Donkey’s Bronze Age Bit and Saddle Bags Called Symbolic

HADAROM, ISRAEL—More information has become available about a donkey that had been ritually buried with a bit and saddle bags 3,700 years ago at Tel Haror. The copper bit in the donkey’s mouth had been assembled from pieces of three separate bits and it was not in working order. No other metal bridle fittings were found. The young donkey’s teeth show no evidence of bit wear. “This strongly suggests that, in the context of the ritual donkey burial of Tel Haror, the bridle bit had symbolic significance and its quality and functional state were of little concern,” wrote the investigative team, headed by Guy Bar-Oz of the University of Haifa. The metal saddle bag fittings indicate that they were probably made of leather.

Modern Humans May Have Depended Upon Rabbits for Survival

LONDON, ENGLAND—A new study led by biologist John Fa of the Durrell Wildlife Conservation Trust and Imperial College, London, suggests that although Neanderthals were expert hunters of large mammals, they may have been too specialized to switch to hunting smaller, faster game such as rabbits when the numbers of large animals dwindled. The team examined food remains from Neanderthal and modern-human sites in Spain, Portugal, and southern France. “We show in our study that [modern humans] used rabbits extensively, but Neanderthals didn’t,” he said. Fa speculates that among modern-human groups, women and children may have specialized in hunting rabbits with help from dogs.

Heart Disease May Be Universal

LOS ANGELES, CALIFORNIA—Neurobiologist Caleb Finch of the University of Southern California used CT scanning technology to examine the arteries of mummies from five different archaeological sites spanning 4,000 years. The Peruvian, ancestral Pueblo Indian, indigenous Aleutian islander, and ancient Egyptian populations that he tested showed signs of atherosclerosis, or narrowing of the arteries. The fats and sugars of the modern diet are known to contribute to clogged arteries and heart disease, but “the generality of our observations suggests it is really a basic part of human aging under all circumstances,” he said.

Europe’s Oldest-Known Fishhooks Found in Germany

WUSTERMARK, GERMANY—Europe’s oldest-known fishhooks have been discovered in a field along with animal and fish remains. Five of the six 12,300-year-old hooks had been carved from reindeer or elk bones; the sixth hook was carved from the 19,000-year-old tusk of a mammoth. It had been thought that Paleolithic hunter-gatherers just speared slow-moving fish such as salmon. The hooks suggest that they also caught faster eel, perch, and pike in lakes as the climate became warmer. “These people had strong ideas to use the new resources of this changing environment,” said Robert Sommer of the University of Kiel.

The Anatomy of a Crystal Skull

WASHINGTON, D.C.—Style problems and lack of provenance have made researchers uneasy about the authenticity of crystal skulls since the early twentieth century. But in recent years, scientists from the Smithsonian Institution, London’s British Museum, and the Quai Branly Museum in Paris have used a battery of sophisticated tests to show that the skulls, which were supposedly carved in Mesoamerica before the arrival of Spanish explorers, are fakes. They used scanning electron microscopy to compare the surfaces of the skulls with the surface of a legitimate Mesoamerican crystal goblet from the Museum of Oaxacan Cultures in Mexico. The etch marks show that the authentic goblet had been crafted with hand tools, while the skulls had been ground with rotary wheels and hard abrasives. Inclusions in the rock of the skull at the British Museum turned out to be a mineral not found in Mexican crystal, and a deposit in the Smithsonian’s skull came from a synthetic, twentieth-century abrasive. A dating technique that measures how deep water penetrates rock showed that the skull in Paris was made after the Spanish conquest.  For more information on how these objects first appeared on the artifact market in the nineteenth century, be sure to read ARCHAEOLOGY's “Legend of the Crystal Skulls,” by Jane MacLaren Walsh of the Smithsonian Institution. She has been instrumental in this research.

Late Roman Site Was Reused by Early Christians

MARYPORT, ENGLAND—Archaeologists Tony Wilmott and Ian Haynes think that they have found a Christian church dating to the end of Roman rule in Britain. Maryport, which is located along the coast of the Solway Firth, was once home to a Roman fort that defended the western end of Hadrian’s Wall. “The discovery of pits containing altars in 1870 led to a belief that these stones were ritually buried by the Roman army. This is something that became accepted. What we discovered was that the altars were actually buried as ballast to support the large posts used for the church buildings,” said Haynes. In a Christian-style burial at the site, volunteers unearthed fragments of bone and a tooth, in addition to a tiny piece of wool that was radiocarbon dated to between 240 and 340 A.D. “In the end, the least unlikely explanation is that the structures include a Christian church,” added Wilmott.

Strike Closes Tourist Venues in Greece

ATHENS, GREECE—A strike by Culture Ministry employees has required archaeological sites and museums across Greece to close today. The workers are protesting reforms that they say could eliminate additional jobs and “constitute a tombstone for the Culture Ministry.” Greece’s continuing financial crisis has led to severe budget cuts and slashed security personnel at its archaeological sites and museums.

Rare Human Y Chromosome Is More than 300,000 Years Old

TUCSON, ARIZONA—Geneticists from the University of Arizona have identified an extremely rare Y chromosome that they say is the oldest-known branch of the human Y chromosome lineage tree. The discovery pushes back the most recent common ancestor for the lineage tree to 338,000 years ago, before the appearance of modern humans in the fossil record. This particular Y chromosome came from an African-American man living in South Carolina who had sent a DNA sample to a consumer genetic testing company. His Y chromosome was eventually matched with 11 men from western Cameroon. “And the sequences of those individuals are variable, so it’s not like they all descended from the same grandfather,” said Michael Hammer of the University of Arizona. “It is likely that other divergent lineages will be found, whether in Africa or among African-Americans in the U.S. and that some of these may further increase the age of the Y chromosome tree,” he added.

DNA From a 33,000-Year-Old Canine Resembles Modern Dog DNA

MOSCOW, RUSSIA—A DNA sample taken from a 33,000-year-old canine skull found in Siberia’s Altai Mountains suggests that the creature was more closely related to modern dogs than to wolves. The skull resembles that of a domestic dog, although the split from wolves had probably been recent, and it is 15,000 years older than evidence of domesticated dogs from the Middle East and East Asia. “Additional discoveries of ancient doglike remains are essential for further narrowing the time and region of origin for the domestic dog,” reported the team of researchers from the Russian Academy of Sciences.

Early Humans Were Fashion Forward

BORDEAUX, FRANCE—A team led by Marian Vanhaeren of the University of Bordeaux made and experimented with shell beads in an effort to replicate the wear patterns found on shell beads from Blombos Cave in South Africa. The researchers came up with six possible ways that the beads may have been strung and worn. “In the lower [75,000-year-old] layers, the shells hang free on a string with their flat, shiny [sides] against each other,” she said. In the younger, 72,000-year-old layers, “the shells are knotted together two by two, with their shiny side up.” This change in style “parallels the many similar changes in symbolic norms observed among more recent and historically known human societies,” the team concluded. 

Looted Artifacts Confiscated at Yemen Airport

SANA’A, YEMEN—Some 1,500 artifacts were confiscated at Sana’a International Airport by customs officials between 2006 and 2012. The recovered objects will be sent to the National Museum, where they will be displayed in a special show after they have been studied. Ibrahim Abdulla Hadi, secretary general of the museum, hopes that the exhibition will help to raise awareness about Yemen’s cultural heritage and encourage local people to inform the authorities when they learn of looting or smuggling activity.

Twenty Stone-Age Skeletons Found in Sahara Desert

CAMBRIDGE, ENGLAND—Twenty skeletons have been found in and around a rock shelter in Libya’s Sahara Desert. The isotopes in their tooth enamel correspond with elements from the local environment, indicating that they had grown up and lived in the area. Fifteen of the skeletons represented women and children that had been buried in the rock shelter between 7,300 and 5,600 years ago. The remains of five men and juveniles had been buried under tumuli outside the rock shelter around 4,500 years ago, at a time when the region became more arid. Rock art in the area suggests that the people had herded cattle, which require more water, until climate change forced them to switch to keeping goats. The change in climate may be reflected in the patterns of the burials. “It must have been a place of memory. People throughout time have kept it, and they have buried their people, over and over, generation after generation,” said Mary Anne Tafuri of the University of Cambridge.