A wide range of megalithic burials recently discovered in some northern districts of Kerala (India) during a research project have thrown light on possible links between the Mediterranean and Kerala coasts in the Stone Age between 6000 BCE and 2000 BCE. The researchers, however, say further studies and analysis are required to establish the thesis. Interestingly, the finds were unearthed at a time when the researchers have firmly established the maritime links between the Mediterranean region with Kerala since ancient times, thanks also to the shards of Roman amphora that have recently been dug up from Pattanam near Kochi, close to the ancient port town Muziris.
     The existence of a large number of port-holed cists and dolmens in Palakkad, Wayanad and Idukki districts seeks to show that the megalithic people who lived in these parts of the world were navigators who migrated to Kerala from the Mediterranean region by sea route. V.P. Devadas, principal investigator, UGC [University Grants Commission] Major Research Project on Megaliths of Kerala, says that the archaeological studies on Malabar mainly depend on its megalithic culture. Though there is uniformity in the character of the megalithic burial monuments in Malabar, there are some differences in the mode of construction.
     Dr. Devadas says that Kerala is rich in megalithic monuments, viz. rock-cut caves, rock-cut pits, urn burials, umbrella stones (kodakkal, hat stones (toppikkal), slab cists, port-holed cists, dolmens, menhirs, multiple hood stones and stone circles. Among these monuments, the most typical of the megalithic burials is the port-holed cist. A port-holed cist is a box-like structure, made of four or five dressed granite orthostats or slabs kept upright either in the clockwise or in the anti-clockwise direction on a floor slab with a cap-stone cover. The box-like structure has a port-hole on the front slab, the hole facing the east.
     In the large cist cemeteries of Wayanad, the port-holed cists are found facing the east. This type is mainly confined to the granite highland region of Kerala. Port-holed cists are abundantly seen at Muppuzha in Palakkad district, Ayiremkolli, Kuppakolli, Krishnagiri, Vythiri and Mangalamkarp in Wayanad district and Marayur in Idukki district, according to Dr. Devadas' study. There are a large number of port-holed cists at Pathirikunnu in Krishnagiri at the foothills of the Chembra peak near Meppadi. There are about 200 such cist burials in an area of 1,500 acres near the Edakkal Hills.

Sources: The Hindu, (8 March 2010), BusinessGhana (9 March 2010)

The Italian archaeological mission in Pakistan has discovered a large number of Buddhist sites and rock shelters in Kandak and Kota valleys of Barikot in Swat in the North West Frontier Province which depicted the carvings and paintings from the Bronze and Iron ages. "These are some of the finest and most fascinating ancient discoveries preserved in good condition," said Director of the archaeological mission, Dr Luca Maria Olivieri, yesterday. These rock carvings depict agricultural cult scenes in red colours, cup marks meant for rituals, for example, for holding liquids or preparing the ochre pigment, dancing scenes, battle scenes and a large number of animals," said Dr Olivieri.

Source: Gulf Times (8 March 2010)

Newly discovered archaeological sites in southern and northern India have revealed how people lived before and after the colossal Toba volcanic eruption 74,000 years ago. The research team, led by Oxford University in collaboration with Indian institutions, has uncovered what it calls 'Pompeii-like excavations' beneath the Toba ash. The seven-year project examines the environment that humans lived in, their stone tools, as well as the plants and animal bones of the time. "This suggests that human populations were present in India prior to 74,000 years ago, or about 15,000 years earlier than expected based on some genetic clocks," said project director Michael Petraglia, Senior Research Fellow in the School of Archaeology at the University of Oxford.
     The digging sites are in Jwalapuram village and bilasurgam caves in Kurnool and Dhaba village in middle Son valley. "We have beautifully preserved occupation surfaces. We can trace occupation surface across the buried landscape, where we see that the tools are lying on surfaces above wetland areas. The ash has helped to preserve that living surface," Petraglia said. "We need fossils to be absolutely certain, and that is why we are working in the caves, which have fossilised animal bones," he said, adding that they wanted to dig for another five years.
     According to the team, a potentially ground-breaking implication of the new work is that the species responsible for making the stone tools in India was Homo sapiens. Stone tool analysis has revealed that the artefacts consist of cores and flakes, which are classified in India as Middle Palaeolithic and are similar to those made by modern humans in Africa. "Though we are still searching for human fossils to definitively prove the case, we are encouraged by the technological similarities."
     The fact that the Middle Palaeolithic tools of similar styles are found right before and after the Toba super-eruption, suggests that the people who survived the eruption were the same populations, using the same kinds of tools, says Petraglia. Although some scholars have speculated that the Toba volcano led to severe and wholesale environmental destruction, the Oxford-led research in India suggests that a mosaic of ecological settings was present, and some areas experienced a relatively rapid recovery after the volcanic event.

Sources: Bernama (23 February 2010), Deccan Herald (14 March 2010)

Bricks dating back 5,000 to 7,000 years have been unearthed in northwest China's Shaanxi Province, adding between 1,000 to 2,000 years onto Chinese brick-making history, archaeologists claimed. "The five calcined bricks were unearthed from a site of the Yangshao Culture Period dating 5,000 to 7,000 years ago. Previously, the oldest known bricks in the country were more than 4,000 years old," Shaanxi Provincial Institute of Archaeology researcher Yang Yachang said. Only parts of the bricks, including three red ones and two gray ones, have been recovered, Yang said.
     Yangshao Culture is a Neolithic culture that flourished along the Yellow River, which runs across China from west to east. The culture was named after Yangshao, the name of the first village discovered of the culture, in 1921 in central China's Henan Province. Archaeologists used to believe the ceramics were applied to architecture in the Shang Dynasty (1600 BCE-1100 BCE), which had been proved wrong by the new discovery, Yang said.
     The smooth surface and rough surface of most well preserved red bricks are vertical to each other, and the rough surface was designed to be stuck to other materials, Yang said. "It is still unknown whether the bricks were in a square or rectangle shape as none of them are complete," he said.
     The site, covering an area of more than 200,000 square meters, was to be cut through by a new highway, said Shao Jing, assistant researcher of the institute. The salvage excavation was launched in August 2009. As of February, more than 2,300 square meters had been excavated, Shao added. More than 150 sites, including houses, ash pits, ash grooves and kilns, had been found in the area, Shao said. "The bricks were all discovered in ash pits, which were garbage containers for the ancient people. For the modern archaeologist, these garbage containers are treasure troves of artifacts," she said.
     The world's oldest unearthed bricks date back 8,000 to 10,000 years. They were discovered in Middle East and they were adobes which had not been calcined. Thus, the brick-making history of human kind should be about 10,000 years, Yang Yachang said.

Source: CRIemglish (20 February 2010)

DNA extracted from a gentleman whose skeleton lay in one of more than 200 tombs recently excavated at a 2,000-year-old cemetery in western Mongolia pegs him as a descendant of Europeans or western Asians. Yet he still assumed a prominent position in ancient Mongolia's Xiongnu Empire, say geneticist Kyung-Yong Kim of Chung-Ang University in Seoul, South Korea, and his colleagues.
     On the basis of previous excavations and descriptions in ancient Chinese texts, researchers suspect that the Xiongnu Empire - which ruled a vast territory in and around Mongolia from 209 BCE to 93 CE - included ethnically and linguistically diverse nomadic tribes. The Xiongnu Empire once ruled the major trading route known as the Asian Silk Road, opening it to both Western and Chinese influences. Researchers have yet to pin down the language spoken by Xiongnu rulers and political elites, says archaeologist David Anthony of Hartwick College in Oneonta, N.Y. But the new genetic evidence shows that the 2,000-year-old man "was multi-ethnic, like the Xiongnu polity itself," Anthony remarks.
     This long-dead individual possessed a set of genetic mutations on his Y chromosome, which is inherited from paternal ancestors, that commonly appears today among male speakers of Indo-European languages in eastern Europe, central Asia and northern India, Kim's team reports. The same man displayed a pattern of mitochondrial DNA mutations, inherited from maternal ancestors, characteristic of speakers of modern Indo-European languages in central Asia, the researchers say. "We don't know if this 60- to 70-year-old man reached Mongolia on his own or if his family had already lived there for many generations," says study coauthor Charles Brenner, a DNA analyst based in Oakland, Calif. Two other skeletons from the Xiongnu cemetery in Duurlig Nars show genetic links to people who live in northeastern Asia, according to Kim's team.
     The Duurlig Nars man's genetic signature supports the idea that Indo-European migrations to northeastern Asia started before 2,000 years ago. This notion is plausible, but not confirmed, says geneticist Peter Underhill of Stanford University. Further investigations of Y chromosome mutation frequencies in modern populations will allow for a more precise tracing of the Duurlig Nars man's geographic roots, Underhill predicts.
     Scholars have long sought to trace the origin and spread of related languages now found in Europe, India and other parts of Asia. One hypothesis holds that Indo-European languages proliferated via several waves of expansion and conquest by nomads known as Kurgans who had domesticated horses and thus could travel long distances. In this scenario, Kurgans left a homeland north of the Black Sea, in what's now Russia, around 6,400 years ago.
     Another view holds that farmers from ancient Turkey spread Indo-European tongues as they swallowed up one parcel of land after another, beginning around 9,000 years ago. Since 1978, discoveries of 2,400- to 4,000-year-old mummified corpses with European features in northwestern China, not far from Mongolia, have fueled the Kurgan hypothesis. Add to those discoveries a report by geneticist Christine Keyser of the University of Strasbourg in France and her colleagues: they found that nine of 26 skeletons previously excavated at 11 Kurgan sites in northeastern Russia possess a Y chromosome mutation pattern thought to mark the eastward expansion of early Indo-Europeans. That same genetic signature characterizes the Duurlig Nars man.
     Kim's group plans to extract and study DNA from additional Duurlig Nars skeletons. For now, Anthony remarks, "this new study from Mongolia is important because it adds one more point of light to a largely dark prehistoric sky."

Source: ScienceNews (29 January 2010)

The discovery of Iron Age human bone fragments in Laos has shed new light on the region's prehistoric burial customs. A team of Lao and foreign archeologists found the fragments last week in a burial ground believed to be about 2,000 years old when South-East Asia was in the Iron Age. The discovery was made during a dig known as the Middle Mekong Archaeological Project, which is a joint effort between Laos' Department of Heritage and the University of Pennsylvania Museum (USA).
     "Last week, we unexpectedly found two skulls and a fragment of a third, a baby, along with some body bones," said Joyce White, associate curator at the University of Pennsylvania Museum. "It is quite a significant discovery of Lao archaeology." Also among the items found was a burial pot containing human bones, which was the first such example of a secondary burial, or the custom of dismembering a corpse and removing all flesh so the bones could be placed in a container. Although the practice was common in neighbouring Thailand and Vietnam, this was the first evidence of a secondary burial in what is now Laos.

Source: Earth Times (22 January 2010)

Vietnamese and French archaeologists have discovered a paleontological site dating back to more than 100,000 years ago in Da Den Cave in the northern province of Tuyen Quang (Vietnam). Quan Van Dung, director of the Tuyen Quang Museum, said December 24 that the scientists found hundreds of items, including bones and teeth of pigs, long-tailed macaques, rhinos, deer, orangutans, and other animals.
     They also found fossil vestiges proving the existence of human beings in Tuyen Quang Province since the dawn of mankind, he added. His museum is making plans to protect the site and coordinating with the Vietnamese and foreign scientists to continue excavations, he added. In Tuyen Quang, archaeologists have discovered thousands of items in nearly 10 sites dating back to prehistoric times. Da Den Cave houses the largest number of them.

Source: Thanhnien News (3 January 2010)

A team of archaeologists has found stonewares from the Neolithic Age in southeastern Tibet. According to the Nyingchi Prefectural Bureau of Culture, Radio and Television, the stonewares were found in Medog County, Nyingchi Prefecture, southeastern Tibet. They were discovered by members of the Tibet Autonomous Regional Survey Team and the Nyingchi Prefectural Survey Team, during the third national cultural relics survey. They found 34 stonewares and collected 28 of them, including axes, adzes and chisels.
     Experts of the Shaanxi Provincial Archeology Research Institute and the Tibet Autonomous Regional Cultural Relics Research Institute judged that the stonewares belonged to the Neolithic Age and that the river banks where the stoneware were found saw frequent human activities in ancient times. Cui Xiaodong, director of the bureau, said that the discovery is of vital importance to the research on the production and living conditions of human ancestors living in Medog County and the Yarlung Zangbo River Canyon.

Sources: People's Daily Online (28 December 2009), DNA India (29 December 2009)

Humankind's first encounters with alcohol in the form of fermented fruit probably occurred in just an accidental fashion. But once they were familiar with the effect, archaeologist Patrick McGovern believes, humans stopped at nothing in their pursuit of frequent intoxication. A secure supply of alcohol appears to have been part of the human community's basic requirements much earlier than was long believed. As early as around 9,000 years ago, inhabitants of the Neolithic village Jiahu in China were brewing a type of mead with an alcohol content of 10 percent, McGovern discovered recently.
     McGovern analyzed clay shards found during excavations in China's Yellow River Valley at his Biomolecular Archaeology Laboratory for Cuisine, Fermented Beverages, and Health at the University of Pennsylvania Museum. It appears that prehistoric humans in China combined fruit and honey into an intoxicating brew. Additionally, plant sterols point to wild rice as an ingredient. Lacking any knowledge of chemistry, prehistoric humans eager for the intoxicating effects of alcohol apparently mixed clumps of rice with saliva in their mouths to break down the starches in the grain and convert them into malt sugar. These pioneering brewers would then spit the chewed up rice into their brew. Husks and yeasty foam floated on top of the liquid, so they used long straws to drink from narrow necked jugs. Alcohol is still consumed this way in some regions of China.
     McGovern sees this early fermentation process as a clever survival strategy. "Consuming high energy sugar and alcohol was a fabulous solution for surviving in a hostile environment with few natural resources," he explains. The most recent finds from China are consistent with McGovern's chain of evidence, which suggests that the craft of making alcohol spread rapidly to various locations around the world during the Neolithic period. But that wasn't enough for McGovern. He carried the theory much further. His bold thesis, which he lays out in his book 'Uncorking the Past. The Quest for Wine, Beer and Other Alcoholic Beverage,' states that agriculture - and with it the entire Neolithic Revolution, which began about 11,000 years ago - are ultimately results of the irrepressible impulse toward drinking and intoxication.
     "Available evidence suggests that our ancestors in Asia, Mexico, and Africa cultivated wheat, rice, corn, barley, and millet primarily for the purpose of producing alcoholic beverages," McGovern explains. While they were at it, he believes, drink-loving early civilizations managed to ensure their basic survival. According to McGovern, prehistoric humans didn't initially have the ability to master the very complicated process of brewing beer. It's likely that early farmers first enriched their diet with a hybrid swill - half fruit wine and half mead - that was actually quite nutritious. Neolithic drinkers were devoted to this precious liquid. At the excavation site of Hajji Firuz Tepe in the Zagros Mountains of northwestern Iran, McGovern discovered prehistoric wine racks used to store airtight carafes. Inhabitants of the village seasoned their alcohol with resin from Atlantic Pistachio trees. This ingredient was said to have healing properties, for example for infections, and was used as an early antibiotic.
     The village's Neolithic residents lived comfortably in spacious mud brick huts, and the archaeologist and his team found remnants of wine vessels in the kitchens of nearly all the dwellings. "Drinking wasn't just a privilege of the wealthy in the village," McGovern posits. In Iran the American scientist found vessels containing the first evidence of prehistoric beer. At first he puzzled over the purpose of the bulbous vessels with wide openings found in the prehistoric settlement Godin Tepe. Previously known wine vessels all had smaller spouts. McGovern was also perplexed by crisscrossed grooves scratched into the bottoms of the containers. Could it be some kind of mysterious inscription? But back in the laboratory, he isolated calcium oxalate, known to brewers as an unwanted byproduct of beer production. Nowadays, breweries can filter the crystals out of their brew without any difficulty. Their resourceful predecessors, working 3,500 years BCE, scratched grooves into their 50-liter (13-gallon) jugs so that the tiny stones would settle out there.
     The ancient farmers in Godin Tepe harvested barley from fields near the village and mashed the crop using basalt stone. Then they brewed the ground grain into a considerable range of varieties, enjoying a sweet, caramel-flavored dark beer, an amber-hued lager-like concoction, and other pleasant-tasting beverages. Around the same time, the Sumerians were paying homage to their fertility goddess Nin-Harra, whom they considered to be the inventor of beer. The main ingredient in their variety of beer was emmer, a variety of wheat that has since nearly disappeared. "Moderate alcohol consumption was advantageous for our early ancestors," McGovern speculates, "and they adapted to it biologically."

Source: Spiegel Online (24 December 2009)

Chinese scientists have found through genetic studies that modern humans had successfully colonized the Qinghai-Tibet Plateau in the Late Paleolithic Age, at least 21,000 years ago. The plateau, with an average altitude above 4,000 meters, is one of the most challenging areas in the world for human settlement due to its environmental extremes, such as extreme cold and low oxygen levels.
     "Through Paleolithic era stone tools excavated from the plateau years ago, archaeologists believed human beings possibly inhabited the plateau 30,000 years ago," said Zhao Mian, a researcher from the Kunming Institute of Zoology with the Chinese Academy of Sciences. But, with the drastic drop of temperature on the Earth in the Last Glacial Maximum of the Late Paleolithic Age, about 23,000 years ago, many species could not adapt to the changes and died out, she said. "Scientists have been debating heatedly whether modern humans on the plateau had survived the adverse conditions," she said.
     Led by her tutor Zhang Yaping, director of the the Kunming Institute of Zoology, Zhao and 14 other geneticists, including a German scientist, set up a research group three years ago. They collected 680 genome samples of genetic structure from Tibetans in several major Tibetan-populated areas. "Based on studies of their mitochondrial DNA genome variation, our results confirm the vast majority of Tibetan matrilineal components can trace their ancestry to Epipaleolithic and Neolithic immigrants from what is now northern China, or about 10,000 years ago, which accords with previous studies," Zhao said.
     In genetic studies, mitochondrial DNA is a tool for tracking ancestry through females and has been used in this role to track the ancestry of many species back hundreds of generations. "Another significant finding was that researchers identified an infrequent novel haplo group, M16," she said. In human genetics, haplo groups can be used to define human beings' ancestral groups and genetic populations. "M16 branched off directly from the genetic components of the ancestors of modern Eurasians," Zhao said. "M16 has an ancient age of at least 21,000 years, based on calculations through various dating methods in genetics," she said. "Its nearly exclusive distribution in Tibetan populations and ancient age suggest that M16 may represent the genetic relics of the Late Paleolithic inhabitants on the plateau," she said. "We believe the research results give a relatively clear answer to the debate on when modern humans settled down on the Qinghai-Tibet Plateau successfully," she said.
     Archaeologists have discovered Paleolithic human hand and footprints near Lhasa, the heart of the plateau, and reckoned they dated back about 20,600 years to 21,700 years, she said. "The age of the relics is close to that of M16, so we believe that supports our research results to some extent," she added.

Source: China View (14 December 2009)