Fantasy or Prehistory?

Kristina Train

2009-10-26T19:28:00.002-04:00

Kristina Train, who's first band was and is my own group The Looters, has just released her debut album on Blue Note and is getting rave reviews!
Please click below and check it out: I've written a review of it and I need more people to click the LIKE button!

http://www.amazon.com/Spilt-Milk-Kristina-Train/product-reviews/B002NULL58/ref=cm_cr_dp_synop?ie=UTF8&showViewpoints=0&sortBy=bySubmissionDateDescending#R3MKLVKSS466KC

The Looters

2009-10-24T15:48:00.000-04:00

The Looters

The Looters- New article in Connect Statesboro!

2009-10-13T00:01:00.001-04:00

The Looters

Prehistoric site found near UK's Stonehenge

2009-10-03T15:47:00.000-04:00

from Comcast News:

Prehistoric site found near UK's Stonehenge

LONDON — Archaeologists have discovered a smaller prehistoric site near Britain's famous circle of standing stones at Stonehenge.

Researchers have dubbed the site "Bluehenge," after the color of the 27 Welsh stones that were laid to make up a path. The stones have disappeared, but the path of holes remains.

The new circle, unearthed over the summer by researchers from Sheffield University, represents an important find, researchers said Saturday. The site is about a mile (2 kilometers) away from Stonehenge.

Bluehenge, about 80 miles (130 kilometers) southwest of London, is believed to date back 5,000 years.

Mike Parker Pearson of Sheffield University says he believes the path and Stonehenge itself were linked to rituals of life and death.

Prehistoric man 'used crude sat nav'

2009-10-02T20:19:00.000-04:00

Prehistoric man 'used crude sat nav'
Prehistoric man navigated his way across England using a crude version
of sat nav based on stone circle markers, historians have claimed.

Published: 7:00AM BST 15 Sep 2009
Prehistoric man navigated his way across England using a crude version
of 'sat nav' based on stone circle markers, historians have claimed.
Silbury Hill, Wiltshire which may have been part of an ancient
navigational aid for prehistoric man Photo: SWNS

They were able to travel between settlements with pinpoint accuracy
thanks to a complex network of hilltop monuments.

These covered much of southern England and Wales and included now
famous landmarks such as Stonehenge and The Mount.

New research suggests that they were built on a connecting grid of
isosceles triangles that 'point' to the next site.

Many are 100 miles or more away, but GPS co-ordinates show all are
accurate to within 100 metres.

This provided a simple way for ancient Britons to navigate
successfully from A to B without the need for maps.

According to historian and writer Tom Brooks, the findings show that
Britain's Stone Age ancestors were ''sophisticated engineers'' and far
from a barbaric race.

Mr Brooks, from Honiton, Devon, studied all known prehistoric sites as
part of his research.

He said: ''To create these triangles with such accuracy would have
required a complex understanding of geometry.

''The sides of some of the triangles are over 100 miles across on each
side and yet the distances are accurate to within 100 metres. You
cannot do that by chance.

''So advanced, sophisticated and accurate is the geometrical surveying
now discovered, that we must review fundamentally the perception of
our Stone Age forebears as primitive, or conclude that they received
some form of external guidance.

''Is sat-nav as recent as we believe; did they discover it first?''

Mr Brooks analysed 1,500 sites stretching from Norfolk to north Wales.
These included standing stones, hilltop forts, stone circles and hill
camps.

Each was built within eyeshot of the next.

Using GPS co-ordinates, he plotted a course between the monuments and
noted their positions to each other.

He found that they all lie on a vast geometric grid made up of
isosceles 'triangles'. Each triangle has two sides of the same length
and 'point' to the next settlement.

Thus, anyone standing on the site of Stonehenge in Wiltshire could
have navigated their way to Lanyon Quoit in Cornwall without a map.

Mr Brooks believes many of the Stone Age sites were created 5,000
years ago by an expanding population recovering from the trauma of the
Ice Age.

Lower ground and valleys would have been reduced to bog and marshes,
and people would have naturally sought higher ground to settle.

He said: ''After the Ice Age, the territory would have been pretty
daunting for everyone. There was an expanding population and people
were beginning to explore.

''They would have sought sanctuary on high ground and these positions
would also have given clear vantage points across the land with clear
visibility untarnished by pollution.

''The triangle navigation system may have been used for trading routes
among the expanding population and also been used by workers to create
social paths back to their families while they were working on these
new sites.''

Mr Brooks now hopes his findings will inspire further research into
the navigation methods of ancient Britons.

He said: ''Created more than 2,000 years before the Greeks were
supposed to have discovered such geometry, it remains one of the
world's biggest civil engineering projects.

''It was a breathtaking and complex undertaking by a people of
profound industry and vision. We must revise our thinking of what's
gone before.''

'Prehistoric Geometry in Britain: the Discoveries of Tom Brooks' is
now on sale priced £13.90.
More

Ardie

2009-10-02T20:16:00.000-04:00

By Joel Achenbach
Washington Post Staff Writer
Thursday, October 1, 2009 10:33 AM

Ardi lived 4.4 million years ago in the woodlands of East Africa. She
spent most of her time in the trees. She stood about four feet tall,
weighed 110 pounds, and had long arms, short legs, and a grasping big
toe that was perfect for clambering branch to branch. She ate in the
trees, raised her offspring in the trees, slept in the trees.

But sometimes she came down to the ground, and stood upright. She
could walk on two legs. She was, in a sense, taking baby steps on a
journey that would change the world.

"Ardi" is the nickname given to a remarkable, shattered skeleton that
an international team of scientists believes is a major breakthrough
in the study of human origins. The skeletal remains were painstakingly
recovered from the Ethiopian desert along with bones from at least 35
other members of a species scientists call Ardipithecus ramidus. The
15-year investigation of Ardipithecus culminated Thursday in the
publication of a raft of papers in the online edition of the journal
Science, as well as dual press conferences in Washington and Addis
Ababa, Ethiopia.

"This is huge. This is the biggest discovery really since the 'Lucy'
skeleton of the 1970s," said Carol Ward, a University of Missouri
paleoanthropologist who was not involved with the research but had
been given a preview so that she could offer an independent
assessment.

Human origins is a field with high stakes and small bones, and the
elaborate roll-out of the Ardipithecus research probably will trigger
debate about the message contained in fossils so fragile they had to
be excavated with dental picks and porcupine quills. If the scientists
who found Ardi are correct, she represents a transitional figure,
almost a hybrid -- a tree creature who could carry food in her arms as
she explored the woodland floor on two legs.

Ardi lived more than a million years before Lucy, the name given to a
3.2 million-year-old skeleton found in 1974 that is the best example
of Australopithecus afarensis, a small-brained primate that had fully
adapted to a bipedal life and had expanded its habitat beyond the
forest into the savannah of Africa.

Unlike Ardi, she lacked the grasping big toe that extends laterally
from the foot. Lucy's big toe pointed forward, aligned with the other
toes, and was used for propulsion. Ardi and Lucy had different teeth,
with Lucy's enlarged molars more adapted to a wide-ranging diet on the
savannah. But Ardi and Lucy had rather similar faces, skulls, hands,
and pelvises.

The scientists who found Ardi do not contend that Ardi necessarily
evolved into Lucy, or that Ardipithecus ramidus was necessarily a
direct human ancestor. The human family of primates could have
splintered into multiple species along the way, with some winding up
as genetic dead ends. If that were the case, Ardi would be more of a
distant cousin to human beings rather than a direct forebear.

"The individual, Ardi, that female individual, is she our ancestor?"
said Tim White, a University of California at Berkeley
paleoanthropologist who led the research team. "And the answer is,
probably not. If she didn't have any kids, tough luck, she's nobody's
ancestor."

The Ardi team, however, does make the case that the genus
Ardipithecus, which could have encompassed a number of species, is
ancestral to the genus Australopithecus. Thus the general body plan of
Ardi would evolve into the general body plan of Lucy, and on down the
line until the genus Homo appears.

"The Ardipithecus genus gave rise to Australiopithecus even though we
can't say exactly what species did. Maybe ramidus did. But certainly
something like ramidus did," White said.

White and colleagues found the first signs of Ardipithecus in 1994 in
what is known as the Middle Awash, a treeless desert that 4 million
years ago would have been much wetter, teeming with birds, reptiles,
primates and thickly covered with fig and palm trees. A key moment
came Nov. 5, 1994, when a Berkeley graduate student, Yohannes Haile-
Selassie of Ethiopia, found fragments of two finger bones. Further
digging turned up scraps of a pelvis, feet, hands, chips from a skull.
By January 1995 the scientists realized they'd found a paleontological
treasure, a partial skeleton, broken up and ravaged by time. This was
Ardi.

The scientists found scores of other specimens, from both males and
females, though the bones were for the most part scattered and
isolated. Although Ardipithecus quickly entered the paleontology
lexicon in the mid-1990s, and scientists knew that this was
potentially a major discovery, it was not until Thursday -- and after
some complaints by fellow scientists over how long the process was
taking -- that White and his colleagues produced a detailed
description of the species.

"Ardi tells us twice as much as Lucy did. We have hands and feet, a
more complete environment, a more complete skeleton, it's older, it's
more primitive, it shows us the process of transformation from common
ancestor to hominid," said C. Owen Lovejoy, an anthropologist at Kent
State University who was part of the Ardi team.

The origin of the human species via evolution from earlier primates is
beyond scientific dispute. Even when the fossil record of Africa was
virtually nonexistent, Charles Darwin argued that human beings
probably evolved from African primates. Field work over the past
century confirmed Darwin's hypothesis, which was bolstered further by
laboratory analysis of the genetic codes of humans, chimpanzees and
other primates. The fine details of human origin, however, has become
sketchier, and more subject to interpretation and debate, as the
researchers dig deeper into the past and the fossils become scarcer,
more fragmentary and in many cases more enigmatic.

Scientists continue to search for the "Last Common Ancestor,"
sometimes abbreviated as the LCA. This is the creature to which both
modern humans and modern chimpanzees can trace their ancestry. Many
scientists believe the common ancestor lived about 7 million years
ago. The new research on Ardi suggests that this ancestor didn't look
nearly as much like a modern chimpanzee as had been previously
suspected. Rather, the ancestor would have looked more like
Ardipithecus. This suggests that chimpanzees, far from being time
machines for visiting the distant past, have themselves evolved
significantly, including developing such skills as suspending from
branches and knuckle-walking.

"The common ancestor looked like Ardi. It's the chimp and gorilla that
have evolved enormously, not hominids. Hominids have concentrated
their evolution in two things -- upright walking and brain. Everything
else is pretty primitive," Lovejoy said.

In the Ardipithecus genus, the males are not significantly different
in size from the females. The males also lack the dagger-like teeth
that male chimps use to fight one another for access to ovulating
females. Lovejoy argues that this is a sign of a different social
organization. The males, he argues, pair-bonded with females, and
supplied them with food. The upright walking would have made food
transport easier. Lovejoy sees male parental investment in the
survival of offspring as a hallmark of the human lineage.

"The road to becoming human didn't start with a big brain. The road to
becoming human began with setting the social conditions that would
allow for the expansion of the big brain," Lovejoy said, reiterating a
hypothesis he developed long before the discovery of Ardi.

Andrew Hill, a Yale anthropologist, said he didn't think there was
enough evidence to support Lovejoy's conclusions about the domestic
relations of male and female Ardipithecines. But he said the newly
described hominid is a "very satisfactory animal" that "reinforces the
accumulating evidence that these things probably evolved and really
lived in woodland conditions rather than savannahs."

David Pilbeam, a Harvard paleontologist, noted that there has been
some impatience in the scientific community as White and his team
conducted the Ardipithecus analysis, but he suggested that the wait
was worth it: "This is an extraordinary achievement, of discovery,
recovery, reconstitution, description and analysis, which will keep
many others busy for at least another 15 years."

Ardi did not look like a human by any stretch. She had a small head
relative to her body size. There is no way to read her mind and
measure her sense of self, her awareness of her place in the universe.
But if the scientists are correct, her path in life proved to be
fruitful over time, and the planet witnessed the rise of a new animal
that could run on two legs, invent tools, tame fire, and perhaps
eventually -- with much digging and scraping -- decipher its own
origin.
More

Giant stone-age axes found in African lake basin

2009-09-22T23:22:00.000-04:00

Giant stone-age axes found in African lake basin
September 10th, 2009 Enlarge
Four giant stone hand axes were recovered from the the dry basin of Lake Makgadikgadi in the Kalahari Desert.

(PhysOrg.com) -- A giant African lake basin is providing information about possible migration routes and hunting practices of early humans in the Middle and Late Stone Age periods, between 150,000 and 10,000 years ago.
Read More

Neanderthal Hearths at El Salt Reveal Plant And Fish Remains

2009-09-22T23:10:00.002-04:00

Neanderthal Hearths at El Salt Reveal Plant And Fish Remains
Jump to Comments

Julien at A Very Remote Period Indeed has posted a brief note on what looks to be a very important discovery from southern Spain, where archaeologists investigating Neanderthal occupation levels at a Mousterian site called El Salt, dating back at least 60,000 years, have discovered and analysed fat residues and other remains that indicate Neanderthals were not only cooking animals such as wild goat and deer, but quite possibly fish and vegetable matter too. Should the results be confirmed, the site of El Salt, Alcoy in Alicante would represent far earlier evidence for the dietary complexity of Neanderthals than those who occupied Gorham’s Cave, Gibraltar, and who were thought to have been eating mussels and dolphin around 25,000 years ago, after cooked remains were discovered in situ.............Read More

The Looters on Reverb Nation

2009-09-21T19:22:00.002-04:00

Free Music from J. Lyon Layden's Band The Looters!!!!!!!!

2009-09-20T23:07:00.002-04:00

The Looters Have New Music Up

2009-09-20T02:15:00.001-04:00

Just a shameless promotion for my internastional versatility band!!

2009-09-17T02:16:00.001-04:00

2009-09-16T01:10:00.001-04:00

Skull rewrites History in georgia...again!

2009-09-16T00:53:00.000-04:00

Another newspaper story of the more primitive hominins' bones found in
Georgia. Theory says this group evolved further in central Eurasia and
then returned to Africa to become Homo erectus.

September 9, 2009
A skull that rewrites the history of man
By Steve Connor, Science Editor
It has long been agreed that Africa was the sole cradle of human
evolution. Then these bones were found in Georgia...

The conventional view of human evolution and how early man colonised
the world has been thrown into doubt by a series of stunning
palaeontological discoveries suggesting that Africa was not the sole
cradle of humankind. Scientists have found a handful of ancient human
skulls at an archaeological site two hours from the Georgian capital,
Tbilisi, that suggest a Eurasian chapter in the long evolutionary
story of man.

The skulls, jawbones and fragments of limb bones suggest that our
ancient human ancestors migrated out of Africa far earlier than
previously thought and spent a long evolutionary interlude in Eurasia
- before moving back into Africa to complete the story of man.

Experts believe fossilised bones unearthed at the medieval village of
Dmanisi in the foothills of the Caucuses, and dated to about 1.8
million years ago, are the oldest indisputable remains of humans
discovered outside of Africa.

But what has really excited the researchers is the discovery that
these early humans (or "hominins") are far more primitive-looking than
the Homo erectus humans that were, until now, believed to be the first
people to migrate out of Africa about 1 million years ago.

The Dmanisi people had brains that were about 40 per cent smaller than
those of Homo erectus and they were much shorter in stature than
classical H. erectus skeletons, according to Professor David
Lordkipanidze, general director of the Georgia National Museum.
"Before our findings, the prevailing view was that humans came out of
Africa almost 1 million years ago, that they already had sophisticated
stone tools, and that their body anatomy was quite advanced in terms
of brain capacity and limb proportions. But what we are finding is
quite different," Professor Lordkipanidze said.

"The Dmanisi hominins are the earliest representatives of our own
genus - Homo - outside Africa, and they represent the most primitive
population of the species Homo erectus to date. They might be
ancestral to all later Homo erectus populations, which would suggest a
Eurasian origin of Homo erectus."

Speaking at the British Science Festival in Guildford, where he gave
the British Council lecture, Professor Lordkipanidze raised the
prospect that Homo erectus may have evolved in Eurasia from the more
primitive-looking Dmanisi population and then migrated back to Africa
to eventually give rise to our own species, Homo sapiens - modern man.

"The question is whether Homo erectus originated in Africa or Eurasia,
and if in Eurasia, did we have vice-versa migration? This idea looked
very stupid a few years ago, but today it seems not so stupid," he
told the festival.

The scientists have discovered a total of five skulls and a solitary
jawbone. It is clear that they had relatively small brains, almost a
third of the size of modern humans. "They are quite small. Their lower
limbs are very human and their upper limbs are still quite archaic and
they had very primitive stone tools," Professor Lordkipanidze said.
"Their brain capacity is about 600 cubic centimetres. The prevailing
view before this discovery was that the humans who first left Africa
had a brain size of about 1,000 cubic centimetres."

The only human fossil to predate the Dmanisi specimens are of an
archaic species Homo habilis, or "handy man", found only in Africa,
which used simple stone tools and lived between about 2.5 million and
1.6 million years ago.

"I'd have to say, if we'd found the Dmanisi fossils 40 years ago, they
would have been classified as Homo habilis because of the small brain
size. Their brow ridges are not as thick as classical Homo erectus,
but their teeth are more H. erectus like," Professor Lordkipanidze
said. "All these finds show that the ancestors of these people were
much more primitive than we thought. I don't think that we were so
lucky as to have found the first travellers out of Africa. Georgia is
the cradle of the first Europeans, I would say," he told the meeting.

"What we learnt from the Dmanisi fossils is that they are quite small
- between 1.44 metres to 1.5 metres tall. What is interesting is that
their lower limbs, their tibia bones, are very human-like so it seems
they were very good runners," he said.

He added: "In regards to the question of which came first, enlarged
brain size or bipedalism, maybe indirectly this information calls us
to think that body anatomy was more important than brain size. While
the Dmanisi people were almost modern in their body proportions, and
were highly efficient walkers and runners, their arms moved in a
different way, and their brains were tiny compared to ours.

"Nevertheless, they were sophisticated tool makers with high social
and cognitive skills," he told the science festival, which is run by
the British Science Association.

One of the five skulls is of a person who lost all his or her teeth
during their lifetime but had still survived for many years despite
being completely toothless. This suggests some kind of social
organisation based on mutual care, Professor Lordkipanidze said.
Source

The Ancient Origin of Fairy Tales

2009-09-16T00:51:00.000-04:00

Fairy tales have ancient origin
Popular fairy tales and folk stories are more ancient than was previously thought, according research by biologists.

By Richard Gray, Science Correspondent
Published: 9:00PM BST 05 Sep 2009

Dr Jamie Tehrani, a cultural anthropologist at Durham University, studied 35 versions of Little Red Riding Hood from around the world Photo: GETTY They have been told as bedtime stories by generations of parents, but fairy tales such as Little Red Riding Hood may be even older than was previously thought.

A study by anthropologists has explored the origins of folk tales and traced the relationship between varients of the stories recounted by cultures around the world.

Related Articles
Fairytales 'not PC enough'
JK Rowling's The Tales of Beedle the Bard shows why we all need fairy tales
Jack Cardiff
BBC iPlayer choices - Sunday 21 December
Stanley Robertson
No flies on Barack Obama - but are there any on you?The researchers adopted techniques used by biologists to create the taxonomic tree of life, which shows how every species comes from a common ancestor.

Dr Jamie Tehrani, a cultural anthropologist at Durham University, studied 35 versions of Little Red Riding Hood from around the world.

Whilst the European version tells the story of a little girl who is tricked by a wolf masquerading as her grandmother, in the Chinese version a tiger replaces the wolf.

In Iran, where it would be considered odd for a young girl to roam alone, the story features a little boy.

Contrary to the view that the tale originated in France shortly before Charles Perrault produced the first written version in the 17th century, Dr Tehrani found that the varients shared a common ancestor dating back more than 2,600 years.

He said: “Over time these folk tales have been subtly changed and have evolved just like an biological organism. Because many of them were not written down until much later, they have been misremembered or reinvented through hundreds of generations.

“By looking at how these folk tales have spread and changed it tells us something about human psychology and what sort of things we find memorable.

“The oldest tale we found was an Aesopic fable that dated from about the sixth century BC, so the last common ancestor of all these tales certainly predated this. We are looking at a very ancient tale that evolved over time.”

Dr Tehrani, who will present his work on Tuesday at the British Science Festival in Guildford, Surrey, identified 70 variables in plot and characters between different versions of Little Red Riding Hood.

He found that the stories could be grouped into distinct families according to how they evolved over time.

The original ancestor is thought to be similar to another tale, The Wolf and the Kids, in which a wolf pretends to be a nanny goat to gain entry to a house full of young goats.

Stories in Africa are closely related to this original tale, whilst stories from Japan, Korea, China and Burma form a sister group. Tales told in Iran and Nigeria were the closest relations of the modern European version.

Perrault’s French version was retold by the Brothers Grimm in the 19th century. Dr Tehrani said: “We don’t know very much about the processes of transmission of these stories from culture to culture, but it is possible that they may being passed along trade routes or with the movement of people.”

Professor Jack Zipes, a retired professor of German at the University of Minnesota who is an expert on fairy tales and their origins, described the work as “exciting”. He believes folk tales may have helped people to pass on tips for survival to new generations.

He said: “Little Red Riding Hood is about violation or rape, and I suspect that humans were just as violent in 600BC as they are today, so they will have exchanged tales about all types of violent acts.

“I have tried to show that tales relevant to our adaptation to the environment and survival are stored in our brains and we consistently use them for all kinds of reference points.”
Source

Ancient Twining Unravelled

2009-09-16T00:50:00.000-04:00

Stone Age twining unraveled
New finds suggest that people used plant fibers for sewing and other
purposes in western Asia by 32,000 years ago
By Bruce Bower
Web edition : 2:50 pm
f
Strung outAn excavation in western Asia has yielded wild flax fibers,
such as this twisted specimen, suggesting that people made twine for
sewing clothes and other purposes around 32,000 years ago.Science/AAAS

In the Stone Age, advances in fiber technology globalized people not
communication. As early as 32,000 years ago, hunter-gatherers figured
out how to transform wild flax fibers into cords suitable for sewing
clothes, weaving baskets and attaching stone tools to handles,
researchers report in the Sept. 11 Science.

Their excavations at a western Asian cave have yielded the oldest
known fragments of twine.

Following the ancient invention of cord-making techniques, human
groups were able to create warm, durable clothes and other gear needed
for trekking into Siberia and across a now-submerged land bridge to
North America, proposes Harvard University archaeologist Ofer Bar-
Yosef, a coauthor of the new study.

“The invention of cordage was an extremely important technological
event,” Bar-Yosef says.

In 2007 and 2008, a team including Bar-Yosef and led by paleobotanist
Eliso Kvavadze of the Georgian National Museum in Tbilisi collected
soil samples from Georgia’s Dzudzuana Cave containing more than 1,000
wild flax fibers. Radiocarbon measurements of animal bones and charred
wood in the cave’s sediment pointed to periods of human activity from
32,000 to 26,000 years ago, 23,000 to 19,000 years ago and 13,000 to
11,000 years ago. These periods fell within a Stone Age phase called
the Upper Paleolithic, during which cave painting and other cultural
activities flourished.
access
Enlargemagnify
Twine siteScientists unearthed twisted and knotted flax fibers
suggestive of Stone Age twine at Dzudzuana Cave in Georgia.Science/
AAAS

Flax fibers display a signature microscopic shape and structure, the
researchers say. Some of the new finds included pairs of flax fibers
that had been twisted together, suggesting intentional modification of
the fibers. One such find contained numerous knots. Other ancient
fibers had been dyed different colors including black, gray, turquoise
and, in one case, pink.

Natural pigments available near the Georgian cave, including roots and
other plant parts, could have provided dye ingredients, Kvavadze and
his colleagues suggest.

Prehistoric cave residents probably used fiber cords in activities
that involved fur, skin and cloth, such as garment making, the
scientists say. Fiber-containing soil samples also yielded remains of
hair from an extinct wild ox, skin beetles, moths and a fungus known
to destroy clothes and other textiles.

Upper Paleolithic cord remnants are “extraordinarily rare,” remarks
archaeologist Olga Soffer of the University of Illinois at Urbana-
Champaign. Researchers have found 15,000- to 17,000-year-old rope
fragments in France’s Lascaux cave and 19,000-year-old fragments of
fibrous twine at Israel’s Ohalo II site.

The types of plant fibers used at Lascaux and Ohalo II remain unknown.

It’s not surprising that Upper Paleolithic people used wild flax
fibers to make string, rope, nets and cloth, comments archaeologist
James Adovasio of Mercyhurst College in Erie, Pa. By around 5,000
years ago, cultivated flax fueled a revolution in textile production
in the Middle East and western Asia.

Other signs of Upper Paleolithic textiles come not from actual fibers
but from impressions of cords, baskets, nets and various fabrics on
prehistoric pottery. Soffer and Adovasio previously identified such
evidence at a 26,000-year-old site in the Czech Republic.
Representations of woven material also appear on female figurines from
around that time.

Harvard archaeologist Irene Good agrees that people made textiles out
of plant fibers around 30,000 years ago but takes a cautious view of
the new fragmentary finds. It’s possible individual flax fibers blew
into the ancient cave, got buried and then became twisted during
microscopic analyses, Good says.

Some fibers might have absorbed mineral colors from the soil rather
than from intentional dyeing, in her view. “If this is evidence for
dyeing fibers, then it is by far the earliest,” Good notes. Dyeing of
wool began roughly 4,000 years ago.

Further work at the Georgian cave needs to probe for intact threads
containing many flax fibers and pottery bearing textile impressions,
Good says.

and

Harvard University
Archaeologists discover oldest-known fiber materials used by early
humans
Flax fibers could have been used for warmth and mobility; for rope,
baskets, or shoes

CAMBRIDGE, Mass. – A team of archaeologists and paleobiologists has
discovered flax fibers that are more than 34,000 years old, making
them the oldest fibers known to have been used by humans. The fibers,
discovered during systematic excavations in a cave in the Republic of
Georgia, are described in this week's issue of Science.

The flax, which would have been collected from the wild and not
farmed, could have been used to make linen and thread, the researchers
say. The cloth and thread would then have been used to fashion
garments for warmth, sew leather pieces, make cloths, or tie together
packs that might have aided the mobility of our ancient ancestors from
one camp to another.

The excavation was jointly led by Ofer Bar-Yosef, George Grant
MacCurdy and Janet G. B. MacCurdy Professor of Prehistoric Archaeology
in the Faculty of Arts and Sciences at Harvard University, with Tengiz
Meshveliani from the Georgian State Museum and Anna Belfer-Cohen from
the Hebrew University. The microscopic research of the soil samples in
which numerous flax fibers were discovered was done by Eliso Kvavadze
of the Institute of Paleobiology, part of the National Museum of
Georgia.

"This was a critical invention for early humans. They might have used
this fiber to create parts of clothing, ropes, or baskets—for items
that were mainly used for domestic activities," says Bar-Yosef. "We
know that this is wild flax that grew in the vicinity of the cave and
was exploited intensively or extensively by modern humans."

The items created with these fibers increased early humans chances of
survival and mobility in the harsh conditions of this hilly region.
The flax fibers could have been used to sew hides together for
clothing and shoes, to create the warmth necessary to endure cold
weather. They might have also been used to make packs for carrying
essentials, which would have increased and eased mobility, offering a
great advantage to a hunter-gatherer society.

Some of the fibers were twisted, indicating they were used to make
ropes or strings. Others had been dyed. Early humans used the plants
in the area to color the fabric or threads made from the flax.

Today, these fibers are not visible to the eye, because the garments
and items sewed together with the flax have long ago disintegrated.
Bar-Yosef, Kvavadze and colleagues discovered the fibers by examining
samples of clay retrieved from different layers of the cave under a
microscope.

The discovery of such ancient fibers was a surprise to the scientists.
Previously, the oldest known were imprints of fibers in small clay
objects found in Dolni Vestonice, a famous site in the Czech Republic
some 28,000 years old.

The scientists' original goal was to analyze tree pollen samples found
inside the cave, part of a study of environmental and temperature
fluctuations over the course of thousands of years that would have
affected the lives of these early humans. However, while looking for
this pollen, Kvavadze, who led the analysis of the pollen, also
discovered non-pollen polymorphs – these flax fibers.

Bar-Yosef and his team used radiocarbon dating to date the layers of
the cave as they dug the site, revealing the age of the clay samples
in which the fibers were found. Flax fibers were also found in the
layers that dated to about 21,000 and 13,000 years ago.

Bar-Yosef's team began the excavations of this cave in 1996, and has
returned to the site each year to complete this work.

"We were looking to find when the cave was occupied, what was the
nature of the occupation by those early hunter-gatherers, where did
they go hunting and gathering food, what kind of stone tools they
used, what types of bone and antler tools they made and how they used
them, whether they made beads and pendants for body decoration, and so
on," says Bar-Yosef. "This was a wonderful surprise, to discover these
ancient flax fibers at the end of this excavation project."

and

Science 11 September 2009:
Vol. 325. no. 5946, p. 1329
DOI: 10.1126/science.325_1329a

Prev | Table of Contents | Next
News of the Week
Archaeology:
Clothes Make the (Hu) Man
Michael Balter

The first clothes, worn at least 70,000 years ago and perhaps much
earlier, were probably made of animal skins and helped protect early
humans from the ice ages. Then at some point people learned to weave
plant fibers into textiles. But when? The answer is not certain,
because cloth is rarely preserved at archaeological sites. Now
discoveries at a cave in the Republic of Georgia, reported on page
1359 of this week's issue of Science, suggest that this skill was
acquired more than 30,000 years ago.

2009-09-09T18:38:00.001-04:00

The Last Supper

2009-07-15T20:12:00.001-04:00

The Last Supper Of The Hominids Establishes The Times They Lived At
The Sites

ScienceDaily (July 14, 2009) — In the French cave of Arago, an
international team of scientists has analyzed the dental wear of the
fossils of herbivorous animals hunted by Homo heidelbergensis. It is
the first time that an analytical method has allowed the establishment
of the length of human occupations at archaeological sites. The key is
the last food that these hominids consumed.

For many years, the mobility of the groups of hominids and how long
they spent in caves or outdoors has been a subject of discussion among
scientists. Now, an international team headed by researchers from the
Catalan Institute of Human Paleoecology and Social Evolution (IPHES)
in Tarragona has based its studies on the dental fossils of animals
hunted by hominids in order to determine the vegetation in the
environment and the way of life of Homo heidelbergensis.

Florent Rivals is the main author and a researcher from the Catalan
Institute for Research and Advanced Studies (ICREA), attached to the
IPHES in Tarragona. "For the first time, a method has been put forward
which allows us to establish the relative length of the human
occupations at archaeological sites as, up until now, it was difficult
to ascertain the difference between, for example, a single long-term
occupation and a succession of shorter seasonal occupations in the
same place", he explained to SINC.

In the study, recently published in the Journal of Human Evolution,
the researchers analyze the dental wear of the ungulates (herbivorous
mammals) caused by microscopic particles of opaline silica in plants.
These marks appear when eating takes place and erase the previous
ones. This is why they are so useful.

Thanks to the "last supper phenomenon", the scientists have been able
to analyze the last food consumed by animals such as the Eurasian wild
horse (Equus ferus), the mouflon (Ovis ammon antiqua) and the reindeer
(Rangifer tarandus). "This method allows us to confirm the seasonal
nature of the occupation", Rivals added. According to the team, the
microwear of the teeth is sensitive to seasonal changes in the diet.

The application has allowed the researchers to estimate the length of
the occupation of the site from the Lower Paleolithic Age in the cave
of Arago (France) by the number of marks on the fossils and,
therefore, the variation in the diet of several species of herbivores,
as "each season presented food resources which were limited and
different in the environment", the paleontologist clarified.

High and low periods of occupation

After confirming the hypothesis in present-day animals whose age and
date of death was known to the scientists, the researchers
demonstrated that, if a group of animals is seen during a specific
season (a short-term occupation), the signs of dental wear undergo
little variation. But if the occupation lasts several seasons, the
dental marks are more diverse.

"If the animals are hunted during long periods of occupation, more
variable dental wear would be expected", Rivals declared. In the case
of the French cave of Arago, the study of the dental wear confirms
that it was occupied in different ways. "With this method, we were
able to prove that at the site, which belonged to Homo
heidelbergensis, there is evidence of differing mobility, as there
were highly mobile groups and others with little mobility", the
scientist confirmed.

The Spanish and German researchers have combined this application with
multidisciplinary studies of archaeological sites in order to apply it
to other settlements of the Mid-Paleolithic Age such as Payre
(France), Taubach (Germany) and Abric Romani (Spain).

Journal reference:

1. Rivals et al. A new application of dental wear analyses:
estimation of duration of hominid occupations in archaeological
localities. Journal of Human Evolution, 2009; 56 (4): 329 DOI: 10.1016/
j.jhevol.2008.11.005

The abstract

Journal of Human Evolution
Volume 56, Issue 4, April 2009, Pages 329-339

A new application of dental wear analyses: estimation of duration of
hominid occupations in archaeological localities
Purchase the full-text article

References and further reading may be available for this article. To
view references and further reading you must purchase this article.

Florent Rivalsa, Corresponding Author Contact Information, E-mail The
Corresponding Author, Ellen Schulzb and Thomas M. Kaiserb

aICREA and Institut Català de Paleoecologia Humana i Evolució Social
(IPHES), Universitat Rovira i Virgili, Plaça Imperial Tarraco 1, 43005
Tarragona, Spain

bBiozentrum Grindel and Zoological Museum, University of Hamburg,
Martin-Luther-King-Platz 3, 20146 Hamburg, Germany

Received 10 January 2008;
accepted 10 November 2008.
Available online 9 April 2009.

Abstract

Characterization of settlement patterns is one of the core concepts in
archeological research. The duration of an occupation is usually
estimated through zooarchaeology (e.g., density of remains,
cementochronology) and is limited by taphonomic processes and sample
size. We propose a new application of dental wear methods for
estimating the relative duration of hominid settlements in Paleolithic
sites. Dental microwear is known to be sensitive to seasonal changes
in diet. In this new application we use microwear scratch counts to
estimate the variation in the dietary signal of various ungulate
species. We propose that this variation is correlated to the duration
of site occupation. Each season presents a limited and different set
of food resources available in the environment. If animals are sampled
only during a specific season (i.e., during a short term occupation)
then they would be expected to have a dental wear signal with little
variation. On the other hand, a greater diversity of food is available
across different seasons. Therefore, if game animals are hunted
through various seasons during long occupation periods, then they
would be expected to have more variable dental wear. The application
of this technique to the Middle Paleolithic site of Arago Cave
(France), where various types of occupations occurred, supports this
hypothesis. When combined with multidisciplinary studies of
archaeological localities (seasonality in particular), this new
application of dental wear analysis presents valuable information
about hominid settlements and behavior. We contextualize our data with
results from lithic and zooarchaeological analyses from Arago. These
results reveal the presence of both high and low mobility groups of
Homo heidelbergensis throughout the sequence of the Arago Cave.

Keywords: Microwear; Mesowear; Zooarchaeology; Human behavior;
Settlement pattern; Variability
Article Outline

Introduction
Materials

The modern samples from the Kaminuriak population of free-ranging
caribou
The fossil samples from Arago Cave

Methods

Selection and molding process of the teeth
Dental mesowear
Dental microwear
Statistics

Results

Microwear variation in extant ungulates (testing Hypothesis 1)
Variability and climatic factors (testing Hypothesis 2)
Variability and duration of occupation (testing Hypothesis 3)

Discussion

Variation in modern ungulates (Hypothesis 1)
Variability and climatic factors (Hypothesis 2)
Variability and duration of occupation (Hypothesis 3)
Implications for hominid behavioral ecology at Arago Cave

Conclusion
Acknowledgements
References

Source 1
Source 2

First Europeans were cannibals: archaeologists

2009-07-07T13:37:00.000-04:00

First Europeans were cannibals: archaeologists
Posted Wed Jul 1, 2009 5:32pm AEST
Updated Wed Jul 1, 2009 5:31pm AEST

The remains of the "first Europeans" discovered at an archaeological site in northern Spain have revealed that the prehistoric men were cannibals, who particularly liked the flesh of children.

"We know that they practised cannibalism," said Jose Maria Bermudez de Castro, a co-director of the Atapuerca project, a UNESCO World Heritage Site.

A study of the remains revealed that they turned to cannibalism to feed themselves and not as part of a ritual, that they ate their rivals after killing them, mostly children and adolescents.

"It is the first well-documented case of cannibalism in the history of humanity, which does not mean that it is the oldest," he said.

The remains discovered in the caves "appeared scattered, broken, fragmented, mixed with other animals such as horses, deer, rhinoceroses, all kinds of animals caught in hunting" and eaten by humans, he said.

"This gives us an idea of cannibalism as a type gastronomy, and not as a ritual."

The Atapuerca caves were first discovered in the late 19th century, when a tunnel was blasted through the mountain for a railway line.

"But at the time in Spain, there was not enough scientific knowledge to begin research," said another co-director, Eudald Carbonell.

The first excavations did not take place until 1978, then "in 1984, we found 150 human remains".

In 1992, they found a complete intact skeleton, and two years later, they discovered remains dating back more than 800,000 years.
Source

2009-07-07T13:35:00.000-04:00

Picture of the bird bone at the citation/cite. Ore theorist thinks
(sic) that the holes are the result of a carnivore's bite. Probable
fortunate that the thing still plays, as per the recorded sample.

The Divje Babe flute, that is dated at around 43,000 years ago, has
been suggested as Neanderthal made.

"Music did not directly produce a more effective subsistence economy
and greater reproductive success, he concluded, but it might have
fostered social cohesion and new forms of communication, which
indirectly contributed to expansion of modern humans to the detriment
of the culturally more conservative Neanderthals." Then again, he
never saw what went on the back of the cave when the flutist really
put on the sounds.

July 6, 2009

Golden oldies

Discovery of the world's oldest known musical instrument, a 35,000-
year-old flute, suggests the first Europeans had a fairly
sophisticated culture.

By Thomas H. Maugh II
Los Angeles Times

The wing bone of a griffon vulture with five precisely drilled holes
in it is the oldest known musical instrument, a 35,000-year-old relic
of an early human society that drank beer, played flute and drums and
danced around the campfire on cold winter evenings, researchers said.

Excavated from a cave in southwest Germany, the nearly complete flute
suggests that the first humans to occupy Europe had a fairly
sophisticated culture, complete with alcohol, adornments, art objects
and music that they developed there or even brought with them from
Africa when they moved to the new continent 40,000 years or so ago.

"It is not too surprising that music was a part of their culture,"
said archaeologist John J. Shea of Stony Brook University, who was not
involved in the research. "Every single society we know of has music.
The more widespread a characteristic is today, the more likely it is
to spread back into the past."

The making of music probably extended even further back into the past,
he said, but the flute may represent "the first time that people
invested time and energy in making instruments that were (durable
enough to be) preserved."

The flute was discovered last summer in the Hohle Fels cave, about 14
miles southwest of the city of Ulm, by archaeologist Nicholas J.
Conard of the University of Tubingen in Germany. Conard described the
find in a report published online by the journal Nature
(www.nature.com).

"It's unambiguously the oldest instrument in the world," Conard told
The Associated Press.

Other archaeologists agreed with Conard's assessment.

April Nowell, a Paleolithic archaeologist at the University of
Victoria in Canada, said the flute predates previously discovered
instruments, "but the dates are not so much older that it's surprising
or controversial." Nowell was not involved in Conard's research.

In 1995, archaeologist Ivan Turk excavated a bear bone artifact from a
cave in Slovenia, known as the

But other archaeologists, including Nowell, have challenged that
theory, suggesting instead that the twin holes on the 4.3-inch-long
(11-centimeter-long) bone were made by a carnivore's bite.

Turk did not respond to an Associated Press e-mail seeking comment.

The cave is the same one where Conard found the recently described
40,000-year-old Venus figurine in the same layer of sediment, the
oldest known representation of the female form, and a host of other
artifacts.

The cave, which had been occupied for millennia, "is one of the most
wonderfully clear windows into the past, where conditions of
preservation are just right," Shea said.

The reconstructed flute, a little under 9 inches long, was found in 12
pieces in a layer of sediment nearly 9 feet below the cave's floor.

The surfaces of the flute are in excellent condition and reveal many
details about its manufacture. The maker carved two deep, V-shaped
notches into one end, presumably to form the end into which the
musician blew, and four fine lines near the finger holes. The other
end is broken off, but Conard estimates the intact flute was probably
2 to 3 inches longer.

In 2004, Conard found a 30,000-year-old, 7-inch, three-holed ivory
flute at the nearby Geissenklosterle cave, and he has found fragments
of others. Combined, the finds indicate the development of a strong
musical tradition in the region, accompanied by the development of
figurative art and other innovations, Conard said.

Music did not directly produce a more effective subsistence economy
and greater reproductive success, he concluded, but it might have
fostered social cohesion and new forms of communication, which
indirectly contributed to expansion of modern humans to the detriment
of the culturally more conservative Neanderthals.
Source

Ancient river found beneath the Channel during Olympics survey

2009-06-30T16:32:00.000-04:00

Very good color illustrations of this river at the citation/cite.

Ancient river found beneath the Channel during Olympics survey

By Daily Mail Reporter
Last updated at 11:54 PM on 26th June 2009

An ancient river bed that has lain unseen for 185,000 years has been
uncovered by scientists mapping the parts of the English Channel in
the run up to the 2012 Olympics.

The groundbreaking discovery was made during a two-year £300,000
project to map 500 square miles of seabed off the Jurassic coast in
Dorset.

Using new and incredibly accurate mapping techniques, experts traced
the river that may have once been used as a watering hole by woolly
mammoths that roamed the area.
Enlarge riverbed

Enlarge river course

An amazing river course on the bottom of the English channel has been
revealed (above). The prehistoric river bed is 8 miles from the
present day shoreline (below)

The mysterious river bed cuts through bedrock at the bottom of the
ocean and is eight miles long, ranges between 90 to 150 yards wide and
up to 30ft deep Scientists believe it would have flowed when Britain
was still attached to the continent.

As ice melted and refroze, it was washed over and uncovered a second
time, before finally being hidden at the bottom of the sea during the
last Ice Age 12,000 years ago.

As well as the river bed, shipwrecks, rugged cliffs and massive gravel
dunes have also been highlighted using the new techniques which can
pinpoint objects to within six inches.

Scientists are aiming to construct a complete and definitive map ahead
of the 2012 Olympics as thousands of boats are due to descend upon
Dorset for the sailing events.

Smaller yachts have recently come a cropper on submerged rocks that
maritime officials knew nothing about and they don't want this
happening in 2012.

The newly-found river bed poses no such danger as it lays 130ft
underwater.

The project has been lead by the Dorset Wildlife Trust, which hopes
the new information will be invaluable in its conservation work.
Jurassic Coast

Dorset's Jurassic Coast is famous for its fossils

Dr Simon Cripps, director of the Dorset Wildlife Trust, said: 'On land
you can just look out of the window and see what's around, but we have
no real idea what goes on under the sea.

'This study will give us an understanding of what is actually
physically down there - it's very exciting.

'It's like putting a 3D jigsaw together in three layers and the
results will be quite spectacular.'

Now the Maritime and Coastguard Agency is planning to re-chart
nautical maps of the Channel. Some current charts are based on surveys
carried out 75 years ago.

The maps have been created using a high resolution multi-beam sonar,
which sends out 40 'pings' per second to the seabed.

The sonar has 500 beams which give 20,000 readings per second,
allowing scientists to gauge the depth of the ocean, with an accuracy
of six inches.

Not only can it tell how deep the sea goes, but the variation of
sounds created by the beams can identify the type of surface it is
hitting.

The 'pings', which sound like the clicks made by dolphins to the human
ear, differ depending on whether they hit sand, hard rock, or any
matter in between.

The Dorset Integrated Seabed Study, or DORIS for short, is now one
year in and moving on to a second phase of video and photography.

Experts will use the maps to identify patterns in the seabed before
using cameras to take shots of underwater life.
Enlarge survey

The unique new underwater survey that has an accuracy of 15cm

They will visit a range of depths to study the animal and plant life,
taking still and moving images to create an elaborate picture of
previously hidden habitats.

Richard Edmonds, science manager for the Jurassic Coast World Heritage
Site, said: 'The pictures the study has produced are hugely exciting,
I was absolutely blown away when I first saw them.

'We now know that all the fascinating structures we see on the
Jurassic Coast, which are created by the hard and soft rocks eroding
at different paces, happen exactly the same on the seabed.

'When the river bed was uncovered, the land would have been used by
woolly mammoths, reindeer and wolves as well as early humans.'
Source

Female Hands in Cave Paintings

2009-06-30T16:30:00.000-04:00

Lotsa pretty pictures at the citation. National Geographic , you know.

June 16, 2009--Inside France's 25,000-year-old Pech Merle cave, hand
stencils surround the famed "Spotted Horses" mural.

For about as long as humans have created works of art, they've also
left behind handprints. People began stenciling, painting, or chipping
imprints of their hands onto rock walls at least 30,000 years ago.

Until recently, most scientists assumed these prehistoric handprints
were male. But "even a superficial examination of published photos
suggested to me that there were lots of female hands there,"
Pennsylvania State University archaeologist Dean Snow said of European
cave art.

By measuring and analyzing the Pech Merle hand stencils, Snow found
that many were indeed female--including those pictured here. (Also
see: pictures of hand stencils through time.)

Analyzing hand stencils dating back some 28,000 years in Spain's El
Castillo cave, archaeologist Dean Snow concluded many of El Castillo's
artists had been female.

"The very long ring finger on the left is a dead giveaway for male
hands," he said. "The one on the right has a long index finger and a
short pinky--thus very feminine."

His findings suggest women's role in prehistoric culture may have been
greater than previously thought.

Just as in prehistoric times, visitors today can leave behind
handprints at Spain's Maltravieso cave, a Paleolithic site dating back
more than 20,000 years. "Elena's hand [pictured] was typical for
little girls," said Snow.

Hand proportions vary across populations. To assess prehistoric
handprints from Europe, Snow used modern hands for comparison.

"I had access to lots of people of European descent who were willing
to let me scan their hands as reference data," said Snow, whose
research was supported by the National Geographic Society's Committee
for Research and Exploration. (The National Geographic Society owns
National Geographic News.)

In France's Gargas cave, a late Paleolithic left-hand stencil glows
green from a night vision camera. Archaeologist Dean Snow concluded
the hand was female.

"We don't know what the roles of artists were in Upper Paleolithic
society [roughly 40,000 to 20,000 years ago] generally," he said. "But
it's a step forward to be able to say that a strong majority of them
were women."

Snow's research was limited to Europe, but he hopes others will do
similar studies at prehistoric sites elsewhere.

(Also see: pictures of hand stencils through time.)
Nat Geo

Bow and Arrow PreDate Modern Man

2009-06-26T15:45:00.000-04:00

Abstract for an article that surmises that the use of the bow and
arrow predate modern man.

Experimental Use and Quantitative Performance Analysis of Triangular
Flakes (Levallois points) used as Arrowheads

Matthew L. Siska, Corresponding Author Contact Information, E-mail The
Corresponding Author and John J. Sheab, E-mail The Corresponding
Author

aInterdepartmental Doctoral Program in Anthropological Sciences, Stony
Brook University SBS-S501, Stony Brook NY, 11794-4364

bDepartment of Anthropology, Stony Brook University SBS-S501, Stony
Brook NY, 11794-4364

Received 29 March 2009;
revised 11 May 2009;
accepted 21 May 2009.
Available online 28 May 2009.

Abstract

The invention and widespread use of projectile weaponry is a
characteristic presumed to exist only with Homo sapiens. However, as
finds of wooden material during the early development of projectile
weapons are extremely rare, this remains a contentious topic. Recent
work has proposed a series of ballistically-significant morphological
characteristics of stone points that yield information about their
potential use. Here we report on initial experimental approaches to
quantifying the performance of relatively simple stone points as arrow
armatures. Two experimental trials were performed using a series of 51
Levallois points. The first, against a uniform density target, was
designed to give an overall indication of performance. The second,
against a simulated animal carcass, demonstrated the durability of
these points. The results of this study suggest that small Levallois
points could have functioned as arrowheads, albeit ones likely to
break after limited use. They also suggest that these points'
penetrating power is strongly controlled by their morphometric
characteristics, most notably their perimeter. This latter finding
refines a method for assessing hypothetical Paleolithic stone points
on the basis of tip cross-sectional area previously proposed by
others.

Source

Discovery of giant underground quarry in Jordan Valley may rock

2009-06-26T15:44:00.000-04:00

Discovery of giant underground quarry in Jordan Valley may rock
archaeological thinking
By Ran Shapira

A spectacular underground quarry has recently been discovered in the
Jordan Valley north of Jericho, which archaeologists believe may have
marked a biblical site sacred to ancient Christians.

The large cave was discovered by Prof. Adam Zertal and a team from the
University of Haifa which has been conducting a survey of the region
since 1978. "When we reached the entrance to the cave, two Bedouin
approached us and warned us not to go in, because it was cursed and
inhabited by wolves and hyenas," Zertal said yesterday from the site.

They entered anyway, discovering a ceiling supported by 22 gigantic
columns on which various symbols were carved, including 31 crosses, a
possible wheel of the Zodiac and a Roman legionary symbol. The columns
also had niches for the placement of oil lamps and holes that
apparently served as hitching posts.

Zertal says their working theory is that the site is Galgala, biblical
Gilgal, mentioned on the sixth-century Madaba mosaic map. The cave,
buried 10 meters underground, is about 100 meters long, 40 meters wide
and 4 meters high, is the largest artificial cave so far discovered in
Israel.

Potsherds found in the cave and the carvings on the columns led Zertal
to date the first quarrying of the cave to around the beginning of the
Common Era. It was used mainly as a quarry for 400 to 500 years," but
other finds give the impression it was used for other purposes,
perhaps a monastery or even a hiding place," Zertal said.

Zertal said scholars wondered why people would dig a quarry
underground considering the effort needed to just to pull the stones
out of the ground.

A possible answer may be in the famous Madaba Map of ancient
Palestine, found in Jordan. In it, a place named Galgala is marked and
an accompanying Greek word meaning "12 stones." The map also depicts a
church near the site. Archaeologists say they have found two ancient
churches near the cave.

According to Zertal, scholars had always assumed that "12 stones"
refered to the biblical story of the 12 stones the Israelites set up
at Gilgal after they crossed the Jordan. However, the discovery of the
quarried cave may mean the reference was to a quarry established where
the Byzantines identified Gilgal. Zertal explains that in antiquity
sanctuaries were built out of stones from sacred places.

If the Byzantines identified the site as biblical Gilgal, it would
have been considered sacred and quarrying would have remained
underground to preserve it.

Source

Study: Food storage began well before farming

2009-06-26T15:42:00.000-04:00

Study: Food storage began well before farming

WASHINGTON – People were storing grain long before they learned to
domesticate crops, a new study indicates. A structure used as a food
granary discovered in recent excavations in Jordan dates to about
11,300 years ago, according to a report in Tuesday's edition of
Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

That's as much as a thousand years before people in the Middle East
domesticated grain, the research team led by anthropologist Ian Kuijt
of the University of Notre Dame said.

Remains of wild barley were found in the structure, indicating that
the grain was collected and saved even though formal cultivation had
not yet developed.

The granary was between two other structures used for grain processing
and residences, discovered in excavations at Dhra', near the Dead Sea.
The granary was round with walls of stone and mud. The researchers
said it had a raised floor for air circulation and protection from
rodents.

The ability to store food is essential for the development of farming,
the researchers said.

"The granaries represent a critical evolutionary shift in the
relationship between people and plant foods, which precedes the
emergence of domestication and large-scale sedentary communities by at
least 1,000 years," they reported.

The research was funded by the British Academy, the Council for
British Research in the Levant, the U.S. National Science Foundation
and the University of Notre Dame.
source articleandmore info