26,000 year old face carved in mammoth ivory.

From Dolni Vestonice, site of many fine paleolithic finds. It’s thought to be a female face.

Ancient Scots mummified their dead in peat bogs

Bronze Age Britons practised the art of mummification at the same time as the Egyptians. And it appears that the ancient Britons invented the skill for themselves.

Archaeologists unearthed the skeletons of a man, a woman, and a 3-year-old girl under the floor of a prehistoric house at Cladh Hallan on the Scottish island of South Uist. Although no mummified body tissue remained, other evidence was found. The adults’corpses were locked with their knees close to their chests, similar to Peruvian “mummy bundles”. “The bodies must have been trussed up that way because you can’t bend a body like that normally,” says Jeri Hiller, a. biophysicist at the University of Cardiff, UK, who examined the skeletons.

Hiller thinks that the bodies were immersed in an acid peat bog for a few months – long enough to remove some of the soft tissue but keep the tendons and ligaments intact. The acid would also slowly demineralise the bones, an effect that could be tested. Hiller’s analysis showed a breakdown of minerals in the outer 3 millimetres of the bones (Antiquity vol 79, p 529).

This is the only example of mummification in Europe, she says,”It’s nothing like the techniques used in Egypt. People used the natural resources, available to them to carry out this incredibly sophisticated process.”

Longer item here. It seems trying to preserve the dead is a global phenomenon.

The Dali crania, Shaanxi province China.

One of those awkward ‘doesn’t fit the OOA’ paradigm skulls, from China. It was found in 1978, and it’s age is very roughly 209,000 years old. It’s described as being morphologically halfway between modern humans and Homo Erectus, so it’s been placed in the ‘archaic’  Homo Sapiens category for now.

A more thorough discussion of the skull here.

The Russian Sunghir burials and skull reconstructions

The Sunghir site is a paleolithic site in Russia about 190km East of Moscow, dated to approximately 25,000 years BP.

The adults (female and male) from Sunghir. Note the very strongly developed jawlines. The lady has a somewhat Asian look to her cheekbones. The man was sixty years old when he died, ancient by paleolithic standards.

The boy (13) and a girl (8) from the site. More detailed information about them is found here at this excellent site, right down to the DNA investigation of the remains ans isotope analysis of bones (which as always shows a very high proportion of meat in the diet).

The Burials

The Sunghir site is well known because of the style of the burials. The deceased were buried wearing very heavily beaded clothing.

The burial of the male. Counted in the grave were 2,936 ivory beads. He is also wearing armlets of ivory, that showed traces of red and black paint. An artists reconstruction of his outfit below.

 

Artist: Illustration © Libor Balák

And the double burial of the children, buried head to head. It’s thought they were siblings. They were aged 8 and 13, and they were even more heavily beaded than the man: the boy had 4,903 beads, the girl 5,274 beads.

Artist: Illustration © Libor Balák

This is one of the sites where it’s thouight the people were possibly wearing woven cloth as well as hides. The children were also buried with decorated ivory spears. A small horse pendant can be seen next to the boys shoulder.

These people seemed heavily into beaded decoration, and it’s estimated that each bead, using a production line technique, took more than an hour to complete. I can’t help wondering if possibly beads could have been used as a form of currency. A predictable number of hours labour went into them, this could have made their use as a currency possible.

A great place for more artists impressions of the Sunghir people and more detailed information on the artifacts and bead making process, Dons Maps. there is also another good visual page here. 

In interesting snippet on how they lived..

Palaeozoologic analysis of the osteologic material from the Sunghir site revealed clear hunting specialisation – hunt for fur-bearing animals. Apparently, cold climate made it necessary to intensify this type of hunt to obtain materials for clothing. The reconstructed cloth makes it possible to see how adequate the fur was used and how ergologic the cloth was. Proceeding from the results of the biological indicators, it can be supposed that adult and subadult (preadolescent) males of the group participated in hunts. The Sunghirians’ clothes ornamented with thousands of beads show how labour-consuming this work was. This type of locomotive activity is revealed in girl’s skeleton. It allows us to suppose that the work was done by females. Besides this, carrying of the weights on the head was the work of the female part of the community also, because nor juvenile, neither man possessed this indicator.

Fire pits, tens of fireplaces, agglomerations of bones, the places of bone and flint processing show high human activity at the site. Nevertheless, the fact that only surface dwellings existed across the site can be considered as the evidence of its seasonal use. Placed on the surface or slightly deepened dwellings of Anosov-Mesin type with the socle of large mammoth bones or more complex constructions of Kostjonky-Avdeevo type reveals long usage duration, and consequently a settled life of the groups. Opposite to them, the Sunghir inhabitants were mobile, ready to move in one or another direction, following the needs of night’s lodging, preys’ processing and obtaining necessary tools. The fact is notable, that the settlement was located on height eminence, far from natural streams. Probably there were springs, serving as sources of drinking water. The tools with the traces of their usage in gathering were found at the site.

Apparently, the Sunghirian group utterly used the patterns of the landscape and was actively adapted to the climatic factors of the environment.

Morphological affinities of the earliest known American

LAPA VERMELHA IV HOMINID 1: MORPHOLOGICAL AFFINITIES OF THE EARLIEST KNOWN AMERICAN

 Walter A. Neves1, Joseph F. Powell2, Andre Prous3, Erik G. Ozolins2 and Max Blum1 

ABSTRACT

Several studies concerning the extra-continental morphological affinities of Paleo-Indian skeletons, carried out independently in South and North America, have indicated that the Americas were first occupied by non-Mongoloids that made their way to the New World through the Bering Strait in ancient times. The first South Americans show a clear resemblance to modern South Pacific and African populations, while the first North Americans seem to be at an unresolved morphological position between modern South Pacific and Europeans. In none of these analyses the first Americans show any resemblance to either northeast Asians or modern native Americans. So far, these studies have included affirmed and putative early skeletons thought to date between 8,000 and 10,000 years B.P. In this work the extra-continental morphological affinities of a Paleo-Indian skeleton well dated between 11,000 and 11,500 years B.P. (Lapa Vermelha IV Hominid 1, or “Luzia”) is investigated, using as comparative samples Howells’ (1989) world-wide modern series and Habgood’s (1985) Old World Late Pleistocene fossil hominids. The comparison between Lapa Vermelha IV Hominid 1 and Howells’ series was based on canonical variate analysis, including 45 size-corrected craniometric variables, while the comparison with fossil hominids was based on principal component analysis, including 16 size-corrected variables. In the first case, Lapa Vermelha IV Hominid 1 exhibited an undisputed morphological affinity firstly with Africans and secondly with South Pacific populations. In the second comparison, the earliest known American skeleton had its closest similarities with early Australians, Zhoukoudian Upper Cave 103, and Taforalt 18. The results obtained clearly confirm the idea that the Americas were first colonized by a generalized Homo sapiens population which inhabited East Asia in the Late Pleistocene, before the definition of the classic Mongoloid morphology.

A study of Paleo Indians population affinites; again not supporting the single mongoloid origin of modern native Americans. I have to say, I find the idea of a Paleo African colonisation easier to swallow than a Paleo Australoid colonisation. An ocean crossing would be a lot easier across the South Atlantic , and a lucky early colonisation would be possible from Africa. I suppose the next step would be to try to sequence DNA from these old remains. If they’ve been in a cave with a stable temperature, there’s a sporting chance they could retreive some.

However, the resemblence to modern Africans probably isn’t significant, it’s the resemblence to the paleo- populations that’s important. See above.

New Neanderthal reconstruction in New Scientist magazine

They are calling her Wilma, apparently.

And one of her naked with a spear; Britney Spears she isn’t.

Wouldn’t stand out in a crowd that much. Looks like my nan naked.

DNA of the Canary islanders

A Tale of Aborigines, Conquerors and Slaves: Alu Insertion Polymorphisms and the Peopling of Canary Islands

N. Maca-Meyer, J. Villar, L. Pérez-Méndez, A. Cabrera de León and C. Flores*
    

Classical, mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA) and Y chromosome markers have been used to examine the genetic admixture in present day inhabitants of the Canary Islands. In this study, we report the analysis of ten autosomal Alu insertion polymorphisms in 364 samples from the seven main islands of the Archipelago, and their comparison to continental samples. The detection of population-specific alleles from the Iberian Peninsula and Northwest Africa, as well as their affinities on the basis of genetic distances and principal component analysis, support a clear link between these populations. Coincident with previous results, the Canarian gene pool can be distinguished as being halfway between those of its putative parents, although with a major Iberian contribution (62-78%). Both the substantial Northwest African contribution (23-38%), and the minor sub-Saharan African input (3%), suggest that the genetic legacy from the aborigines and slaves still persists in the Canary Islanders.

It seems the descendants of the Guanches still live on. the NW African DNA sequences are seen in the ancient Guanche mummies..

Ancient mtDNA Analysis and the Origin of the Guanches

Nicole Maca-Meyer et al.

The prehistoric colonisation of the Canary Islands by the Guanches (native Canarians) woke up great expectation about their origin, since the Europeans conquest of the Archipelago. Here, we report mitochondrial DNA analysis (HVRI sequences and RFLPs) of aborigine remains around 1000 years old. The sequences retrieved show that the Guanches possessed U6b1 lineages that are in the present day Canarian population, but not in Africans. In turn, U6b, the phylogenetically closest ancestor found in Africa, is not present in the Canary Islands. Comparisons with other populations relate the Guanches with the actual inhabitants of the Archipelago and with Moroccan Berbers. This shows that, despite the continuous changes suffered by the population (Spanish colonisation, slave trade), aboriginal mtDNA lineages constitute a considerable proportion of the Canarian gene pool. Although the Berbers are the most probable ancestors of the Guanches, it is deduced that important human movements have reshaped Northwest Africa after the migratory wave to the Canary Islands

As you can see, the Guanches were most closely related to Modern Moroccan Berbers. These people.

 The study also says…

However, molecular relationships point to the Moroccan Berbers as the most related African population to the Guanches, confirming, at a genetic level, the previous general supposition of the strong cultural and anthropological affinities between the Guanches and the westernmost African Berbers….

Quantitative admixture approaches, using the aboriginal sample as a parental contributor, showed that the Guanches constitute 42–73% of the present day Canarian maternal gene pool.

My own page on the Guanches here.

Mobility and kinship in the prehistoric Sahara

Mobility and kinship in the prehistoric Sahara: Strontium isotope analysis of Holocene human skeletons from the Acacus Mts. (southwestern Libya)
Mary Anne Tafuri a,*, R. Alexander Bentley b, Giorgio Manzi a, Savino di Lernia c
a Dipartimento di Biologia Animale e dell’Uomo, Universita` di Roma ‘La Sapienza’, P.le A. Moro, 5, 00185 Roma, Italy
Received 15 October 2005; revision received 23 January 2006

Abstract
The origins and development of pastoralism in Saharan North Africa involves societies and economies that, subjected to profound climatic changes and progressive desertification, came to be based on the movement of people and resources. The extreme conditions to which these groups were subjected made mobility a ‘resource’ in itself. Through the first analysis of Sr isotopes (87Sr/86Sr) in dental enamel of human skeletons from prehistoric burials of the Fezzan (southwestern Libya), we begin to investigate how mobility patterns changed with the onset of the desert. In combining our results with the archaeological evidence, we find that, the transformation in the economy of prehistoric groups correlated with a shift in mobility and possibly kinship systems.

More on ancient North Africa. It dates domesticated cattle arriving in Southern Libya about 7,400 BP. I’ll read properly later.

Bookmark to an Uan Muhuggiag dig pdf.

http://cohesion.rice.edu/CentersAndInst/SAFA/emplibrary/44_ch07.pdf

About a holocene site in southernmost Libya (virtually Niger).  Nothing to get excited over, just one for the file.

ASPM and MCPH1 and intelligence not linked.

The ongoing adaptive evolution of ASPM and Microcephalin is not explained by increased intelligence.

Mekel-Bobrov N, Posthuma D, Gilbert SL, Lind P, Gosso MF, Luciano M, Harris SE, Bates TC, Polderman TJ, Whalley LJ, Fox H, Starr JM, Evans PD, Montgomery GW, Fernandes C, Heutink P, Martin NG, Boomsma DI, Deary IJ, Wright MJ, de Geus EJ, Lahn BT.

Department of Human Genetics, Howard Hughes Medical Institute, University of Chicago, Chicago, IL 60637, USA.

Recent studies have made great strides towards identifying putative genetic events underlying the evolution of the human brain and its emergent cognitive capacities. One of the most intriguing findings is the recurrent identification of adaptive evolution in genes associated with primary microcephaly, a developmental disorder characterized by severe reduction in brain size and intelligence, reminiscent of the early hominid condition. This has led to the hypothesis that the adaptive evolution of these genes has contributed to the emergence of modern human cognition. As with other candidate loci, however, this hypothesis remains speculative due to the current lack of methodologies for characterizing the evolutionary function of these genes in humans. Two primary microcephaly genes, ASPM and Microcephalin, have been implicated not only in the adaptive evolution of the lineage leading to humans, but in ongoing selective sweeps in modern humans as well. The presence of both the putatively adaptive and neutral alleles at these loci provides a unique opportunity for using normal trait variation within humans to test the hypothesis that the recent selective sweeps are driven by an advantage in cognitive abilities. Here, we report a large-scale association study between the adaptive alleles of these genes and normal variation in several measures of IQ. Five independent samples were used, totaling 2393 subjects, including both family-based and population-based datasets. Our overall findings do not support a detectable association between the recent adaptive evolution of either ASPM or Microcephalin and changes in IQ. As we enter the post-genomic era, with the number of candidate loci underlying human evolution growing rapidly, our findings highlight the importance of direct experimental validation in elucidating their evolutionary role in shaping the human phenotype.