Tag: archaeology

320 ka behavior leap

10s of collaborators at institutions worldwide worked to analyze the environmental record they had obtained, which is now the most precisely dated African environmental record of the past 1 ma. early humans at Olorgesailie relied on the same tools, stone handaxes, for 700 ka. Their way of life during this period was remarkably stable, with no major changes in their behaviors and strategies for survival. Then, beginning around 320 ka ago, people living there entered the Middle Stone Age, crafting smaller, more sophisticated weapons, including projectiles. At the same time, they began to trade resources with distant groups and to use coloring materials, suggesting symbolic communication.

China civilization origins

Shimao is now the largest known Neolithic settlement in China with art and technology that came from the northern steppe and would influence future Chinese dynasties.

Together with recent discoveries at other prehistoric sites nearby and along the coast, Shimao is forcing historians to rethink the beginnings of Chinese civilization—expanding their understanding of the geographical locations and outside influences of its earliest cultures. Shimao is one of the most important archaeological discoveries of this century. It gives us a new way of looking at the development of China’s early civilization. Carbon-dating determined that parts of Shimao, as the site is called (its original name is unknown), date back 4300 years, 2000 years before the oldest section of the Great Wall—and 500 years before Chinese civilization took root on the Central Plains, several 100 km to the south.

2023-06-07: The genetic roots go back even further

We now know that the Han, 95% of the citizens of today’s People’s Republic of China, are scions of hunters and foragers who roamed the Yellow and Yangzi river valleys at the end of the last Ice Age, 12 ka BP. Today’s Chinese carry DNA startlingly similar to an individual buried in Tianyun Cave, near modern Beijing, 40 ka BP. China might not have the oldest continuous recorded history (Mesopotamia owns this distinction). But it comes close, and on the far more astonishing scale of 10s of 1000s of years, the Chinese people’s biological continuity knows no parallel.

Ancient Egyptian Tattooing

It seems that women were primarily being tattooed The tattoos from Deir el-Medina are on women associated with temples as priestesses, who had roles in singing and dancing and performance. The most eye-opening find was a single mummy that bore at least 30 tattoos, based on the current analysis. Some of the tattoos, adorning the arms, chest, and neck, were visible with the naked eye—and sound more Brooklyn than Egypt.


2021-09-29: Now combine that with DNA facial reconstruction

Mummy samples were estimated to be between 2023 and 2797 years old. Researchers performed enzymatic damage repair on each mummy before conducting DNA sequencing. Then Parabon used the resulting whole-genome sequencing data and selected 3 samples with the highest quality to analyze. The This is the first comprehensive DNA phenotyping the company has performed on human DNA of this age. They used Snapshot, a phenotyping method to predict the ancestry of mummies, to predict the ancestry, pigmentation, and face morphology of the 3 mummies. The overall genetic makeup of the mummies is closer to the modern Mediterranean or the Middle East people than modern-day Egyptians. Researchers generated 3D meshes for the outline of the faces and calculated heat maps to highlight differences between the 3 faces. They combined these results with the Snapshot predictions and reveal that the mummies once had light brown skin with dark eyes and hair.