Fascinating details of ancient child sacrifices, a map of a lost city in the Amazon and the answer to a Stonehenge mystery are some of this year’s insights into human history.
Gone brains
The discovery of a human brain at an archaeological site is more common than you might think. A new archive lists some 4,400 ancient brains that were found dried, frozen or otherwise preserved (SN : 19/03/24). Brains may owe such surprising robustness to their chemical composition.
Ancient arts and crafts
The oldest rock art in the Americas may be a set of cave paintings from Argentina dating back around 8,200 years (SN : 9/03/24, p. 16). It is several thousand years older than other rock art in the region. The nearly 900 paintings located in a cave called Cueva Huenul 1 – which include geometric shapes as well as figures of humans and animals – may have helped preserve cultural knowledge through generations of hunter-gatherers.
Breeding heritage
Yamnaya breeders arriving from southwest Asia rewrote the genetic history of Europe around 5,000 years ago, based on the DNA of more than 1,600 ancient peoples (SN : 10/02/24, p. 14). Northern Europeans probably owe their tall stature and lighter skin, as well as their vulnerability to multiple sclerosis, to their Yamnaya ancestors. Eastern Europeans, meanwhile, may have inherited a variant of the Yamnaya gene linked to Alzheimer’s disease.
Egyptian ergonomics
Digging into scrolls took its toll on ancient Egyptian scribes (SN : 27/06/24). The skeletons of 30 scribes buried in the Abusir pyramid complex show signs of arthritis and other damage from poor posture.
The Scottish centerpiece of Stonehenge
The mysterious altar stone at the heart of Stonehenge probably comes from Scotland (SN : 14/08/24). It was previously thought to share the Welsh origins of other Stonehenge blocks, but the stone closely matches the mineral composition of the Orcadian Basin, a Scottish rock formation.
Pompeii is a terrible, horrible, no good, very bad day
The infamous Pompeii apocalypse was worse than anyone thought. When Mount Vesuvius erupted in 79 A.D., it not only covered nearby towns in hot gas, ash and deadly rock, it also triggered deadly earthquakes, a study collapsed buildings and crushed skeletons discovered (SN : 8/7/24).
Mayan sacrifices unmasked
Child sacrifices in a Mayan burial chamber on the Yucatán Peninsula all involved young boys, DNA shows, overturning the theory that women were sacrificed there in fertility rituals (SN : 12/06/24). The boys, sacrificed between AD 500 and 900, may have been killed to appease a rain god.
A lost city, finished
Laser scans have revealed the Amazon’s oldest and largest known urban complex (SN : 11/01/24). Beneath the trees of Ecuador’s Upano Valley lie thousands of mounds that were once homes and community spaces, as well as remains of roads and farms. Inhabited from around 500 BC to 1500 AD, the city shows how sophisticated Amazonian civilizations were long before European conquest.
X marks the spot
In a rare case of productive social media scrolling, a researcher identified part of a lost civilization’s alphabet in a photo of an engraved slate posted onSN : 24/06/24). Found in Spain, slate comes from the Tartessos civilization, which disappeared in the 5th century BC. The writing system is linked to the Phoenician alphabet which shaped Latin, Spanish and English writing.
Agriculture was not inevitable
A group of Stone Age hunter-gatherers known as the Iberomaurusians ate a primarily vegetarian diet of wild plants for millennia. And they did it without ever cultivating these plants, according to an analysis of approximately 15,000-year-old human bones and teeth from a cave in Morocco (SN : 01/06/24, p. 14). These findings challenge the traditional idea that plant-based diets lead humans to grow their own food.
The idea of a population boom is a failure
Contrary to popular belief, the early Polynesian settlers of Rapa Nui, aka Easter Island, may not have experienced a population boom that destroyed their civilization and the island’s environment. Field studies and satellite data suggest that Polynesian islanders who arrived about 800 years ago established a modest agricultural system and maintained a stable population of fewer than 4,000 until the arrival of Europeans there. 300 years (SN : 10/08/24, p. 14).
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