2,600-year-old stone busts of ‘lost’ ancient Tartessos people were discovered in a sealed pit in Spain
Two of the carved figures likely depict goddesses wearing gold earrings.
Archaeologists in Spain have unearthed five life-size busts of human figures that could be the first-known human depictions of the Tartessos, a people who formed an ancient civilization that disappeared more than 2,500 years ago.
The carved stone faces, which archaeologists date to the fifth century B.C., were found hidden inside a sealed pit in an adobe temple at Casas del Turuñuelo, an ancient Tartessian site in southern Spain.
The pieces were scattered amongst animal bones, mostly from horses, that likely came from a mass sacrifice, according to a translated statement published on April 18.
“The unusual thing about the new finding is that the representations correspond to human faces,” Erika López, a spokesperson for the Spanish National Research Council (CSIC), said in the statement.
Archaeologists from the CSIC called this discovery “a profound paradigm shift in the interpretation of [Tartessos],” since this ancient civilization, which existed from about the eighth to the fourth centuries B.C., was long considered an aniconic culture in which divinity was represented through animal or plant motifs, rather than idolized humans, according to the statement.
Of the figurative reliefs, two are nearly complete and likely portray female divinities wearing earrings, which could be a nod to the Bronze Aged peoples’ adept goldsmithing skills.
Archaeologists found only fragments of the other three reliefs, but identified one as a warrior wearing a helmet, according to the statement.
Although the Tartessos didn’t leave much of an archeological record, archaeologists do know that they were skilled at goldsmithing; for instance, gold pieces similar to the reliefs’ earrings have been unearthed at two nearby Tartessian sites, Cancho Roano, and La Mata.
These locations were torched to the ground in a similar manner to the newly discovered pit site, but why and how these conflagrations occurred remains a mystery, according to an April 21 Vice article.
Some historians, including the Greek philosopher Aristotle, once linked the Tartessos people to the mythical lost city of Atlantis. However this idea “has been widely dismissed in the scientific community,” according to a 2022 BBC article.
“The finding only further influences both the importance of the site and the importance of the Tartessian culture in the Guadiana valley during its last moments,” López said in the translated statement.
Handaxes from the period of the first human migration out of Africa, circular burial chambers, a collection of rock engravings, and the Arabian Stonehenge. Unique findings are being reported by an international team led by the Institute of Archaeology of the CAS in Prague, which has successfully completed its third excavation season in Oman. The collected samples are now being analyzed by experts and will contribute to the reconstruction of the earliest history of the world’s largest sand desert.
Czech archaeologists have been focusing on the still underexplored desert areas of the Sultanate of Oman for a long time. Their last year’s expedition was the third in a row and several more are in the pipeline. More than twenty archaeologists and geologists from ten countries were involved in the excavations at two different sites in Oman.
The first expedition team was situated in the Dhofar Governorate in the south of the country, while the second group operated in the Duqm province of central Oman. The researchers shared their observations directly from the field on Twitter via @Arduq_Arabia.
The expedition camp in the Rub’ al-Khali desert, southern Oman.
The Arabian Peninsula as a migration corridor
In the dunes of the Rub’ al Khali desert in the Dhofar province, researchers unearthed stone handaxes that date back to the first human migration out of Africa some 300,000 to 1.3 million years ago. Due to its geographical location, Arabia served as a natural migration route from the African cradle of humankind into Eurasia.
Among dunes up to 300 meters high, they managed to find eggshells of extinct ostriches, a fossil dune, and an old riverbed from a period when the climate in Arabia was significantly wetter. “Our findings, supported by four different dating methods, will provide valuable data for reconstructing the climate and history of the world’s largest sand desert. Natural conditions also shaped prehistoric settlements, and what we are trying to do is study human adaptability to climate change,” said expedition leader and coordinator Roman Garba from the Institute of Archaeology of the CAS in Prague.
Nuclear physics is helping history research
Archaeologists use special dating methods to determine the age of the finds. “We carry out radiocarbon dating and cosmogenic radionuclide dating in cooperation with the Nuclear Physics Institute of the CAS, which has newly commissioned the first accelerator mass spectrometer in the Czech Republic,” Garba explained.
Radiocarbon dating and spatio-temporal analysis can also help researchers find out more about the roughly two-thousand-year-old ritual stone monuments – known as triliths. In layman’s terms, they can be likened to England’s better-known Stonehenge. They appear in what is now southern Arabia, and it is not clear exactly what they were used for or who built them.
What is hidden beneath the circular burial chambers?
The second expedition team operated in the Duqm province of central Oman, focusing in particular on a Neolithic tomb dating back to 5,000–4,600 BCE at the Nafūn site.
Excavation of a Neolithic tomb at the Nafūn site, central Oman.
“What we find here is unique in the context of the whole of southern Arabia. A megalithic structure concealing two circular burial chambers revealed the skeletal remains of at least several dozen individuals. Isotopic analyses of bones, teeth, and shells will help us to learn more about the diet, natural environment, and migrations of the buried population,” explains Alžběta Danielisová from the Institute of Archaeology, Prague.
“What we find here is unique in the context of the whole of southern Arabia. A megalithic structure concealing two circular burial chambers revealed the skeletal remains of at least several dozen individuals.
Isotopic analyses of bones, teeth, and shells will help us learn more about the diet, natural environment, and migrations of the buried population,” explained Alžběta Danielisová from the Institute of Archaeology of the CAS in Prague.
Not far from the tomb, there is a unique collection of rock engravings spread out over a total of 49 rock blocs, whose different styles and varying degrees of weathering provide a pictorial record of settlements from 5,000 BCE to 1,000 CE. Researchers also investigated stone tool production sites from the Late Stone Age.
Following the traces of ancient settlements in southern Arabia The research in Oman is part of a wider project by evolutionary anthropologist Viktor Černý from the Institute of Archaeology in Prague. His research focuses on the biocultural interactions of populations and their adaptation to climate change.
“The detected interactions of African and Arab archaeological cultures characterize the mobility of populations of anatomically modern humans.
It will be interesting to confront these findings also with the genetic diversity of the two regions and create a more comprehensive view of the formation of contemporary society in Southern Arabia,” explained Černý, who received the prestigious Academic Award of the Czech Academy of Sciences for the project last year.
The ARDUQ (Archaeological Landscape and environmental dynamics of Duqm and Nejd) expedition was carried out under the auspices of the Omani Ministry of Heritage and Tourism. Researchers from the Czech Republic, USA, Great Britain, Ukraine, Iran, Italy, Slovakia, Austria, France, and Oman took part in the project.
Genetic Study Establishes Native Ancestors Were in Alaska 3,000 Years Ago
In a study published in iScience, researchers analyzed ancient genetic data to show that some modern Alaska Natives still live almost exactly where their ancestors did 3,000 years ago. The researchers studied the genome of a 3,000-year-old female individual and found that she is most closely related to Alaska Natives living in the area today. This discovery strengthens the idea that genetic continuity in Southeast Alaska has continued for thousands of years, shedding light on human migration routes, mixtures among people from different waves of migration, and territorial patterns of Pacific Northwest inhabitants in the pre-colonial era.
Researchers have discovered that some modern Alaska Natives still live almost exactly where their ancestors did 3,000 years ago, highlighting genetic continuity in Southeast Alaska and shedding light on human migration patterns and pre-colonial territorial patterns in the Pacific Northwest.
The first people to live in the Americas migrated from Siberia across the Bering land bridge more than 20,000 years ago. Some made their way as far south as Tierra del Fuego, at the tip of South America. Others settled in areas much closer to their place of origin where their descendants still thrive today.
In “A paleogenome from a Holocene individual supports genetic continuity in Southeast Alaska,” published recently in the journal iScience, University at Buffalo evolutionary biologist Charlotte Lindqvist and collaborators show, using ancient genetic data analyses, that some modern Alaska Natives still live almost exactly where their ancestors did some 3,000 years ago.
Lindqvist, PhD, associate professor of biological sciences at the UB College of Arts and Sciences, is senior author of the paper. In the course of her studies in Alaska, she explored mammal remains that had been found in a cave on the state’s southeast coast. One bone was initially identified as coming from a bear. However, genetic analysis showed it to be the remains of a human female.
“We realized that modern Indigenous peoples in Alaska, should they have remained in the region since the earliest migrations, could be related to this prehistoric individual,” says Alber Aqil, a UB PhD student in biological sciences and the first author of the paper. This discovery led to efforts to solve this mystery, which DNA analyses are well suited to address when archeological remains are as sparse as these were.
The bone that researchers found belonged to an ancient individual that the Wrangell Cooperative Association named Tatóok yík yées sháawat (Young lady in cave).
Learning from an ancestor
The earliest peoples had already started moving south along the Pacific Northwest Coast before an inland route between ice sheets became viable. Some, including the female individual from the cave, made their home in the area that surrounds the Gulf of Alaska. That area is now home to the Tlingit Nation and three other groups: Haida, Tsimshian, and Nisga’a.
As Aqil and colleagues analyzed the genome from this 3,000-year-old individual — “research that was not possible just 20 years ago,” Lindqvist noted — they determined that she is most closely related to Alaska Natives living in the area today. This fact showed it was necessary to carefully document as clearly as possible any genetic connections of the ancient female to present-day Native Americans.
In such endeavors, it is important to collaborate closely with people living in lands where archeological remains are found. Therefore, cooperation between Alaska Native peoples and the scientific community has been a significant component of the cave explorations that have taken place in the region.
The Wrangell Cooperative Association named the ancient individual analyzed in this study as “Tatóok yík yées sháawat” (Young lady in cave).
Genetic continuity in Southeast Alaska persists for thousands of years
Indeed, Aqil and Lindqvist’s research demonstrated that Tatóok yík yées sháawat is in fact closest related to present-day Tlingit peoples and those of nearby tribes along the coast. Their research, therefore, strengthens the idea that genetic continuity in Southeast Alaska has continued for thousands of years.
Human migration into North America, although it began some 24,000 years ago, came in waves — one of which, about 6,000 years ago — included the Paleo-Inuit, formerly known as Paleo-Eskimos. Importantly for understanding Indigenous peoples’ migrations from Asia, Tatóok yík yées sháawat’s DNA did not reveal ancestry from the second wave of settlers, the Paleo-Inuit. Indeed, the analyses performed by Aqil and Lindqvist helped shed light on the continuing discussion of migration routes, mixtures among people from these different waves, as well as modern territorial patterns of inland and coastal people of the Pacific Northwest in the pre-colonial era.
Oral history links an ancient woman to people living in Southeast Alaska today
The oral origin narratives of the Tlingit people include the story of the most recent eruption of Mount Edgecumbe, which would place them exactly in the region by 4,500 years ago. Tatóok yík yées sháawat, their relative, therefore informs not just modern-day anthropological researchers but also the Tlingit people themselves.
Out of respect for the right of the Tlingit people to control and protect their cultural heritage and their genetic resources, data from the study of Tatóok yík yées sháawat will be available only after review of its use by the Wrangell Cooperative Association Tribal Council.
“It’s very exciting to contribute to our knowledge of the prehistory of Southeast Alaska,” said Aqil.
Reference: “A paleogenome from a Holocene individual supports genetic continuity in Southeast Alaska” by Alber Aqil, Stephanie Gill, Omer Gokcumen, Ripan S. Malhi, Esther Aaltséen Reese, Jane L. Smith, Timothy T. Heaton and Charlotte Lindqvist, 8 April 2023, iScience.
Image courtesy: University of Michigan Museum of Anthropological Archaeology Bison skulls excavated from an archaeological site near Roswell, New Mexico. Pictured are objects 83209 a and b.
Early human foragers may have relied on eating the partially digested vegetable matter, called digesta, found in the stomachs and digestive tracts of bison and other large game herbivores.
But foraging hypotheses and models do not include this important source of calories and carbohydrates, according to a University of Michigan study.
Folding digesta into these models will allow researchers to better address major questions in evolutionary anthropology. It even calls into question the idea that “hunting and gathering,” which all prehistoric people relied on until about 10,000 years ago, was divided by sex, according to author Raven Garvey, associate professor of anthropology and affiliate of the Research Center for Group Dynamics at the U-M Institute for Social Research.
Image courtesy: University of Michigan Museum of Anthropological Archaeology Folsom points, which date to between 11,000 and 10,000 years ago, were believed to be used in the prehistoric hunting of bison. This is object 37737.
Early foragers may, in some contexts, have consumed their required portion of “vegetables” in the form of digesta, according to Garvey. Eating not only the herbivores’ meat and organs but also digesta would net a person a significantly higher number of calories, and also would expand the kinds of macronutrients such as protein, fat and carbohydrates available to the forager.
“Failure to account for this underappreciated resource could have important consequences in studies that address major questions in evolutionary anthropology,” she said. “Accounting for digesta as a source of both kilocalories and carbohydrates leads to predictions that differ from foraging models that do not include this resource.”
Garvey’s study, published in the journal Evolutionary Anthropology, explores the significance of digesta in two of these questions: sex-divided subsistence labor and archaeologically observed increases in plant use and sedentism, or the transition to more permanent settlements.
Subsistence hunting
Using estimates of available protein and carbohydrates in the native tissues and digesta, respectively, of a large ruminant herbivore (Bison bison), Garvey shows that, with digesta included, a group of 25 adult foragers could meet the USDA’s average recommendations for proteins and carbs for three days without additional supplementation.
Such a resource could have been crucial in certain contexts, like in areas where plants were scarce or indigestible to humans. It could also have eliminated the need to hunt and gather separately since total nutrition could be obtained from a single resource.
Image courtesy of the University of Michigan Museum of Anthropological Archaeology Folsom points, which date to between 11,000 and 10,000 years ago, are associated with the prehistoric hunting of bison. These points are objects 27673, 39802, 30442, and 37737.
In this way, Garvey’s “bison model” raises questions about the assumption that human subsistence labor was always strongly sex-divided and the traditional picture of exclusively male-provisioning of large-bodied prey. Women’s participation in hunting becomes likelier when high-energy resources can be acquired with low risk. In times and places where large-bodied herbivores were abundant, a group’s overall hunting success could have been improved, and plant-animal scheduling conflicts reduced through women’s hunting.
There is some archaeological evidence to suggest female hunting (and the child care provisioning that would have entailed) was more common during prehistory than in the later ethnographic period, Garvey says. A study of “grave goods” in burials across North and South America, for example, found that perhaps 30%-50% of all large-game hunters in the Americas during the late glacial (late Pleistocene and early Holocene) era, between 8,000 and 13,000 years ago, may have been female.
This strategy might have been influenced both by the relative abundance during that period of large-bodied herbivores and by people’s high mobility. Following migratory game, groups increased the reliability of hunting, but created conditions that reduced the accessibility of edible plants. Digesta consumption would have bridged this resource gap.
Social organization
Digesta consumption could also also have contributed to major changes in dietary breadth and human mobility in the Americas, Garvey says. Her “bison model” indicates that while large-bodied herbivores could provide small human groups’ total nutrition for short periods, the ratio of protein to carbohydrates in a single animal makes digesta an unsustainable source of carbohydrates in the long run.
That is, a 1,000-pound bison could provide a group of 25 adult foragers with three days’ worth of protein and carbohydrates, but if they pursued a fresh animal every fourth day, they would leave approximately 6 days’ worth of protein unconsumed each bison kill.
As human populations grew in size, it would have become increasingly difficult to address the carb deficit: The level of hunting required to ensure sufficient carbohydrates would become unsustainable. In such cases, Garvey says, the need for reliable access to both protein and carbohydrates, without which humans can’t survive, would necessitate significant social reorganization of settlement and subsistence.
Even if herbivores and their stomach contents were not a group’s sole source of key macronutrients—as Garvey notes they likely were not in most times and places—digesta’s positive effect on herbivores’ nutrient profiles could, when available, have affected plant foraging behaviors, relaxing the demand for fresh plant foods and perhaps freeing up time and energy for other activities.
“Many anthropologists are concerned that our evolutionary understanding of humans is disproportionately influenced by contemporary behaviors and cultural expressions that may bear little resemblance to those of the past,” Garvey said. “Allowing for the possible dietary importance of large herbivore digesta and other understudied resources can lead to new interpretations of past behaviors and a healthy reevaluation of assumptions on which our evolutionary hypotheses rest.”
Garvey is the associate curator of the U-M Museum of Anthropological Archaeology and received an Andrew W. Mellon Foundation fellowship last year to train in engineering and explore the effects of wind on hunter-gatherers’ livelihoods and technologies.
Archaeologists discover medieval a tableman gaming piece in Bedfordshire, England
Archaeologists in Bedfordshire, England, have made an intriguing discovery: a tableman gaming piece was discovered at a medieval site.
Cotswold Archaeology excavated in preparation for a Taylor Wimpey housing development at Bidwell West, near Houghton Regis and Dunstable.
In addition to the tableman, the archaeological team discovered a medieval timber-framed building and a series of medieval enclosure ditches.
The gaming piece, which has a diameter of nearly 6cm, is made from a cattle mandible – a large, sturdy bone, which serves as the lower jawbone of a cow, according to a press release. Its face has been decorated with concentric circles and a ring-and-dot design, which is attractive although not unusual.
Tablemen were used to play a variety of board games in which two players rolled dice and moved their pieces across rows of markings.
The term ‘tables’ is derived from the Latin tabula, which originally meant “board” or “plank” and was introduced to Britain during the Roman period.
One of the more popular table games among the Romans was Ludus duodecim scriptorium. It was a dice game with three cubic dice, and each player had 15 pieces to move.
The game of tabula was most likely refined from Ludus duodecim scriptorium, and it grew in popularity during the medieval period. Tabula, like Backgammon, has two rows of twenty-four points.
The tableman found at Bidwell West has a diameter of nearly 6cm (2.36 in) and similar examples in both size and decoration style have been recovered at other sites, including an example from Winchester, Hampshire which was made in the medieval period (11th-13th centuries).
As Cotswolds Archeology also wrote in its description:: “It is not always possible to identify which game the gaming pieces recovered from archaeological excavations would have belonged to, because there is often no surviving board.
However, due to the association with the medieval site, the style of decoration, and the size, it is likely that the gaming piece was used to play tabula during the medieval period.
Smoke archeology finds evidence Humans visited Nerja Cave for 40,000 years
A new study by a team from the University of Córdoba reveals that Nerja is the European cave with the most confirmed and recurrent visits during Prehistory.
Humans have been visiting the Cave of Nerja for 41,000 years; for a few of them, it has been exploited as a tourist attraction, and for nearly the same amount of time, it has been the subject of scientific study.
Throughout its history, and even today, it continues to stun visitors and researchers from around the world.
The latest surprise from the cave, located in the province of Malaga, was just published in Scientific Reports by an international team including researchers from the University of Córdoba; Marian Medina, currently at the University of Bourdeux; Eva Rodríguez; and José Luis Sachidrián, a Professor of Prehistory and the scientific director of the Cave of Nerja.
They have managed to demonstrate that Humanity has been present in Nerja for some 41,000 years, 10,000 years earlier than previously believed, and that it is Europe’s cave featuring Paleolithic Art in Europe with the highest number of confirmed and recurrent visits to its interior during Prehistory.
This new research has managed to document 35,000 years of visits in 73 different phases, which means that human groups entered the cave every 35 years, according to their calculations.
Image composition of the materials. (A) Black mark (dating number 33). (B) Micro-charcoal inside fixed lamp (dating number 43). (C) Scattered charcoals (dating number 54). (D) GN16-08 stalagmite section. The red arrows point to one of the samples, analyzed both by TEM–EDX and Raman micro-spectroscopy.
This level of precision has been made possible thanks to the use of the latest techniques dating the coals and remains of fossilized soot on the stalagmites of the Nerja Cave.
This is what has been called “smoke archaeology,” a new technique developed by the main author of the work, Marián Medina, from Córdoba’s Santa Rosa district, an honorary researcher at that city’s university, who has been reconstructing European prehistory for more than a decade by analyzing the remnants of torches, fires, and smoke in Spanish and French caves.
With the enthusiasm of one who loves what she does, Medina explains that the information that Transmission Electron Microscopy and Carbon-14 dating techniques can provide on man’s rituals and ways of life is impressive.
In this last work, 68 datings are presented, 48 totally new, of the deepest areas of the cave, featuring Paleolithic Art, and evidence of chronocultures never previously recorded has been found.
Furthermore, these “fire archaeologists” understand how to interpret the way the torches were moved based on the information detected under the microscope, inferring from it the symbolic and scenographic use that humans made of fire 40,000 years ago.
“The prehistoric paintings were viewed in the flickering light of the flames, which could give the figures a certain sense of movement and warmth,” explains Medina, who also underscores the funerary use of the Nerja Cave in the latter part of Prehistory, for thousands of years. “There is still much it can reveal about what we were like,” she says.
Archaeologists have uncovered a hidden complex of rooms covered with Christian paintings in Old Dongola, a deserted town in Sudan that was once the capital of medieval Makuria.
A team from the Polish Centre of Mediterranean Archaeology had been exploring houses dating from the later Funj period, 16th to 19th century, when they stumbled upon an opening into a small chamber painted with depictions of the Mother of God, Christ, a Nubian ruler, and Archangel Michael.
Preliminary research suggests the paintings were created during a time of extreme duress for Dongola, which was an important trade city on the Nile that flourished for hundreds of years under the peaceful relations between the Muslims of Egypt and the Christians of Nubia.
Close-up of King David inside the discovered vaults in Old Dongola.
The paintings show a Nubian ruler, believed to be King David, being shielded by Archangel Michael and are accompanied by inscriptions calling for God to protect the city—figurative scenes that the archaeologists consider “unique for Christian art.”
David’s reign marked the beginning of the end for the kingdom and his actions led to the city being sacked by the Mamluk Sultanate in 1276.
Onsite archaeologists speculate that the paintings might have been made with the Mamluk army approaching or laying siege to the city. Inscriptions accompanying the paintings, according to a preliminary reading, include pleas for God’s protection.
A depiction of Mary, Mother of God in Dongola.
Close up of scene with King David.
The chambers in Old Dongola are covered with vaults and domes built from dried brick and are more than 20 feet above the medieval ground level, a fact that has confused archaeologists.
The complex is adjacent to the Great Church of Jesus, which was the most important church of the Makuria kingdom.
“I think these structures were built in exactly this place because of the presence of the Great Church of Jesus, which was the largest and most important church in Nubia according to written sources,” Artur Obłuski, the project’s director told Artnet News. “We have funding for three new projects and one is focused on the excavation of the Great Church of Jesus.”
inside the chamber discovered in Old Dongola.
Ahead of their return to Old Dongola in the autumn when temperatures in Sudan are cooler, the team has secured and protected the wall paintings.
Polish archaeologists have been excavating the town since the 1960s, with the latest work funded by the European Research Council.
“Despite all the new and fancy methods,” Obłuski said, “archaeology still delivers surprises like this one.”
1,800-year-old wooden mask likely used in farm festivals found in Japan
Archaeologists have unearthed an almost perfectly preserved wooden mask from the early third century at the Nishi-Iwata ruins in Osaka Prefecture, Japan.
The discovery was announced by the Osaka Cultural for Heritage Center on April 24.
The discovery is the third example of a wooden mask from this period. Experts believe the artifact was important in influential agricultural festivals organized by powerful people at the time.
The wooden mask, hewn from a cedar tree, measures around 30cm in height by 18cm wide and features two eye holes, a mouth, and a perforated hole surviving on one side that probably held string for holding the mask on the wearers face.
The mask was found in flood sediment 2.9 meters below the surface of the ground. It was discovered next to a piece of a wooden water bucket and a wooden object in the shape of a hoe that had been burned. Experts believe the three items may well have featured in agricultural festivals.
Photo: Osaka Centre for Cultural Heritage
According to the researchers, the mask may have been used in ceremonial rituals during significant agricultural festivals around 1800 years ago, during the Yayoi era.
During this time, Japan transitioned to a settled agricultural society, employing agricultural methods introduced from Korea in the Kyushu region.
The mask was probably displayed at festivals because it is too heavy to wear, according to Kaoru Terasawa, director of the Research Center for Makimukugaku, Sakurai City, in Nara Prefecture.
Kaoru Terasawa, said: “I believe the mask represented a ‘spirit of a head,’ which was believed to be a god in the shape of a human and represented the authority of Okimi.”
Okimi is the title given to the ruler of the Yamato Kingship, a political alliance of powerful families centered in modern-day Nara Prefecture that ruled from the third to the seventh centuries.
The mask will be on display at the Museum of Yayoi Culture in Izumi, Osaka Prefecture, from April 29 to May 7.
