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Early in human history, people were willing to make enormous sacrifices in order to satisfy their deities. Some cave dwellers even cut off their own fingers, according to new research.

These are examples of negative hand images with missing fingers on calcite draperies in Cosquer Cave, located in Calanque de Morgiou, France [Credit: Jean Clottes]

It was a mystery archaeologists couldn’t figure out for decades. Cave paintings nearly 27,000 years old sometimes depicted hands with missing fingers — but why?

A team of anthropologists and archaeologists from British Columbia’s Simon Fraser University now believe humans in the Upper Palaeolithic era amputated their fingers in religious rituals and that the incredibly painful experience might have helped groups of humans form intensely strong bonds.

Master’s student Brea McCauley and supervisors David Maxwell and Mark Collard combed through records dating back to the 1600s for examples of researchers and travellers who noted the practice of finger amputation.

McCauley, who led the team, was surprised to find examples of finger amputation on every continent humans inhabit.

“We did not expect, in the slightest, to find 121 societies that engaged in finger amputation,” McCauley said in an interview.

Closwer view of hand images in Cosquer Cave [Credit: Fanny Broadcast/ Gamma-Rapho via Getty Images]

In one instance, a cave in France featured hand paintings from 50 different individuals, including men, women and children. Many had fingers missing.

The team posited that finger amputation was likely done as either a sign of mourning or as a sacrifice in order to appeal to a deity for assistance. And the ritual may have helped, but likely not in the way early humans thought.

Group amputations of people’s fingers in a highly ritualized practice probably had the “side effect” of creating powerful bonds among participants, said Collard, an archaeology professor at SFU.

Existing research suggests deeply uncomfortable experiences can in fact make people more loyal to others who share the same trauma, explained McCauley.

“These rituals that might be painful or might cause emotional distress create really strong communities. They bind people as though they are family,” she said.

“So that means they are really likely to look out for one another and that means they might be hostile to other groups because they are so bounded inward.”

While these rituals were happening during the Upper Palaeolithic era, modern humans spread across much of the world and out competed neanderthals.

The research is published in the Journal of Paleolithic Archaeology.

Author: Wanyee Li | Source: The Star Vancouver [December 07, 2018]

Is it in our nature to go to war? Should we just accept the fact that humans have this innate tendency and are hardwired to kill members of other groups?

Rock paintings in Tadrart Acacus region of Libya dated from 12,000 BC to 100 AD [Credit: WikiCommons]

No, says R. Brian Ferguson, professor of anthropology at Rutgers University-Newark. There is no scientific proof that we have an inherent propensity to take up arms and collectively kill.

In a study published in Scientific American, Ferguson argues that war may not be in our nature at all. People might fight and sometimes kill for personal reasons, but homicide, he argues, is not war.

"There is definitely controversy in the field when it comes to this question," says Ferguson, who studies human nature, war and peace. "But it is the overall circumstances that we live in that creates the impulse to go or not go to war."

In his study, "War May Not Be in Our Nature After All. Why We Fight", Ferguson reached back thousands of years to look at the historical roots of warfare to shed light on whether humans have always made war or if armed conflict has only emerged as changing social conditions provided the motivation and organization to collectively kill.

It's a topic he's been studying since the Vietnam War, a period in history that sparked his interest. His research is an attempt to settle an age-old academic debate over whether humans are hardwired to fight wars or if war is a human invention. If war is not ingrained in human nature, that may help provide a basis for arguing against war as an option, he says.

Many scientists and scholars believe that humans as a species are aggressive, brutal and bloodthirsty and this behavior is part of our DNA. Ferguson argues, however, that there is no real indication or scientific proof that humans have been waging war for the entire history of the species.

"Warlike cultures in some places became common only over the past 10,000 years and in most place more recently than that," Ferguson says.

In his research, Ferguson looked at cases reported as violent deaths throughout the prehistoric record. He found that 15 percent to 25 percent of deaths that many anthropologists and archeologists say were the result of war may reflect cherry-picking the most violent cases, which are contradicted by broad surveys of all archaeological sites.

"Individual killing is not the same as war on social groups," says Ferguson. "War leaves physical traces that archaeologists can find. When and where it began is very different in different places around the world, but there are stretches of even thousands of years when there are no clear signs of war."

Part of the reason for the debate, Ferguson says, is that the evidence used to identify prehistoric warfare – weapons, art and cave paintings, defensive structures and skeletal remains – are often ambiguous and difficult to interpret. Careful examination of all evidence typically finds no strong indication of war in early remains, which changes to clear signs of war in later periods.

He disputes the belief of many scholars that humans may have inherited their genetic makeup from their chimpanzee cousins millions of years ago. After examining every reported chimpanzee killing, Ferguson, who is writing a book on the subject, believes that war among chimps was not an evolved evolutionary strategy but rather a response to human contact and disturbances.

So why did war become so common in more recent archaeological finds? Ferguson says that preconditions that made war more likely became far more widespread, including social hierarchy, a more sedentary existence, a growing regional population, valuable resources and the establishment of boundaries. These conditions have sometimes worsened with severe environmental changes, he says.

Ferguson, who also studies contemporary war, brutal civil wars around the world and U.S. wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, agrees with anthropologist Margaret Mead that "warfare is only an invention, not a biological necessity," but does he not see war ending.

"Anthropologists think about prospects for war in the long term," Ferguson says. "If the idea that war is part of human nature is not scientifically supported, alternative futures open up. If more people work for prevention, the eventual eradication of war is a definite theoretical possibility."

Source: Rutgers University [December 04, 2018]

Scientists are painting the clearest picture yet of what life may have been like for Neanderthals living in Southern France some 250,000 years ago, and to do it, they're using an unlikely day-to-day record of what their environment was like—their teeth.

Teeth may be an important new resource for understanding the lives of our extinct relatives, said Daniel Green, a postdoctoral fellow at the Forsyth Institute, an affiliate of Harvard Dental School of Medicine [Credit: Kris Snibbe/Harvard University]

A team of researchers showed that examining the teeth of Neanderthal infants could yield insight into nursing and weaning behavior as well as winter and summer cycles. The study even found evidence that the Neanderthals had been exposed to lead—the earliest such exposure ever recorded in any human ancestor.

The study from researchers Daniel Green, a postdoctoral fellow at the Harvard-affiliated Forsyth Institute; Tanya Smith, a former Harvard professor now at Griffith University in Australia; and Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai researchers Christine Austin and Manish Arora, who is also a former postdoctoral fellow at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health, was recently published in Science Advances.

"Humans are very different from other apes," said Green, one of the first authors of the study. "We are curious to understand what made us different in evolutionary history, and a lot of people have looked to the climate to understand those differences.

"Obviously, we are changing the climate today, but in the past the climate was shaping us, and a number of theories suggest that changes in the seasonal availability of water drove us to take one part of our behavioral repertoire—stone-tool-making—and use that much more frequently," he continued.

"But that idea is hard to test … because we don't know what rainfall was like 2, 3, or 4 million years ago. It turns out teeth are a really good way of addressing this problem because they grow in rings, like a tree, but those rings are formed every day."

And much like tree rings, he said, changes in the environment—such as winters and summers—are recorded in the chemical composition of teeth, giving modern scientists a window into the seasonal patterns with which Neanderthals contended.

The study builds partly on research Green conducted several years ago as part of his Ph.D., in which he raised a flock of 10 sheep at Harvard's Concord Field Station.

"What we did was collect 700 gallons of glacial melt water from Montana, so we could give it to the sheep and contrast it with Boston water as a way to create these artificial, experimental seasons," Green said. "Everything was carefully controlled—we were measuring their body chemistry in real time, their environmental chemistry in real time, and we built a computational and statistical model to predict, based on measurements we can make in the teeth, what the seasons were like when they were living."

The technique proved to be so effective, Green said, that not only could he identify the seasonal differences between the two water supplies, he was even able to spot short-lived environmental changes like snowstorms.

"Everything was working, but we were seeing one small blip," he said. "When we went back to the animals' lives … it turned out that there had been two big snow storms that were not a planned part of the experiment. The sheep had eaten snow from the ground, and that was reflected in their tooth chemistry. So the system worked so well that it actually ended up re-creating storm events, and teaching us about our own experiment."

Informed by these findings, and adding barium and lead measurements to the oxygen isotope analyses in teeth, Smith and her international team of archaeologists, biological anthropologists, Earth scientists, and public health specialists were able to identify a similar seasonal pattern in Neanderthal teeth.

"We can see that one of the Neanderthals was born in the spring and weaned from mother's milk in the fall, and we can see they were exposed to lead a number of discrete times in the winter," Green said. "That was a striking result, and there is still a lot of mystery about it. We don't actually know where that lead comes from … but we do know that later, during the Roman period and onward, there were lead mines in the area, so it's possible that lead in the ground had contaminated some water or food sources."

What is known, Green said, is that teeth may be an important new resource for understanding the lives of our extinct relatives.

"The oxygen analysis used in this study is a new type that has been used only a few times previously," Green said. "So to validate that work, and show we can pick out these seasonal cycles from Neanderthal teeth, we looked at some of the analyses I had done for my Ph.D., used them to validate the technique, and we then applied it to Neanderthals."

Going forward, Green hopes to trace the source of lead exposure found in the Neanderthal teeth, but also believes the finding may set other scientists on the path to searching for similar exposures in other early populations. The ability to track these exposures in teeth opens the door to using the technique in contemporary populations as well, he said.

"If people are saying they have been exposed to lead or that their water isn't clean, we could go to that community and look at the teeth children are losing naturally," Green said. "We could use this type of analysis to understand who has been exposed, by how much, and what kind of interventions are needed to deal with those issues."

Green also said he hopes to see researchers apply the technique to other early human ancestors, particularly those in Africa, in an effort to understand the environmental challenges they faced as they evolved.

"I didn't expect that the very detailed and technical geochemical work I did would apply to such a salient question about the lives of Neanderthals and in Europe, so this has been very rewarding for me," he said. "It's very exciting to have these cousins who are so closely related to us, and who contributed to our DNA, and to see these very precise moments in their lives and place them in some sort of environmental and seasonal context."

Author: Peter Reuell | Source: Harvard University [December 04, 2018]

The Dental Anthropology Group of the Centro Nacional de Investigación sobre la Evolución Humana (CENIEH) has just published a paper on dental histology in the journal Comptes Rendus PALEVOL, in which a comparison is made for the first time between the sample from the Sima de los Huesos site, in Atapuerca (Burgos), and dental samples from the Neanderthal site of Krapina, in Croatia, as well as with different modern human populations.

The Dental Anthropology Group of the CENIEH has published the first dental histology study of Sima de los Huesos, which reinforces the close relationship between this European Middle Pleistocene population  and the species Homo neanderthalensis [Credit: CENIEH]

This is a comparative study centering on the canines, in which certain dental pieces from Homo antecessor were included, whose results make it clear that the Pleistocene populations at Atapuerca already showed the pattern considered typically Neanderthal in their enamel and dentine volumes.

“The teeth from Sima de los Huesos exhibit large coronal and root dentine dimensions, as well as thin enamel. This histological pattern has traditionally been considered a distinctive trait of the Neanderthals, and it has allowed them to be distinguished both from other groups and from modern humans”, according to Cecilia García Campos, lead author of the paper.

Further, the results of this study might support an early appearance of this highly characteristic dental trait, which had been observed as early as 800,000 years ago in Homo antecessor, and maintained in later groups during the Middle Pleistocene.

The fossils found at Sima de los Huesos were initially considered to belong to the taxon Homo heidelbergensis, a species which populated Europe before the Neanderthals, so named from the mandible found in the locality of Heidelberg (Germany).

Nevertheless, a study led by Juan Luis Arsuaga, Centro Mixto UCM-ISCIII de Evolución y Comportamiento Humanos de Madrid, published in 2014 in the journal Science, raised doubts about this assignment, and suggested removing the population at Sima from this taxon because of its evident similarities to Homo neanderthalensis.

Later, two genetic studies of Sima de los Huesos, published in the journal Nature in 2014 and 2016, underpinned this decision by showing that these hominins belonged to the Neanderthal evolutionary lineage because of their close relationship to the ancestors of the Neanderthals.

“The dental histology results obtained for the individuals at la Sima de los Huesos support the close relationship there must have been between the Middle Pleistocene hominins at Atapuerca and the later Neanderthal groups living in Europe”, adds García Campos.

Source: CENIEH - Centro Nacional de Investigación sobre la Evolución Humana [December 01, 2018]

A team of scientists led by Mohamed Sahnouni, archaeologist at the Centro Nacional de Investigación sobre la Evolución Humana (CENIEH), has just published a paper in the journal Science which breaks with the paradigm that the cradle of Humankind lies in East Africa, based on the archaeological remains found at sites in the region of Ain Hanech (Algeria), the oldest currently known in the north of Africa.

Archaeological excavation at Ain Boucherit, Algeria [Credit: Mathieu Duval]

For a long time, East Africa has been considered the place of origin of the earliest hominins and lithic technology, because up to now, very little was known about the first hominin occupation and activities in the north of the continent. Two decades of field and laboratory research directed by Dr. Sahnouni have shown that ancestral hominins actually made stone tools in North Africa that are near contemporary with the earliest known stone tools in East Africa dated to 2.6 million years.

These are stone artifacts and animal bones bearing marks of cutting by stone tools, with an estimated chronology of 2.4 and 1.9 million years, respectively, found at two levels at the sites of Ain Boucherit (within the Ain Hanech study area), which were dated using Paleomagnetism, Electron Spin Resonance (ESR), and the Biochronology of large mammals excavated together with the archaeological materials.

Fossils of animals such as pigs, horses and elephants, from very ancient sites, have been used by the paleontologist Jan van der Made, of the Museo Nacional de Ciencias Naturales in Madrid, to corroborate the ages yielded by Paleomagnetism, obtained by the CENIEH geochronologist Josep Parés, and ESR, found by Mathieu Duval, of Griffith University.

Members of Ain Hanech team excavating at Ain Boucherit [Credit: Sahnouni et al., 2018]

The artifacts of Ain Boucherit were manufactured of locally available limestone and flint and include faces worked into choppers, polyhedra and subspheroids, as well as sharp-edged cutting tools used to process animal carcasses. These artifacts are typical of the Oldowan stone technology known from 2.6-1.9 million-year-old sites in East Africa, although those from Ain Boucherit show subtle variations.

"The lithic industry of Ain Boucherit, which is technologically similar to that of Gona and Olduvai, shows that our ancestors ventured into all corners of Africa, not just East Africa. The evidence from Algeria changes the earlier view that East Africa was the cradle of Humankind. Actually, the whole of Africa was the cradle of humankind," states Sahnouni, leader of the Ain Hanech project.

Ain Boucherit is one of the few archaeological sites in Africa which has provided evidence of bones with associated marks of cutting and percussion in situ with stone tools, which shows unmistakably that these ancestral hominins exploited meat and marrow from animals of all sizes and skeletal parts, which implied skinning, evisceration and defleshing of upper and intermediate extremities.

Two examples of stone tools from Ain Boucherit. An Oldowan core from which sharp-edged cutting flakes were removed (left). Sharp-edged cutting flake that may be used for butchery activities on the bones (right) [Credit: Mohamed Sahnouni]

Isabel Cáceres, taphonomist at the IPHES, has commented that "the effective use of sharp-edged tools at Ain Boucherit suggests that our ancestors were not mere scavengers. It is not clear at this moment whether they hunted, but the evidence clearly shows that they were successfully competing with carnivores and enjoyed first access to animal carcasses."

At this moment, the most important question is who made the stone tools discovered in Algeria. Hominin remains have still not been found in North Africa which are contemporary with the earliest stone artifacts. As a matter of fact, nor have any hominins yet been documented in direct association with the first stone tools known from East Africa.

Nevertheless, a recent discovery in Ethiopia has shown the presence of early Homo dated to 2.8 million years, most likely the best candidate also for the materials from East and North Africa.

A small bovid bone with stone tool cutmarks [Credit: Isabel Caceres]

Scientists thought for a long time that the hominins and their material culture originated in the Great Rift Valley in East Africa. Surprisingly, the earliest known hominin, dated to 7.0 million years, and the 3.3 million years Australopithecus bahrelghazali, have been discovered in Chad, in the Sahara, 3000 km from the rift valleys in the east of Africa.

As Sileshi Semaw, scientist at the CENIEH and a co-author of this paper, explains that the hominins contemporary with Lucy (3.2 million years), were probably roamed over the Sahara, and their descendants might have been responsible for leaving these archaeological puzzles now discovered in Algeria, that are near contemporaries of those of East Africa.

"Future research will focus on searching for human fossils in the nearby Miocene and Plio-Pleistocene deposits, looking for the tool-makers and even older stone tools," concludes Sahnouni.

Source: Centro Nacional de Investigación sobre la Evolución Humana (CENIEH) [November 30, 2018]

A research group from Russia and the United States analyzed samples of obsidian volcanic glass in Kabardino-Balkaria. It turned out that more than 70 thousand years ago, Neanderthals transferred this mineral to distances up to 250 kilometers and used it to manufacture tools. These findings help to understand how populations from different regions communicated in antiquity. The study was supported by the Russian Science Foundation and is published in the Journal of Archaeological Science: Reports.

A) obsidian in rocks formed during the eruption; B), C) obsidian boulders ("bombs"), differing in colour and shape  [Credit: Ekaterina V. Doronicheva et al./Journal of Archaeological Science: Reports, 2018]

When volcanoes erupted, the ejected lava hardens formed a mixture of various minerals, including obsidian. In the Stone Age, the ancient people used this material extensively to create tools. In fact, we use it even now: in surgery, for the manufacture of dark glass and jewelry.

The elemental composition of obsidian is unique not only for each volcano, but also for each eruption. This makes it possible to determine precisely the specific archaeological site, where particular obsidian sample originated from.

According to earlier studies, in the Paleolithic in Central Europe and the Caucasus, obsidians were actively transferred from one settlement to another, and over time the distance of its transportation increased from 100 to more than 700 kilometers.

Scientists from the non-profit organization "Laboratory of Prehistory" analyzed the elemental composition of obsidian samples from various Neanderthals ites of the Central and North-Western Caucasus, which were found during several expeditions. The obsidian composition turned out to be almost identical for many tools, which indicates their common origin.

Saradj-Chuko Grotto. 2017 excavations. 1) View from the grotto to the Saradj-Chuko (Fanduko) river valley; 2)–9) – obsidian tools from layer 6B, 2017 excavations [Credit: Ekaterina V. Doronicheva et al./ Journal of Archaeological Science: Reports, 2018]

New data also indicates that obsidian was transported over more than 250 kilometers from sources in the Central Caucasus to the North-West Caucasus during the Middle Paleolithic. At the same time, new studies show that the Central Caucasus populations cultural tradition differed from the Neanderthals of the North-West Caucasus. So archaeologists have yet to figure out how the interaction between these different Neanderthals groups was build in this period.

Scientists also found that in the Upper Paleolithic, people transported obsidians from the Elbrus region and the South Caucasus to the Mezmay cave, which is located in the North-West Caucasus. The length of migration was 250 and 450 kilometers respectively. The researchers suggest that in the Upper Paleolithic there was already a developed social network between groups of people from different regions.

"The study of cultural areas, the impact of innovations and mechanisms for the dissemination of new technologies is one of the most important tasks of modern research. Our work reliably shows the existence of connections of the population of different regions in antiquity.

These results can be widely used in university lectures, as well as in modern textbooks for middle and high school. Also, the results of recent studies can be used in the design of expositions of museums and thematic exhibitions," summarizes Ekaterina Doronicheva, one of the authors of the work, Ph.D., research associate of the "Laboratory of Prehistory".

Source: Akson Russian Science Communication [November 29, 2018]

Beginning more than 1.5 million years ago, early humans made stone handaxes in a style known as the Acheulean -- the longest lasting tool-making tradition in prehistory. New research led by the Max Planck Institute for the Science of Human History and the Saudi Commission for Tourism and National Heritage has documented an Acheulean presence in the Arabian Peninsula dating to less than 190,000 years ago, revealing that the Arabian Acheulean ended just before or at the same time as the earliest Homo sapiens dispersals into the region.

Handaxes from the site of Saffaqah, Saudi Arabia [Credit: Palaeodeserts/Ian R. Cartwright]

Much attention has been given to understanding the spread of our own species, Homo sapiens, first within Africa and then beyond. However, less attention has been given to where diverse groups of close evolutionary cousins lived in Eurasia immediately prior to the arrival of Homo sapiens. Understanding this is critical because the spatial and temporal characteristics of such groups reveal the human and cultural landscape first encountered by our species on leaving Africa.

The youngest Acheulean site in Southwest Asia

In a paper published in Scientific Reports, an international team of researchers led by the Max Planck Institute for the Science of Human History and the Saudi Commission for Tourism and National Heritage reports the first ever dates obtained from an Acheulean site in Arabia, the site of Saffaqah, situated in Central Saudi Arabia. Saffaqah is the first stratified Acheulean site to be reported in the Arabian Peninsula and the dates reveal that early humans occupied the site until at least 190,000 years ago. These dates are surprisingly recent for a region known to feature among the oldest examples of such technology outside Africa. For example, dates from the Levant document an ancient Acheulean presence from 1.5 million years ago. Conversely the site of Saffaqah features the youngest Acheulean tools yet found in southwest Asia.

Researcher Eleanor Scerri with giant Acheulean core from which flakes were struck  to create the handaxes [Credit: Palaeodeserts]

Over 500 stone tools, including handaxes and other artefacts known as cleavers, were recovered from the occupation levels. Some of the stone flakes used to make handaxes were in such fresh condition that they were recovered still resting on the stone nodules from which they had been detached. These and other artefacts show that the early humans responsible for making them were manufacturing stone tools at this site.

"It is not surprising that early humans came here to make stone tools," says Dr. Eleanor Scerri of the Max Planck Institute for the Science of Human History, the lead author of the study. "The site is located on a prominent andesite dyke that rises above the surrounding plain. The spot was both a source of raw material as well as a prime location to survey a landscape that, back then, sat between two major river systems." This choice location also seems to have continued to be attractive to early humans at an even later date than those recorded by the researchers in this study. Layers containing identical stone handaxes are also found above the dense occupation layers that were dated, raising the possibility that Saffaqah is among the youngest Acheulean sites documented anywhere.

Hominins living at the edge

The new dating results both record the late persistence of the Acheulean in the Peninsula and also show that as yet unidentified hominin populations were using networks of now extinct rivers to disperse into the heart of Arabia during a time of increased rainfall in the region. This suggests that these hominins were able to live on the margins of habitable zones and take advantage of relatively brief "greening" episodes in a generally arid area. The dispersal of these hominins into the heart of Arabia may also help to explain the surprisingly late persistence of the Acheulean, as it suggests a degree of isolation.

Archaeologists excavating the site of Saffaqah, Saudi Arabia [Credit: Palaeodeserts]

"These hominins were resourceful and intelligent," adds Dr. Scerri, "They dispersed across a challenging landscape using technology commonly seen as reflecting a lack of inventiveness and creativity. Instead of perceiving the Acheulean this way, we should really be struck by how flexible, versatile and successful this technology was."

Cutting edge science

To date the sediments from the site of Saffaqah, the researchers used a combination of dating techniques known as luminescence methods, including a newly developed infrared-radiofluorescence (IR-RF) dating protocol for potassium rich feldspars. The method relies on the ability of such minerals to store energy induced by natural radioactivity and to release this energy in the form of light. "The application of IR-RF dating allowed us to obtain age estimates from sediments that were previously difficult to reliably date," explains Marine Frouin of the University of Oxford, one of the researchers involved in the dating program.

These discoveries and methods are already leading to new research. "One of the biggest questions we have is whether any of our evolutionary ancestors and close cousins met up with Homo sapiens, and if this could have happened somewhere in Saudi Arabia. Future field work will be dedicated to understanding possible cultural and biological exchanges at this critical time period," says Professor Michael Petraglia of the Max Planck Institute for the Science of Human History, the director of the project which led to the discoveries at Saffaqah.

Source: Max Planck Institute for the Science of Human History [November 29, 2018]

Some of the world's oldest cave paintings have revealed how ancient people had relatively advanced knowledge of astronomy.

Some of the world's oldest cave paintings have revealed how ancient people had relatively advanced knowledge of astronomy. Animal symbols represent star constellations in the night sky, and are used to mark dates and events such as comet strikes, analysis from the University of Edinburgh suggests [Credit: Alistair Coombs]

The artworks, at sites across Europe, are not simply depictions of wild animals, as was previously thought. Instead, the animal symbols represent star constellations in the night sky, and are used to represent dates and mark events such as comet strikes, analysis suggests.

They reveal that, perhaps as far back as 40,000 years ago, humans kept track of time using knowledge of how the position of the stars slowly changes over thousands of years.

The findings suggest that ancient people understood an effect caused by the gradual shift of Earth's rotational axis. Discovery of this phenomenon, called precession of the equinoxes, was previously credited to the ancient Greeks.

Around the time that Neanderthals became extinct, and perhaps before mankind settled in Western Europe, people could define dates to within 250 years, the study shows.

The findings indicate that the astronomical insights of ancient people were far greater than previously believed. Their knowledge may have aided navigation of the open seas, with implications for our understanding of prehistoric human migration.

Some of the world's oldest art has revealed how ancient people had relatively advanced knowledge of astronomy. Animal symbols, such as those used at Gobekli Tepe in modern day Turkey, represent star constellations in the night sky, and are used to mark dates and events such as comet strikes, analysis from the University of Edinburgh suggests [Credit: Alistair Coombs]

Researchers from the Universities of Edinburgh and Kent studied details of Palaeolithic and Neolithic art featuring animal symbols at sites in Turkey, Spain, France and Germany.

They found all the sites used the same method of date-keeping based on sophisticated astronomy, even though the art was separated in time by tens of thousands of years.

Researchers clarified earlier findings from a study of stone carvings at one of these sites - Gobekli Tepe in modern-day Turkey - which is interpreted as a memorial to a devastating comet strike around 11,000 BC. This strike was thought to have initiated a mini ice-age known as the Younger Dryas period.

They also decoded what is probably the best known ancient artwork - the Lascaux Shaft Scene in France. The work, which features a dying man and several animals, may commemorate another comet strike around 15,200 BC, researchers suggest.

The team confirmed their findings by comparing the age of many examples of cave art - known from chemically dating the paints used - with the positions of stars in ancient times as predicted by sophisticated software.

Some of the world's oldest art has revealed how ancient people had relatively advanced knowledge of astronomy. Animal symbols, such as the Lion-Man of Hohlenstein-Stadel Cave, represent star constellations in the night sky, and are used to mark dates and events such as comet strikes, analysis from the University of Edinburgh suggests [Credit: Oleg Kuchar Museum Ulm, Germany]

The world's oldest sculpture, the Lion-Man of Hohlenstein-Stadel Cave, from 38,000 BC, was also found to conform to this ancient time-keeping system.

This study was published in Athens Journal of History.

Dr Martin Sweatman, of the University of Edinburgh's School of Engineering, who led the study, said: "Early cave art shows that people had advanced knowledge of the night sky within the last ice age. Intellectually, they were hardly any different to us today.

"These findings support a theory of multiple comet impacts over the course of human development, and will probably revolutionise how prehistoric populations are seen."

Source: University of Edinburgh [November 27, 2018]

New research has shed light on the origin and extinction of a giant, shaggy Ice Age rhinoceros known as the Siberian unicorn because of its extraordinary single horn.

Australian scientists believe the Siberian unicorn was a victim of climate change [Credit: WikiCommons]

An international team of researchers from Adelaide, Sydney, London, the Netherlands, and Russia, have settled a long-standing debate about the relationship of the Siberian unicorn to living rhinos, and revealed that it survived much later than previously believed, overlapping in time with modern humans.

Published in the journal Nature Ecology and Evolution and led by London's Natural History Museum, the researchers say the Siberian unicorn became extinct around 36,000 years ago. This was most likely because of reduction in steppe grassland where it lived – due to climate change rather than the impact of humans.

Today there are just five surviving species of rhino, although in the past there have been as many as 250 species.

Weighing up to 3.5 tonnes with a single enormous horn, the Siberian unicorn (Elasmotherium sibiricum), which roamed the steppe of Russia, Kazakhstan, Mongolia, and Northern China, was undoubtedly one of the most impressive.

Skeleton of the rhino at the Stavropol Museum [Credit: Igor Doronin]

Genetic analyses performed at the University of Adelaide's Australian Centre for Ancient DNA (ACAD), however, have shown that the Siberian unicorn was the last surviving member of a unique family of rhinos.

"The ancestors of the Siberian unicorn split from the ancestors of all living rhinos over 40 million years ago," says co-author and ACAD researcher Dr. Kieren Mitchell, who analysed the DNA of the Siberian unicorn. It is the first time DNA has ever been recovered from E. sibiricum.

"That makes the Siberian unicorn and the African white rhino even more distant cousins than humans are to monkeys."

This new genetic evidence overturns previous studies that suggested the Siberian unicorn was a very close relative of the extinct woolly rhino and living Sumatran rhino.

It had long been assumed that the Siberian unicorn went extinct well before the last Ice Age, perhaps as much as 200,000 years ago.

Artist’s impression of Elasmotherium [Credit: © W. S. Van der Merwe/Natural History Museum]

In this study 23 Siberian unicorn bone specimens were dated, confirming that the species survived until at least 39,000 years ago, and possibly as late as 35,000 years ago. The Siberian unicorn's final days were shared with early modern humans and Neanderthals.

"It is unlikely that the presence of humans was the cause of extinction," says co-author Professor Chris Turney, climate scientist at the University of New South Wales.

"The Siberian unicorn appears to have been badly hit by the start of the ice age in Eurasia when a precipitous fall in temperature led to an increase in the amount of frozen ground, reducing the tough, dry grasses it lived on and impacting populations over a vast region."

Other species that shared the Siberian unicorn's environment were either less reliant on grass – like the woolly rhino – or more flexible in their diet – like the saiga antelope – and escaped the Siberian unicorn's fate, though the woolly rhino eventually became extinct 20,000 years later.

Author: Robyn Mills | Source: University of Adelaide [November 27, 2018]