Ginger

Ginger, nickednamed for his reddish/blonde hair, is the oldest known mummy from Ancient Egypt. Dated to c. 3500 BC, he was found in the area of Gebelein, also known as Naga el-Gherira. He is currently located in the British Museum.

Description by the British Museum:

Body of naturally mummified adult male lying in flexed position.

Skull - Tufts of ginger-coloured hair are present on the scalp. No obvious fractures. Mouth slightly open. All teeth present and appear healthy.

Thorax and Abdomen - Comminuted fracture, 4th left rib. Fracture, anterior third of 6th, 7th, 8th, and 9th left ribs. The spinal column is free from fractures and dislocations. The intervertebral discs appear normal. No arthritic changes are present. There is a large, faintly granular opacity within the thorax. Stellate crack fracture on the wing of the left ilium. Fracture through the right pubic ring.

Arms - No definite fractures seen. The left index finger and several of the terminal phalanges of the feet are missing.

Legs - Both femoral shafts are fractured and there is a fracture of the shaft of the left tibia and fibula. Three shells are present on the soft tissue just behind the left knee. No lines of arrested growth are visible.

Length: 163 centimetres (5.4 feet)

There were six bodies found at this location, including Ginger, all dating to the same period. Ceramic vessels were found with the bodies.

In 1967, x-rays were performed at the British Museum. Their findings:

• Female adult body with fractures to skull and many other bone fractures occurring after death, however the bones are otherwise healthy. There is long brown hair present on the scalp. The body is 5.0 feet in length.
• Body of an adolescent has a detached skull that may not belong to the body. The teeth are worn and there are fractures in all ribs, left tibia and right thigh bone. There are lines of arrested growth in the tibia. Linen has been used to pack the thorax and abdomen. The body is 4.9 feet in length.
• Male adult body with a square-shaped opacity in the skull and healthy teeth. The body has fractures in the 9th rib, the right femur and a crack fracture left of the sciatic notch. Several of the fingers are missing and the left hand has been detached at the wrist. Tufts of brown hair are on the remains of the scalp. The body is 5.2 feet in length.
• Elderly body with decalcified bones bones, consistent with senile osteoporosis. The body was probably in a wicker basket and covered with an animal skin as wicker and fur remnants are present and there are patches of linen on the body surface. All teeth are present with caps worn. The body has many fractured ribs and only wrist bones of the left hand remain. The legs have been detached due to fractures mid-shaft of both thigh bones. There are lines of arrested growth in the tibia and the last bones of most toes are missing. The body is 5.0 feet in length.
• Adult body, probably male, has remnants of bandages at the neck, pelvis and right ankle. The skull has been detached with some incisors missing but the remaining teeth appear healthy. The body has fractures in the ribs and left femur. One arm has been dislocated at the elbow joint, the left hand is detached at the wrist and both feet are also detached from the rest of the body. The body is 5.0 feet in length.

Ginger in the British Museum

Pre-Dynastic Egypt Timeline

• Early Predynastic (Badarian) (ca 5000-3900 BC)
• Middle Predynastic (Nagada I or Amratian) (ca 3900-3650 BC)
• Late Predynastic (Nagada II or Gerzean) (ca 3650-3300 BC)
• Terminal Predynastic (Nagada III or Proto-Dynastic) (ca 3300-3050 BC)

Tut and Other Stuff for 2011

Link

The tomb of King Tut’s wife, a buried pyramid, the Great Pyramid’s secret doors, and the final resting place of Cleopatra and Mark Anthony: these discoveries could await us in 2011, according to Dr. Zahi Hawass, chief of Egypt's Supreme Council of Antiquities.

Hawass, one of the world's leading Egyptologists, gave an exclusive interview to Discovery News at an exhibition of images from ancient Egypt taken by photographer Sandro Vannini. Hawass’ many-years-long effort to solve the mystery behind the Great Pyramid’s secret doors and Cleopatra’s burial place is well known.

Less publicized has been his search for a new tomb in the Valley of the Kings and a buried pyramid in the Dashur area.

“We took satellite images over an area in Dashur and we could see that a pyramid is buried underneath the ground. Right now we are excavating this pyramid,” Hawass told Discovery News.

Located some 50 miles south of the Egyptian capital, Cairo, Dashur is the site of several pyramids. The best known are the “Bent” pyramid, so named because of its sloping upper half, the “Red" pyramid, named after the reddish limestone from which it is built, and the “Black” pyramid of Amenemhat III.

Hawass believes the buried pyramid might belong to a king of the 13th Dynasty (1782-1650 BC), a period marked by rivalry over the throne, with many kings reigning for a short time.

“We do not know the name of the king yet. There are many missing kings in the 13th Dynasty,” Hawass said.

At the present time, Hawass seems to concentrate most of his efforts in the Valley of the Kings, where he hopes to uncover tomb KV64.

Indeed, 63 tombs have been already discovered since the valley was first mapped in the 18th century, with 26 of them belonging to kings.

Called KV64, as it will be the 64th tomb discovered, the tomb is likely to be a Queen’s burial.

“We found some indication that this tomb could be for Ankhesenamun, the Queen of Tutankhamun,” Hawass said.

Born as Ankhesenpaaten around 1348 BC, she was the third daughter of the Pharaoh Akhenaten and Nefertiti.

She probably changed her name into Ankhesenamun when she became the Great Royal Wife of Tutankhamun, most likely her half brother, at the age of 13.

Recent DNA tests have established that the two female fetuses buried in the tomb of Tutankhamun were most likely his offspring.

The mother is not yet genetically identified, although the data obtained from KV21A, one of two late 18th dynasty queens buried in tomb KV 21, pointed to this mummy as the mother of the fetuses.

Unfortunately, the researchers were not able to identify her as Ankhesenamun.

If KV64 is indeed Ankhesenamun’s tomb, new light might be shed on the family lineage of King Tut, especially if the Queen’s mummy is found.

“I hope this will be an intact tomb for Queen Ankhesenamun,” Hawass said.

Urartian King's Burial Chamber - 6th Century BC

Article 

Burial chambers of Urartian King Argishti and his family in the western wing of the ancient castle in the eastern province of Van was opened for the first time.

The Anatolia news agency took photographs and video of the burial chambers which were closed to visitors.

Centered around the Lake Van in the eastern Turkey, the Urartian Kingdom ruled from the mid 9th century BC till its defeat by Media in the early 6th century BC. The most splendid monuments of the Urartian Kingdom take place in Van since the city was the capital of the kingdom.

Built on a rocky peak, the castle, one of the most significant samples of the Urartian architecture, was brought to daylight during excavations headed by lecturer Altan Cilingiroglu of the Ege University. The castle draws hundreds of Turkish and foreign visitors each year.

Argishti I was the sixth known king of the ancient kingdom, reigning from 786 BC to 764 BC. As the son and the successor of Menua, he continued the series of conquests initiated by his predecessors. Victorious against Assyria, he conquered the northern part of Syria and made Urartu the most powerful state in the post-Hittite Near East.

His burial chamber in the west wing of the Van Castle is composed of five separate sections. There are Urartian inscriptions on the walls.

Atantis

Interesting article to look at later.

Article

Outfit from Pre-Roman Britain

Mediaeval Scots Documents

Past Horizons

The most comprehensive database ever compiled of any European kingdom’s inhabitants in the central Middle Ages has now been published online thanks to a grant from the Arts and Humanities Research Council (AHRC).

The multi-faceted database contains information on every person mentioned in more than 6,000 documents from Scotland between 1093 and 1286. It shows not only who they were, but gives an insight into how they related to each other as individuals, as different parts of society, and as Gaels and non-Gaels.

PoMS Site

5,500 Year Old Neolithic Settlement in Norway

Discovered in Norway, in good condition after being covered by a sandstorm 5,500 years in the past.

Past Horizons

A team of archaeologists from the University of Oslo and the Museum of Cultural History has announced the discovery of houses dating from the Neolithic, untouched for 5500 years, after having been lost during a terrible sand storm.

The  settlement was found two metres below the ground, during investigations prior to housing to be built in the area. Currently, nearly 100 square metres of settlement has been uncovered. The discovery was made 70-80 metres from the present shore and is now approximately 11 metres above sea level. 5500 years ago the settlement lay at the water’s edge before it was buried.

Armenian Winery, ca. 4100 BC

Found in Past Horizons

The facility, which dates back to roughly 4100 BCE — 1,000 years before the earliest comparable find — was unearthed by a team of archaeologists from Armenia, the United States and Ireland in the same mysterious Armenian cave complex where an ancient leather shoe was found, a discovery that was announced last summer.

“For the first time, we have a complete archaeological picture of wine production dating back 6,100 years,” said Gregory Areshian, co-director of the excavation and assistant director of UCLA’s Cotsen Institute of Archaeology.

“This is, so far, the oldest relatively complete wine production facility, with its press, fermentation vats and storage jars in situ,” said Hans Barnard, the article’s lead author and a UCLA Cotsen Institute archaeologist.

A shoe was also found in the same cave complex.

The cow-hide shoe dates back to ~ 3,500 BC (the Chalcolithic period) and is in perfect condition. It was made of a single piece of leather and was shaped to fit the wearer’s foot. It contained grass, although the archaeologists were uncertain as to whether this was to keep the foot warm or to maintain the shape of the shoe, a precursor to the modern shoe-tree perhaps? “It is not known whether the shoe belonged to a man or woman,” said lead author of the research, Dr Ron Pinhasi, University College Cork, Cork, Ireland “as while small (European size 37; US size 7 women), the shoe could well have fitted a man from that era.” The cave is situated in the Vayotz Dzor province of Armenia, on the Armenian, Iranian, Nackhichevanian and Turkish borders, and was known to regional archaeologists due to its visibility from the highway below.

Interesting Links for Reference

Archaelogical News:

Archaelogica

Johns Hopkins dig in Luxor, Egypt - Temple of Mut:

Dig Updates

Science Direct - Journal of Archaelogical Science:

Science Direct

Past Horizons provides the "latest archaelogical news, articles, projects, videos and tools":

Past Horizons

Malta:

OTSF

Old Texts, including Herodotus' "Account of Egypt":

Archive

Archaeological Site Dating to Ancient Sumerian Era, Discovered in Nassiriya

An ancient archaeological site, dating back to Ancient Iraq's Sumerian Era, was discovered in southern Iraq's Nassiriya city, the center of Thi-Qar Province, the Director General of the High Commission for Archaeology &Heritage, Qais Rashid Hussein said on Sunday.

"Our excavation teams have discovered an important site in a Sumerian position, dating back to the Dawn of the Ancient Strains - Third Century BC, south of Nassiriya city," Hussein told Aswat al-Iraq news agency, adding that "the site, carrying the name 'Umm al-Aqarib (Mother of Scorpions) consists of a worshipping position, housing units and about 600 archaeological antiques, that were handed over to the Iraqi Museum." The archaeological sites in Thi-Qar Province, comprising amazing ancient archaeological sites, date back to the ancient historic eras of Misopotamia (Ancient Iraq), some of them dating back to the Somerian era and others to the Acadian, Babylonian, Firthian, Akhmenian, Sasanian or Islamic eras, whilst it comprises the world's most ancient archaeological hill, called "Al-Obali Hill", dating back to 6,000 BC.

Link

Caligula's Tomb?

The Guardian reports, somewhat prematurely, I think, Caligula's tomb has been found:

The Guardian

The lost tomb of Caligula has been found, according to Italian police, after the arrest of a man trying to smuggle abroad a statue of the notorious Roman emperor recovered from the site.

After reportedly sleeping with his sisters, killing for pleasure and seeking to appoint his horse a consul during his rule from AD37 to 41, Caligula was described by contemporaries as insane.

With many of Caligula's monuments destroyed after he was killed by his Praetorian guard at 28, archaeologists are eager to excavate for his remains.

Officers from the archaeological squad of Italy's tax police had a break last week after arresting a man near Lake Nemi, south of Rome, as he loaded part of a 2.5 metre statue into a lorry. The emperor had a villa there, as well as a floating temple and a floating palace; their hulks were recovered in Mussolini's time but destroyed in the war.

The police said the statue was shod with a pair of the "caligae" military boots favoured by the emperor – real name Gaius Julius Caesar Augustus Germanicus; as a boy, Gaius accompanied his father on campaigns in Germany; the soldiers were amused he wore a miniature uniform, and gave him his nickname Caligula, or "little boot".

The statue is estimated to be worth €1m. Its rare Greek marble, throne and god's robes convinced the police it came from the emperor's tomb. Under questioning, the tomb raider led them to the site, where excavations will start today.

However, in the Times is a blog entry by Mary Beard, who appears quite doubtful (I'm with her on this one). Beard is a professor of classics at Cambridge University.

The Times

The news this morning is full of the "discovery" of the emperor Caligula's tomb at Nemi, by the lake about 30 kilometres out of Rome. The details are pretty murky. The police apparently arrested a guy who was loading a statue of the monster young emperor into the back of a lorry.

I havent seen a picture of this yet. But how do we know it was Caligula? Because, they say, it was wearing the 'caligae" or sandals that gave the emperor his nickname (his 'real' name was Gaius). Errr? Aren't there loads of Roman statues that wear these?

And why do we think that it marked his tomb?

Simple. Because it makes a good story that gets a load of press coverage for the discovery made by these no doubt brave policemen (the illicit antiquities business is probably second only to drug running in its nastiness).

All the evidence we have from the ancient world suggests that this cannot be so.

Caligula was assassinated in his palace on the Palatine Hill in Rome in 41 AD. According to Suetonius' Life (chap 59), his body was taken to the horti Lamiani, the site of an imperial pleasure gardens on the Esquiline Hill. There he was quickly cremated and buried a light covering of turf. Later on his sisters returned, to cremate and bury it properly.

There is no suggestion whatsoever, so far as I know, that this burial was at Nemi, or that it was a grand tomb (the Latin just says "buried", sepultum). True, Caligula had a big villa there, but it is almost inconceivable that this assassinated symbol of imperial monstrosity would have been given a grand monument, plus a big statue there.

Besides there is no evidence for that whatsoever.

Much more likely is that he had a modest burial in or near the horti Lamiani, or -- as some people think -- that he was slipped into the big Mausoleum of Augustus (where many of the imperial family ended up).

Capsian Cutmarks on Human Remains

The remains were found at Site 12, an 8000 year old Capsian escargotiere (shell midden) in Algeria. The cutmarks appear to be purposeful.

Link to PDF

Evolution of North Africa

Link

A Wikipedia Entry I Find Interesting

I would say pure bunk, but it's interesting. Might be able to use something from it in my fiction.

Link

6,000 Year Old Mummies From Takarkori, Libya

Two female mummies from the South Western Libyan site of Takarkori have been carbon 14 dated to six thousand years old. They are now being studied by an Italian research team. One of the mummies (aged 30 to 35) showed several health problems; malnutrition, a healed fracture of the left ulna and an hyperostosis of the cranial vault (thickened bone).

The mummies are estimated to be about 500 years older than the black mummy at Uan Muhuggiag. It’s unclear at the moment if the mummies are accidental or deliberate, although both appear to have been deliberately interred.

Again, swiped from Mathilda

Link to Translated Abstract

The Secret Museum of Mankind

Secret Museum of Mankind

Old pictures of people from around the world.

7,000 Year Old Settlement in Arabia

From Mathilda's Blog:

A group of stone houses nearly 7,000 years old have been found on Abu Dhabi’s Western island of Marawah. They are the oldest buildings of their type ever discovered in the United Arab Emirates.

The discovery was made by an ADIAS team working in association with the Environmental Research and Wildlife Development Agency, ERWDA, who are responsible for management of the island’s wildlife and environment as part of the Marawah Marine Protected Area, MMPA.

During work at a site known as MR-11 in spring 2003, ADIAS examined a group of stone mounds, and uncovered three buildings. One of these structures was fully excavated and revealed a well-constructed house with stone walls still surviving to a height of almost a metre in some places.

During the excavations, a fine flint spear and flint arrowhead were found, as well as a fragment of a stone pestle, probably used for grinding food items.

Fragments of sheep or goat bone were found at the site, which would put their existence in the UAE about 7,000 years ago.

Link to Article
Second Link to Article

Dental Evidence of Early Aurignacians

From S.E. Bailey. Department of Human Evolution, Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology (Leipzig), Department of Anthropology, New York University.

Neandertals and anatomically modern humans overlapped in Europe between 45- and 30,000 BP. Unfortunately, the human fossil record during this important time period is sparse. What is preserved is fragmentary and consists primarily of jaws and isolated teeth. This has led some to question whether we can determine if Neandertals or anatomically modern humans were responsible for the early Aurignacian. The goals of this study were, first, to investigate whether root lengths can help differentiate these two taxa; and second, to combine these data with tooth crown traits to assess the taxonomic affiliation of isolated teeth from two early Aurignacian sites (Brassempouy and La Ferrassie).

Root lengths were measured from the lingual aspect of permanent teeth of Neandertals (maximum n=15) and Upper Paleolithic modern humans (maximum n=10). The student’s t-test showed that the mean root lengths of I1, I2, C’, I1, I2, C, P3, P4 and M2 were significantly longer in Neandertals than in Upper Paleolithic moderns (p<0.05), with no overlap in the ranges of I1, I1, C’, and P4. At Brassempouy, the root lengths of the two I1s, C’ and M2 fall more than three standard deviations below the Neandertal mean. Likewise, the single I1 from Le Ferrassie possesses a root that is too short to be considered Neandertal. Additionally, the tooth crowns at both Brassempouy and La Ferrassie lack any diagnostically Neandertal traits.

Thus, the preponderance of dental evidence suggests that anatomically modern humans, not Neandertals, are associated with these early Aurignacian sites.

Aurignacian

Aurignacian
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia:

Link

The Aurignacian culture (pronounced /ɔrɪɡˈneɪʃən/ or /ɔrɪnˈjeɪʃən/) is an archaeological culture of the Upper Palaeolithic, located in Europe and southwest Asia. It lasted broadly within the period from ca. 45,000 to 35,000 years ago in terms of conventional radiocarbon dating, or between ca. 47,000 and 41,000 years ago in terms of the most recent calibration of the radiocarbon timescale. [1] The name originates from the type site of Aurignac in the Haute Garonne area of France.

The oldest known example of figurative art, the Venus of Hohle Fels, comes from this culture. It was discovered in September 2008 in a cave at Schelklingen in Baden-Württemberg in southern Germany.



















The Lion Man," found in the Hohlenstein-Stadel cave of Germany's Swabian Alb and dated at 32,000 years old, is associated with the Aurignacian culture and is the oldest known anthropomorphic animal figurine in the world.

mtDNA Variation in Kung and Kwhe

Swiped from Mathilda's Blog, of course:

Link to Abstract

The mtDNA variation of 74 Khoisan-speaking individuals (Kung and Khwe) from Schmidtsdrift, in the Northern Cape Province of South Africa, was examined by high-resolution RFLP analysis and control region (CR) sequencing. The resulting data were combined with published RFLP haplotype and CR sequence data from sub-Saharan African populations and then were subjected to phylogenetic analysis to deduce the evolutionary relationships among them. More than 77% of the Kung and Khwe mtDNA samples were found to belong to the major mtDNA lineage, macrohaplogroup L* (defined by a HpaI site at nucleotide position 3592), which is prevalent in sub-Saharan African populations. Additional sets of RFLPs subdivided macrohaplogroup L* into two extended haplogroups—L1 and L2—both of which appeared in the Kung and Khwe. Besides revealing the significant substructure of macrohaplogroup L* in African populations, these data showed that the Biaka Pygmies have one of the most ancient RFLP sublineages observed in African mtDNA and, thus, that they could represent one of the oldest human populations. In addition, the Kung exhibited a set of related haplotypes that were positioned closest to the root of the human mtDNA phylogeny, suggesting that they, too, represent one of the most ancient African populations. Comparison of Kung and Khwe CR sequences with those from other African populations confirmed the genetic association of the Kung with other Khoisan-speaking peoples, whereas the Khwe were more closely linked to non–Khoisan-speaking (Bantu) populations. Finally, the overall sequence divergence of 214 African RFLP haplotypes defined in both this and an earlier study was 0.364%, giving an estimated age, for all African mtDNAs, of 125,500–165,500 years before the present, a date that is concordant with all previous estimates derived from mtDNA and other genetic data, for the time of origin of modern humans in Africa.

Quote Mathilda: One Halogroup, L3a, seems closely related to M1 and M, as L3a is the precursor to M.

The Asian mtDNA phylogeny is subdivided into two macrohaplogroups, one of which is M. M is delineated by a DdeI site at np 10394 and an AluI site of np 10397. The only African mtDNA found to have both of these sites is the Senegalese haplotype AF24. This haplotype branches off African subhaplogroup L3a (figs.2 and3), suggesting that haplogroup M mtDNAs might have been derived from this African mtDNA lineage; however, it is also possible that this particular haplotype is present in Africa because of back-migration from Asia.

Since M itself seems absent in Africa, and M1 traces the path of U in North and East Africa pretty closely, it’s now pretty much a done deal that M1 arrived in North Africa from West Asia. The real mystery is the lack of L3 and M in India, but the Toba eruption could easily have caused a wipe out across India that erased the first immigrants there. I’d like to observe that this L3a seems to have followed the North African population movements that curved southwards down into the West coast of Africa, so I think that its from the back migration may be possible, or at least dating to the expansion from upper Egypt about 24k ago with a origin from the Nile area. - Mathilda

For Further Research

• R1b - a Y chromosome derived from Eurasia. (Research this further)
• One variation in male (or Y) DNA, labled J2, is a genetic marker that identifies descendants of the ancient Levantines. Since this Haplogroup is believed to have arisen from Anatolia, it is not surprising that its highest concentration in modern men is still there. Its source is the same stock that produced the Jews, both Sephardic and Ashkenazi, whose traditions developed along a different path.
• Principal Investigator for National Geographic Society's Genographic Project, Dr. Pierre Zalloua has found J2 in high proportion among Lebanese, Palestinians and Syrians. "The YDNA Haplogroup of the ancient Phoenicians is J2, also identified as the signature of human migration via the Mediterranean in the Neolithic or New Stone Age around 6,000 BC, from the Levant into Europe."[ii]
• This same marker is found in unusually high frequency along the Aegean and Mediterranean coasts, the concentration diminishing on its way into Europe, with the exception of a loud bang on Malta. Zalloua reports: "The further south you go, the less likely you are to see this marker. The further north and the further inland you go, the less you see this marker. It is very Levantine... In Malta, the ancient DNA type was found in an extremely high 30 percent of samples."[iii] A clear pattern of the migration emerges when the numbers are tracked on a map. (See "Atlantis" post on 01/19/2011)

Berbers

Turkey: Discovery of 12,000-year-old Temple Complex Could Alter Theory of Human Development | EurasiaNet.org

Turkey: Discovery of 12,000-year-old Temple Complex Could Alter Theory of Human Development | EurasiaNet.org

As a child, Klaus Schmidt used to grub around in caves in his native Germany in the hope of finding prehistoric paintings. Thirty years later, representing the German Archaeological Institute, he found something infinitely more important -- a temple complex almost twice as old as anything comparable on the planet.

"This place is a supernova", says Schmidt, standing under a lone tree on a windswept hilltop 35 miles north of Turkey's border with Syria. "Within a minute of first seeing it I knew I had two choices: go away and tell nobody, or spend the rest of my life working here."

Behind him are the first folds of the Anatolian plateau. Ahead, the Mesopotamian plain, like a dust-colored sea, stretches south hundreds of miles to Baghdad and beyond. The stone circles of Gobekli Tepe are just in front, hidden under the brow of the hill.

Compared to Stonehenge, Britain's most famous prehistoric site, they are humble affairs. None of the circles excavated (four out of an estimated 20) are more than 30 meters across. What makes the discovery remarkable are the carvings of boars, foxes, lions, birds, snakes and scorpions, and their age. Dated at around 9,500 BC, these stones are 5,500 years older than the first cities of Mesopotamia, and 7,000 years older than Stonehenge.

Never mind circular patterns or the stone-etchings, the people who erected this site did not even have pottery or cultivate wheat. They lived in villages. But they were hunters, not farmers.

"Everybody used to think only complex, hierarchical civilizations could build such monumental sites, and that they only came about with the invention of agriculture", says Ian Hodder, a Stanford University Professor of Anthropology, who, since 1993, has directed digs at Catalhoyuk, Turkey's most famous Neolithic site. "Gobekli changes everything. It's elaborate, it's complex and it is pre-agricultural. That fact alone makes the site one of the most important archaeological finds in a very long time."

With only a fraction of the site opened up after a decade of excavations, Gobekli Tepe's significance to the people who built it remains unclear. Some think the site was the center of a fertility rite, with the two tall stones at the center of each circle representing a man and woman.

It's a theory the tourist board in the nearby city of Urfa has taken up with alacrity. Visit the Garden of Eden, its brochures trumpet, see Adam and Eve.

Schmidt is skeptical about the fertility theory. He agrees Gobekli Tepe may well be "the last flowering of a semi-nomadic world that farming was just about to destroy," and points out that if it is in near perfect condition today, it is because those who built it buried it soon after under tons of soil, as though its wild animal-rich world had lost all meaning.

But the site is devoid of the fertility symbols that have been found at other Neolithic sites, and the T-shaped columns, while clearly semi-human, are sexless. "I think here we are face to face with the earliest representation of gods", says Schmidt, patting one of the biggest stones. "They have no eyes, no mouths, no faces. But they have arms and they have hands. They are makers."

"In my opinion, the people who carved them were asking themselves the biggest questions of all," Schmidt continued. "What is this universe? Why are we here?"

With no evidence of houses or graves near the stones, Schmidt believes the hill top was a site of pilgrimage for communities within a radius of roughly a hundred miles. He notes how the tallest stones all face southeast, as if scanning plains that are scattered with archeological sites in many ways no less remarkable than Gobekli Tepe.

Last year, for instance, French archaeologists working at Djade al-Mughara in northern Syria uncovered the oldest mural ever found. "Two square meters of geometric shapes, in red, black and white - a bit like a Paul Klee painting," explains Eric Coqueugniot, the University of Lyon archaeologist who is leading the excavation.

Coqueugniot describes Schmidt's hypothesis that Gobekli Tepe was meeting point for feasts, rituals and sharing ideas as "tempting," given the site's spectacular position. But he emphasizes that surveys of the region are still in their infancy. "Tomorrow, somebody might find somewhere even more dramatic."

Director of a dig at Korpiktepe, on the Tigris River about 120 miles east of Urfa, Vecihi Ozkaya doubts the thousands of stone pots he has found since 2001 in hundreds of 11,500 year-old graves quite qualify as that. But his excitement fills his austere office at Dicle University in Diyarbakir.

"Look at this", he says, pointing at a photo of an exquisitely carved sculpture showing an animal, half-human, half-lion. "It's a sphinx, thousands of years before Egypt. Southeastern Turkey, northern Syria - this region saw the wedding night of our civilization."

Editor's note: Nicolas Birch specializes in Turkey, Iran and the Middle East.

Lost civilization under Persian Gulf?

Lost civilization under Persian Gulf?

Jeffrey Rose, an archaeologist and researcher with the University of Birmingham in the U.K., says that the area in and around this "Persian Gulf Oasis" may have been host to humans for over 100,000 years before it was swallowed up by the Indian Ocean around 8,000 years ago. Rose's hypothesis introduces a "new and substantial cast of characters" to the human history of the Near East, and suggests that humans may have established permanent settlements in the region thousands of years before current migration models suppose.

In recent years, archaeologists have turned up evidence of a wave of human settlements along the shores of the Gulf dating to about 7,500 years ago. "Where before there had been but a handful of scattered hunting camps, suddenly, over 60 new archaeological sites appear virtually overnight," Rose said. "These settlements boast well-built, permanent stone houses, long-distance trade networks, elaborately decorated pottery, domesticated animals, and even evidence for one of the oldest boats in the world."

But how could such highly developed settlements pop up so quickly, with no precursor populations to be found in the archaeological record? Rose believes that evidence of those preceding populations is missing because it's under the Gulf.

"Perhaps it is no coincidence that the founding of such remarkably well developed communities along the shoreline corresponds with the flooding of the Persian Gulf basin around 8,000 years ago," Rose said. "These new colonists may have come from the heart of the Gulf, displaced by rising water levels that plunged the once fertile landscape beneath the waters of the Indian Ocean."

Historical sea level data show that, prior to the flood, the Gulf basin would have been above water beginning about 75,000 years ago. And it would have been an ideal refuge from the harsh deserts surrounding it, with fresh water supplied by the Tigris, Euphrates, Karun, and Wadi Baton Rivers, as well as by underground springs. When conditions were at their driest in the surrounding hinterlands, the Gulf Oasis would have been at its largest in terms of exposed land area. At its peak, the exposed basin would have been about the size of Great Britain, Rose says.

Evidence is also emerging that modern humans could have been in the region even before the oasis was above water. Recently discovered archaeological sites in Yemen and Oman have yielded a stone tool style that is distinct from the East African tradition. That raises the possibility that humans were established on the southern part of the Arabian Peninsula beginning as far back as 100,000 years ago or more, Rose says. That is far earlier than the estimates generated by several recent migration models, which place the first successful migration into Arabia between 50,000 and 70,000 years ago.

The Gulf Oasis would have been available to these early migrants, and would have provided "a sanctuary throughout the Ice Ages when much of the region was rendered uninhabitable due to hyperaridity," Rose said. "The presence of human groups in the oasis fundamentally alters our understanding of human emergence and cultural evolution in the ancient Near East."

It also hints that vital pieces of the human evolutionary puzzle may be hidden in the depths of the Persian Gulf.

Was Israel the birthplace of modern humans?

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ScienceDaily (Dec. 31, 2010) - It has long been believed that modern humans emerged from the continent of Africa 200,000 years ago. Now Tel Aviv University archaeologists have uncovered evidence that Homo sapiens roamed the land now called Israel as early as 400,000 years ago -- the earliest evidence for the existence of modern humans anywhere in the world.
 
The findings were discovered in the Qesem Cave, a pre-historic site located near Rosh Ha'ayin that was first excavated in 2000. Prof. Avi Gopher and Dr. Ran Barkai of Tel Aviv University's Department of Archaeology, who run the excavations, and Prof. Israel Hershkowitz of the university's Department of Anatomy and Anthropology and Sackler School of Medicine, together with an international team of scientists, performed a morphological analysis on eight human teeth found in the Qesem Cave.
This analysis, which included CT scans and X-rays, indicates that the size and shape of the teeth are very similar to those of modern humans. The teeth found in the Qesem Cave are very similar to other evidence of modern humans from Israel, dated to around 100,000 years ago, discovered in the Skhul Cave in the Carmel and Qafzeh Cave in the Lower Galilee near Nazareth. The results of the researchers' findings are being published in the American Journal of Physical Anthropology.
 
Reading the past
Qesem Cave is dated to a period between 400,000 and 200,000 years ago, and archaeologists working there believe that the findings indicate significant evolution in the behavior of ancient humans. This period of time was crucial in the history of humankind from cultural and biological perspectives. The teeth that are being studied indicate that these changes are apparently related to evolutionary changes taking place at that time.
 
Prof. Gopher and Dr. Barkai noted that the findings related to the culture of those who dwelled in the Qesem Cave -- including the systematic production of flint blades; the regular use of fire; evidence of hunting, cutting and sharing of animal meat; mining raw materials to produce flint tools from subsurface sources -- reinforce the hypothesis that this was, in fact, innovative and pioneering behavior that may correspond with the appearance of modern humans.
 
An unprecedented discovery
According to researchers, the discoveries made in the Qesem Cave may overturn the theory that modern humans originated on the continent of Africa. In recent years, archaeological evidence and human skeletons found in Spain and China also undermined this proposition, but the Qesem Cave findings because of their early age is an unprecedented discovery.
 
Excavations at Qesem Cave continue and the researchers hope to uncover additional finds that will enable them to confirm the findings published up to now and to enhance our understanding of the evolution of humankind -- especially the emergence of modern man.