Posted by Jason Organ in Public science communication
Here we are, once again, at the end of a calendar year filled with lots of exciting news in the field of human evolution. Last year, just as we were finalizing edits on the 2017 Top 5 Human Evolution Discoveries list, the remainder of the skeleton of a human ancestor nown colloquially as “Little Foot” (belonging to the genus Australopithecus, the same genus, but different species, as the famed “Lucy” fossil) was finally revealed after 20
years of cleaning and excavation from its embedding rock. Amazingly, just as we are finishing the edits for this year’s installment of top human evolution discoveries, Little Foot is back in the news. As of the last week of November, full descriptions and analyses of the remainder of the fossils are now available (prior to undergoing peer-review) on the preprint server bioRxiv.

Enjoy reading our Top 6 list for 2018! Why 6? These stories are
too cool not to share.–JMO
By Ella Beaudoin, BA, and Briana Pobiner, PhD, Human Origins Program, Smithsonian Institution, National Muse \um of Natural History
What does it mean to be human? What makes us unique among all other organisms on Earth? Is it cooperation? Conflict? Creativity? Cognition? There happens to be one anatomical feature that distinguishes modern humans (Homo sapiens) from every other living and extinct animal: our bony chin! But does a feature of our jaws have actual
meaning for our humanity? We want to talk about the top six discoveries of 2018, all from the last 500,000 years of human evolution, that give us more insight into what it means to be human. If you want to learn more about our favorite discoveries from last year, read our 2017 blog post!
1) Migrating modern humans: the oldest modern human fossil found outside of Africa
Every person alive on the planet today is a Homo sapiens,and our species evolved around 300,000 years ago in Africa. In January of this year, a team of archaeologists led by Israel Hershkovitz from Tel Aviv University in Israel made a stunning discovery at a site on the western slope of Mount Carmel in Israel—Misliya Cave. This site had previously yielded
flint artifacts dated to between 140,000 and 250,000 years ago, and the assumption was that these tools were made by Neanderthals which had also occupied Israel at this time.
But tucked in the same layer of sediment as the stone tools was a Homo sapiens upper jaw! Dated to between 177,000 and 194,000 years ago by three different dating techniques, this finding pushes back the evidence for human expansion out of Africa by roughly 40,000 years. It also supports the idea that there were multiple waves of modern humans migrating out of Africa during this time, some of which may not have survived to pass on their genes to modern humans alive today. Remarkably, this jawbone was
discovered by a freshman student at Tel Aviv University working on his firstarchaeological dig in 2002! So, there is hope for students wishing to make a splash in this field!
2) Innovating modern humans: long-distance trade, the use of color, and the oldest Middle Stone Age tools in Africa At the prehistoric site of Olorgesailie in southern Kenya, years of careful climate research
and meticulous excavation by a research team lead by Rick Potts of the Smithsonian’s National Museum of Natural History and Alison Brooks of George Washington University were able to explore both the archaeological and paleoenvironmental records to document behavioral change by modern humans in response to climatic variation. The artifacts show a shift from the larger and clunkier tools of the Acheulean, characterized
by teardrop-shaped handaxes, to the more sophisticated and specialized tools of the Middle Stone Age (MSA). The MSA tools were dated to 320,000 years ago, the earliest evidence of this kind of technology in Africa. They also found evidence that one of the kinds of rock used to make the MSA tools, obsidian, was obtained from at least 55 miles (95 kilometers) away. Such long distances led the teams to conclude that obsidian was traded in social networks, since this is much further than modern human forager groups typically travel in a day. On top of that, the team found red and black rocks (pigments) used for coloring material in the MSA sites, indicating symbolic communication, possibly used to maintain these social networks with distant groups. Finally, all of these innovations occurred during a time of great climate and landscape instability and unpredictability, with a major change in mammal species (about 85%). In the face of this uncertainty, early members of our species seem to have responded by developing technological innovations, greater social connections, and symbolic communication. These exciting findings were published in a set of three papers in Science, focused on the dating of these finds; the stone tool technology and transport and use of pigments; and the
earlier changes in environments and technology that anticipate later characteristics of the stone tools.
(Featured image at the top of this post is the famous “Catwalk Site”, one of the open air displays at the National Museums of Kenya Olorgesailie site museum, which is littered with ~900,000 year old handaxes. Photo courtesy of Briana Pobiner.)

3) Art-making Neanderthals: our close evolutionary cousins actually created the
oldest known cave paintings
Neanderthals are often imagined as primitive brutes dragging clubs behind them. But new
discoveries, including one made last year, continue to reshape that image. A team led by
Alistair Pike from the University of Southampton found red ocher paintings – dots, boxes,
abstract animal figures, and handprints – deep inside three Spanish caves. The most
amazing part? These paintings dated to at least 65,000 years ago –a full 20,000-25,000
years before Homo sapiens arrived in Europe (which was 40,000 to 45,000 years ago)!
The age of the paintings was determined by using uranium-thorium dating of white crusts
made of calcium carbonate that had formed on top of the paintings by water percolating

through the rocks. Since the calcite precipitated on top of the paintings, the paintings
must have been there first – so they are older than the age of the calcite. The age of the
paintings suggests that Neanderthals made them. It has been generally assumed that
symbolic thought (the representation of reality through abstract concepts, such as art) was
a uniquely Homo sapiensability. But sharing our ability for symbolic thought with
Neanderthals means we may have to redraw our images of Neanderthal in popular
culture: forget the club, maybe they should be holding paint brushes instead.
4) Trekking modern humans: the oldest modern human footprints in North
America
When we think about how we make our marks on this world, we often picture leaving
behind cave paintings, structures, old fire pits, and discarded objects. But even a footprint
can leave behind traces of past movement! A discovery this year by a team led by
Duncan McLaran from the University of Victoria with representatives from the Heiltsuk
and Wuikinuxv First Nations revealed the oldest footprints in North America ! These 29
footprints were made by at least three people on the tiny Canadian island of Calvert. The
team used Carbon-14 dating of fossilized wood found in association with the footprints to
date the find to 13,000 years ago. This site may have been a stop on a late Pleistocene
coastal route humans used when migrating from Asia to the Americas. Because of their
small size, some of the footprints must have been made by a child – who would have
worn about a size 7 kids shoe today, if they were wearing shoes (interestingly, the
evidence indicates they were walking barefoot). As humans, our social and caregiving
nature has been essential to our survival. One of the research team members, Jennifer
Walkus, mentioned why the child’s footprints were particularly special: “Because so
often kids are absent from the archeological record. This really makes the archaeology
more personal.” Any site with preserved human footprints is pretty special, as there are
currently only a few dozen in the world.
5) Winter-stressed, nursing Neanderthals: Neanderthal children’s teeth reveal
intimate details of their daily lives
Evidence of children is very rare in the prehistoric archaeological record; their bones are
more delicate than those of adults and therefore less likely to survive and fossilize, and
their material artifacts are also almost impossible to identify. For instance, a stone tool
made by a child might be interpreted as made hastily or by a novice, and toys are quite a
new invention. To find remains that are conclusively juvenile is very exciting to
archaeologists – not only for the personal connection we feel, but for the new insights we
can learn about how individuals grew, flourished, and according to a new study led by
Dr. Tanya Smith from Griffith University in Australia, suffered. Smith and her team
studied the teeth of two Neanderthal children who lived 250,000 years ago in southern
France. They took thin sections of the two teeth and “read” the layers of enamel, which
develops in a way similar to tree rings: in times of stress, slight variations occur in the
layers of tooth enamel. The tooth enamel chemistry also recorded environmental
variation based on the climate where the Neanderthals grew up, because it reflects the
chemistry of the water and the food that the Neanderthals kids ate and drank. The team

determined that the two young Neanderthals were physically stressed during the winter
months – they likely experienced fevers, vitamin deficiency, or disease more often during
the colder seasons. The team found repeated high levels of lead exposure in both
Neanderthal teeth, though the exact source of the lead is unclear – it could have been
from eating or drinking contaminated food or water, or inhaling smoke from a fire made
from contaminated material. They also found that one of the Neanderthals was born in
the spring and weaned in the fall, and nursed until it was about 2.5 years old, similar to
the average age of weaning in non-industrial modern human populations. (Our closest
living relatives (chimpanzees and bonobos) nurse for much longer than we do, up to 5
years.) Discoveries like this are another indication that Neanderthals are more similar to
Homo sapiensthan we had ever thought. Paleoanthropologist Kristin Krueger notes how
discoveries like this are making “the dividing line between ‘them’ and ‘us’ [become more
blurry] every day.”
6) Hybridizing hominins: the first discovery of an ancient human hybrid
Speaking of blurring lines (and probably the biggest story of the year): a new discovery
from Denisova Cave in Siberia has added to the complicated history of Neanderthals and
other ancient human species. While Neanderthal fossils have been known for nearly two
centuries, Denisovans are a population of hominins only discovered in 2008 based on the
sequencing of their genome from a 41,000-year-old finger bone fragment from Denisova
Cave – which was also inhabited by Neanderthals and modern humans (and whom they
also mated with). While all of the known Denisovan fossils could nearly fit in one of your
hands, the amount of information we can gain from their DNA is enormous! This year, a
stunning discovery was made from a fragment of a long bone identified as coming from a
13-year-old girl nicknamed “Denny” who lived about 90,000 years ago: she was the
daughter of a Neanderthal mother and Denisovan father . A team led by Viviane Slon and
Svante Pääbo from the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology in Leipzig,
Germany first looked at her mitochondrial DNA and found that it was Neanderthal – but
that didn’t seem to be her whole genetic story. They then sequenced her nuclear genome
and compared it to the genomes of other Neanderthals and Denisovans from the same
cave, and compared it to a modern human with no Neanderthal ancestry. They found that
about 40% of Denny’s DNA fragments matched a Neanderthal genome, and another 40%
matched a Denisovan genome. The team then realized that this meant she had acquired
one set of chromosomes from each of her parents, who must have been two different
types of early humans. Since her mitochondrial DNA – which is inherited from your
mother – was Neanderthal, the team could say with certainty that her mother was a
Neanderthal and a father that was Denisovan. However, the research team is very careful
about not using the word “hybrid” in their paper, instead stating instead that Denny is a
“first generation person of mixed ancestry.” They note the tenuous nature of the
biological species concept: the idea that one major way to distinguish one species from
another is that individuals of different species cannot mate and produce fertile offspring.
Yet we see interbreeding commonly occurring in the natural world, especially when two
populations seem to be in the early stages of speciating – because speciation is a process
that often takes a long time. It is clear from genetic evidence that Neanderthals and Homo
sapiens individuals were sometimes able to mate and produce children, but it is unclear if

these matings included difficulty with becoming pregnant or bringing a fetus to term –
and modern human females and Neanderthal males may have had particular trouble
making babies . While Neanderthals contributed DNA to the modern human genome, the
reverse seems not to have occurred. Regardless of the complicated history of
intermingling of different early human groups, Dr. Skoglund from the Francis Crick
institute echoes what many other researchers are thinking about this amazing
discovery, “[that Denny might be] the most fascinating person who has had their genome
sequenced.”

ITHACA, N.Y. – New research from Cornell University raises questions about the timing and nature of early interactions between indigenous people and Europeans in North America.

Until now, it’s been assumed that the presence of European trade goods, such as metals and glass beads, provide a timeline for the indigenous peoples and settlements in the 15th and 16th centuries. New research suggests this may be a mistake in cases where there was not direct and intensive exchange between the two groups of people.

Radiocarbon dating and tree-ring evidence shows that three major indigenous sites in Ontario, Canada, conventionally dated 1450-1550 – because there were no or very few European goods recovered – are in fact 50-100 years more recent. This dates the sites to the worst period of the Little Ice Age, around 1600.

“This seems extraordinary: Given this was only 400 years ago, how can we have been wrong by as much as 25 percent?” said first author Sturt Manning, professor of classical archaeology.

Manning is lead author of “Radiocarbon Re-dating of Contact-era Iroquoian History in Northeastern North America,” published in Science Advances. Other Cornell authors include Cornell Tree-Ring Laboratory senior researcher Carol Griggs and doctoral student Samantha Sanft.

Previously, dates in the early contact period were based on the absence – and then presence – of types of glass beads and other European trade goods in excavated sites, along with shifts in material culture, such as changes in ceramic designs. Dates were assigned according to “time transgression,” the assumption that when European goods are found in one place with a confirmed date associated with them, that same date can be used for other places where those trade goods are found.

“But goods don’t get distributed evenly within societies or across distances,” said Manning. “This is a vast area with complex local societies and economies, so the concept that everybody gets the same thing necessarily all at once is a bit ludicrous in retrospect.”

The team’s chronological findings dramatically rewrite how history has been understood in the region. The period of first European contact, rather than following major changes in Iroquoian society, can now be seen to coincide with those changes. This suggests that contact-era transformations happened much later than previously thought.

“Of course, we’ve dated only one site sequence, and there are many more,” Manning said. “What this paper really shows is we now need to reassess all those site sequences where there’s not a clear historical link or association.”

###

The research was supported by a grant from the National Science Foundation.

For more information, see this Cornell Chronicle story.

Cornell University has dedicated television and audio studios available for media interviews supporting full HD, ISDN and web-based platforms.

Disclaimer: AAAS and EurekAlert! are not responsible for the accuracy of news releases posted to EurekAlert! by contributing institutions or for the use of any information through the EurekAlert system.

In a 5,000 year old grave outside Falköping, scientists have found the oldest traces of the plague bacterium’s DNA in the world. An international research team including archaeologists from the University of Gothenburg made the discovery using advanced DNA techniques. According to the researchers, this discovery may also have identified the first pandemic in history which stretched from Europe across to Asia as a result of the new trade routes in this period.

The remarkable finds were made at Frälsegården in Gökhem outside Falköping in a passage grave – a kind of collective grave with a large stone burial chamber. Traces of the DNA of Yersinia pestis, the bacterium that causes the plague, were found in the skeletons of Middle Neolithic farmers who have lived at the site approximately 4,900 years ago. The bacterium, which started the Black Death for example, is the deadliest in human history and has cost millions of people their lives.

The discovery was made by a multidisciplinary research team from France, Denmark and Sweden that includes archaeologists Kristian Kristiansen and Karl-Göran Sjögren from the University of Gothenburg.

“The discovery of such an early variant of the bacterium in Falköping was totally unexpected since previous findings pointed to Yersinia pestis as having originated in Asia. This now needs to be re-evaluated, so it certainly is a significant discovery,” says Karl-Göran Sjögren.

The find in Falköping also means that the researchers may have solved another mystery. It was only recently discovered that people in different regions of Eurasia were all infected with the plague during the Bronze Age. But where and when the disease first appeared and how it spread has been unknown – until now. The variant of the bacterium discovered in Falköping seems to have given rise to all subsequent variants and is believed to have spread rapidly since the bacterium has been discovered in finds dating from just a few hundred years later across a huge area from Eastern Europe to Central Asia.

“We think now that the first plague may have occurred in the Cucuteni–Trypillia culture north of the Black Sea a few hundred years before the find in Falköping and then spread to both the west and the east, changing along the way. Its spread may have been facilitated by better communications such as ox-wagons, which were then starting to be used,” says Karl-Göran Sjögren.

It was by analysing ‘molecular clock’ data that the researchers discovered that different strains of the plague bacterium spread very rapidly in Eurasia between 5,000 and 6,000 years ago. This matches exactly a period in South-East Europe when the first large population densities arose but also collapsed. It was also at this time that many technological breakthroughs occurred such as the wheel, the use of draught animals, and metallurgy – breakthroughs that facilitated long-distance trade, for example.

“This very rapid spread is indicative of well-developed communications and contacts that linked groups across very large areas,” says Karl-Göran Sjögren.

Based on this evidence, the researchers therefore believe that it really was a pandemic of the plague that occurred in those large population densities which subsequently had major consequences for future civilisations and migration patterns.

Explore further: An ancient strain of plague may have led to the decline of Neolithic Europeans

Provided by: Göteborgs universitet

Let’s stand up for equality, justice and human dignity
Human Rights Day is observed every year on 10 December – the day the United Nations General Assembly adopted, in 1948, the Universal Declaration of Human Rights . This year, Human Rights Day marks the 70th anniversary of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, a milestone document that proclaimed the inalienable rights which everyone is inherently entitled to as a human being — regardless of race, colour, religion, sex, language, political or other opinion, national or social origin, property, birth or other status. It is the most translated document in the world, available in more than 500 languages .
Drafted by representatives of diverse legal and cultural backgrounds from all regions of
the world, the Declaration sets out universal values and a common standard of
achievement for all peoples and all nations. It establishes the equal dignity and worth of
every person. Thanks to the Declaration, and States' commitments to its principles, the dignity of millions has been uplifted and the foundation for a more just world has been laid. While its promise is yet to be fully realized, the very fact that it has stood the test of time is testament to the enduring universality of its perennial values of equality, justice and human dignity.
The Universal Declaration of Human Rights empowers us all. The principles enshrined in the Declaration are as relevant today as they were in 1948. We need to stand up for our own rights and those of others. We can take action in our own daily lives, to uphold the rights that protect us all and thereby promote the kinship of all human beings.
#StandUp4HumanRights

The Egyptian archaeological mission working in the south-east of King Amenemhat II’s
pyramid uncovered a number of archaeological burials that include coffins at the
archaeological area of Dahshour.
The mission’s Manager and Head of the Supreme Council of Antiquities, Mostafa
Waziry, said that the mission started working in this area in August 2018.
Inside the burials, the mission discovered eight coffins made of limestone that house
mummies covered with a layer of coloured cardboard in the shape of a human being.
Waziry explained that three of the discovered mummies are in good condition and date
back to the late era, stressing that the coffins are now in the warehouse for restoration.
He added that the pictures of the coffins were presented to the Committee of Museums tobe placed in the museums’ exhibitions established by the Ministry of Antiquities inside
Egypt.
Minister of Antiquities Khaled el-Anany announced on November 24 the discovery of
Mut Temple’s Tomb. The sarcophagus dates back to the 18th dynasty and houses a mummy wrapped in linen in a very good condition.
The first examination of the mummy revealed it was restored and re-wrapped in linen
during the late period. The sarcophagus was discovered by an archaeological mission affiliated to the French University of Strasbourg in the vicinity of tomb TT33 in the West Bank of Luxor.
http://www.egypttoday.com/Article/4/61104/8-coffins-uncovered-at-archaeological-area-of-
Dahshour

Archaeologists of the Far Eastern Federal University (FEFU) found three burials of the
ancient inhabitants of South America dated from 6 to 10 thousand years ago. The
excavations were carried out in Atahualpa anton, Ecuador. The findings belong to the Las Vegas archeological culture of the Stone Age.
Analysis of artifacts will help scientists understand the development of ancient cultures
on the shores of the Pacific Ocean and clarify the origin and development of ancient
American civilizations. Research is being jointly conducted by FEFU and Primorsky
Polytechnic University in Guayaquil (ESPOL, Ecuador).
Previously, FEFU scientists investigated the famous Neolithic settlement in Real Alto. In
2018, they decided to study an earlier site in order to trace the development of ancient
cultures on the Pacific Coast opposite to the Pacific Coast of Russia (Russian Far East). The archaeological site of Loma Atahualpa is more archaic than Real Alto, its materials are transitional from the Mesolithic to the Neolithic. We excavated three burials that were probably made at different times. This will make it possible to compare their materials and retrieve the new information on the development of ancient cultures in the period from 10 to 6 thousand years ago," said the Alexander Popov, director of the Educational and Scientific Museum of The School of Humanities of FEFU.
Expedition materials are processed by experts from several countries. The stone tools
found were examined at Tohoku University (Japan) for traces of mechanical activity in
order to understand how they were used. There were also sent samples for radiocarbon
dating. Simultaneously, anthropologists from The Kunstkamera (Peter the Great Museum of Anthropology and Ethnography, St. Petersburg) and the Institute of the Problems of Northern development, Siberian Branch of the Russian Academy of Sciences (Tyumen, Russia) began to study the morphological features of the human remains found.
In the course of working with Ecuadorian colleagues, we have learned that our research
attracted the obvious attention of scientists. Last year's symposium, which was organized at the Real Alto Museum, was attended by colleagues from the United States, Canada, Brazil, Japan, Poland and other countries. We also cooperate with partners from several European countries and the Russian Academy of Sciences, said Alexander Popov.
Provided by: Far Eastern Federal University
Read more at: https://phys.org/news/2018-11-archaeologists-oldest-burials-ecuador.html#jCp

A palm sized portrait author, Charles Dickens reportedly was found in a box of junk pieces at a house clearance sale in the South African city of Pietermaritzburg. It is believed that the last time the portrait was seen was in the late 19th century and then was reported unaccounted for by its artist, Margaret Gillies, according to CNN. It was reported that many attempts to locate the work failed and it was to be lost.

The people who found the portrait by accident in a garage sale, sent the piece to London’s antiques expert, Philip Mould of Philip Mould & Company, to be authenticated. Not only they authenticated the piece but also estimated the value of the portrait to be about a quarter of a million dollars.

According to Mould, this was a very interesting time for Dickens who had survived two flops, ‘The Life and Adventures of Martin Chuzzlewit’ and ‘Barnaby Rudge,’ and needed something to get out of a time of insecurity for the author. This portrait was the picture of Dickens on the precipice of stardom.

The portrait which will have its first exhibition since 1844 required two months of restoration.

It is believed that the portrait was done over six to seven sittings in late 1843, when Dickens was 31 and writing what would be a bestseller, “A Christmas Carol.” The book, of course as we all know centered around the redemption of Ebenezer Scrooge around Christmas, showed that “everyone has capacity for compassion. Many experts believe that the book also popularized Christmas, which was considered a second-rate holiday in the early 19th century.

The portrait is also remarkable for its female artist, Gillies, who like Dickens, shared an interest in social reform. She was an early supporter of women’s suffrage and, according to her correspondences with Dickens, had spirited debates with the author, whose works showed great empathy toward the vulnerable of post-Victorian society.