(p. C9) In “Origins: How Earth’s History Shaped Human History,” astrobiologist and professor of science communication Lewis Dartnell argues that “there is a clear causal chain taking us from the politics and socio-economic conditions of today, to their roots in historical agricultural systems, and then further back to the geological tapestry of the ground beneath our feet.”
. . .
The final sentence he offers as summation—“The Earth made us”—can be read two ways, capturing the parallel themes of “Origins.”
With emphasis on “us,” it refers to the origin of the genus Homo, a clade of naked apes giving rise to our species, H. sapiens, the greatest biological superpower of all time, one so potent that all others in our genus are extinct. Why did this emergence take place in the cradle of the East African Rift and nowhere else? And why did the arrival of our genus broadly coincide with the onset of high-frequency climatic swings about two million years ago? Mr. Dartnell concludes that this recently uplifted and intricately rifted landscape created a mosaic of habitats dominated by lakes that further amplified the climatic oscillations between dry-wet and hot-cool conditions. Change was dramatic, frequent, unpredictable and stressful. Thus “intelligence” became “the evolutionary solution to the problem of an environment that shifts faster than natural selection can adapt the body . . . driving . . . ever more flexible and intelligent behavior.”
For the full review, see:
Robert M. Thorson. “The Earth and Us.” The Wall Street Journal (Saturday, April 23, 2022 [sic]): C9.
(Note: ellipsis between paragraph, added; ellipses within paragraph, in original.)
(Note: the online version of the review has the date May 9, 2019 [sic], and has the title “‘Origins’ Review: The Earth and Us.”)
The book under review is:
Dartnell, Lewis. Origins: How Earth’s History Shaped Human History. New York: Basic Books, 2019.
Category: Archaeology
9,000 Years Ago 10,000 Humans Lived in the City of Catalhoyuk
The Catalhoyuk section of Four Cities appears germane to the question: how long have humans more or less like us existed on earth? Apparently at least 9,000 years. But only in the last few hundred years have some humans flourished. The bigger question is: what novel economic system has allowed the the flourishers to leapfrog previous humans?
(p. 16) Nine thousand years ago, the people of Catalhoyuk, maybe 10,000 of them, lived in cuboid clay houses packed against one another above the Konya Plain of south-central Turkey. Their dwellings were uniform, suggesting a highly regulated society: one or two rooms, painted in white or with red ocher designs. You exited not via a front door but by climbing a ladder to the roof. Much of life was lived up there: cooking, socializing, ambling along sidewalks that ran across the top of the city.
Let me say that again in case you missed it: This was 9,000 years ago. In terms of human society, that is just an imponderable span of time. The oldest of the books of the Hebrew Bible date to roughly 3,000 years ago; the pyramids of Egypt go back about 5,000 years. These were not prehumans or near relatives. They were like us: complex, organized, alive to meaning and living at a time beyond reckoning.
. . .
At Catalhoyuk, Newitz hangs out with Ruth Tringham of the University of California, Berkeley, who has devoted years to humanizing the remnants of this city of the dim past by focusing on one skeleton, of a woman she has dubbed Dido. Dido replastered her walls regularly, kept her home swept clean, covered the floor in reed mats and decorated the place with art: clay figures of animals and stylized human females. In other words: much like us.
Catalhoyuk was founded by pioneers of urban living. “When the earliest construction began,” Newitz writes, “many people coming to live at Catalhoyuk were only a generation or two removed from nomadism.” It was brand-new, this fixed settlement thing, but it proved remarkably successful. By the time Dido was born, the city was about 600 years old. I’m tempted to repeat a number yet again. Think of the settled, structured history Dido could look back on. As evidence of her awareness of the past, Dido, like everyone else in town, buried her ancestors in her home, beneath her bed. Some were given a special honor: Their skulls sat in niches in the walls. Dido could enjoy the comfort of her forebears’ empty eye sockets following her as she went about her daily chores. In other words: not so much like us.
. . .
Perhaps looking back 9,000 years can yield practical guidance on how to move forward from where we are. For me, the effect of reading “Four Lost Cities” was more meditative. This is a long, long, long ride we are on. Much is beyond our control. Humanity trundles on.
For the full review, see:
Russell Shorto. “In Ruins.” The New York Times Book Review (Sunday, March 14, 2021 [sic]): 14.
(Note: ellipses added.)
(Note: the online version of the review has the date Feb. 25, 2021 [sic], and has the title “Searching for Our Urban Future in the Ruins of the Past.”)
The book under review is:
Newitz, Annalee. Four Lost Cities: A Secret History of the Urban Age. New York: W. W. Norton & Company, 2021.
Iberian Hunter-Gatherers Were More Sophisticated 9,500 Years Ago Than Previously Known
(p. 6) Hunter-gatherer societies on the Iberian Peninsula were making sophisticated baskets with decorative geometric patterns 9,500 years ago, more than 2,000 years earlier than previously thought, researchers in Spain have reported.
. . .
Francisco Martínez-Sevilla, a researcher of prehistory at the University of Alcalá and the lead author of a paper outlining the findings that was published this week in Science Advances, explained that carbon-14 dating tests had been carried out on 76 objects that were found by 19th-century miners in the Cueva de los Murciélagos, a cave in southern Spain.
The objects, including Europe’s oldest pair of sandals, a wooden stick and mace and exquisitely crafted baskets woven from reed and esparto, were previously believed to have been made by Neolithic farmers.
But the carbon-14 testing carried out by Dr. Martínez-Sevilla’s research group, which has recently excavated human remains in the cave, showed that the best-preserved baskets were, in fact, crafted by hunter-gatherer communities in the Mesolithic era, 9,500 years ago. . . .
“My first reaction was, ‘Oh my God, that is not possible,’” Dr. Martínez-Sevilla said in a telephone interview, explaining how the discovery suggested that Mesolithic societies may have been more complex than previously imagined. “When we realized the magnitude of the findings, we published the paper with all the analysis in less than a year.”
For the full story, see:
(Note: ellipses added.)
(Note: the online version of the story was updated Oct. 3, 2023, and has the title “Hunter-Gatherers Were Making Baskets 9,500 Years Ago, Researchers Say.”)
The research discussed in the passages quoted above is published in the following academic article:
Global Warming “Presents a Fleeting Opportunity for Glacial Archaeologists”
(p. 14) Espen Finstad was trudging through mud in the Jotunheimen mountains of eastern Norway this month when he happened upon a wooden arrow, bound with a pointed tip made of quartzite. Complete with feathers, it was so well-preserved that it looked as if it could have been lost just recently.
. . .
The find, which Mr. Finstad and his colleagues believe belonged to a reindeer hunter in the late Stone Age or early Bronze Age, is among thousands of artifacts and remains that have emerged from melting ice in recent years, as climate change thaws permafrost and glaciers around the world.
. . .
The thaw presents a fleeting opportunity for glacial archaeologists: They must find the historical treasures just as they emerge from the ice and before they are destroyed by the elements.
“We’re sort of in a race against time,” said Lars Holger Pilo, a glacial archaeologist and a colleague of Mr. Finstad’s. . . .
For more than a decade, their team, which runs the Secrets of the Ice project, has scoured mountain passes across the country. . . .
Since then, the team has discovered around 4,000 artifacts and remains, including a 1,000-year-old wooden whisk and Viking mitten, medieval horseshoes, Bronze Age skis and more than 150 arrows.
Similar work is taking place near Anchorage, Alaska, as well as in northeastern Siberia and Mongolia.
Among the most exciting finds have been Yuka, a 39,000-year-old baby Mammoth found in Siberia in 2010, and a 280-million-year-old tree fossil found in Antarctica in 2016. But the most famous of all is Ötzi — a 5,300-year-old iceman found in 1991 by hikers on the northern Italian border with Austria.
For the full story, see:
(Note: ellipses added.)
(Note: the online version of the story has the date Sept. 23, 2023, and has the title “Ancient Arrow Is Among Artifacts to Emerge From Norway’s Melting Ice.”)
Stimulant Ephedrine Was Known and Used in Bronze Age
Ephedrine currently has a variety of medical uses, including as a decongestant.
(p. A4) Bronze Age humans have been credited with a number of civilizational advancements: the invention of irrigation, the wheel, writing systems and the ability to forge weapons and tools from the durable metal that lends the era its name.
Now, strands of human hair discovered in an ancient burial cave in Spain suggest another novelty: a proclivity for consuming psychoactive drugs.
. . .
The findings, published Thursday [April 6, 2023] in Scientific Reports of the journal Nature, provide the first direct evidence that ancient Europeans consumed psychoactive drugs much like their pre-Columbian brethren in Mesoamerica, the researchers said.
Elisa Guerra-Doce, the lead author of the study, said researchers were stunned by the results, especially because the cave interiors yielded no detectable signs of the drugs’ presence. A chemical analysis of the hair revealed evidence of three alkaloid substances known to produce altered states of consciousness: ephedrine, atropine and scopolamine.
The compounds themselves are produced by flora native to Minorca. Atropine and scopolamine, powerful hallucinogens, can be found in plants in the nightshade family, among them mandrake, henbane and thorn apple. Ephedrine, a stimulant, can be extracted from joint pine.
“These findings are so singular,” said Ms. Guerra-Doce, an expert in the anthropology of intoxication at the University of Valladolid in Spain. “Sometimes when people think about drugs, they think it’s a modern practice. These results tell a different story.”
. . .
The three compounds have a long history of human use. Ephedrine is a stimulant that provides bursts of energy and mental clarity, and it can stave off sleepiness. Atropine and scopolamine are powerful deliriants that can produce hallucinations and out-of-body experiences.
For the full story, see:
(Note: ellipses, and bracketed date, added.)
(Note: the online version of the story has the date April 6, 2023, and has the title “Tripping in the Bronze Age.”)
The academic paper mentioned in the passage quoted above is:
Caution in Interpreting Alternative Explanations of Ancient Artifacts
A few weeks ago, an article highlighted the finding of female bones in a burial along with a sword. It was interpreted that the sword belonged to a distinguished female warrior and was interpreted as evidence against patriarchal assumptions.
(p. D1) The epitaph on more than one Roman tombstone read: “A gang of doctors killed me.”
Medical remedies have improved since those times — no more smashed snails, salt-cured weasel flesh or ashes of cremated dogs’ heads — but surgical instruments have changed surprisingly little. Scalpels, needles, tweezers, probes, hooks, chisels and drills are as much part of today’s standard medical tool kit as they were during Rome’s imperial era.
Archaeologists in Hungary recently unearthed a rare and perplexing set of such appliances. The items were found in a necropolis near Jászberény, some 35 miles from Budapest, in two wooden chests and included a forceps, for pulling teeth; a curet, for mixing, measuring and applying medicaments, and three copper-alloy scalpels fitted with detachable steel blades and inlaid with silver in a Roman style. Alongside were the remains of a man presumed to have been a Roman citizen.
The site, seemingly undisturbed for 2,000 years, also yielded a pestle that, judging by the abrasion marks and drug residue, was probably used to grind medicinal herbs. Most unusual were a bone lever, for putting fractures back in place, and the handle of what appears to have been a drill, for trepanning the skull and extracting impacted weaponry from bone.
The instrumentarium, suitable for performing complex operations, provides a glimpse into the advanced medical prac-(p. D4)tices of first-century Romans and how far afield doctors may have journeyed to offer care. “In ancient times, these were comparatively sophisticated tools made of the finest materials,” said Tivadar Vida, director of the Institute of Archaeology at Eötvös Loránd University, or ELTE, in Budapest and leader of the excavation.
Two millenniums ago Jászberény and the county around it were part of the Barbaricum, a vast region that lay beyond the frontiers of the Empire and served as a buffer against possible outside threats. “How could such a well-equipped individual die so far from Rome, in the middle of the Barbaricum,” mused Leventu Samu, a research fellow at ELTE and a member of the team on the dig. “Was he there to heal a prestigious local figure, or was he perhaps accompanying a military movement of the Roman legions?”
. . .
The tool-laden grave was discovered last year at a site where relics from the Copper Age (4500 B.C. to 3500 B.C.) and the Avar period (560 to 790 A.D.) had been found on the surface. A subsequent survey with a magnetometer identified a necropolis of the Avars, a nomadic peoples who succeeded Attila’s Huns. Among the rows of tombs, the researchers uncovered the man’s grave, revealing a skull, leg bones and, at the foot of the body, the chests of metal instruments. “The fact that the deceased was buried with his equipment is perhaps a sign of respect,” Dr. Samu said.
That is not the only possibility. Dr. Baker said that she often cautioned her students about interpreting ancient artifacts, and asked them to consider alternative explanations. What if, she proposed, the medical tools were interred with the so-called physician because he was so bad at his practice that his family and friends wanted to get rid of everything associated with his poor medical skills? “This was a joke,” Dr. Baker said. “But it was intended to make students think about how we jump to quick conclusions about objects we find in burials.”
For the full story, see:
(Note: ellipsis added.)
(Note: the online version of the story also has the date June 13, 2023, and has the title “Scalpel, Forceps, Bone Drill: Modern Medicine in Ancient Rome.”)
Small-Brained Early Humans Buried Their Dead and Used Symbols
(p. A16) Discoveries from a subterranean cave system in South Africa are prompting paleoanthropologists to rethink what makes us human. New findings reveal a small-brained human relative known as Homo naledi buried its dead and carved symbols on walls inside the system. Both these behaviors were previously associated with our species or the big-brained Neanderthals with which we interbred.
“We’re looking at cultural behavior that is very human in a species that has a brain a third the size of ours,” said John Hawks, a University of Wisconsin-Madison paleoanthropologist and co-author of the research released Monday [June 5, 2023], which will soon be published in the journal eLife as reviewed preprints. “It is going against the idea that brain size is what made us human.”
. . .
“We’ve never had a creature that manifested the complexity of us that wasn’t us,” said Lee Berger, a paleoanthropologist and an explorer in residence at National Geographic who co-authored the new research. Homo naledi, he added, is “threatening to the very clearly defined narrative of the rise of human exceptionalism.”
For the full story, see:
(Note: ellipsis, and bracketed date, added.)
(Note: the online version of the story was updated June 5, 2023, and has the title “New Homo Naledi Cave Discoveries Upend What We Know About Being Human.”)
The reference to the journal preprint mentioned above is:
Homo Sapiens’s Greater Genetic Diversity May Have Allowed Them to Adapt to Climate Change Faster than Neanderthals
(p. D5) Scientists have revealed a surprisingly complex origin of our species, rejecting the long-held argument that modern humans arose from one place in Africa during one period in time.
By analyzing the genomes of 290 living people, researchers concluded that modern humans descended from at least two populations that coexisted in Africa for a million years before merging in several independent events across the continent. The findings were published on Wednesday [May 24, 2023} in Nature.
“There is no single birthplace,” said Eleanor Scerri, an evolutionary archaeologist at the Max Planck Institute for Geoarchaeology in Jena, Germany, who was not involved in the new study. “It really puts a nail in the coffin of that idea.”
. . .
The researchers concluded that as far back as a million years ago, the ancestors of our species existed in two distinct populations. Dr. Henn and her colleagues call them Stem1 and Stem2.
About 600,000 years ago, a small group of humans budded off from Stem1 and went on to become the Neanderthals. But Stem1 endured in Africa for hundreds of thousands of years after that, as did Stem2.
If Stem1 and Stem2 had been entirely separate from each other, they would have accumulated a large number of distinct mutations in their DNA. Instead, Dr. Henn and her colleagues found that they had remained only moderately different — about as distinct as living Europeans and West Africans are today. The scientists concluded that people had moved between Stem1 and Stem2, pairing off to have children and mixing their DNA.
. . .
It’s possible that climate upheavals forced Stem1 and Stem2 people into the same regions, leading them to merge into single groups. Some bands of hunter-gatherers may have had to retreat from the coast as sea levels rose, for example. Some regions of Africa became arid, potentially sending people in search of new homes.
Even after these mergers 120,000 years ago, people with solely Stem1 or solely Stem2 ancestry appear to have survived. The DNA of the Mende people showed that their ancestors had interbred with Stem2 people just 25,000 years ago. “It does suggest to me that Stem2 was somewhere around West Africa,” Dr. Henn said.
. . .
Dr. Scerri speculated that living in a network of mingling populations across Africa might have allowed modern humans to survive while Neanderthals became extinct. In that arrangement, our ancestors could hold onto more genetic diversity, which in turn might have helped them endure shifts in the climate, or even evolve new adaptations.
“This diversity at the root of our species may have been ultimately the key to our success,” Dr. Scerri said.
For the full story, see:
(Note: ellipses, and bracketed date, added.)
(Note: the online version of the story was updated May 24, 2023, and has the title “Study Offers New Twist in How the First Humans Evolved.”)
The article in Nature mentioned above is:
Growing Research Suggests Neanderthals Were More Similar to Homo Sapiens in Behavior
(p. A16) Neanderthals might be getting a bad rap. In the movie “Night at the Museum,” when the exhibits come to life after sundown, the Neanderthals are depicted as dimwitted cave men who grunt and bash rocks together in futile attempts to generate a flame. When Ben Stiller’s night-guard character gives them a lighter, one promptly sets himself on fire.
Popular culture has often depicted our Neanderthal cousins much like these museum cave men—also-rans and unsophisticated brutes whose nomadic-hunter lifestyle precluded them from social gatherings and might have contributed to their demise.
But the past decade or so has changed our understanding of Neanderthals. A growing body of research shows these extinct relatives—who overlapped in time and space with anatomically modern humans, or Homo sapiens—were similar to us in many ways. Recent studies suggest Neanderthals altered the landscape around them with fire and were sophisticated hunters who could exploit a variety of prey in groups larger than paleoanthropologists once thought.
Studies show the species used fire to cook, constructed tools to manipulate meat and stone, built structures and made jewelry. They swam and dove for shells, which they used as tools and beads, and distilled birch bark to make tar. Neanderthals decorated and engraved bones and used red ochre—a natural clay pigment—to alter surfaces.
“The more we learn about Neanderthals, the more similar they look to us behaviorally,” said Chris Stringer, research leader in human origins at the Natural History Museum in London.
For the full story, see:
(Note: the online version of the story has the date April 10, 2023, and has the title “Neanderthals and Us: We’re More Alike Than Once Thought.” The wording in the last sentence quoted above is from the print version, rather than the shorter online version, of the sentence.)
Marine Life Turns Man-Made Artifacts into a Biodiverse Habitat
(p. 21) Kirstin Meyer-Kaiser, a marine biologist at the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution, who . . . has studied the connection between underwater sites and marine biodiversity, said that leaving human artifacts in place was also likely better for any marine wildlife. “It was not supposed to be there in the first place,” she said of the relics. “But after a certain amount of time, any man-made object turns into a habitat.”
For the full story, see:
(Note: ellipsis added.)
(Note: the online version of the story was updated May 6, 2023, and has the title “Submerged Island Off Florida Reveals Secret: Civil War-Era Cemetery.” The online version says that the page number of the print version is p. A23. My national edition of the print version is on p. A21.)
Scientists Resurrect “Sweet and Possibly Medicinal” Judean Date Palm Pushed to Extinction by Roman Soldiers
(p. C11) The Judean date palm, prized for its sweet and possibly medicinal fruits, had been a feature of the landscape of biblical Israel. In the aftermath of the failed Jewish rebellion at the fortress of Masada in A.D. 73, Roman soldiers set about destroying the date trees, . . .
. . .
The few remaining Judean palms eventually died out. Yet the species wasn’t gone forever, as Martin Lemelman tells children in a captivating graphic novel,”The Miracle Seed.”
With economical text and expressive panel illustrations, Mr. Lemelman recounts the story of the tree’s astounding 21st-century resurrection. Among the detritus left at Masada, he explains, was an earthenware jar containing six Judean palm seeds.
. . .
“The Miracle Seed” not only reads like an adventure but also exudes an optimism of the kind that children ages 8-14 deserve.
For the full review, see:
(Note: ellipses added.)
(Note: the online version of the review has the date March 24, 2023, and has the same title as the print version.)
The book under review is:
Lemelman, Martin. The Miracle Seed. Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans Books for Young Readers, 2023.