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May 08 2012
Thick, 1,000-Year-Old Dental Plaque Is Gross, Useful to Archaeologists
What big plaque deposits you have!
A dentist will tell you to floss everyday, but an archeologist might, well, have different priorities. Turns out the nitrogen and carbon isotopes in dental plaque can give archeologists a look at 1,000-year-old diets.
The buildup of plaque on this set of teeth is, um, impressive. (Cut the skull some slack though, this was before we had dentists to chide us about daily flossing.) Without the benefit of modern dental hygiene, the plaque built up over a lifetime, layer upon layer like a stalagmite. In a paper recently published in the Journal of Archeological Science researchers exhumed 58 medieval Spanish skeletons and scraped off their dental plaque to test carbon and nitrogen isotopes. When they compared the isotope profiles of the Spaniards to that of plaque from an Alaskan Inuit, the scientists found the ratio of nitrogen-15 to be quite different. That makes sense, as the Intuit ate a predominantly marine diet, and there is more nitrogen-15 in the protein molecules of organisms living in sea than on land.
Another benefit of plaque is that it’s easier to test than bone, which has to be dissolved in acid to extract from ...
January 27 2012
3,500-Year-Old Jokes Have Something to Say About Yo Mama
“That’s what SHE said!”
The study of jokes and riddles written in ancient languages we barely understand is, well, a little tricky. But in a recent paper in the journal Iraq, Middle East scholars Michael Streck and Nathan Wasserman describe and interpret some thigh-slappers scrawled on a badly damaged tablet from Babylon, circa 1500 BC. The scribe’s cuneiform is on the sloppy side. The translations are uncertain, too—but no doubt the humor will still shine through. Here’s one riddle for your pleasure:
The deflowered (girl) did not become pregnant
The undeflowered (girl) became pregnant (-What is it?)
The answer is, of course, is “auxiliary forces.” That was your guess too, right? No? If it makes you feel better, Wasserman and Streck didn’t really get it, either.
Let’s do another one:
He gouged out the eye:
It is not the fate of a dead man.
He cut the throat: A dead man (-Who is it?)
The governor.
ROFL!! Streck and Wasserman write that this is referring to a governor’s hilarious power to sentence people to death.
Here’s one last riddle, whose beginning has been lost and whose translation is a bit uncertain:
… of your mother
is by the one who has intercourse (with her) ...
August 04 2011
Archaeologists Trade in Their Primative Tools for a Kinect
Is there any limit to the cool things you can do with Microsoft’s Kinect? Just last month we told you about students in Switzerland that used the device to create a gesture-controlled quadrocopter; now, students in California are looking to employ the Kinect in archaeological digs in Jordan.
Excavation is painstaking work, requiring careful cataloging of every artifact and the exact locations where they were found. To simplify this tedious process, researchers at the University of California, San Diego have modified a Kinect to do all the work for them. The new system, called ArKinect (archaeology + Kinect, if you didn’t catch that), extracts information from the Kinect’s streaming data feed of visible and infrared light.
The archaeologists will the use the system to quickly make accurate 3D scans of both the entire dig site and anything they pull up from the ground. The idea is to then plug the data into their 360-degree virtual reality environment called StarCAVE, which would allow the archeologists to interact with the virtual objects. “We can then use the 3D model, walk around it, we can move it around, we can look at it from all ...
May 24 2011
Newsflash: Civilization Was Built on Llama Dung
Far before the looming pyramids and the learned librarians at Alexandria, Egyptian civilization sprung up from the fertile banks of the Nile. Long predating the Inca empire and the sprawling structures of Macchu Picchu, Andean civilization emerged from a whole bunch of llama poop.
For civilizations to take root, people need to have enough food on hand to put time and energy into activities like waging war, building stuff, and composing epic poetry. In the high and rugged Andes, growing that much maize—the staple crop of ancient South America—isn’t easy. That’s what llama droppings are for, a new study suggests.
Digging through some deeply buried and really old dirt from a spot in the Andes two miles above sea level, paleoecologist Alex Chepstow-Lusty found two things: pollen and bugs. In particular, he found maize pollen from 2700 years ago—and, from the same period, a population explosion of little crap-eating critters called oribatid mites, which are known to make a meal of that which llamas leave behind. The local people were suddenly able to cultivate maize with such success, Chepstow-Lusty surmised, because they had growing herds of llamas, and therefore an ...
September 01 2010
When the World Was Young, and Human Cannibalism Wasn’t Such a Big Deal
No dessert, caveman child, until you finish eating your human. Digging around in a Spanish cave called Gran Dolina, archaeologists have found butchered humans’ fossilized bones. Researchers say the bones show that cave dwellers skinned, decapitated, and enjoyed other early humans, before throwing their remains into a heap with animals bones from other meals.
The study, which appeared this month in Current Anthropology, says the 800,000-year-old Homo antecessor bones could indicate the most “ancient cultural cannibalism … known until now.” Adding to the nightmare: National Geographic reports that the hungry cavemen had a penchant for kids, since the 11 cannibalized humans uncovered were all youngsters. They speculate that the kiddos were easier to catch, and eating them was a good way to stop competitors from building their families.
Study coauthor José María Bermúdez de Castro, of the National Research Center on Human Evolution, told National Geographic that marks near the base of some skulls hint that the diners decapitated humans to get the brain goodness inside.
“Probably then they cut the skull for extracting the brain…. The brain is good for food.”
The researchers believe that eating other humans wasn’t a big deal back then, and probably wasn’t linked to religious rituals or marked by elaborate ceremonies. They draw that conclusion from the fact that butchered human bones were tossed in the scrap heap along with animal remains.
There is some debate as to how frequently human was on the menu, but these researchers note that the Sierra de Atapuerca region had a great climate and that cannibalism didn’t likely result from a lack of alternatives. I guess our ancestors were just that tasty.
Related content:
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Discoblog: To Fight Cancer, Ovarian Cells Eat Themselves
80beats: New Guinean Cannibals Evolved Resistance To Mad Cow-Like Disease
Image: flickr / joanna8555
August 31 2010
Bronze Age Brain Surgeon: Volcanic Glass Scalpel, Please
Move over, Dr. Quinn. Sure, the fictional television doctor could perform surgeries in the Old West using nothing more than a spoon–but one researcher now argues that inhabitants of a small village in Turkey sliced skulls over 4,000 years ago, using shards of volcanic glass.
Working in a Bronze Age graveyard in Ikiztepe, Turkey, archaeologist Önder Bilgi has uncovered 14 skulls with rectangular cut marks. He believes the Ikiztepe people used obsidian “scalpels,” found elsewhere on the site, to treat brain tumors and fight-related head injuries, and to relieve pressure from hemorrhaging.
Bilgi also told New Scientist, which has a complete interview, that the skulls’ healing indicates that some patients survived at least two years after their surgeries. Though this isn’t the oldest evidence of brain surgery (researchers have found a hole drilled into a Neolithic skull), Bilgi argues that the Ikiztepe rectangular skull openings are much more “sophisticated.”
Bilgi, who in an earlier study analyzed arsenic absorption in Ikiztepe bones to determine their metalworking skills, told New Scientist that the tools themselves aren’t too worse for multiple millennial wear:
“The blades are double-sided, about 4 centimetres [1.6 inches] long, and very, very sharp. They would still cut you today.”
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Image: flickr / Mykl Roventine
August 26 2010
Study: Was Ötzi the Iceman Buried With Pomp and Circumstance?
In 1991, German hikers found a surprise on an Alpine trail: a dead body. It turned out the man had died some time ago–around 5,000 years earlier. Researchers guessed from his scattered belongings that the iceman had died a lonely death from the cold and an arrow wound in his shoulder. But now, based on the way his belongings were scattered and the timing of his last meal, some archaeologists think the iceman named Ötzi may have had a proper funeral.
Though many previous studies have looked at the body itself, ScienceNOW reports that archaeologist Alessandro Vanzetti and his team looked at all of the iceman’s gear. They used a modeling technique called spatial point pattern analysis to make a map of how Ötzi’s goods–including axe, dagger, quiver, backpack, and unfinished bow–got to their final resting places. Specifically, the analysis determines how Ötzi’s surroundings froze and thawed over time. The researchers say the scattering is consistent with a ceremonial burial and that Ötzi’s tribe may have placed his possessions around him on a nearby stone platform. The study, which ScienceNOW calls “provocative,” appears in Antiquity Journal.
Vanzetti’s team thinks this spatial analysis is consistent with evidence that Ötzi ate his last meal in April, while the pollen in the ice around him appears to have come from September or August–a sign that his burial crew waited for the ground to thaw. Others are skeptical, saying, among other things, that there is no evidence anyone moved Ötzi after death.
Regardless of whether or not he died cold and alone, Ötzi is now sitting pretty in a refrigerated tomb in Italy’s South Tyrol Museum of Archaeology in Bolzano (pictured above).
Related content:
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Discoblog: Decapitated, Lion-Chewed Remains = Ancient Gladiator Graveyard
Discoblog: Building a Better Dead Body Detector
Image: South Tyrol Museum of Archaeology in Bolzano
July 15 2010
Trade Center Construction Workers Stumble on a 1700s Sailing Ship
World Trade Center construction workers dug up something unexpected this week: an 18th century sailing ship.
Plans for the new Trade Center require workers to unearth parts of lower Manhattan left undisturbed during construction of the original buildings. During part of this dig, in an area between Liberty and Cedar Streets, beams of wood rose from the mud. Yesterday, archaeologists confirmed that 20 to 30 feet below street level, a 30-foot ship chunk has rested for more than 200 years.
It’s not unusual for such artifacts to hide under large coastal cities. As a young city’s population grows, inhabitants look for any way possible to extend the city’s borders, transforming dirt and trash poured into the water into prime real estate. As The New York Times reports, this isn’t the first ship uncovered in Manhattan. In 1982, New Yorkers discovered a 1700s sailing vessel that had been hiding under 175 Water Street.
A. Michael Pappalardo, an archaeologist working with the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey, told The New York Times that he believes that the entire ship may have originally been around 2 to 3 times larger than the uncovered piece and, because the section looks deliberately sawed off, it’s likely that the ship was purposely chopped up and used for landfill material. Now uncovered, the ship is vulnerable to degradation, so archaeologists must work quickly to document and move the find as construction continues around it.
Archaeologist Doug Mackey told the The New York Times that because of the ship’s vulnerability, he is particularly happy to have this week’s rainy weather:
“If the sun had been out,” he said, “the wood would already have started to fall apart.”
Pictures of the dig are available at The New York Times website.
Related content:
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Discoblog: Archaeological Surprise: Grave Site Full of Phallic Figurines
80beats: Take a Virtual Tour of Pompeii on Google Street View
Image: New York Historical Society
June 08 2010
Decapitated, Lion-Chewed Remains = Ancient Gladiator Graveyard
As archaeologists dug up the ancient corpse, something looked a little off. For one, it didn’t have a head. Second, one of the skeleton’s arms looked like it supported a lot more muscle than the other. Third, it seemed a lion had chewed on it.
Meet a dead Roman gladiator. Archaeologists uncovered around eighty such skeletons in York, England over the past seven years. Though they admit that the 1,600- to 1,800-year-old corpses might have had other origins, the researchers say all signs point to the ancient circus. A decapitated corpse suggests that individual got a thumbs down from the jeering crowds, the mismatched arms signify much swordplay, and the bite marks imply that a lion, tiger, or bear had taken a taste in battle.
Michael Wysocki, who examined the remains in the forensic anthropology laboratory at the University of Central Lancashire, discussed those tell-tale bite marks with CNN:
“Nothing like them has ever been identified before on a Roman skeleton…. It would seem highly unlikely that this individual was attacked by a tiger as he was walking home from the pub in York 2,000 years ago,” he said.
One other clue comes from the fact that the skeletons, despite their violent lives and deaths, had what appears a ceremonial burial, resting in their graves with some great ancient goodies (i.e. horse bones and cow remains, the believed leftovers from a feast). Still, archeologists speculate that none of these fighters were the stars of their day, and that many bit the dust after only one or two battles.
“You’re seeing the losers instead of the Russel Crowes,” archeologist Kurt Hunter-Mann said in a CNN video.
Related content:
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DISCOVER: Dressed to Kill
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Image: flickr / storem
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