Stonehenge As A&E Unit , Or A Triumph of Modern Hype Over Neolithic Death?

Stonehenge as A&E unit is a revelation that druid mumbo jumbo can't match :: The Guardian

At Stonehenge, the hype goes on and on, with the mainstream media hopping aboard this particular bandwagon with the grim determination of Tokyo commuters squeezing themselves into jam-packed metro trains. Despite the fact that not a single piece of tangible evidence exists to prove Stonehenge was a so-called Accident and Emergency unit, let alone a 'Prehistoric Lourdes' it seems that this latest interpretation is in the process of entering the petrified realms of officialdom. This from Simon Jenkins in The Guardian...

The myriad past theories of Stonehenge mostly take refuge in magic and religion. Inigo Jones cited the Roman gods, John Aubrey and William Stukeley the druids, while more recent aficionados proffer astronomy and even chronology, though who needed a clock on this scale is puzzling. The henge has also represented a serpent's egg, a vulva and a kingly shrine. Aliens, wizards and dragons have had their brief hour on its stage.

All these theories collapse before the bluestone question. Why go to the colossal effort and expense of moving four-tonne megaliths 250km (150 miles) across land and sea from Preseli, a work of global engineering comparable only with the contemporary building of the Great Pyramid at Giza? And why then surround them so reverentially with 25-tonne sarsens?

A suggested answer was given by Geoff Wainwright and Tim Darvill to the Society of Antiquaries two years ago, before the start of the current dig. They claimed that the bluestone - dark blue when freshly cut and speckled with white quartz - was thought to have curative properties. In other words, the key to Stonehenge lay not in magic or religion, but in the worldly human craving for longevity and pain relief. It was in the here and now, not the hereafter. As Darvill put it this week, Stonehenge was "the neolithic A&E unit for southern England".

Apart from the fact that it's likely almost nobody was ever cured of anything by the bluestones, we might wonder why this magical bluestone was taken only to Stonehenge, and not distributed to other locations across England and Wales - in other words, why only have one A&E unit, when there must have been heavy demand for such a service the length and breadth of mainland Britain and Ireland? Here's more...

The plethora of wells at Preseli and the associated burial mounds appear to go back long before the bluestones arrived at Stonehenge, about 2300BC. This suggests that the wells and their bluestones were famed far and wide, a reputation repeated by the (albeit unreliable) Geoffrey of Monmouth in the middle ages.

Into the 19th century, visitors could buy hammers in Amesbury to chip bits off Stonehenge in honour of the old tradition of its healing power. This may explain why only the underground parts of many of the bluestones survive, and why chippings are found in graves across the country, including at Silbury. Bluestone, like a copper bracelet, was plainly long thought to be a health-giving token.

Everything about Stonehenge begins to fall in place with this theory. The crippled Amesbury archer and his son, who science tells us originated from the Alps and then Kent, join the mass of burials of mutilated visitors who appear to have travelled to Stonehenge over the centuries. Isotope analysis of the teeth enamel of the local "Boscombe bowmen" reveals time spent in the bluestone country of south Wales - perhaps in search of a "second opinion".

We see from the first paragraph that it was the wells at Preseli and the water from them that had the curative powers, not the bluestone - the difference between water and stone is that the former can be consumed, and dispense its curative properties accordingly, whilst the consumption of stone is unlikely to benefit the patient in any way.

I'm not sure either why bluestone chippings in graves would have been thought able to cure the incumbents of physical ailments - the whole point of being dead is that you no longer need the services of a doctor, healing stones or anything else of that nature. However, if it was believed at the time that people reincarnated, there might have been a thought that if health-giving amulets were included as grave goods, that person's reincarnation might enjoy better health in its next life. Cleansing of the soul would appear to be a more appropriate metaphor in the context of material with healing properties being placed within graves.

The difference between a copper bracelet and a stone chipping is that the former can be worn and kept close to the skin, there to perform its supposed palliative effects - a bluestone chipping, unless pierced and strung, can't be worn next to the body - at best it would have fitted into a pocket, a location not normally considered as a centre of healing.

Either way, the very fact that bluestone is included in so many graves would seem to indicate this material has at least some associations with death and maybe the next life, rather than worldly considerations of physical ailments, accidental or inflicted.

"Everything about Stonehenge begins to fall in place with this theory."

I suppose that depends on how one defines 'everything' - in this instance 'everything' appears to comprise Preseli bluestone and a handful of burials consisting of folk who were non-local and who had carried injuries in their life-times. The fact that 19th century visitors, visiting the site around four-and-half millennia later, chipped off bluestone for its putative health-giving properties is surely irrelevant, and can't be used in any meaningful archaeological context.

Moreover, the recent articles discussing the massive amounts of pallisade which are thought to have existed at or around Stonehenge don't really speak of a welcoming, people-friendly healing place, more somewhere where activities were taking place in a location that was physically separated from the outside (or physical) world.

I was reading a post at Eternal Idol, and saw a link to an article by Dan Jones in the Smithsonian magazine, the final part of which contained some pithy comment from Mike Pitts; as we see...

Not everyone buys into the healing stone theory.

"I think the survey work [Darvill and Wainwright are] doing in the Preseli hills is great, and I'm very much looking forward to the full publication of what they've found there," says Mike Pitts.

"However, the idea that there is a prehistoric connection between the healing properties of bluestones and Stonehenge as a place of healing does nothing for me at all. As far as I'm concerned, it's a fairy story."

Pitts also wants to see more evidence that people suffering from injuries and illness visited Stonehenge. "There are actually very few—you can count them on one hand—human remains around and contemporary with Stonehenge that haven't been cremated so that you could see what injuries or illnesses they might have suffered from," he says. "For long periods in the Neolithic we have a dearth of human remains of any kind."

And as is pointed out elsewhere in this article, and mentioned here in previous posts, people were marking the landscape around Stonehenge at 10,500 bp, as evidenced by the Mesolithic pits that once contained substantial pine posts - and recent news from this year's excavations indicates Palaeolithic material has since been found, further underlining the idea that there was something special or unique about the landscape which attracted people to the area - although it's quite puzzling to see such a huge gap in time between the Mesolithic pits and the late Neolithic henge, and other features that marked the first construction phases some 6,000 years later.

It seems that trees may originally have featured, and Woodhenge doesn't seem to fit into a healing centre either - the wood at this site is thought to represent the ephemeral nature of life, in that it was a perishable material and decayed, whereas the stone at Stonehenge was much more durable, and in the context of a generations of humans, effectively eternal, perhaps marking the eternal nature of death itself - though whether that would discount ideas of an after-life or reincarnated life is another debate in itself.

The presence of the two cursuses is not addressed at all by the 'Prehistoric Lourdes' theory, whilst even the erection of the vast sarsen stones says nothing to me about healing, rather an indelible statement of brute force and power intertwined with ingenuity and precision never before seen in that part of the world, and one only matched by the Giza pyramid phase, thousands of miles away in Egypt.

The fact that bluestone was taken from Wales, possibly in the wake of a dismantled bluestone construction that may have stood there put me more in mind of the way the Coronation Stone was taken from Scotland by Edward I, as a means of taking power away from one area and installing it somewhere else - in the Stone of Scone's case, that was London, in 1296.

Obviously there is little comparison between Neolithic England, Scotland and Wales, and the geopolitical landscape which existed at the time of Edward I, but it might be worth considering the idea that something was being taken from one part of the land, either to diminish power there, transfer that power somewhere else, or have been part of a plan to unify two locations lying distant from each other.

Moreover, there is a very plausible (at least in my opinion) idea that Stonehenge was part of a wider complex that represented the world of the living and that of the dead. The foremost proponent of this idea is Mike Parker Pearson of the Stonehenge Riverside Project; this from the Smithsonian...

The new radiocarbon dating also raises questions about a theory advanced by archaeologist Mike Parker Pearson of the University of Sheffield, who has long suggested that Stonehenge was a massive burial site in which the stones were symbols of the dead—the final stop of an elaborate funeral procession by Neolithic mourners from
nearby settlements.

The oldest human remains found by Parker Pearson's team date to around 3030 B.C., about the time the henge was first built but well before the arrival of the bluestones. That means, says Darvill, "the stones come after the burials and are not directly associated with them."

Of course it's entirely possible that Stonehenge was both—a great cemetery and a place of healing, as Darvill and Wainwright willingly admit. "Initially it seems to have been a place for the dead with cremations and memorials," says Darvill, "but after about 2300 B.C. the emphasis changes and it is a focus for the living, a place where specialist healers and the health care professionals of their age looked after the bodies and souls of the sick and infirm."

English Heritage's Amanda Chadburn also finds the dual-use theory plausible. "It's such an important place that people want to be associated with it and buried in its vicinity," she says, "but it could also be such a magical place that it was used for healing, too."

So although it could be argued that as there is no direct evidence that Druidic beliefs have a specific validity at Stonehenge, the fact that this theory contradicts such ideas doesn't make this new theory valid by default - it's just another set of ideas, which cannot be conclusively proved or dismissed - back once more to The Guardian, where we read...

Stonehenge's reputation must have been Europe-wide, explaining its uniquely splendid architecture. Like Lourdes (and like Harley Street), ceremony and even a touch of confidence trickery were adjuncts of the healing game. Hence the great processional way up from the river, the guarding sarsens and the mumbo jumbo of solstice alignment.

Hence also the riches emerging from excavations two miles away at Durrington Walls by Sheffield University's Mike Parker Pearson. This is revealing a town of some 300 houses, not just a prehistoric Lourdes but "the largest neolithic settlement in northern Europe". Parker Pearson's theory is that this was a place of kingly burial, not incompatible with the Lourdes thesis.

I'm dubious about the claim stating the architecture of Stonehenge was dictated by its supposed renown across Europe - and the point the author makes about confidence trickery seems to contradict his own argument - as soon as people realised that the bluestones had no physiological healing properties whatsoever, there would presumably have been no practical use, (other than architectural), for them - people would have realised this long before they started heaving the massive sarsens across the landscape. Stonehenge was in use and under construction for many hundreds of years, a time-frame far too great for people to continue believing in a healing bluestone component, when it almost certainly never worked at all.

The processional way he refers to is echoed at Woodhenge, suggested by Parker Pearson as representing life, while Stonehenge itself reflected the idea of death, with the River Avon linking the two sites- and the suggestion that because the same archaeologist thinks of 'kingly burials' doesn't indicate any direct association with healing at all - I haven't noticed too many people visiting the Valley of the Kings in Egypt in search of curative souvenirs, and offhand I can't think of any royal burial ground anywhere that has any associations with healing the living of illness or injury.

With regard to the Neolithic village at Durrington Walls, the indications from cattle and animal remains are that it was used on a seasonal basis, possibly late in the calendar year - if people were requiring medical or curative aid at Stonehenge, it's doubtful they would have been prepared to wait for a certain time of year to roll round - an illness contracted in Spring would theoretically involve a wait of nine months to get specialist help, which although some cynics might suggest is roughly in line with NHS waiting times in the modern day, would have had little appeal to those seeking healing from the bluestones - during a long wait, they could presumably have had ample time to get to Preseli and get a cure there, instead of Stonehenge.

(As a brief aside, it's maybe notable that a Neolithic settlement was built near Stonehenge, but not at nearby Silbury Hill - at the latter site, there are signs that there was once a fairly substantial Roman settlement, and although Roman pottery etc has been found at Stonehenge, there is as yet, no evidence for a Roman settlement there - it has been suggested that the unexcavated Vespasian's Camp might be a Roman settlement, but nothing conclusive has yet been found there.)

A final word from The Guardian...

Medical science has found therapies in chalybeate and mud, in herbs, roots, vegetables and even human urine. Is it possible there is something in Preseli dolerite and rhyolite, when dowsed by good clean water, that does indeed do you good? Research shows the springs to be full of chloride and sulphur. But the goodness lies in the water, not just the stone. Were the lordly proprietors of Hospice Stonehenge sold a complete pup by those wily Welshmen who forgot to mention, please add water?

Jacquetta Hawkes remarked that each age gets the Stonehenge it deserves, or perhaps the one that best reflects its concerns. Ours is the age of hypochondria. But even hypochondriacs can be ill, and can be cured. Ancient Britons were no different, and truly built themselves a national health service to last.

Until the medical profession investigates the purported medicinal properties of bluestone, we can probably assume it has zero benefit to humans, whether dowsed in spring water or no - even Dr. House at his most callous probably wouldn't try it out on his most detested patient.

As for Stonehenge granting each age the one it deserves, I'd broadly agree with that - the Stonehenge Riverside Project has in my opinion made huge inroads into making new discoveries, especially at Durrington, and coming up with what seems a plausible association of Stonehenge with the dead, something reflected to this day in Madagascar. Added to that, there is a plethora of well researched books and papers offering a variety of suggestions as to who was doing what and why at Stonehenge and the surrounding landscape - and of course its no surprise that there should be all manner of esoteric beliefs and deeply held convictions by so-called New Agers, pagans and so on. It's exactly the kind of mix we should expect in a century in which technological advances have been as numerous as the people who attach this or another abstract set of meanings to a place that offers a refuge of the mind and soul, if not the physical self.

But vaunted though science is, it can only tell us so much, and we cannot use it to peer too far inside the minds and beliefs of the builders and users of the site. Clues abound, and depending on your preference, ideas of an observatory, astronomical and calendrical markers for diverse and possibly arcane purposes all have their pros and cons, with no single idea covering the mass of complexity that encompasses all the physical features to be found on this part of Salisbury Plain.

In broad terms, I get the impression that Stonehenge was built and rearranged for more than one reason, just as there were probably several uses or functions that changed over time, or in some cases ran parallel with one another. And much as I very much doubt that Stonehenge was conceived of and built as any kind of health centre, there's the distinct possibility that it's presence and renown may well have persuaded people through the ages that the old place and its 'star-studded' dolerite stones did have some power that could benefit either or both their physical and spiritual health.

But any single notion that seeks to explain Stonehenge in its entirety, and over the very long time-spans involved is inevitably going to be found wanting - there are too many contradictions and anomalies, with very little in the way of conclusive evidence to support any single use theory. It is in the same way that Stonehenge and the countryside for miles around comprise a myriad of features, mysteries and missing pieces, that there were probably multiple motives, needs and beliefs in the minds of successive generations of Neolithic people, hailing as they did from near and far, over land and sea.

And speaking of overseas, I'm increasingly perplexed as to why we almost never see any mention of the megalithic complexes down in Malta, such as Hagar Qim and Mnajdra Temples, built contemporaneously with Stonehenge, maybe a little earlier - there might not be any direct connection between the two sites, but when considering the Neolithic mindset of those at Stonehenge, it might be an idea to cast the analytic net a little further abroad, to what would have been a remote outpost in the Med, much in the same way that Neolithic Orkney became in the northernmost reaches of Britain - the associations between Wessex and Orkney have also been noted. My point being that rather than just focus on bluestone, a few mutilated skeletons and some 19th century folklore, a much wider picture exists, and should be viewed with due care and attention.

So if this latest 'Prehistoric Lourdes' doesn't appeal to all, no need to worry - as has been seen in the past, there will always be another Stonehenge bandwagon rumbling along the tracks, and another after that, and so on, for as long as the bluestones and their sarsen counterparts remain rooted in their sockets.

What is of far greater importance in our considerations of Stonehenge is the urgent need to preserve both the site and its environs - one million visitors per annum is testament enough that it still holds us in its thrall, but even if only one visitor turned up each year, this monument is as unique as it is irreplaceable, and its deterioration, including the apparent lack of a coherent plan to divert heavy road traffic away from it, should not be allowed to progress any further.

(With reference to a note in Anthony Johnson's 'Solving Stonehenge', ("Anyone writing about Stonehenge is destined to employ the word 'enigmatic'" - p. 167) I've studiously avoided using the word 'enigmatic' anywhere in this essay - as I've shown above, it is entirely possible to write about this enigmatic structure without using the word 'enigmatic' even once. Oops, my bad.)

image of Stonehenge from Sunja's Flickr photostream.

Neanderthals' Diet - Dolphins And Mussels alive alive-oh

Neanderthals ate seafood and had sophisticated palates - Telegraph

Here's a story that's been doing the rounds these past few days, and concerns the recent investigations of Professors Chris Stringer and Clive Finlayson et al, who have been excavating Vanguard And Gorham's Caves on Gibraltar, one of the latest known sites to have been inhabited by Neanderthals shortly before their lamented demise, some 25,000 years ago. This from the Telegraph...

While their lives in the north were dominated by reindeer, woolly mammoth, and so on, an analysis of remains in Gorham's and Vanguard Caves, located at Governor's Beach on the eastern side of the Rock provides evidence they ate molluscs (mussels), seal, dolphin, and fish over some 50,000 years...

... Neanderthals ate marine mammals such as the monk seal (Monachus monachus) and dolphins (Tursiops truncatus), and probably also fish such as sea bream. Remains of shellfish such the mussel (Mytilus galloprovincialis) were also discovered. As for oysters, "not as far as we know, but it is possible," said Prof Stringer.

The most interesting item on the Neanderthal menu looks to be the sea bream, a deepwater fish; whilst the dolphin, seal and mussel can all be found onshore, to catch sea bream it might well have been necessary for someone to put to sea with suitable fishing gear, a behavioural trait not normally associated with Neanderthals.

Although as we see from this link, that shallow coastal waters are sometimes used as nurseries by sea bream, we see at this page (scroll down to 'common sea bream') that sea bream tend to live at depths of between 30m and 150m. However, as it's not clear from the article whether this fish was actually consumed by Neanderthals, it seems speculative to suggest that the archaic species of human may have had ocean-going capabilities - there is no archaeological material to suggest that Neanderthals made harpoons for example, and as far as I know, there are no remains of Neanderthal water-craft.

But if we bear in mind that they may have spent as much as 50,000 years down by the seaside, maybe it's within the realms of credulity that some among their number built makeshift rafts, if only for recreational purposes. Whether Neanderthals were able to put together deep sea fishing missions seems more doubtful, but on this suggested evidence, can't be entirely discounted, imo.

(On a vaguely related note, I came across the following passage in a book, 'The Basque History of the World', of which the opening paragraph of Chapter 3, 'The Basque Whale' runs thus...

"In 1969, a cave with drawings of fish dating back to the Palaeolithic Age was discovered in Vizcaya. The fish appear to be sea bream. A sea bream drawing was also found in a cave in Guipúzcoa, and drawings of a number of other fish species have been discovered there as well.

These drawings are remarkable because Palaeolithic man (And Palaeo-woman, offspring etc, Ed.), living in natural caves 12,00 years ago, chose to depict mammals such as deer and horses, and not fish. He had had not yet gone to sea. But these same caves are also significant because the remains of fish bones and shells reveal an unusual prehistoric diet."

As yet I've been unable to identify exactly which caves these are, but it's curious to see the sea-bream raise its glistening head once more in the Palaeolithic, and on the same Iberian peninsular, albeit hundreds of miles away to the north of Gibraltar, and a good 12,000-14,000 years later. Even to this day, the sea-bream lives on in local tradition, as we see from the same page of the book mentioned above...

"A reverence for the sea-bream, bixigu (Euskara), has been conserved for millennia on the coast of Vizcaya and Guipúzcoa. It is a traditional Christmas dish, and in Guipúzcoa, a pastry shaped in the form of a sea bream is served on Christmas Eve.

On that night, the people of San Sebastián gather...and climb Mount Igueldo...carrying a large effigy of a sea bream. This is because the fish is associated with Olentzaro, a pre-Christian evil sort of Santa Claus who climbs down chimneys to harm people in their sleep. Fireplaces are lit for the holiday to keep him away."

Such has been the impact of the mighty sea bream on human culture over the millennia - and how odd to see Santa Claus portrayed in stark contrast to our more romanticised view in the modern era.)

Getting back to the Neanderthals, it's also surprising that they maintained this marine presence for 50,000 years - at first glance, I briefly assumed that Neanderthals were only exploiting this littoral environment because they had been displaced from their inland refuges by incoming moderns, and that as seafood and fish were the only food available, that's what they ate.

But with 50 millennia of coastal dwelling to their name, it seems clear that at least some Neanderthals opted to live in such areas by choice - and it's clear from other food remains found in the caves, that they were able to exploit two quite different environments...

'Since we have recurrent evidence from several excavated levels over 30,000 years old in the two Gibraltar sites, we can say that eating seafood was not a rare behaviour for Neanderthals.

"We have found evidence that they knew the geographic distribution and behaviour of their prey, suggesting they were hunting on a seasonal basis.'

Intriguingly, the way that Neanderthals butchered seals can be seen today among Inuits, who cut the flippers off at the joints, and draw the skin off in a single piece.

The fore flippers - with the shoulders and the hind flippers - are taken out, the only part remaining being the head, the spinal column, and the rump bone.

The team thinks there was seasonal hunting practices at a time when seals would be vulnerable because of their need to breed on land. Dolphins can also seasonally become beached on the seashore, where they can be scavenged.

The caves also contain hearths and flint stone tools, as well as butchered land mammals such as ibex (Capra ibex), red deer (Cervus elaphus), wild boar (Sus scrofa), bear (Ursus arctos) and rabbit (Oryctolagus cuniculus).

Given the diverse diet, "it may therefore be no coincidence that they survived longest in this part of the world," said Prof Finlayson.

As mentioned earlier, these caves represent a geographical area that was at the very edge of dry land in northern Europe - as has been shown at Lagar Velho in Portugal, where the 24,500 bp remains of a child presenting possible Neanderthal/modern hybrid human traits were found, and as recently shown by the 30,000 bp Neanderthal site at Beedings in southern England, Neanderthals lingered on in locations on the periphery of mainland Europe, which at the time was becoming increasingly populated by Homo sapiens.

However, Gibraltar was by no means the only coastal region on the Med inhabited by Neanderthals, as we see in this post from John Hawks...

Stiner (1993:191ff) documented shellfish remains in the Middle Paleolithic strata of Moscerini Cave, Latium, Italy. One of the interesting elements of the Moscerini shellfish remains was a fluctuation over time between two kinds of shellfish: mussels and smooth-shelled sand clams.

These two kinds of bivalves live on different substrates -- mussels attach to rock, while sand clams, well, bury themselves in sand. Distinct pulses of alternating mussel and sand clam remains occurred in the site, and Stiner interpreted these as a consequence of local abundance of these different bivalves, which may have changed over time due to local sedimentation, sea levels, or other hydrological factors.

But this fluctuation raised a point about the Neandertals: they weren't carrying the clams or mussels very far. They left in the cave a small fraction of the species variety of shellfish in the environment; the two kinds of bivalves are approximately equivalent in calories and nutritional yield.

Elsewhere in his same article there is reference to the Gibraltar Caves Research Project, from which the following excerpt is culled...

The Gibraltar Caves project began in 1994, with excavations at Ibex Cave. Major excavations were undertaken at Gorham's and Vanguard Caves from 1995-2000, with additional work in Gorham's Cave in 2001-2. As a result of the research project, we have been able to compare and contrast the distinct records of these caves to show that Middle Palaeolithic Neanderthals in Mediterranean-type environments occupied relatively small home ranges, that they focused on local estuarine wetland and marine habitats and had a highly omnivorous diet.

This is revealed in exceptionally well-preserved occupation levels, by the presence of plant foods and shellfish, and cut-marked bones of small (e.g. tortoise, bird, rabbit) and large (red deer, ibex) vertebrates. Vanguard cave has also revealed the first evidence of Neanderthal processing of marine mammals, and this very important finding is the subject of a paper now being prepared for Science.

We have also identified within the upper stratigraphic sequence at Gorham's Cave younger levels dating after about 30 kyr bp with Upper Palaeolithic finds but associated with environmental indicators of much cooler climatic conditions (North Atlantic grey seal, North Atlantic seabirds and montane pine woodland). Ongoing analyses indicate that the modern humans who succeeded the Neanderthals imported distant lithic raw materials and may consequently have had greater home ranges than the Neanderthals.

This apparent unwillingness to travel far from home, at least on a frequent basis may have been a contributory factor in the Neanderthals' eventual extinction. I get the impression that during the era when they had sole domain over Western Europe, Neanderthals lived for the most part in small groups, and that some social contact was maintained with other localised groups - this need not have been frequent, but was evidently enough to maintain sufficient diversity in their gene pool. From that, it might be implied that this inter-group contact was effectively curtailed as modern humans began arriving in ever greater number. As a result, maybe the small groups of Neanderthals became completely isolated from one another, to the extent that population numbers crashed, and those that did breed, did so within diminishing gene pools, thus sealing their fate.

Either way, what is clear from reading through the various linked articles, is that Neanderthal behaviours and capabilities are becoming less distinguishable as more research is done, and it's unlikely they became extinct because of a previously supposed cognitive and/or technological inferiority.

However, even the idea that Neanderthals spent too much time in their own neighbourhoods appears to be contradicted by this news from Greece, earlier this year, as we see from this pos from February 2008, at msnbc.com...

The team from the Max Planck Institute, led by Department of Human Evolution professor Mike Richards and Harvati, analyzed tooth enamel for ratios of strontium isotope, a naturally occurring metal found in food and water. Levels of the metal vary in different areas. As it is absorbed by the body, an analysis of its levels can show where a person lived.

Eleni Panagopoulou of the Paleoanthropology-Speleology Department of Southern Greece said the levels of strontium isotope found in the tooth showed that this particular Neanderthal grew up in a different area — at least 12.5 miles away — from its discovery site.

"The analysis results ... will contribute to solving one of the central issues of paleoanthropology, that of the mobility of the Neanderthal," Panagopoulou said.

"Our findings prove that their mobility was significant and that their settlement networks were broader and more organized than we believed," she said.

It might be argued that 12.5 miles is well within the bounds of what might be considered a local environment, especially for a foraging population constantly scouring the landscape for food and other materials, but it's also clear that Neanderthals extended their range far into eastern Asia.

As the story of the last millennia of the Neanderthals unfolds, revealing ever greater complexity, it seems increasingly difficult to believe that the presence of modern humans in previously held Neanderthal territories, wasn't directly to blame for the Neanderthals' ultimate disappearance - it was likely to have been an unintentional displacement, as moderns and Neanderthals coexisted for tens millennia.

And of course, we'll never know if the Neanderthals would have survived intact had the arrival of modern humans not happened - perhaps there would still be Neanderthals wandering around on Gibraltar, casting one eye out to sea, wondering if it would ever retreat again to the lower levels that exposed areas of dry land that had been known to, and feasted upon, by their distant ancestors.

NB: The latest edition of Current Anthropology (subscription required) contains a paper, namely...

A New Cultural Frontier for the Last Neanderthals: The Uluzzian in Northern Italy, and here's the abstract...

The Middle–Upper Paleolithic shift was a crucial event intimately involved in Neanderthal biogeography and the patchy scenario that emerges from the last marked cultural and behavioral evolution our extinct relatives underwent during the interval 50-30 k.yr. BP. In Mediterranean Europe, this behavior, considered modern, gave rise to the Uluzzian, a cultural complex confined to central-southern Italy and Greece as a consequence of the supposed retreat of archaic humans in the face of the rapid diffusion of Homo sapiens.

The recent discovery of dwelling structures and lithic implements at Fumane Cave in northeastern Italy redraws this scenario and depicts at 33.4 k.yr. BP the northernmost frontier to which the Uluzzian spread around the Great Adriatic Plain, a pivotal region near the western edge of the Middle Danube basin, where the last Neanderthals were using very different cultural items.

I haven't had time to read the entire paper, but it should make for interesting reading, given the context of the topics discussed above.


image of Gibraltar Caves from Guardian article : Neanderthals Had A Taste For Seafood

A Darkness Flows Through It - Mystery Of The Speeding Bulletcluster

Centauri Dreams :: A Dark Flow in the Cosmos

Here's a story that for some reason has thus far retained a fairly low profile, which is surprising given the implications of what has been discovered by astrophysicists working at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Centre; first, a quick visit to Centauri Dreams for some introductory notes...

Seeing things that are otherwise invisible means looking for their effect on the things we can see. Examples abound: The presence of dark matter was originally inferred from the shape of galaxies, and the fact that the mass of what we could see couldn’t explain how these cities of stars held together. Dark energy turned up through minute examination of supernovae, shaping the idea that the acceleration of the universe is an ongoing phenomenon. And now we have another unusual effect suggesting the presence of matter beyond the observable universe.

The work grows out of the study of some 700 galactic clusters whose X-rays, emitted by hot gases, cause measurable effects on photons from the cosmic microwave background. This is the Sunyaev-Zel’dovich effect, in which high energy electrons impart some of their energy to the CMB. A variant of the SZ effect helps us study galactic clusters in ways that now suggest the presence of inflation in the early universe. Thus Alexander Kashlinsky (NASA GSFC), who lays out the finding in this news release:

“The clusters show a small but measurable velocity that is independent of the universe’s expansion and does not change as distances increase,” says Kashlinsky. “We never expected to find anything like this… The distribution of matter in the observed universe cannot account for this motion.”

The story is taken up by Space.com, who elucidate further...

Patches of matter in the universe seem to be moving at very high speeds and in a uniform direction that can't be explained by any of the known gravitational forces in the observable universe. Astronomers are calling the phenomenon "dark flow." The stuff that's pulling this matter must be outside the observable universe, researchers conclude. They discovered that the clusters were moving nearly 2 million mph (3.2 million kph) toward a region in the sky between the constellations of Centaurus and Vela. This motion is different from the outward expansion of the universe (which is accelerated by the force called dark energy).

"We found a very significant velocity, and furthermore, this velocity does not decrease with distance, as far as we can measure," Kashlinsky told SPACE.com. "The matter in the observable universe just cannot produce the flow we measure.

What makes this story even more interesting is the suggestion that this phenomenon might be caused by something exerting an influence far beyond our universe...

The scientists deduced that whatever is driving the movements of the clusters must lie beyond the known universe. A theory called inflation posits that the universe we see is just a small bubble of space-time that got rapidly expanded after the Big Bang. There could be other parts of the cosmos beyond this bubble that we cannot see. In these regions, space-time might be very different, and likely doesn't contain stars and galaxies (which only formed because of the particular density pattern of mass in our bubble).

It could include giant, massive structures much larger than anything in our own observable universe. These structures are what researchers suspect are tugging on the galaxy clusters, causing the dark flow.

"The structures responsible for this motion have been pushed so far away by inflation, I would guesstimate they may be hundreds of billions of light years away, that we cannot see even with the deepest telescopes because the light emitted there could not have reached us in the age of the universe," Kashlinsky said in a telephone interview. "Most likely to create such a coherent flow they would have to be some very strange structures, maybe some warped space time. But this is just pure speculation."

Further details of this story can be found at NASA's GSFC site by clicking here.

image : galaxy cluster 1E 0657-56 (known as the Bullet Cluster) from NASA Goddard Space Flight Center

Four Stone Hearth #50 @ Yann Klimentidis' Weblog

Yann Klimentidis' Weblog: Four Stone Hearth Anthroplogy Blog Carnival

Four Stone Hearth celebrates it's 50th edition, and is hosted this time round at Yann Klimentidis' Weblog - there's plenty of good stuff to read, with many familiar faces contributing material, all very fitting for an auspicious occasion marking a half-century of 4SH.

Plenty of Neanderthal news and articles to peruse, which are worth checking, because between them they once again demonstrate that the presumed differences between them and what we refer to as modern humans seem to decrease as ever more research is carried out - the reason for their sudden extinction becomes ever more perplexing. As Julien Riel-Salvatore points out in his post, when considering similarities and differences between Neanderthals and our Cro-Magnon forebears, it's necessary to address all areas of study...

DNA provides some information, fossils provide other types of information and archaeology provides yet other information, all of which is necessary and complementary to reach an adequate understanding of this process. I hammer this a lot to my students and in my work, but it really cheapens the practice of physical anthropology and archaeology when they're considered only as icing on the interpretive cake of evolutionary genetics.

To read the rest of his post and all the others, simply click through to Four Stone Hearth #50.

Human Evolution On Trial :: Evolution - by Terry Toohill

Human Evolution on Trial - 'Evolution'

Like everything else, the theory of evolution is itself evolving. One hundred and fifty years ago, in Charles Darwin’s time, humans had no knowledge of genetics or the movement of the continents, and no fossils of ancient humans had been recognised. It’s only to be expected the theory has been modified since then.

Anyway Charles Darwin didn’t actually invent the theory of evolution himself. Many people before his time were convinced evolution was not just some random alternative view of history. As long ago as 1619 Lucilio Vanini believed humans might have evolved from apes (“Mythconceptions” [Ancient Myths]). And several ancient Greek philosophers had considered evolution to be a possibility. Darwin’s contribution was merely to provide evidence to support a possible mechanism for how it happened.

Of course he was influenced by the social and economic ideas of his time, the beliefs of his own social class. He was also concerned about the implications his theory had for the maintenance of the European social order, especially after the disturbances of 1848. Evolution stated very specifically there was no fixed order. This, rather than any religious doubt, seems to have been the reason he delayed publishing his theories for so many years.

Many people today still confuse “evolution” with “progress”. This confusion is a survival from Darwin’s time, the Victorian age. In those days of continuing industrial progress the concept was expanded. Progress was seen everywhere. The ultimate product of progress was believed to be “Man”, specifically English Man or, at least European Man (Jones 2001, and Tattersall and Schwartz 2000). Women didn’t come into it, which is a little strange. Any Human Evolution is impossible without them.

But until the industrial revolution all change had been seen as decline from a previous golden age. Things were better in the old days. This view too has survived. And of course the Garden of Eden was wonderful. In fact K. R. Howe (2003) suggests New Age theories on the settlement of New Zealand are based on the idea.

Biological evolution is neither progress nor decline. As the jury saw in Part II it is simply change.

Purpose?

Over generations the individual strands of DNA mutate or change. The causes of this change include solar or background radiation, decay with age and possibly to some extent the influence of hormones and enzymes within the body. The mutations themselves may be random (“Chromosomes and DNA” [Y-chromosome]). Pythagoras may have been onto something when he said all things, including music, are simply the product of numbers.

However evolution, unlike some music, does appear to demonstrate “purpose” or “intelligent design”. For example many scientists are beginning to accept the Gaia theory proposed by J. E. Lovelock in 1979. This states the earth behaves as if it were living even though most of it is not actually living material. Overall the earth has maintained itself in a state fit for life to exist. I read the book “Gaia” (Lovelock 1989) years ago and, naturally, it set me to wondering where humans might fit into the system. Soon afterward I went to visit one of my brothers who was working at a place called Oue on the Hokianga Harbour. His job there involved crushing the limestone that had been precipitated on the sea floor in the Mid Tertiary geological period, about thirty million years ago. The crushed limestone was then spread over farmland in order to improve its productivity. “Hmmm,” I thought.

Ultimately, though, evolution is really just the adaptation of a species to its environment. This adaptation may go back to while the individual foetus is developing; it adjusts its development to what it perceives to be the environment it is likely to grow up in. In other words before it is born an individual adapts to the environment its mother lives in. Its mother’s hormones help it do this. The adjustment may go back as far as influencing which sperm the egg accepts (“Chromosomes and DNA” [Nuclear DNA]). If all this proves to be true it could lead us back to the old idea that the giraffe grew a long neck because over the generations it was forced to reach higher and higher into the trees for its food.

In spite of prosecution claims, the overall process is most certainly not random. All species (including humans) have to survive in some sort of environment and so comparing evolution to lines of people throwing dice, thousands of monkeys typing or the construction of a watch, mousetrap or aircraft is completely absurd. The members of the defence certainly don’t believe that the eye, for example, evolved as a disembodied entity, in spite of what members of the prosecution imply. Evolution acts on whole ecosystems, not simply on each individual species in an ecosystem. And especially not on just a single characteristic of a single species. Species and ecosystems must either adapt or go extinct. From our perspective this process has led to the conception of Purpose or Intelligent Design.

In “Chromosomes and DNA” [Dominant and Recessive Genes] the jury saw that any species can be regarded as being simply a collection of shared genes, population genetics. Genes for any extreme variations are swamped by what we could call normal genes or are picked off by selection. It is not always an advantage to be the fittest and finish up in front. If a variation is not picked off, or if it provides a breeding advantage for any individuals with it, over time the whole population will change in that direction, sometimes rapidly, as the gene spreads through the generations. The bell curve shifts for that variation.

There is selection within a species, which is what is usually meant by evolution, but there is also selection between species (Tattersall and Schwartz 2000).

In the first case families become extinct; in the second species become extinct. The jury will see next in “Extinctions” [What Have we Done?] that whole genera can become extinct. Of course extinction is totally irrelevant to the individuals concerned. It makes no difference to their own life whether they leave descendants or not. It is only human culture and the knowledge of our own mortality that influences our attitude to extinctions. Contrary to most views of evolution, creatures don’t run around ensuring their genes survive. Sex and hormones are the driving forces. Genes survive as a result of a complex set of circumstances. But any species that cannot maintain effective reproductive instincts, or at least cultural strategies, obviously rapidly becomes extinct. Any species that has failed to evolve a strong instinctive will to survive in each individual is also doomed to extinction.

But the fact that DNA mutates means any populations that have become isolated from each other, for any reason, develop different patterns in their DNA, much like language change. This means populations vary from each other in different regions, and over time. Time and space again.

Evolution is the change of a species through time; speciation is the change of a species through space. The two are closely related. The space variation is usually the kind of geographic variation we saw in “The “Human Star” [Geography] and “Species” [Kinds]. But some people believe it may also occur through the exploitation of different environments by the genetic extremes of a population, ecological speciation. This is currently the main debate in evolutionary biology. I’ll explain it as quickly as I can. For ecological speciation to be possible members of a single species must be able to divide into tribes, each specialising in a different ecological niche. The jury will need to imagine that in ecological speciation the points of the star are not geographic but ecological. This means that at any one time an evolutionary star may have only two points, if such a thing could still be called a star.

Ecological Speciation

It seems the greater the diversity of species in a particular region the greater the general stability of the ecosystem. But it is a chicken and egg situation. It may be that greater stability allows more species to survive. Unstable ecosystems cause extinctions.

As the defence said in “Pacific Population” the islands of the Pacific Ocean basically contain fewer and fewer biological types as you move eastwards from New Guinea towards America (Mayr and Diamond 2001). The Galapagos Islands are particularly poor in species diversity and most species there appear to derive from the other direction, America (Jones 2000). The lack of species on the Galapagos Islands makes them an interesting laboratory.

In “Change” [Galapagos Finches] the defence drew the jury’s attention to two kinds of Galapagos Island ground finches (Geospiza). They live on a single island, but can breed together in times of plenty during El Niños, and then speciate again when times are tough (Weiner 1995). This may demonstrate how separate species or kinds are able to form without being geographically separated: through ecological separation. Presumably if there were adequate numbers in each population and the stress was prolonged the kinds could remain separated long enough to become separate species. But periods of hybrid formation would make it impossible to say precisely when the two species had actually separated. Speciation would be a very gradual affair as the two populations slowly drifted apart in their ability to breed together. This shows again that we cannot assume two populations that appear in the fossil record to be different species are not able to form hybrids. Bradley Livezey (1991) even suggests that the isolating mechanisms separating various species are a result, not the cause, of factors that lead to speciation. In other words the isolating mechanisms, reproductive strategies and instincts themselves evolve or change over time as well.

Ecological speciation may be responsible for the pattern of distribution observed for many groups of species. This pattern has led to the concept of “centripetal evolution”. Tim Flannery (2001) writes, “Centripetal evolution constantly generates new species at the centre of a group’s range, leaving relictual species around the margin, often on islands”. Centripetal evolution may be an illusion though. The evolution of different subspecies in various points of a species’ star would also eventually give rise in the middle to many different genes, gene pools and even species, leaving relictual examples in other points.

Ecological speciation seems to be the best explanation for the diversification of cichlid fishes in African lakes though (quoted in Mayr and Diamond 2001) and seems to be at least reasonably common in plants. In “The First Point” [Origin] the defence will show it might have been important at times during Human Evolution.

Of course it is extremely doubtful there is actually a single means by which species evolve but the image of a star, either geographic or ecological, is useful. Gene flow from any point of a multi-pointed star usually leaves relictual populations in other points. In Parts IV and V the jury will find that this situation has been very common during human development, for changes in technology, culture and language as well as for genetic change.

Hybrids

Most standard descriptions of evolution talk about populations somehow isolated from each other eventually becoming separate species. Possibly by this stage members of the jury can accept this could happen. I’ll return to it soon [Geographic Speciation].

But I can’t recall ever seeing a consideration of what happens when populations that have been isolated from each other long enough to change a little, through inbreeding, are able to mix again. This would be a very frequent occurrence in reality. Especially at the geographic margins of a species’ distribution during times of plenty. Or when some environmental or ecological change has occurred. Two populations that have had different selection pressures acting on them will have a different gene pool, and perhaps appearance. If the populations then meet and are able to breed together new genes are introduced into a wider population, usually through the formation of some sort of hybrid zone (“Hybrid Vigour and Inbreeding” [Wave Theory of Evolution]). In effect, though, it is actually possible for a single hybrid individual to transfer genes from one species to another (see “Hybrid Vigour and Inbreeding” [Hybrid Vigour]). Hybrid populations are usually at a disadvantage (“Species” [Ecology]) but, if for some reason a particular one is not, selection in the hybrids would promote the best combination of characteristics for survival from each of the two parent populations.

Any gene disadvantageous to survival is bred out by selection and useful genes remain. After several generations of inbreeding members of any hybrid population come to look more like each other, a stabilised hybrid. The extreme variations are eliminated. Of course some disadvantageous mutations may survive if the individuals that carry the single recessive receive enough heterosis to be at a selective advantage.

If there has been inbreeding depression in either original population the resulting hybrid population may also display hybrid vigour and displace one or both parent populations. For example, like all creatures, the duck genus Oxyura is divided into various species and subspecies throughout its range. The white-headed stiff-tail (Oxyura leucocephala) occupies the Western Mediterranean, Central Asia and Northern India, but its range is discontinuous. The Spainish population has become isolated and presumably inbred. The North American ruddy duck (Oxyura jamaicensis) has been introduced to Spain and within that country this introduced population probably also constituted an inbred population. Since the introduction hybrids of the two species have formed, and seem to be replacing the native white-headed duck by gene flow between the two species (Tudge 1996). It seems that eventually the population in Spain will evolve into a stabilised hybrid. As the defence said in “Species” the formation of hybrids may have been very important during duck evolution.

A similar process probably happens, at least at a minor level, for all species at all times.

Any new species can be only a little different to its parent species. But any new species may have a major initial expansion if it is able to move into a new region or use the environment in a new way. We may be able to get some idea of what happens then by observing species that have been introduced to new environments by humans. The jury saw in “Change” [Destruction] that even human numbers usually increase to epidemic proportions. It seems that the depletion, or even local extinction, of resources follows an initial population explosion during the first times of plenty. After the initial population explosion numbers fall with the onset of hard times. Population remnants survive in areas where the environment can support them in some sort of balance. These scattered population remnants become inbred. They either slowly change, each in their own direction, or the species becomes locally extinct. Populations that have been able to evolve long-term survival strategies can then expand back through what has become an unoccupied ecological niche. Eventually some of these groups may be, for one reason or another, able to come in contact with other inbred populations. They either form a hybrid or are already separate species. But if two or more of the populations are able to interbreed, selection can start on the hybrid population and we’re off again.

As the jury saw in Part II, something like this happened as humans moved onto islands in the Pacific. It has presumably happened at other times during human development, as populations have been able to expand into new environments.

The process is probably responsible for what appears in the fossil record to be the relatively rapid speciation of any creature that has been able to invade a new environment. At a greater level it would give the impression in the fossil record of fairly rapid change or the sudden appearance of new kinds, which is often exactly what we find.

Punctuated Equilibrium

It is becoming generally accepted that the fossil record shows that evolution usually proceeds by a series of jumps separated by long periods of very little change. Evolution is digital not analogue. The phenomenon even appears at a very local level. For example Corfield (2001) describes the sudden bursts of change in species of snails around a lake in Kenya. In 1972 the late Steven J. Gould along with Niles Eldredge introduced the term “punctuated equilibrium” to describe the phenomenon.

Most species stay roughly the same for a long time, because they are well adapted to an environment that doesn’t change (Tudge 1996). For example sharks and crocodiles have remained much the same for a very long time, although many varieties have become extinct. Another reason for stability is that mutations that actually increase survivability are probably quite rare, and the formation of a double recessive even more so. In “Hybrid Vigour and Inbreeding” [Wave Theory of Evolution] the defence explaned how an advantageous gene might rapidly expand though.

And sometimes changes in the earth’s environment, either through changes in weather patterns or even the evolution of some new species, have led to very rapid evolutionary change. Even apparently minor changes can have a huge effect. Eventually everything settles down a bit and we have a period of stability. These factors all lead to the phenomenon of punctuated equilibrium. But in fact the balance of nature is constantly changing.

Many people wish to convince us that a huge leap or series of leaps has occurred at some stage during Human Evolution, either between animal and human or early human and modern human. Later we’ll stand back and be able to take an overall view of the evidence. The jury will then see that our evolution has basically proceeded by gradual change at a fairly leisurely pace (a number of small jumps) rather than by the few sudden huge jumps people look for in punctuated equilibrium. In other words we may be looking at a punctuation mark in the process of evolution. Its study may give us a good idea of how these punctuations work.

Geographic Speciation

The defence pointed out in “Hybrid Vigour and Inbreeding” that the geographic margins of a population are the most different. Unless a population’s members are extremely mobile and genes can travel easily from one end to the other, gene combinations (or at least mating behaviours) from opposite ends of a widely spread species may eventually become incompatible. Conveniently for the defence case the geographical range of several collections of subspecies forms a circle, and the opposite ends of their distribution overlap.

Both the herring gull (Larus argentatus) and the lesser black-backed gull (Larus fuscus) are found in Northwest Europe. But as you follow the black-backed gull eastwards across Northern Asia the black on its back fades gradually to slate grey. The herring gull’s silvery grey back, on the other hand, becomes darker as you move west across the Atlantic and through North America to Northern Asia. The two species are simply opposite ends of a cline that stretches around the Arctic. But the herring gull and the lesser black-backed gull don’t form hybrids where the ends overlap. They are recognised as being separate species.

Rory Putman (1988) writes, “A parallel situation exists in Eurasian great tits, Parus major, where a series of populations extends from the east coast of Soviet Russia, through Russia itself to western Europe, thence south of the Caspian Sea, through to India and on northwards through China and Korea back to the eastern coast of Russia. While the various populations around this circuit differ from one another, they intergrade, and it is clear that adjacent, neighbouring populations regularly hybridise. However, by the time the circle is complete, where the two ends of this continuous ring meet at the Amur River in USSR they have diverged sufficiently that they themselves cannot interbreed, despite the fact that they intergrade with each other through neighbouring populations right around the ring and so strictly might be considered one biological species”.

Putman also suggests the separate species of deer in the genus Cervus (which includes red deer, wapiti, sika and sambar) are also just variations of a single species. Geography has restricted gene flow between the separate species. Red deer, at least, are capable of forming fertile hybrids with most of the others.

The defence has pointed out many times that new gene combinations move through populations by the formation of hybrid zones, the wave theory of evolution. If the populations are closely related the hybrid zone can be wide and we have a cline. If the populations are less closely related hybrid zones are narrower. The difference may even be so great hybrid zones are unable to form. The spread of any new gene combination is then achieved by the expansion of what has become a new species.

It seems that many species originally occupying a wide geographical range have developed into different species in different regions. These separate species have then spread back over much of the original species’ range, separating the ecological niches. Each of these species has diversified yet again. In other words the process is continuous, much like language movement and change. As James Hutton said (“Long Ago” [Geology]), “We can find no vestige of a beginning, no prospect of an end”.

The ducks we met in “Species” [Kinds] certainly seem to have separated from each other through geographic speciation, as may have cats, hyenas, bears and dogs. In fact antelope, llamas, camels, giraffes, deer, sheep, goats, cattle and pronghorn antelope can be arranged to demonstrate the process perfectly.

Ruminants

Future detailed examination of nuclear and mitochondrial DNA and the Y-chromosome will no doubt lead to some adjustments to the following diagram.

And of course there is actually much greater diversity than shown. For example there are a huge number of species of deer, goats, antelope etc. and there were even several subspecies of American bison when Europeans first arrived there.

Some sort of time scale can be guessed at for the diagram.

First of all camels and llamas are not true ruminants as they have only a three-stage digestive system rather than four (Tudge 1996). Camels, like horses, had their greatest diversity in North America and didn’t appear in Asia until about four million years ago (Flannery 2001). But camels had started developing more than 40 million years ago from pig-like ancestors. And. Grassland expanded around 25 million years ago and other evidence shows the deer and giraffe line had separated from the main line by then (Tudge 1996). Deer and giraffes remained animals of the forest or forest edges (Putman 1988) while the other ruminants took advantage of the grassland. Deer probably developed in Eastern Asia about 20 million years ago. Giraffes are now confined to Africa. About nineteen million years ago the ancestors of the pronghorns and their extinct relations moved into North America from Asia. There is now only one species in this group but during the Miocene geological epoch they had diversified into a very weird collection (Flannery 2001). Deer first appeared in North America five million years ago although one group (the “hollow-toothed deer”) is virtually confined to America, especially South America.

Until humans arrived there myotragus lived on the island of Majorca. It could be described as a sort of antelope (Attenborough 1987). It had probably been isolated on the island since the filling of the Mediterranean Sea, three to five million years ago. The split that led to antelope, goat, cow and sheep must have occurred before then. Gazelles first appeared about 2.6 million years ago (Tudge 1996) and have their greatest diversity in Africa. It’s possible that in Asia early humans exterminated them though.

Research by Buntjer et al (2002) has revealed a great deal of information for the last few branches in the diagram. Certainly all the species from bison on developed simply as regional and ecological varieties of a single original species. The diversification began as recently as one million years ago. The relationship between the species is not simple however. They do not simply split immediately into the separate species. Gene flow between the various species has occurred at various times. The most interesting case is the bison. All bison species look roughly the same; their nuclear DNA is similar. But the European bison’s mitochondrial DNA is much closer to that of cattle than to that of American bison. The mtDNA and nuclear DNA lines are surprisingly independent. Presumably many other genes are also independent. The defence asks the jury to remember this.

The defence mentioned Indian, African and European cattle mtDNA in “Pedigrees”(Bradley et al 1996). African and European cattle separated 22,000 to 26,000 years ago. [Selection]. The three groups of cattle can all easily form fertile hybrids. They can even form hybrids with bison. Indian cattle split from African and European cattle 117,000 to 275,000 years ago

The Human Influence

Until recently domestic cattle were bred for dual or triple purpose: milk, meat and pulling wagons or ploughs, but the development of the internal combustion engine has released cattle in the Western World from draught purposes. And within the last 100 or 200 years European cattle have been further split into dairy and beef breeds.

This splitting of European cattle into dairy and beef breeds fits onto the above diagram absolutely smoothly. Any conception it might represent something new is completely wrong. Humans are as much a part of the selection process as are any group of lions on the African plains or any climatic events such as El Niños in the Galapagos Islands. It is remotely possible some form of ancient human activity led to the split between cattle and bison in the first place, and in “Extinctions” [The Results] the defence will suggest it is even possible that human activity had earlier encouraged the diversity of antelope and gazelle species in Africa.

Because it provides us with interesting evidence in favour of the defendant we’ll study animal extinction during human expansion next. One difficulty arises in trying to decide whether a species has in fact become extinct, or if it has changed into something else. For example the long-horned bison disappeared in North America soon after humans arrived. But a lot of evidence shows it actually changed by selection through human hunting and landscape alteration (Flannery 2001). It probably also formed a series of stabilised hybrids with the incoming Asian bison and became the modern American plains bison (Tudge 1996). This sort of change didn’t happen with all the species in North America. Mammoths and mastodons, for example, obviously became extinct.

Dogs have also changed and diversified considerably since they were first domesticated, probably a little more than 10,000 years ago. In fact if we were reduced to just examining their skeletons many breeds would no doubt be classified as separate species. Of course size differences do prevent successful mating between some pairs of breeds. And Steve Jones (2000) claims, “Even when large forms like Great Dane and St Bernard are mated, the young are defective, as they inherit so many genes for abnormal growth”. Does this mean we can now call them separate species? But most dog breeds can successfully form fertile hybrids, even with wolves.

Human activity has certainly had a hand in the evolution of plants.

For example many new hybrids of previously geographically isolated plants have been made in the last 300 years, often in plant nurseries. Some of these hybrids, such as ragwort (Jones 2000), blackberry, rhododendron, lantana, old man’s beard and spartina, have become noxious weeds in many countries (although one of my friends says concrete is actually the worst noxious weed).

But the change in crop plants actually began more than 10,000 years ago. Once we have any form of domestication the direction of selection changes. Studies have shown grains such as wheat and maize evolved interesting changes as a result of the prehistoric human harvesting, and eventually sowing, of wild forms. These changes were mainly in the size of the individual grains and in the ease of harvesting. The first step in the domestication of grasses would have been the carrying of wild grass seed-heads back to a seasonal home base. Those strains of grasses that held the seeds more firmly to the head by a strong rachis would have been the ones that made it there (Attenborough 1987). By the next season the grains that had been spilled around the campsite would have grown. They would then have been the easiest ones harvested. Natural selection for a strong rachis. The process would have been gradual though, almost certainly over a period of several thousand years. Collecting of grass seed may have started in the Middle East as long ago as 50,000 years; Neanderthal times (Jones 2001). Once humans discovered sowing the seeds was possible selection for large seeds could have been rapid. This would have been helped by the survival of multiple-chromosome grasses formed through mutations (e.g. tetraploid). The mingling of different strains by trading would also have given rise to hybrids through cross pollination (Jobling et al 2004), a similar process to what has happened with the nursery hybrids formed in more recent times.

The jury will soon see that all the above patterns continue throughout Human Evolution. But the defence has one last piece of evidence to present before we can begin to follow our evolution from apes until today.

See next :: Human Evolution On Trial - 'Extinctions'

Witnesses Called

Attenborough, David (1987) The First Eden. Guild, London.

Bradley et al (1996) Mitochondrial Diversity and the Origins of African and European Cattle. Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. Vol. 93 pp. 5131-5135.

Buntjer et al (2002) Phylogeny of Bovine Species Based on AFLP Fingerprinting. Heredity 88, 46-51.

Corfield, Richard (2001) Architects of Eternity. Headline Book Publishing, London.(UK/US)

Flannery, Tim (2001) The Eternal Frontier. Text Publishing, Australia. (UK/US)

Howe, K. R. (2003) The Quest for Origins. Penguin, New Zealand

Jobling et al (2004) Human Evolutionary Genetics. Garland Science, New York. (UK/US)

Jones, Martin (2001) The Molecule Hunt. The Penguin Press, London.

Jones, Steve (2000) Almost Like a Whale. Anchor, London. (UK/US)

Livezey, Bradley C. (1991) A Phylogenetic Analysis and Classification of Recent Dabbling Ducks (Tribe Anatini) Based on Comparative Morphology. The Auk, 108: 471-507.

Lovelock, J. E. (1989) Gaia, a New Look at Life on Earth. Oxford University Press, Oxford.

Mayr, Ernst and Diamond, Jared (2001) The Birds of Northern Melanesia. Oxford University Press, New York. (UK/US)

Putman, Rory (1988) The Natural History of Deer. Cornell University Press, New York. (UK/US)

Tattersall, Ian and Schartz, Jeffrey H. (2000) Extinct Humans. Westview Press, New York. (UK/US)

Tudge, Colin (1996) The Time Before History. Scribner, New York. (UK/US)

Weiner, Jonathan (1995) The Beak of the Finch. Random House, London.

Palaeolithic Origins of Stonehenge? Eternal Idol

Eternal Idol Blog Archive Time Team, Stonehenge and the Palaeolithic…

Something of a surprise from Stonehenge, as reported at Eternal Idol...

Another amazing aspect that’s just come to light is that the archaeologists discovered Palaeolithic material there, beneath the Mesolithic deposits at the southern end of the Avenue. More details of this will certainly emerge at a later date elsewhere from more informed sources, but the realisation that this area was in active use over 10,000 years ago set my mind reeling, while there’s a clear suggestion of the continuity of this use over the course of millennia.

The existence of the Mesolithic post holes and the formidable structures they once held just to the northwest of Stonehenge are astonishing enough, as they clearly imply that this ancient area somehow retained its value to the many generations who lived and died before the first earthworks at Stonehenge were put in place in or around 3,000 BC, about 5,000 years later.

However, the discovery of Palaeolithic material at the start of the Avenue places the significance of the site and landscape of Stonehenge at a different order of magnitude, to my mind, and I’m happy to admit that my imagination’s been (privately) running riot.

Hopefully Dennis and/or the Stonehenge Riverside Project, will post further details in the near future.

A Host of Intriguing Discoveries by the Stonehenge Riverside Project

Eternal Idol:: Blog Archive::A host of intriguing discoveries by the Stonehenge Riverside Project

Here's a quick link to some of the most recent news to emanate from this year's explorations at Stonehenge, in this instance conducted by the Riverside Project, and related to us here by Dennis Price, who has evidently paid a visit there. Here's a brief extract...

There have been some fascinating finds in the field to the west of Stonehenge itself, as well as at the eastern end of the Cursus and at various sites along the Avenue. To begin with, however, Pete’s photo (above) shows a trench being dug at the southern end of the Avenue close to the River Avon. There are a number of remarkable aspects to this trench, the first of which is that a Mesolithic layer was discovered where the young lady with the trowel and the pink top at the front of the photo is kneeling.

Behind her, the gentleman with the orange top is digging a Neolithic round ditch, but as the trench extends away from the camera and away from the ditch, the archaeologists have discovered Bronze Age artefacts, then Iron Age and then mediaeval remains, making it highly unusual by any standards.

We are promised more news in due course, which in turn will doubltess be reported here.

Four Stone Hearth #49 @ A Hot Cup of Joe

A Hot Cup of Joe::Blog Archive::Four Stone Hearth #49

It has been noted in the past that some of the smaller components of our reality are the most effective - diminutive England striker Theo Walcott's hat-trick heroics against Croatia last night being a case in point -

Croatia had been terrified by his jet-propelled charges. "Lightning quick, a great finisher who scored goals and not from easy positions," muttered Slaven Bilic in defeat.

In a similar vein, we have the latest edition of Four Stone Hearth over at A Hot Cup of Joe, which although not as voluminous as some previous editions, nevertheless packs something of a punch, a point reinforced by Martin R's review of Auf den Spuren des "Elbe-Kommandos" Rammjäger.

Julien makes a welcome return at A Very Remote Period Indeed, with a look at some Palaeolithic assemblages of the Near, Middle and Far East, there are some nice neuroanthropology posts, and a select sample of other archaeology news, and of course the Neanderthals, without whose presence, no anthro blog carnival should really be considered complete.

To read these posts, just click through to Four Stone Hearth 49, and follow the links accordingly - the next edition on September 24th will be hosted by Yann Klimentidis, and submissions should be sent to him or via 4SH, details of which can be found on the linked page.

The Archaeology Channel Upgraded: VIRCAS Videos

The Archaeology Channel: VIRCAS Videos

If you subscribe to the TAC newsletter, the latest edition gives details of a new initiative which enables online viewers to watch TAC content as full screen, high resolution presentations, instead of the customary windowed showings that have until now been available. To this end,TAC have released their own player, which once downloaded, will grant the viewer access to the content, in this case a set of five documentaries; the aim of this latest presentation is for TAC to analyse this new technology for the future, so the more of us who participate in this, the better.

NB: For the time being, the VIRCAS player is only available for Windows users, although a Mac version is slated for release in the near future.

Here's an introductory message from the TAC website...

We present the following films at the highest possible resolution for only a short time as a test of the new VIRCAS player, which features the ability to deliver up to true High Definition video via on-demand streaming to viewers with only modest bandwidth. You can see Broadcast DVD quality at 1.2 mbps and HD at 2 mbps. The Greatest Good is available in HD, while the others will play at DVD quality. To watch these videos, just download the VIRCAS player (see link below; only for Windows users–the Mac version is coming soon) and then click on “Watch Now” for your selected video. The player will test your bandwidth and deliver the highest resolution your system will permit.

Here's a list of those films...

Bilad Chinqit: The Land of Chinguetti (Mauritania, 59 min) (DVD quality)

A Forgotten Place: The History of an Abandoned Farming Community (North Carolina, 52 min.) (DVD quality)

The Greatest Good (United States, 124 min.) (High Definition)

In Vivid Color: Voices from Shiloh’s Mound (Tennessee, 22 min.) (DVD quality)

Signs Out of Time: The Story of Archaeologist Marija Gimbutas (Worldwide, 59 min.) (DVD quality)

And if you click through to this page, you'll find details and links about how to download the VIRCAS player, obtain the activation code and and watch the films.

Further down this same page you'll find brief outlines and details of the films, the majority of which run for around an hour, similar to TV-length documentaries but without the intrusive advertising breaks that candistract viewers' attention - so far I've only had time to watch part of
Bilad Chinqit: The Land of Chinguetti, which was excellent, (and indeed revelatory) of which I'll write more in due course, but suffice it to say that the new full-screen experience is a major improvement, and one which will doubtless continue to make future TAC presentations even better than those posted over recent years in the smaller format.

And although TAC presentations don't contain ad breaks, there is a commercial aspect to TAC, which allows visitors to their Marketplace to purchase many of the videos presented online - these are in DVD and/or VHS format, and as such I'd imagine they would make excellent gifts, either to oneself or interested others. Moreover, there is an extensive catalogue of books for sale, comprising a good eclectic mix aimed at the general reader, and which should appeal to anyone who has regularly watched TAC video content.

As mentioned earlier, I'll write up at least one of the videos featured above, but in the interim, my recommendation would be to check them out for yourself.

Smithsonian Folkways - The Folkways Collection Podcast - review

Smithsonian Folkways :: The Folkways Collection

I recently read a post at Centauri Dreams, 'Preserving Future History', which discusses the challenges faced by those in the present day wishing to record information on digital media in such a way as to make it accessible in the distant future - one of the main problems is the speed with which computer hardware and software become obsolete, preventing users of more recent technology accessing data on (perishable) disks and such. Until the digital age arrived, the printed word on a published page was the commonest analogue solution to reading past writing, and although we make the assumption that all the data we now have in digital format on computers and the Internet will be available far into the future, there is good evidence to show that we have already lost many invaluable data-sets, and that similar problems might well arise in the future - check the linked article for more discussion, as well as the thoughtful readers' comments that follow.

But the purpose of this post is to quickly mention how Moses Asch, described as a musical archaeologist, spent many years gathering sounds of music and speech from America in particular and the world in general, over a period of three decades, at a time when technological developments enabled people for the first time to go out and record all manner of music from a huge diversity of sources around the globe. Part of the result is the Folkways Collection, as I discovered when I downloaded the podcasts from iTunes U, and which between them comprise around 24 hours of assembled musical snippets, culled from the archive, as well as interviews with some of those who wrote, played and sang the music, along with assorted comments and insights from all manner of contemporary people who were otherwise involved. Here's a description of Folkways Records from the Smithsonian website...

Folkways Records & Service Co. was founded in 1948 in New York City by Moses Asch (1905-1986) and Marian Distler (1919-1964). Under Asch's enthusiastic and dedicated direction, Folkways sought to record and document the entire world of sound. Between 1948 and Asch's death, Folkways' tiny staff released 2,168 albums. Topics included traditional, ethnic, and contemporary music from around the world; poetry, spoken word, and instructional recordings in numerous languages; and documentary recordings of individuals, communities, current events, and natural sounds.

As one of the first record companies to offer albums of "world music," and as an early exponent of the singers and songwriters who formed the core of the American folk music revival (including such giants as Woody Guthrie, Pete Seeger, and Lead Belly), Asch's Folkways grew to become one of the most influential record companies in the world.

Following Asch's death in 1987, the Smithsonian Institution Center for Folklife and Cultural Heritage in Washington, D.C., acquired Folkways Recordings and the label's business papers and files in order to ensure that the sounds and genius of its artists would continue to be available to future generations.

As a condition of the acquisition, the Smithsonian agreed that virtually all of the firm's 2,168 titles would remain "in print" forever--a condition that Smithsonian Folkways continues to honor through its custom order service. Whether it sells 8,000 copies each year or only one copy every five years, every Folkways title remains available for purchase.

The podcasts available include a 3-parter, 'The Anthology of American Folk Music', a similar set on world music (including tribal and shamanic material), and others which address genres such as Country and Bluegrass, Blues and Jazz. Still others are specifically dedicated to Asch, Woody Guthrie, Phil Ochs and Pete Seeger, 'Lead Belly', and of course Bob Dylan, as well as a host of other comparatively unsung musicians, whose names may be unfamiliar, but whose contributions were nonetheless immense. There's a specific show on American poets in which Kerouac, Ginsberg, Leonard Cohen et al are featured, as well as some more generalised offerings, like the fascinating 'Music and the Winds of Change: Labor', and the equally compelling 'Voices of History', 'A Folkways Overture' and 'Epilogue'.

There's way too much content to for me to cover in a short blog post, but having listened to all the programmes I can do little other than highly recommend the entire ensemble to anyone with even a passing interest in music, its history, various roles and some of the accompanying characters, who over the latter half of the 20th century, completely revolutionised one aspect of popular culture, and whose influence will doubtless live on for many years to come.

But most of all this is an exceptionally well constructed series of programmes, very well presented by Cathy Ennis, which provide very enjoyable listening, as well as imparting a real feeling that whatever else humankind has achieved - or failed at - over the past few decades, music as evidenced here, was one of the greatest gifts we were given and ran with, and it's very worthwhile taking the time to sit down and take in just this small sample of the greater whole. The Folkways Collection was and is unlike any other set of such recordings, mainly because it was never meant to be a commercial enterprise solely aimed at making vast profits at the expense of the consumer, rather being an effort to document and preserve a unique record of human creativity - much of it inspired by human suffering and endurance.

All of which brings us back to the question raised at the beginning of this post, namely how we should make every effort to record as much of what we have now for posterity, as we owe it to our descendants to hand on intact the defining sounds and visions of our own ancestors and contemporaries, just as much as we need to preserve and document our current technical progression from analogue to digital information, and from being an Earth-bound species that might yet survive long enough to travel out across space to distant worlds. The challenge is to develop technology that can store such records and data, in such a way that humans living decades and centuries after us will still be able to gain access to - and hopefully derive pleasure from - this and other snapshots of ourselves.

The 24 shows can be accessed directly from this page, and there is of course the option to subscribe - for free - via iTunes U. You'll need a reasonably fast connection and about a gigabyte of disk space to accommodate the podcasts in all their glory, as well as plenty of time to sit down and listen to them all.

This project was made in association with CKUA Radio.

see also :: Studs Terkel (website)

image from here