Evolutionary Insights by Anthropology.net

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  1. قبل ١٢ ساعة

    Stones and Fire in the West African Savanna

    For centuries, the prehistory of West Africa has lingered in the shadows of better-studied regions. Europe’s caves brim with art and stratigraphy; East Africa’s rift valleys yield hominin fossils and ancient tools. By contrast, West Africa has offered far fewer windows into its past. The climate and geology have conspired to erase many traces of human life, leaving archaeologists with a patchwork record. Now, a site tucked into Senegal’s Falémé Valley is helping to fill that gap. Excavations at Ravin Blanc X (RBX) have revealed an Early Holocene workshop where hunter-gatherers knapped quartz into tools beside a small fireplace. Radiocarbon dates place this activity around 9,100 years ago. It is one of the rare Later Stone Age (LSA) sites in West Africa preserved with enough clarity to show how stone, fire, and environment intersected in daily life. “Stratification is crucial: it captures successive phases of occupation and provides key information on chronology, lifestyle changes, and climatic and environmental evolution,” notes Anne Mayor of the University of Geneva, who co-directed the project. A rare archaeological pocket The RBX site lies within a ravine whose sediments shielded the remains of an aceramic Later Stone Age occupation. In 2017, surface finds led researchers to test the site. Beneath later Neolithic deposits, they uncovered a layer dense with lithics and charcoal. The heart of this layer contained a fireplace and a knapping floor, intact after nearly 9,000 years. What the team found was not finished tools but debris. Flakes, cores, and fragments of quartz told the story of toolmaking in action. By refitting broken pieces, archaeologists could reconstruct the reduction sequences. Two main types of blanks were produced: broad, rectilinear flakes and narrower, elongated ones with oblique points. Retouching was rare; precision at the knapping stage meant the tools were already close to final form. The quartz itself was carefully chosen. Of the valley’s many sources, people selected microcrystalline blocks with predictable fracture patterns, demonstrating a practiced eye for stone quality. Stones in the savanna The RBX fireplace offered another glimpse of daily life. Charcoal analysis showed that the wood came from Detarium species, small trees common in dry savannas whose dense wood burns hot. Phytoliths—silica bodies from ancient plants—revealed a landscape of open grasslands dotted with palms and scattered trees. This was the onset of the African Humid Period, when rainfall transformed parts of the Sahel into more fertile terrain. Together, the evidence situates RBX’s occupants within a dynamic ecological transition. Their tools and fire hint at groups adapted to a savanna that was greener than today, yet still demanding in its seasonal rhythms. Shared traditions, distinct choices Comparisons with other sites show that the RBX toolkit was not unique. Technological parallels exist with Fatandi V in Senegal and Damatoumou 1 in Mali, pointing to a Sahelo-Sudanian LSA tradition. Yet contrasts emerge when comparing savanna groups with those in West Africa’s tropical forests. The latter show less standardization and more opportunistic toolmaking. “The microliths found at these savannah sites reveal sophisticated craftsmanship aimed at producing highly standardized, identical tools,” says Mayor. “Conversely, sites further south, in tropical forest settings, show different, more opportunistic technical choices.” Such differences suggest that by 9,000 years ago, cultural distinctions were already emerging between communities in contrasting environments. Why it matters The Ravin Blanc X site offers more than a single episode of tool production. It demonstrates that well-preserved LSA contexts in West Africa can exist and can illuminate cultural diversity at a critical juncture: the transition from foraging lifeways to the first ceramics, domestication, and Neolithic societies. By anchoring chronology with radiocarbon dates, RBX bridges the gap between the Late Pleistocene and the Holocene in a region where timelines have remained hazy. It underscores that the history of human ingenuity is not confined to Europe’s caves or Africa’s rift valleys. The people of the Falémé Valley were equally skilled at shaping stone and navigating changing landscapes. Related Research * Sorbini, G., et al. (2023). “Technological diversity in the Later Stone Age of West Africa.” African Archaeological Review. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10437-023-09568-0 * Huysecom, E., et al. (2012). “The emergence of pottery in Africa during the tenth millennium cal BP.” Journal of African Archaeology, 10(1): 43–65. https://doi.org/10.3213/2191-5784-10210 * Scerri, E. M. L., et al. (2016). “The West African Stone Age in the context of African prehistory.” Azania: Archaeological Research in Africa, 51(4): 507–537. https://doi.org/10.1080/0067270X.2016.1261741 * Lespez, L., et al. (2020). “Palaeoenvironments of the Falémé Valley (Senegal) and their impact on human settlement.” Quaternary International, 554: 95–111. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.quaint.2020.06.017 This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.anthropology.net/subscribe

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    A Lone Ingot and the Trade Networks of the Iron Age Baltic

    In a windswept coastal field near Särdal, Sweden, archaeologists recently examined what at first seemed an ordinary lump of metal. Its plano-convex shape—a low dome with a flat base—resembled the ingots long associated with Bronze Age trade. Yet isotopic tests told a different story: this was no Bronze Age artifact, but a copper-zinc-tin-lead alloy typical of the Iron Age. The find, reported in the Journal of Archaeological Science: Reports by Serena Sabatini and colleagues, is the first complete plano-convex ingot identified from Sweden. When set beside ingot rods from northeastern Poland’s Iława Lakeland, it reveals a shared recipe for alloying that hints at much wider economic ties linking the Baltic world with Atlantic and continental Europe. “Due, in particular, to its shape and size, it seemed to us a Bronze Age artifact,” noted Serena Sabatini of the University of Gothenburg. “But the ingot turned out to be made of a copper-zinc-tin-lead alloy, typical of the Iron Age and later periods.” The ingot as artifact and signal Plano-convex ingots are best known from Bronze Age contexts across the Mediterranean, where they were produced for transport and exchange. To find one in Sweden—an isolated object with no archaeological context—posed interpretive challenges. To resolve them, the team turned to isotope geochemistry. By comparing trace elements and lead isotope ratios in the Särdal ingot with similar analyses from Polish finds, the researchers uncovered near-identical signatures. This suggested not only contemporaneity but also a shared metallurgical tradition. “Given the astonishing similarity of the metal composition in all those artifacts, we also managed to strengthen earlier hypotheses about contacts and networking in the Baltic area during the Nordic pre-Roman Iron Age,” Sabatini explained. Collaboration across borders The study highlights the role of collaboration in archaeometallurgy. Polish scholars had recently published data on Iron Age ingot rods, and only by comparing datasets could the Swedish find be placed within a coherent historical context. “Networking and international collaboration are also important to unveil patterns and data that would remain unknown when one looks exclusively at the local context,” said Sabatini. “Without the successful collaboration with our Polish colleagues, we would never have achieved such remarkable results.” Iron Age networks beyond Scandinavia The metallurgical match between Sweden and Poland points to more than isolated experiments in alloying. It suggests structured exchange, perhaps even organized distribution of copper alloys across the Baltic. Such trade would have been essential in a world where access to ores, especially tin, was uneven and often distant. By the Nordic pre-Roman Iron Age (ca. 500 BCE–CE 1), Scandinavia was already tied into far-flung exchange networks that connected the Atlantic façade, the Baltic, and continental Europe. Objects of Mediterranean origin occasionally reached northern Europe; amber and furs traveled south. Metal, always a commodity of strategic importance, was the medium through which these exchanges were made tangible. What a single ingot tells us In isolation, the Särdal ingot might have been written off as a curiosity. But when analyzed and contextualized, it becomes a key to understanding the broader economic and cultural world of the Iron Age Baltic. Objects like this ingot and the Polish rods illuminate how trade and metallurgy worked together to weave the pre-Roman north into continental patterns. Related Research * Ling, J., & Stos-Gale, Z. (2015). Isotope evidence for the origin of metals in Late Bronze Age Europe. Journal of Archaeological Science, 61, 246–259. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jas.2015.06.001 * Nørgaard, H. W., Pernicka, E., & Vandkilde, H. (2019). On the trail of Scandinavia’s early metallurgy: Provenance, transfer and mixing. PLOS ONE, 14(7), e0219574. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0219574 * Radivojević, M., Rehren, T., Pernicka, E., Šljivar, D., Brauns, M., & Borić, D. (2010). On the origins of extractive metallurgy: New evidence from Europe. Journal of Archaeological Science, 37(11), 2775–2787. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jas.2010.06.012 * Sabatini, S., & Bergerbrant, S. (2019). Trade and Civilisation: Economic Networks and Cultural Ties, from Prehistory to the Early Modern Era. Cambridge University Press. https://doi.org/10.1017/9781108563709 This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.anthropology.net/subscribe

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    Voices From Deep Time

    he Anthropology of Sound Language is often hailed as humanity’s signature invention, the trait that makes us unique. But if we listen carefully to the evolutionary past, the roots of speech run far deeper than words. For anthropologists and archaeologists, language isn’t just a system of grammar and vocabulary. It is a survival tool, a social bond, and a window into cognition. To understand where it came from, researchers increasingly look not just to fossilized skulls or stone tools, but to the living voices of other species. Two new studies add to this growing chorus. One, published in NeuroImage by Boglárka Morvai and colleagues, suggests that the ability to detect vocalizations—and to tell our own kind apart from others—is an ancient mammalian inheritance, shared by species as different as humans, dogs, and pigs. Another, published in PNAS by Renata Biazzi and collaborators, reveals how rapid postnatal brain growth in humans and marmosets may explain why both species babble their way into language. Taken together, these findings place human speech on a broader evolutionary map: from deep-time mammalian sound detection to the peculiar, fragile window of infant brain development that made vocal learning possible. Voices Across Mammals: A Shared Heritage The Hungarian team behind the NeuroImage study asked a deceptively simple question: how do mammalian brains respond to voices? To find out, they wired up humans, pet dogs, and companion pigs with EEG electrodes, and played back a series of sounds: sighs, coughs, barks, grunts, and neutral noises. The results revealed a two-step neural process. Within 200 milliseconds, human and pig brains showed heightened activity whenever they heard a vocal sound—whether from their own species or another. Then, a little later, all three species (including dogs) showed a distinct response when the sound belonged to their own kind. This suggested that the ability to prioritize voices, and then to sort them into familiar and unfamiliar categories, is not a human innovation. It likely dates back some 90 million years, to the last common ancestor of these diverse mammals. “Conspecific vocalization sensitivity may have ancient evolutionary roots,” the team concluded. In short: mammals have been listening closely for a very long time. Babbling Brains: Why Humans (and Marmosets) Talk But recognizing voices is not the same as learning to produce speech. That leap—babbling, imitating, and eventually conversing—is rare in the animal kingdom. Apart from humans, only a handful of birds and one other primate, the marmoset, show clear signs of vocal learning in infancy. The PNAS study sought to understand why. By comparing developmental data across four primates—humans, marmosets, chimpanzees, and rhesus macaques—the researchers found that humans and marmosets share a striking pattern: their brains grow unusually fast just after birth. That accelerated growth means that infants experience the world, and the social responses of caregivers, at a time when their neural circuits are still highly malleable. Marmoset parents, much like human families, answer their babies’ squeaks and coos with vocal replies. This back-and-forth accelerates the young monkeys’ progress from babble to adult-like calls. The same dynamic underlies the human journey from cooing to words. As neuroscientist Asif Ghazanfar has put it, “That means the social environment an infant is born into has a tremendous influence” on language learning. In evolutionary terms, humans didn’t invent this strategy out of nowhere—we share it with a tiny monkey in Brazil. The Long Evolution of Talking For anthropologists, these studies reshape how we think about speech. Voice recognition circuits are ancient, perhaps as old as mammals themselves. Babbling brains, nurtured by caregivers, arose later, but not uniquely in our lineage. Together, they form the scaffolding for human language. The archaeological record reminds us that spoken language leaves no fossils. But by combining neuroscience with evolutionary biology, researchers are uncovering the hidden continuities that connect our conversations today with the calls of pigs, the barks of dogs, and the chatter of marmoset infants. Speech, it seems, is both deeply ancestral and oddly fragile: rooted in mechanisms shared across millions of years, yet dependent on the fleeting window of infancy to take shape. Between these two poles—ancient recognition and infant learning—lies the story of how humans became the most talkative species on Earth. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.anthropology.net/subscribe

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    When Mutations Aren’t Accidents

    For more than a century, biologists have described evolution as a two-step dance: mutations arise randomly, and natural selection decides which survive. Randomness, in this view, is the engine of genetic variation, producing an endless supply of accidents, some beneficial, many neutral, and others lethal. But new research suggests that not all mutations fit this script. A study published in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences by an international team led from Israel and Ghana argues that some mutations appear not by accident but in patterns shaped by long-term pressures. Their findings come from the APOL1 gene, a locus with a fraught evolutionary history. Variants in APOL1 protect against Trypanosoma parasites, which cause African sleeping sickness, but they also increase the risk of kidney disease when inherited in pairs. “The new findings challenge the notion of random mutation fundamentally,” said Adi Livnat of the University of Haifa, senior author of the study. A mutation with two faces The APOL1 variant under scrutiny has long puzzled geneticists. In West and Central Africa, where Trypanosoma infections have historically been a deadly force, this mutation provides a clear survival advantage. But outside regions where the parasite is common, the same mutation seems less prevalent, as its protective benefits are irrelevant and its risks remain. If mutations arise purely at random, researchers expected the APOL1 variant to appear at similar baseline rates worldwide, only later spreading in Africa under parasite pressure. Instead, the team’s ultra-sensitive method showed that the mutation originates more frequently in African populations than in Europeans. Even more striking, the change occurs in exactly the part of the gene where it confers parasite resistance. This pattern echoes earlier findings on the HbS mutation, which guards against malaria while causing sickle-cell anemia. Both cases suggest that some mutations arise with a kind of internal logic, linked to genomic context and environmental history. Beyond randomness and Lamarck Historically, evolution has been cast between two poles: Darwinian mutation-and-selection versus Lamarck’s discredited idea that organisms directly tailor their genes to environmental needs. The new study proposes something different: that genomes themselves may have a built-in tendency to produce useful changes, honed over generations. In this view, the genome isn’t just a passive ledger of chance accidents. Instead, it’s an active system where mutations can be guided by the accumulated “experience” of past selective pressures. “At each generation, mutations arise based on the information that has accumulated in the genome up to that time point,” Livnat and colleagues write. The researchers describe this as a form of natural simplification. Over evolutionary time, genetic interactions that repeatedly prove useful can become “hardwired” into the DNA through mutational processes. This mechanism doesn’t require foresight by organisms, but it means mutations aren’t always scattershot. The case of gene fusions The team points to gene fusions as an example. Traditional thinking held that genes fuse randomly when DNA segments happen to break and rejoin. But studies show that genes which frequently work together in cellular networks are more likely to fuse—suggesting that the 3D architecture of the genome brings them together in ways that favor functional outcomes. Seen this way, mutations aren’t just noise. They can be the crystallization of long-term biological “conversations,” streamlining regulatory systems into new, inheritable units. Implications for anthropology and medicine For anthropologists, this study opens new possibilities for thinking about human evolution. If some mutations arise preferentially in response to enduring pressures, then episodes like the spread of malaria resistance in Africa or lactose tolerance in Europe may need re-examining. Did these mutations simply occur at random, or did genomic architecture make them more likely in populations where they mattered most? The medical implications are equally large. Nonrandom mutational processes could help explain why certain populations bear disproportionate burdens of genetic disease, and why some protective traits cluster geographically. A shift in evolutionary thinking While controversial, the results encourage scientists to look more closely at mutation as a process with its own rules, not merely raw material for selection. “Understood in the proper timescale, an individual mutation does not arise at random nor does it invent anything in and of itself,” Livnat argues. Instead, mutations may emerge from a long history of genomic interactions, layered generation by generation. If so, then the story of evolution is not only about chance and filtering, but also about the deep memory encoded within the genome itself. Related Research * Stern, D. L. (2010). Evolution, Development, and the Predictable Genome. Roberts and Company. https://doi.org/10.1086/656796 * Monroe, J. G., Srikant, T., Carbonell-Bejerano, P., Becker, C., Lensink, M., Exposito-Alonso, M., ... & Weigel, D. (2022). Mutation bias reflects natural selection in Arabidopsis thaliana. Nature, 602(7896), 101–105. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41586-021-04269-6 * Livnat, A. (2013). Interaction-based evolution: how natural selection and nonrandom mutation work together. Biology Direct, 8(24). https://doi.org/10.1186/1745-6150-8-24 This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.anthropology.net/subscribe

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    How the Slavic Migrations Reshaped Europe’s Genetic and Cultural Landscape

    In the sixth century CE, Slavic groups began to appear in the written accounts of Byzantine chroniclers. Within a few generations, they spread across a vast region from the Elbe to the Volga, and from the Baltic to the Balkans. Yet for centuries, historians and archaeologists puzzled over a basic question: did the spread of Slavic culture reflect the movement of people, or simply the diffusion of language and traditions among existing populations? Two major genomic studies now bring clarity to this debate. A team led by Joscha Gretzinger and colleagues, writing in Nature, analyzed genome-wide data from 555 ancient individuals across Central and Eastern Europe. Meanwhile, another study by Ilektra Schulz and co-authors in Genome Biology focused on 18 individuals from South Moravia, a region that later became the heartland of the ninth-century Moravian principality. Together, the findings paint a detailed picture of how large-scale migration shaped Europe’s genetic and cultural landscape during the Early Middle Ages. The Scale of Movement The genetic evidence shows that beginning in the sixth century, populations carrying ancestry from eastern Europe—particularly areas around present-day Belarus and Ukraine—moved westward and southward. This was no trickle. In regions such as eastern Germany, Poland, and Croatia, more than 80 percent of the local gene pool was replaced during this period. In South Moravia, the data tell a similar story. Individuals from the fifth century carried a wide spectrum of ancestries, from Mediterranean to Scandinavian. But by the seventh century, this diversity gave way to a more homogeneous profile closely resembling modern Slavic-speaking populations. As Schulz and colleagues note, the results are “incompatible with theories of strict local continuity,” supporting instead the arrival of new populations linked to the Prague-Korchak cultural horizon. Social Worlds in Transition This genetic transformation was not accompanied by the kind of empire-building often associated with migration in antiquity. Instead, archaeogenetic and archaeological evidence suggests that early Slavic communities were built around flexible kinship networks and local alliances. In eastern Germany, new extended family groups became the backbone of society, organized around patrilineal descent. In the Balkans, by contrast, migrants mixed with local populations, producing hybrid communities where old and new traditions persisted side by side. These findings help explain why early Slavic communities left such modest archaeological signatures—small villages, handmade pottery, and cremation burials. Their strength may have lain not in imposing dominance but in adaptability. As medievalist Walter Pohl puts it, the Slavic migrations resembled, “a demic diffusion or grass-root movement, often in small groups or temporary alliances, settling new territories without imposing a fixed identity or elite structures.” Continuities and Legacies One of the most striking outcomes of these studies is the persistence of early medieval Slavic ancestry into the present day. Among the Sorbs, a Slavic-speaking minority in eastern Germany, genetic profiles remain closely aligned with the populations that settled the region over a millennium ago. In Poland, the genetic shift of the sixth and seventh centuries laid the foundation for the ancestry of modern Poles, Ukrainians, and Belarusians. At the same time, regional variation remained the norm. In Croatia, for example, Slavic-related ancestry makes up only part of the modern gene pool, reflecting a long history of intermarriage with diverse local groups. In Moravia, genetic continuity from the seventh century onward suggests that once established, Slavic communities remained relatively stable, forming the basis for later political entities such as the Moravian principality. A Different Kind of Migration Story The genomic evidence reframes the Slavic expansion not as a story of conquest, but as one of demographic transformation. Entire families moved together, women and men contributing equally to the gene pool. Rather than replacing local elites, early Slavs integrated with them in some regions, or built new communities where space was available in others. Their success lay in flexibility and resilience during a period of political fragmentation and ecological stress. As Johannes Krause of the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology observes, “The spread of the Slavs was likely the last demographic event of continental scale to permanently and fundamentally reshape both the genetic and linguistic landscape of Europe.” Related Research Other archaeogenetic work complements these findings: * Mathieson, I., et al. (2018). The genomic history of southeastern Europe. Nature, 555, 197–203. https://doi.org/10.1038/nature25778 * Veeramah, K. R., et al. (2018). Population genomic analysis of elongated skulls reveals extensive female-biased immigration in Early Medieval Bavaria. PNAS, 115(13), 3494–3499. https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.1719880115 * Järve, M., et al. (2023). Genetic continuity, isolation, and local adaptation in the people of the eastern Baltic. Current Biology, 33(4), 739–751. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cub.2022.12.028 Together with the new research, these studies highlight how movements of people, not just ideas, profoundly shaped the genetic and cultural map of Europe. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.anthropology.net/subscribe

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    The Blue Shadows of Dzudzuana

    In the foothills of the Caucasus, archaeologists have recovered something unusual from Dzudzuana Cave: tiny traces of indigotin, the molecule that produces indigo blue. The residues clung to pebbles used as grinding tools 34,000 years ago. They came not from food, but from the leaves of Isatis tinctoria L.—a plant better known as woad. This is the first evidence that Upper Paleolithic groups intentionally processed a non-nutritional plant to extract compounds for purposes beyond survival. For archaeologists, it is a rare window into how Homo sapiens looked to plants not just for calories, but for color, healing, and meaning. “Rather than viewing plants solely as food resources, this study highlights their role in complex operations, likely involving the transformation of perishable materials for use in different phases of daily life,” noted archaeologist Laura Longo of Ca’ Foscari University of Venice, who led the research. A cave, some pebbles, and unexpected color Dzudzuana Cave, tucked into the Georgian Caucasus, has long yielded evidence of early modern human life. Excavations in the early 2000s recovered unknapped stone pebbles that had been used for grinding. Initially, the goal was to identify what these tools processed. Microscopic and chemical analysis revealed starch grains and wear consistent with soft plant material. Then came a surprise: blue residues concentrated in the worn zones. Advanced spectroscopy confirmed that the pigment was indigotin. The chemical forms when oxygen reacts with glycoside precursors in woad leaves during crushing. This means Paleolithic groups intentionally processed the plant, though its leaves have no nutritional value. Woad in the Paleolithic imagination The question is why. Isatis tinctoria has a deep history as both a dye and a medicinal plant. Medieval Europeans used it to produce blue textiles, while traditional remedies valued it for anti-inflammatory and antimicrobial properties. At Dzudzuana, the blue residues hint at similar possibilities. The pigments may have been used to color fibers, skins, or bodies. They may also have been part of medicinal or ritual practices, with color serving as a marker of power or protection. What matters most is the evidence of choice. These humans invested time and effort into transforming plants for purposes that reached beyond nutrition. Experiments in replication To test the idea, Longo’s team ran replicative experiments. They gathered river pebbles near the cave, cultivated woad, and crushed the leaves. The resulting residues matched the archaeological samples: faint blue fibers clinging to pores in the stone. The work showed that the Paleolithic pebbles could have trapped and preserved pigment for tens of thousands of years. “Our multi-analytical approach opens new perspectives on the technological and cultural sophistication of Upper Paleolithic populations, who skillfully exploited the inexhaustible resource of plants,” Longo explained. A glimpse of complex behavior These findings broaden the picture of Paleolithic ingenuity. Humans at Dzudzuana were not just hunters or gatherers of staples. They were chemists of the forest, experimenting with plants whose properties spoke to senses, bodies, and perhaps spirits. For anthropologists, the residues suggest a cultural world in which plants shaped identities, rituals, and aesthetics. The traces of blue are fragile, but they point to a capacity for abstract thinking, planning, and symbolic action long before agriculture or writing. Related Research * Hardy, K., Buckley, S., Collins, M. J., Estalrrich, A., Brothwell, D., Copeland, L., García-Tabernero, A., et al. (2012). Neanderthal medics? Evidence for plant-based dietary and medicinal practices. Naturwissenschaften, 99(8), 617–626. https://doi.org/10.1007/s00114-012-0942-0 * Power, R. C., Salazar-García, D. C., Rubini, M., Darlas, A., Havarti, K., Walker, M., & Henry, A. G. (2018). Dental calculus indicates widespread plant use within the stable isotope ecology of Upper Paleolithic humans. Nature Communications, 9, 5127. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41467-018-07282-0 * Cagnato, C. (2019). Plant dyes in the archaeological record: Their emergence, identification, and implications. Journal of Archaeological Method and Theory, 26(1), 219–258. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10816-018-9361-0 * Radini, A., Cummings, L. S., Buckley, S., Macchiarola, M., & Hardy, K. (2019). Human use of plants for non-nutritional purposes: Dental calculus evidence from prehistoric Europe. Antiquity, 93(367), 405–420. https://doi.org/10.15184/aqy.2019.31 This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.anthropology.net/subscribe

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    The Ghost of a Pandemic: Unearthing the Plague That Changed History

    In the mid-sixth century, a mysterious illness swept across the Byzantine Empire. Chroniclers described entire cities hollowed out by death, trade routes silenced, and the empire itself brought to its knees. The disaster became known as the Plague of Justinian, named after the emperor who ruled during its outbreak. For centuries, historians argued over what caused it. Was it the same plague that would later unleash the Black Death in Europe? Or something different entirely? Now, nearly 1,500 years later, science has an answer—one drawn from fragments of DNA hidden in the teeth of the dead. Researchers from the University of South Florida and Florida Atlantic University, working with an international team, have recovered direct genetic evidence of Yersinia pestis, the bacterium that causes plague, from a mass grave in Jerash, Jordan. The findings, published in Genes and Pathogens, confirm beyond doubt that the Plague of Justinian was indeed the first pandemic driven by the same pathogen that would return in later centuries. “For centuries, we’ve relied on written accounts of a devastating disease, but lacked hard biological evidence of plague’s presence,” said microbiologist Rays H. Y. Jiang, lead investigator of the study. “Our findings provide the missing piece of that puzzle.” A Roman Arena Turned Graveyard The story begins in the ruins of Jerash, once a thriving city of the Eastern Roman Empire. Known for its colonnaded streets and grand hippodrome, Jerash was a hub of commerce and culture. But by the sixth century, the city faced catastrophe. Written sources speak of sudden waves of mortality that struck between AD 541 and 750, reducing populations to shadows of their former selves. Beneath the floors of Jerash’s hippodrome—a venue built for spectacle and sport—archaeologists found something far grimmer: human remains stacked hastily in burial chambers, victims of a sudden and overwhelming calamity. Teeth from eight individuals, preserved in the dry soils, held the answers researchers had sought for generations. Using targeted ancient DNA methods, the team extracted genetic material from these teeth and sequenced it. The result was unmistakable: Yersinia pestis DNA, nearly identical across all samples. That genetic uniformity points to a rapid, explosive outbreak—precisely the kind described by Byzantine chroniclers. A Pandemic Before Pandemics Had a Name The Plague of Justinian erupted first in Pelusium, a port city in Egypt, before radiating outward along trade networks. It struck Constantinople in AD 542, killing thousands daily at its peak. Historians estimate that the pandemic may have claimed 30 to 50 million lives—nearly half the empire’s population—over its two-century span. Until now, direct biological proof from the empire’s heartland was missing. Traces of Y. pestis had been recovered from remote sites in Western Europe, but never from the Eastern Mediterranean, where the outbreak began. The Jerash evidence closes that gap. Pandemics on Repeat A second study by the same team places the Jerash strain in a larger evolutionary context. By comparing ancient and modern plague genomes, the researchers discovered that the pathogen behind the Justinian outbreak was not the ancestor of later pandemics, like the Black Death. Instead, plague has repeatedly spilled over from animal reservoirs into humans, triggering pandemics independently across history. This finding shatters the notion of a single lineage marching through time. Unlike COVID-19, which traces to a single spillover, plague is a recurring phenomenon—an opportunistic killer waiting in the wings. “The Jerash site offers a rare glimpse of how ancient societies responded to a public health disaster,” noted Greg O’Corry-Crowe of FAU. “A place built for celebration became a cemetery. That transformation speaks volumes about how quickly cities could be overwhelmed.” Lessons from the Past Today, plague still lingers. In July, a resident of Arizona died of pneumonic plague—the most lethal form of the disease. A week later, a case emerged in California. These incidents are rare, but they remind us that plague is not a relic of the past. It continues to evolve and persist, even as antibiotics keep it largely at bay. The Jerash discovery is more than a historical footnote. It is a cautionary tale about the interplay of ecology, trade, and human mobility—forces that shape pandemics both ancient and modern. Just as the Justinian Plague reshaped the Byzantine world, new pathogens will challenge ours. The ghosts of past pandemics still whisper: connectivity breeds vulnerability. The team’s next step takes them to Venice, where thousands of plague victims from the Black Death lie buried on Lazaretto Vecchio, a quarantine island that once stood as Europe’s first line of defense. Their bones may hold more secrets—about pathogens, about resilience, and about what it means to live in a world where pandemics are not the exception, but the rule. Related Research and Citations * Harbeck, M., Seifert, L., Hänsch, S., et al. (2013). Yersinia pestis DNA from skeletal remains indicates widespread presence in Europe during the Black Death. PNAS, 110(8), 2910–2914. https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.1205750110 * Spyrou, M. A., Tukhbatova, R. I., Feldman, M., et al. (2016). Historical Yersinia pestis genomes reveal the European Black Death as the source of ancient and modern plague pandemics. Cell Host & Microbe, 19(6), 874–881. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.chom.2016.05.012 * Rasmussen, S., Allentoft, M. E., Nielsen, K., et al. (2015). Early divergent strains of Yersinia pestis in Eurasia 5,000 years ago. Cell, 163(3), 571–582. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cell.2015.10.009 This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.anthropology.net/subscribe

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    A Maya Town Between Two Worlds: Hunacti and the Cost of Defiance

    In the 16th century, as Spanish friars pushed deeper into the Yucatán, they built more than churches—they built social experiments. One of those experiments was Hunacti, a visita mission town founded in 1557 and abandoned by 1572. In its brief 15-year life, Hunacti tells a story of paradox: a place that outwardly embraced colonial order yet quietly resisted, holding fast to Maya traditions even as persecution closed in. Hunacti looked the part of a model town. Streets ran in a grid, leading to a central plaza dominated by a T-shaped church. Around it rose three grand houses, plastered and arched in Spanish fashion. Historical records suggest its leaders enjoyed rare privileges—horses, cacao orchards, and access to labor for building projects. Yet beneath that facade lay currents of defiance. “Hunacti is a paradox,” said archaeologist Marilyn Masson, who co-authored the study published in Latin American Antiquity. “It was grandly built, with cooperative leaders at first, yet it became known for ongoing resistance, even when the costs were high.” Idolatry Trials and a Town Under Siege Those costs came swiftly. By the 1560s, Hunacti had drawn the attention of Franciscan inquisitors enforcing Christianity through notorious idolatry trials. In 1562, town leader Juan Xiu was accused of human sacrifice. He and eight others died under torture. The violence didn’t end there: later leaders were publicly lashed for keeping Maya rites alive. A chilling episode in 1561—a stillborn child marked like a crucified Christ, reported by Xiu himself—may have sealed Hunacti’s fate in Franciscan eyes. Famine struck in 1572, and the town was abandoned. What the Archaeology Shows Excavations at Hunacti’s plaza, church, and elite residences offer a view beyond colonial chronicles. Beneath the polished floors, archaeologists found effigy censers—ceramic incense burners shaped like deities—tucked in corners and layered above late-period floors. They were still in use when the town’s final residents walked away. “Many of the censers were found above the last colonial floors, suggesting their use continued until the settlement’s end, despite Franciscan prohibitions,” Masson noted. Other finds reinforce this picture of autonomy: * Local over imported: Stone tools made of local chert and limestone dominate. Only one European metal artifact—a hatchet—appeared. * Sparse Spanish goods: Few imported ceramics or market items, suggesting a retreat from colonial trade. * Faunal remains: Mostly native game such as deer and peccary, with the exception of one horse—a symbol of elite status. Resistance in Plain Sight If Hunacti began as a cooperative town, it ended as something else: a community tightening its circle, resisting through household ritual and limited engagement with Spanish systems. Masson argues that this was a calculated strategy. “Success in this context isn’t just about wealth or imported goods,” she explained. “It’s about sustaining your own traditions and making your own decisions, even under intense outside pressure.” For the Maya residents of Hunacti, that autonomy came at the cost of survival as a town. But the fragments they left behind—the censers, the chipped chert blades, the hidden symbols—speak to resilience. Why It Matters Hunacti’s story complicates the old narrative of passive assimilation. Instead, it reveals a spectrum of strategies—negotiation, adaptation, and defiance—played out in kitchens, plazas, and ritual spaces. It also underscores why household archaeology matters: the smallest artifacts can rewrite colonial history. Four centuries later, Hunacti stands as a cautionary tale about power, culture, and the choices people make when forced to live between two worlds. Related Research * Restall, M. (1997). The Maya World: Yucatec Culture and Society, 1550–1850. Stanford University Press. * Hutson, S. R. (2016). The Ancient Urban Maya: Neighborhoods, Inequality, and Built Form. University Press of Florida.DOI: 10.5744/florida/9780813061817.001.0001 * Clendinnen, I. (1987). Ambivalent Conquests: Maya and Spaniard in Yucatán, 1517–1570. Cambridge University Press.DOI: 10.1017/CBO9780511812558 * Farriss, N. M. (1984). Maya Society under Colonial Rule: The Collective Enterprise of Survival. Princeton University Press. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.anthropology.net/subscribe

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