundation Center for Basic Metabolic Research.
The team analyzed genetic material from over 2,000 living individuals alongside 900 ancient genomes ranging from the early Neolithic to the Viking Age. By developing a new AI-assisted technique to detect CCR5 deletions in degraded DNA, they spotted a sudden, rapid rise of the mutation beginning roughly 5,000 years ago.
Its spread was swift—too swift for genetic drift alone.
“People with this mutation were better at surviving,” said postdoctoral researcher Leonardo Cobuccio. “It probably dampened the immune response at a time when humans were encountering new pathogens.”
Agriculture, Crowds, and Contagion
The mutation’s timing coincides with one of the most significant transitions in human history: the rise of agriculture. As populations shifted from mobile foragers to settled farmers, their daily lives changed dramatically. Grain storage brought mice. Animal domestication brought zoonoses. Sedentism brought waste, and with it, disease.
In such conditions, a hyperactive immune system could become a liability. The CCR5 deletion may have offered a buffer. By slightly muting immune responses, it may have reduced mortality during early exposure to smallpox-like viruses or other epidemic pathogens that flourished in these dense, early farming settlements.
“An overly aggressive immune system can be deadly—think of cytokine storms in severe flu or COVID-19,” Cobuccio added.
In that light, the deletion may have helped human groups adjust biologically to a radically new way of living.
A Genetic Ghost, Reanimated by HIV
Fast forward to the 1980s, and physicians begin to notice something odd. A small subset of people exposed to HIV remained uninfected. Eventually, scientists identified the CCR5-Δ32 mutation as a likely cause. Today, the variant plays a central role in therapies and even stem cell transplants designed to treat or cure HIV.
What makes this story compelling isn’t just the age of the mutation—it’s the irony. A genetic variation born in the context of Neolithic plagues now protects people against a disease that didn't exist until the late 20th century. It’s as if an ancient ghost in our genome, shaped by the first waves of crowd-borne diseases, returned to protect its descendants.
A Broader Story of Human Evolution
This research is the latest in a growing body of studies that link ancient evolutionary pressures to modern health. In recent years, ancient DNA has been used to track how populations responded to the Black Death, tuberculosis, and leprosy—all diseases that shaped the human genome.
The story of CCR5-Δ32 is a case study in evolutionary contingency. A single deletion in one individual's genome became a tool for modern survival. But it also hints at the costs of civilization itself—the diseases we created, the biological changes they forced, and the delicate balance between immunity and inflammation.
Related Research
* Fumagalli, M., Sironi, M., Pozzoli, U., Ferrer-Admetlla, A., Pattini, L., & Nielsen, R. (2011). Signatures of environmental genetic adaptation pinpoint pathogens as the main selective pressure through human evolution. PLoS Genetics, 7(11), e1002355. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pgen.1002355
* Enard, D., Cai, L., Gwennap, C., & Petrov, D. A. (2016). Viruses are a dominant driver of protein adaptation in mammals. eLife, 5, e12469. https://doi.org/10.7554/eLife.12469
* Souilmi, Y., Patin, E., Sousa, V. C., et al. (2021). Ancient viral epidemics and the evolution of human adaptive immunity. PLOS Genetics, 17(6), e1009772. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pgen.1009772
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The Ox and the Origins of Unequal Societies
Long before hedge funds, private property, or multinational tax havens, human societies were surprisingly equal. Across a wide range of Neolithic communities, archaeological evidence suggests that disparities in wealth—though present—were often kept in check. That balance, however, began to shift dramatically around 5,000 years ago. According to a new synthesis of archaeological, historical, and economic data published in the Journal of Economic Literature, that change wasn’t just about economics. It was also political—and deeply cultural.
In the paper, economists Samuel Bowles of the Santa Fe Institute and Mattia Fochesato of Bocconi University argue that it wasn’t the invention of agriculture that sparked long-term inequality, but what came next: the ox-drawn plow. This innovation allowed a small subset of the population to control vast amounts of land—something that would have been physically impossible in a world where all farming was done by hand.
“Think of the ox and plow as a Neolithic robot,” said Bowles. “It displaced labor and enriched their owners.”
From Muscle to Material
The ox-drawn plow changed the basic equation of survival. Before its widespread adoption, farming success depended on human strength, cooperation, and proximity. In such contexts, physical labor could not be easily scaled, and communities often responded to growing disparities in wealth with what the authors call "aggressive egalitarianism"—social norms, or even violence, to reduce inequality.
But the plow shifted the playing field. Productivity was no longer limited by human labor but by how much land a family could command. Wealth became more easily accumulated, stored, and inherited—tied to property, not people.
“The key factor determining family income shifted from traits that were relatively equally distributed—strength and skill—to material possessions that could be passed on.”
Culture, Coercion, and the Proto-State
Technological change alone doesn’t guarantee inequality. In fact, Bowles and Fochesato argue, the enduring nature of wealth disparity required new political and cultural institutions to protect it. This period saw the rise of proto-states: centralized authorities that provided infrastructure and security—but also claimed the exclusive right to wield force.
By reducing the threat of local revolts or re-distributive violence, these early states stabilized inequality. At the same time, the cultural embrace of hierarchy and individualism began to replace long-held norms of communal sharing and economic leveling.
“The origin of enduring wealth inequality required both the change in technology and the state,” Bowles noted. “And a shift in cultural norms that made inequality seem acceptable—or inevitable.”
Echoes in the Age of Automation
The study’s relevance isn’t limited to the deep past. As artificial intelligence and other labor-replacing technologies emerge today, scholars are asking whether history might be repeating itself.
The comparison isn’t just metaphorical. Bowles and Fochesato point to AI as a modern analog to the ox-drawn plow. Both represent technologies that shift value away from labor and toward capital. Whether or not these shifts lead to renewed inequality, the authors argue, will depend less on the technology itself than on the surrounding political and social responses.
“Whether inequality increases again,” Bowles suggested, “is a political question—one that depends on who controls the new technologies and how societies choose to respond.”
Revisiting the Inequality Puzzle
What makes this study particularly compelling is its interdisciplinary reach. Drawing on decades of research, it integrates archaeological data on house size and burial wealth, textual analysis of early state formations, and economic models of inheritance and labor substitution.
Its conclusion is stark: The rise of persistent inequality wasn’t a natural outgrowth of farming—it was the outcome of a complex and contingent interplay between innovation, institutional development, and shifting cultural values.
Related Research
* Scheidel, W. (2017). The Great Leveler: Violence and the History of Inequality from the Stone Age to the Twenty-First Century. Princeton University Press.https://press.princeton.edu/books/hardcover/9780691165028/the-great-leveler
* Borgerhoff Mulder, M., Bowles, S., Hertz, T., et al. (2009). Intergenerational wealth transmission and the dynamics of inequality in small-scale societies. Science, 326(5953), 682–688.https://doi.org/10.1126/science.1178336
* Bogaard, A., Fochesato, M., & Bowles, S. (2021). The plow, the horse, and the subjugation of women. Journal of Political Economy, 129(6), 1731–1775.https://doi.org/10.1086/713096
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By the time the sun rose over the jagged folds of the Catalan Pyrenees some 20,000 years ago, the snow crust had already hardened under the feet of a small band of Homo sapiens. They carried their belongings with care—scraps of dried meat, slings, and flint cores nestled inside hides tied into makeshift packs. These weren’t just travelers. They were artisans, negotiators, and survivors moving through a landscape hardened by glacial winds and shaped by ancestral memory.
Their destination was Montlleó, a windswept terrace perched over the Cerdanya valley at 1,144 meters above sea level. Today it lies quiet in the municipality of Prats i Sansor, in northeastern Spain. But during the Last Glacial Maximum, Montlleó was a vital node in a trans-Pyrenean network. Flint tools left behind at the site tell a story of mobility, cultural identity, and the quiet ingenuity of Upper Paleolithic peoples who refused to be hemmed in by mountains or ice.
Stone Maps of Human Movement
More than 25,000 lithic artifacts have been recovered from Montlleó—flint flakes, blades, and cores, some chipped and spent, others pristine and ready for use. Among them are rare specimens that archaeologists traced to distant geological formations across modern-day France. A few fragments likely came from Chalosse, a region nearly 400 kilometers away in the southwest. These weren’t random rocks. They were hand-selected, transported, and exchanged—signifiers of distant homelands and enduring human ties.
“We now understand that the Pyrenees were not a boundary,” writes Sánchez de la Torre and colleagues, “but a permeable corridor traversed repeatedly by Magdalenian communities.”
By comparing flint artifacts from over 20 archaeological sites with geological samples from the Pyrenean flint formations, researchers mapped not only where humans traveled—but what they valued. The project, known as SPEGEOCHERT, combined field sampling with geochemical fingerprinting and GIS-based route modeling to reconstruct ancient movement patterns.
Crossing the Ice: How People Navigated High Mountains
During the Last Glacial Maximum, glaciers swept across the Pyrenees, locking large swaths of the range under thick sheets of ice. Still, corridors such as the Cerdanya valley remained viable. These routes were well known to Paleolithic hunter-gatherers. Rather than barriers, the mountains became meeting places—seasonal hubs for trade, communication, and cultural exchange.
Montlleó was one such hub. Excavations there suggest repeated short-term occupations, likely tied to hunting expeditions and intergroup contact. Alongside flint tools, archaeologists have recovered evidence of bone tools, hearths, and ornaments—many of them made from imported materials.
“Each projectile point was shaped for the hunt,” said co-author Xavier Mangado, “but the raw materials and typologies also marked group affiliation. They were social objects.”
Not all flint circulated equally. Certain varieties, favored for their quality or symbolism, appeared more widely than others. These “preferred flints” helped researchers trace not just individual journeys, but cultural routes—a shared mental map passed down over generations.
What Flint Reveals About Ice Age Life
By examining how far and in what form these flints traveled, archaeologists could identify distinct pathways across the mountains. Two principal corridors emerged: one in the east, following the Cerdanya valley, and another in the west through the Basque country. These routes remained in use for thousands of years, shaping the region’s prehistoric networks.
Flint wasn’t just a functional material. It was part of a larger toolkit for survival, memory, and meaning. The tools themselves—cores prepared for flake production, retouched blades, worn-down scrapers—bear the physical marks of hands at work. And their movement across the Pyrenees shows how Paleolithic people brought more than just tools with them. They brought traditions.
“The distribution of certain flints,” the authors note, “is more than a question of distance. It reflects choice, identity, and connectivity.”
Rethinking Human Limits
Archaeology often underestimates how far early humans traveled, or how complex their social worlds were. But the research at Montlleó is part of a growing body of evidence that challenges those assumptions. These Ice Age foragers weren’t simply reacting to the environment—they were shaping it, mapping it, and moving through it with intention.
In a frozen world, they climbed mountains to connect with others. They met in snowy valleys to trade, feast, and form alliances. And when they left, they carried with them not just meat and hides, but stories—chiseled into stone.
Related Research
* Féblot-Augustins, J. (1997). La circulation des matières premières au Paléolithique. ERAUL.
* Schmidt, I., & Zimmermann, A. (2019). Population dynamics and socio-spatial organization of the Aurignacian: Scalable quantitative demographic data for western and central Europe. PLoS ONE, 14(2), e0211562. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0211562
* Vaquero, M., & Pastó, I. (2001). The definition of spatial units in Middle Palaeolithic sites: The hearth-related assemblages. Quaternary International, 135(1), 93–103. https://doi.org/10.1016/S1040-6182(04)00079-3
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More than 3,000 years ago, long before Rome rose or Athens dreamed of democracy, bronze was already reshaping the ancient world. Weapons, tools, and ornaments forged from this copper-and-tin alloy were transforming everything from warfare to daily labor. But while copper is relatively easy to find, tin is elusive. It doesn’t litter the ancient Mediterranean the way obsidian or copper does. And yet, by 1300 BCE, civilizations across the eastern Mediterranean were awash in bronze.
That paradox has haunted archaeology for decades. Known as the “tin problem,” it hinges on a simple question: Where did the Bronze Age world get all its tin?
Now, thanks to a multi-year geochemical study led by a British research team, there’s a compelling answer—and it reaches farther northwest than many suspected. New trace element and isotope data point to the windswept cliffs of Cornwall and Devon, suggesting that southwestern Britain was supplying tin to the Mediterranean world long before most scholars thought such trade was possible.
“This is the first commodity to be exported across the entire continent in British history,” said Dr. Benjamin Roberts, associate professor of archaeology at Durham University. “It requires an entirely new perspective on what Bronze Age miners and merchants were able to achieve.”
From Wind-Carved Cliffs to Levantine Ports
The researchers conducted compositional analysis of tin ingots recovered from Bronze Age shipwrecks, including three that sank off the Israeli coast. Using lead isotope ratios and tin trace elements, they compared these artifacts with ores from known tin sources in Europe—including Cornwall’s massive deposits. The chemical fingerprint matched.
Not only were the ingots compatible with British sources, but the scale and consistency of their presence suggested something even more striking: organized, sustained trade across thousands of kilometers, long before written records or urban centers existed in Britain.
The route, pieced together like shards of a broken amphora, ran from Cornwall through the rivers of France, past Sardinia, Cyprus, and onward to the Levant. This was not an accidental trickle. It was a system.
“A whole chain of interconnected communities was involved,” said Roberts.“From miners in the British Isles to sailors in the Aegean and metallurgists in the Levant.”
For archaeologists who have long viewed Bronze Age Britain as isolated or peripheral, the findings challenge deep-seated assumptions. Cornish tin, it seems, didn’t just help forge weapons and tools. It stitched distant communities together.
A Mining Culture Without Cities
What makes the story more astonishing is who was doing the mining. By the standards of the ancient Mediterranean, Bronze Age Britain was rustic. No palaces. No temples. No writing. Its inhabitants lived in scattered farming settlements, leaving behind little more than postholes, pottery, and the occasional hoard.
And yet these people, often imagined as insular and self-sufficient, appear to have contributed the essential ingredient for a metallurgical revolution that would ripple across Egypt, Anatolia, and the Levant.
Dr. Alan Williams, a geologist-turned-archaeologist and honorary fellow at Durham University, has spent five decades tracing the origins of Cornish tin. He first dreamt of this connection as a student in one of the last working tin mines in the region.
“We believe Cornish tin was the richest, the most easily accessible, and the main source,” Williams explained.
The evidence includes not just the ingots, but also geological samples, traceable through advanced spectroscopy and mass spectrometry. One tin ingot found in the Uluburun shipwreck off Turkey—long believed to be among the oldest shipwrecks in the world—may also have come from Cornwall.
Bronze Age Globalization
Historians have long spoken of the Late Bronze Age as a proto-globalized era, characterized by diplomatic letters between pharaohs and kings, trade in luxury goods, and widespread cultural exchange. But these networks have typically been viewed as Mediterranean-bound.
This new evidence suggests that the edges of the known world—like windswept Cornwall—were far more connected than previously imagined.
“It radically transforms our understanding of Bronze Age Britain’s place in the wider world,” Roberts said.
Such trade required not only knowledge of distant lands but also the logistical infrastructure to move cargo, safeguard routes, and negotiate exchanges. That this was accomplished without writing or centralized state structures only deepens the mystery—and admiration—for these early traders.
What’s Next: A Dig at St Michael’s Mount
Roberts and Williams are now turning their attention to a site with almost mythical status in Cornish lore: St Michael’s Mount. The tidal island, now crowned by a medieval abbey, may once have served as a Bronze Age tin smelting center and maritime hub.
Excavations planned for the coming year will probe for evidence of Bronze Age activity—metallurgical waste, harbor installations, or perhaps even dwellings that once housed the people behind this transcontinental exchange.
Recasting the Bronze Age Narrative
Cornish tin isn’t just a mineral. It’s a clue. A clue that suggests the periphery was never as peripheral as it seemed.
From the highlands of Anatolia to the shipwrecks of the Levant, bronze shaped the tools of farmers, the blades of warriors, and the adornments of the elite. And behind it all, at least in part, were miners in a distant, foggy land at the western edge of Europe.
Related Research
* Berger, D., et al. (2019). “Tin Isotopes and the Sources of Tin in the Bronze Age.” Nature Communications, 10, 5000. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41467-019-12925-0
* Haubner, R., Lux, B., & Mitterbauer, E. (2020). “Metal Flow in Bronze Age Trade: Evidence from Chemical Composition.” Archaeometry, 62(4), 783–800. https://doi.org/10.1111/arcm.12543
* Cierny, J., & Weisgerber, G. (2003). “The Early Bronze Age Tin Trade in Central and Eastern Europe.” Der Anschnitt, 16(Suppl), 59–74.
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In the humid heart of the Yucatán, inside the ceremonial center of Chichén Itzá, a dozen ceramic bowls buried in history have begun to speak again. Through cracks, burn marks, and chemical traces, they offer a new clue to one of Mesoamerica’s most enduring aesthetic and ritual achievements: the production of Maya blue.
The pigment, renowned for its vibrancy and permanence, has captivated scientists since its rediscovery in the early 20th century. Found in murals, pottery, and on the bodies of sacrificial victims, this azure compound refused to fade, even after centuries in the tropical climate. But how it was made—how ancient artisans achieved this molecular resilience—remained unclear until the early 2000s, when chemical analysis linked the pigment’s creation to a trio of ingredients: indigo, palygorskite, and the sacred resin copal.
Now, more than 15 years after that breakthrough, new findings suggest the story is more complex. In a recent study presented at the Society for American Archaeology’s 2024 annual meeting and detailed in the newly published book Maya Blue (University Press of Colorado), anthropologist Dean Arnold proposes a second, previously undocumented method. This one, he argues, draws on a different sequence of preparation—one that hints at deeper ritual roles and restricted priestly knowledge.
Cracks in the Clay, Clues in the Fire
Arnold's investigation began not in a lab, but with close observation of ceramic artifacts: a dozen bowls excavated from Chichén Itzá, each bearing ghostly residues and signs of use. A white coating clung to the interiors, consistent with palygorskite, a fibrous magnesium-rich clay. But it wasn’t just the presence of the clay that intrigued him—it was how it had been processed.
Tiny fractures along the inside of the bowls pointed to wet grinding, a technique distinct from previous pigment-making reconstructions. In some bowls, microscopic plant remains were preserved—burnt stems trapped in place. The bases showed thermal scarring, suggesting that the bowls had been directly heated from below.
Together, these clues suggest an alternate recipe: plant matter (perhaps indigo-producing), palygorskite ground in water, then heated. Missing from this version is copal resin, once thought to be essential. In its place, Arnold hypothesizes, a different organic binder or sacrificial botanical element may have been used to coax the blue into being.
“The observations of these bowls provide evidence that the ancient Maya used this method as a second way to create Maya blue,” Arnold told colleagues during his presentation in Denver.
A Sacred Chemistry
Why develop two distinct methods to produce the same pigment? The answer may lie in the roles Maya blue played—not just as a pigment, but as a symbolic substance, tightly bound to cosmology and ceremony.
The color blue was more than visual—it was a spiritual medium. Maya blue was painted on sacrificial victims offered to Chaak, the storm and rain deity, particularly during periods of drought. In such contexts, the pigment was not mere decoration; it marked human bodies as transformed offerings, entangled with divine forces.
“This is a genius discovery that they made,” said Arnold, “and apparently the knowledge of it was limited to specialists like priests.”
The restricted access to this pigment’s production may have mirrored the broader stratification of Maya religious knowledge. Those who could produce Maya blue held not just technical skill, but ritual authority. The act of making the pigment—grinding, mixing, heating—may have been a form of invocation itself.
A Living Color, A Living Question
Despite the progress, the full story of Maya blue remains elusive. The genus of the plants used in the pigment’s creation has yet to be firmly identified. And the ritual logic behind the two separate methods—whether they were regionally specific, chronologically distinct, or purpose-driven—remains an open question.
What’s clear, however, is that Maya blue was never just a color. It was a material culture in miniature: sacred science, encoded in practice, surviving in pigment long after its makers were gone.
“The result of mixing indigo, palygorskite and copal,” Arnold once noted, “is also perhaps an incarnation of the rain god Chaak in this bowl after you heat it.”
In that light, each bowl becomes a kind of crucible—not just for pigment, but for belief.
Related Research
* Arnold, D. E. (2024). Maya Blue. University Press of Colorado.https://upcolorado.com/university-press-of-colorado/item/6507-maya-blue
* Chiari, G., Giustetto, R., & Ricchiardi, G. (2003). "Crystal Structure Refinement of Palygorskite and Maya Blue from X-ray Powder Diffraction and Molecular Modeling." European Journal of Mineralogy, 15(1), 21–33.DOI: 10.1127/0935-1221/2003/0015-0021
* Kleber, C., et al. (2008). "Deconstructing Maya Blue: A Recipe from the Past." European Journal of Mineralogy, 20(2), 341–348.DOI: 10.1127/0935-1221/2008/0020-1820
* Magaloni Kerpel, D. (2014). Colors of the New World: Artists, Materials, and the Creation of the Florentine Codex. Getty Research Institute.
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In a craggy fold of the central Zagros Mountains, archaeologists braced against time, weather, and destruction. At Kunakhera Cave — its silence punctured by looters and erosion—they found traces of a world long buried: chipped stone tools, scorched animal bone, blackened hearths. These were not casual signs of occupation. They told a deeper story—of Homo neanderthalensis surviving, hunting, and perhaps even dreaming in the highlands of western Iran some 40,000 to 80,000 years ago.
The work began as an emergency. Illegal digging and natural degradation had threatened to erase whatever remained at Kunakhera. A team led by Iranian archaeologist Nemat Hariri secured permission from the Cultural Heritage and Tourism Research Institute to excavate what they could before it was too late.
“The aim was twofold,” Hariri said. “To rescue the site’s archaeological record from further damage—and to ask scientific questions about the Paleolithic landscape and those who once moved through it.”
Mousterian Tools and the Weight of Memory
The artifacts came quickly. Flakes and cores aligned with the Mousterian technological tradition—a hallmark of Neanderthal craftsmanship—emerged from the stratified sediment. Layered ash and blackened earth pointed to repeated use of fire. Nearby, fragments of bone bore the unmistakable scoring of stone knives, and traces of heating.
“The tools and the bones appear together in spatial patterns that suggest deliberate activity around hearths,” Hariri noted. “We’re not looking at a single event, but recurring use—perhaps seasonal.”
The faunal remains read like a late Pleistocene field guide. Cave bears, wild equids, goats and sheep, jackals, rabbits, and even freshwater turtles were all present. The presence of multiple prey species—not just large game—speaks to a flexible, opportunistic approach to subsistence, and to a group skilled at surviving in a harsh, high-altitude environment. Kunakhera lies around 1,800 meters above sea level, close to the ancient snow line. This is no easy landscape to inhabit.
A Wider Paleolithic Landscape
The sediment at Kunakhera mirrored that of a more famous neighbor: Bawa Yawan, a rock shelter not far away. Known for its Mousterian assemblages and, more recently, Paleolithic rock art, Bawa Yawan has been central to understanding human presence on the Iranian plateau. Now, with Kunakhera added to the map, archaeologists are revisiting assumptions about how often—and how long—Neanderthals occupied the region.
Saman Heydari-Guran, one of Iran’s foremost Paleolithic scholars, emphasized the symbolic weight of Bawa Yawan. Recent discoveries of rock motifs there—some interpreted as linked to fertility or childbearing—hint at more than subsistence. They point toward symbolic behavior, toward culture.
“These motifs,” Heydari-Guran explained, “are comparable to European Paleolithic art in form and content. They open a rare window into the cognitive world of early humans in this region.”
Radiocarbon dates from the shelter’s associated layers suggest an age of around 13,400 years for the art. While that postdates the Neanderthal horizon, it speaks to a long tradition of human occupation and perhaps cultural continuity or echo.
Rethinking Neanderthal Lives
If Kunakhera reinforces anything, it is the persistence and adaptability of Neanderthals in western Asia. For decades, they were caricatured as brutish and doomed—a hominin footnote. But data like this push back against that image.
Recent work across Eurasia has steadily revised the Neanderthal story. We now know they crafted composite tools, made symbolic markings, buried their dead, and interbred with Homo sapiens. Kunakhera adds another dimension—showing how these hominins adapted not just to temperate Europe but to the rugged, high-altitude ecologies of the Iranian plateau.
“The emerging view is one of Neanderthals as sophisticated hominins,” Hariri said.“Not biologically inferior, but behaviorally complex.”
Kunakhera is unlikely to be the last word. But its survival, thanks to a rescue mission launched in urgency, offers new terrain for paleoanthropologists. It adds another stone to the mosaic of human evolution—a mosaic not centered on any one region, but scattered across plains, shelters, and wind-carved caves.
Related Research
Here are several related studies that provide context and comparative insights into Neanderthal adaptation, cognition, and occupation in Asia and beyond:
* Leder, D., et al. (2021). “Persistence and replacement in the late Middle Paleolithic of the Iranian Plateau.” PLOS ONE, 16(1): e0244945. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0244945
* A detailed study of lithic variability and occupation continuity across Paleolithic Iran.
* Roebroeks, W., & Soressi, M. (2016). “Neandertals revised.” Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 113(23), 6372–6379. https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.1521269113
* A reassessment of Neanderthal cognitive and cultural capacities.
* Nishiaki, Y., et al. (2020). “Late Middle Paleolithic stone tool technology in the Zagros: Insights from the Darband Cave.” Journal of Archaeological Science: Reports, 33, 102549. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jasrep.2020.102549
* Focuses on lithic strategies in a comparable Zagros cave context.
* Ruebens, K., et al. (2015). “Regional behaviour among late Neanderthal groups in Western Europe.” Nature Communications, 6, 6348. https://doi.org/10.1038/ncomms7348
* Documents cultural diversity and regionalism among late Neanderthals.
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Somewhere in Ice Age Eurasia, a Palaeolithic knapper leaned over a lump of flint. With a practiced hand, they struck it just so—angle, force, and point of impact carefully judged. The result was a flake shaped with intention, useful and standardized, snapped free with a single blow. For decades, archaeologists have debated how much of this was planned—and how much was just luck.
A new study published in Archaeological and Anthropological Sciences suggests it was anything but random. In fact, angle mattered a great deal.
The research, led by Shi-Zhu Lin and colleagues from the University of Queensland, offers a close look at one of the most distinctive and cognitively demanding stone technologies of the Middle Palaeolithic: the Levallois method. Their focus? Not the final product, but the strike itself. Specifically, how the angle of the hammer relative to the core at the moment of contact influenced the size, shape, and fracture path of Levallois flakes.
Hitting the Right Angle
The Levallois technique, widespread among Neanderthals and early Homo sapiens, involves preparing a core with deliberate convexities and striking a flake from it with a final blow. This method isn’t just about getting a sharp edge—it's about reproducibility. Levallois flakes are predictably shaped, efficient, and standardized. But the mechanics behind their detachment have remained, in many ways, a black box.
To open it, Lin and colleagues designed an experimental program to systematically vary just one parameter: the angle at which a hammerstone met the core surface. They struck over 300 flint cores using controlled angles and measured the resulting flake morphologies.
What they found was surprisingly consistent. A shallower angle of blow—closer to parallel with the core surface—tended to produce flakes that were longer and thinner, with more extensive fracture propagation. In contrast, steeper angles produced shorter, thicker flakes with different fracture paths.
“These results demonstrate that the angle of blow exerts a systematic and predictable influence on both the morphology and fracture trajectory of Levallois flakes,” the authors write.
More Than Muscle Memory
Why does this matter? Because in Palaeolithic archaeology, stone tools are among the best proxies for understanding cognition. Controlling flake shape with nuanced biomechanical precision—by managing variables like hammer angle—is not simply a manual skill. It requires foresight, planning depth, and perhaps most importantly, embodied expertise passed down through generations.
“This type of fracture control may reflect highly developed sensorimotor coordination and perceptual attunement,” the authors note, drawing connections to research in experimental psychology and skilled craftsmanship.
In other words, this isn’t just about rocks. It’s about minds at work—prehistoric bodies trained to read stone like a script and compose tools with surgical finesse.
Chipping Away at the Levallois Mystery
Previous studies have often emphasized the visual and geometric aspects of Levallois flaking: how cores are shaped, convexities maintained, and platforms prepared. But this new study highlights a subtler dimension—force dynamics in real time. By isolating a single variable in a controlled experiment, the team has shown that flake production wasn't just the outcome of shaping the core but of controlling the strike with remarkable regularity.
Importantly, this also complicates earlier assumptions that Levallois flakes were the product of core morphology alone. Instead, toolmakers may have fine-tuned outcomes with biomechanical precision, adding a previously underappreciated layer of complexity.
Neanderthals, Cognition, and Craft
What does this mean for how archaeologists interpret past behavior? If Levallois artisans actively adjusted their striking angle to produce desired flake traits, this suggests a degree of motor planning and feedback monitoring that brings us closer to understanding prehistoric cognition. It points toward learned behavior, possibly taught within social groups and practiced over years.
This also supports broader claims that Neanderthals and early modern humans weren’t so different. They weren’t just reactive beings chipping away at random. They were thinking, planning, adjusting.
“The precise manipulation of hammer angle may reflect motor expertise embedded in social learning traditions,” the authors conclude.
Related Research
Here are some related studies that provide additional context:
* Lombard, M., Wadley, L., & Parsons, I. (2010). Hunting with Howiesons Poort segments: Pilot experimental study and use-trace analysis. Journal of Archaeological Science, 37(1), 1–13. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jas.2009.07.014– Explores hafted tools and projectile use in the Later Stone Age.
* Boëda, E. (1995). Levallois: A volumetric construction, methods, a technique. In The Definition and Interpretation of Levallois Technology (pp. 41–68).– Foundational framework on the Levallois concept.
* Faisal, A. A., Stout, D., Apel, J., & Bradley, B. (2010). The manipulative complexity of Lower Paleolithic stone toolmaking. PLoS ONE, 5(11), e13718. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0013718– Quantifies the biomechanical and neural demands of early stone tool production.
* Hecht, E. E., Gutman, D. A., Bradley, B. A., Preuss, T. M., & Stout, D. (2015). Process versus product in Palaeolithic toolmaking: A neuroarchaeological perspective. Journal of Human Evolution, 82, 5–18. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jhevol.2015.02.004– Looks at brain imaging studies tied to stone tool replication.
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Tracing Human Movement Across the Iranian Heartland
In the northern reaches of Iran’s Central Desert, nestled between the rugged Alborz Mountains and the flat, wind-worn claylands to the south, archaeologists have uncovered eight scattered landscapes rich in Paleolithic stone tools. These findings from Eyvanekey, Semnan Province, represent the first direct evidence of Pleistocene hominin activity in the central corridor of this harsh, often overlooked region.
“The archaeological record here was practically a blank page,” noted Seyyed Milad Hashemi of Tarbiat Modares University, the project’s lead researcher. “This part of the Iranian Central Desert has long been proposed as a potential migration route, but no field surveys had ever confirmed that story—until now.”
A New Chapter in an Ancient Corridor
Previous studies had focused largely on the western and eastern edges of the Northern Iranian Central Desert. The central region—arid, remote, and challenging—remained largely uncharted. The 2021 Eyvanekey field project sought to change that.
Covering an area of nearly 900 square kilometers, researchers identified eight Paleolithic landscapes, most clustered on ancient alluvial fans and old river terraces. These features had become visible due to wind erosion and surface runoff, stripping away the topsoil to expose a timeworn record beneath.
The lithics recovered—1,200 in total—ranged from Middle to Upper Paleolithic. Nearly half were debitage, the leftover flakes from tool production. But the team also found refined tools, including retouched points, Levallois flakes, bifaces, and even a keilmesser—indicating a robust and sophisticated knowledge of stone working.
“The presence of tools with basal trimming, convergent scrapers, and Levallois cores underscores the diversity and skill of the hominins who once moved through this desert corridor,” the authors wrote.
On the Edge of Innovation
Although the assemblage includes distinctive Middle Paleolithic signatures—particularly the use of the Levallois technique—it also contains traits more common in later periods. Tools made on blades and bladelets, soft-hammer production, and prismatic cores suggest a gradual transition toward Upper Paleolithic technologies.
Yet the lithic traditions here were not carbon copies of what was happening in the Levant or the Caucasus. The Levallois method appears only moderately developed, and many of the tools are typologically atypical.
“The Eyvanekey assemblages more closely resemble the opportunistic industries found in central Iran’s Mirak site or the Teshik-Tash cave in Uzbekistan,” Hashemi’s team notes, “rather than the refined techno-complexes of the Zagros Mousterian or the southern Levant.”
Filling the Gaps in Pleistocene Geography
If the Iranian Plateau functioned as a migration route for hominins moving between western Asia and Central or South Asia, sites like Eyvanekey become critical in mapping that journey. This survey adds a missing puzzle piece to the so-called “Northern Dispersal Corridor,” a hypothesized passage used by archaic and possibly early modern humans as they spread across the continent.
“These finds support the idea that this corridor wasn’t a theoretical pathway—it was used, repeatedly and substantially, by hominin groups,” said co-author Asqar Nateqi of Islamic Azad University.
However, the archaeological material is surface-level. To fully understand the time depth and behavioral contexts of these lithic assemblages, the researchers emphasize the need for future excavations that uncover stratified, in situ deposits.
An Unfinished Story in Stone
With its modest yet revealing collection of tools, the Eyvanekey project challenges the notion that deserts are archaeological voids. Instead, the area emerges as a living, shifting record of ancient lives—of travelers, toolmakers, and foragers who crossed the region long before written memory.
The research also signals a shift in Iranian Paleolithic studies, urging scholars to look beyond the known hotspots and into the marginal zones—the clay flats, wind-scoured terraces, and buried fan deposits where stories lie just beneath the surface.
“It’s only the beginning,” Hashemi concluded. “But it’s a beginning that matters.”
Related Research:
* Vahdati Nasab, H., & Hashemi, M. (2016).Playas and Middle Paleolithic settlement of the Iranian Central Desert: the discovery of the Chah-e Jam Middle Paleolithic site.Quaternary International, 408(part B), 140–152.https://doi.org/10.1016/j.quaint.2015.11.117
* Shoaee, M. J., Vahdati Nasab, H., & Petraglia, M. D. (2021).The Paleolithic of the Iranian plateau: hominin occupation history and implications for human dispersals across southern Asia.Journal of Anthropological Archaeology, 62, 101292.https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jaa.2021.101292
* Nishiaki, Y., & Aripdjanov, O. (2021).A new look at the Middle Paleolithic lithic industry of the Teshik-Tash Cave, Uzbekistan.Quaternary International, 596, 22–37.https://doi.org/10.1016/j.quaint.2020.11.035
* Golovanova, L. V., & Doronichev, V. B. (2003).The Middle Paleolithic of the Caucasus.Journal of World Prehistory, 17(1), 71–140.https://doi.org/10.1023/A:1023960217881
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