Ancient History rocks!

Mini ice age took hold of Europe in months

Grandpa — Fri, 13 Nov 2009 13:42:01 -0800

Mini ice age took hold of Europe in months

JUST months - that's how long it took for Europe to be engulfed by an ice age. The scenario, which comes straight out of Hollywood blockbuster The Day After Tomorrow, was revealed by the most precise record of the climate from palaeohistory ever generated.

Around 12,800 years ago the northern hemisphere was hit by the Younger Dryas mini ice age, or "Big Freeze". It was triggered by the slowdown of the Gulf Stream, led to the decline of the Clovis culture in North America, and lasted around 1300 years.

Until now, it was thought that the mini ice age took a decade or so to take hold, on the evidence provided by Greenland ice cores. Not so, say William Patterson of the University of Saskatchewan in Saskatoon, Canada, and his colleagues.

The group studied a mud core from an ancient lake, Lough Monreagh, in western Ireland. Using a scalpel they sliced off layers 0.5 to 1 millimetre thick, each representing up to three months of time. No other measurements from the period have approached this level of detail.

Carbon isotopes in each slice revealed how productive the lake was and oxygen isotopes gave a picture of temperature and rainfall. They show that at the start of the Big Freeze, temperatures plummeted and lake productivity stopped within months, or a year at most. "It would be like taking Ireland today and moving it up to Svalbard" in the Arctic, says Patterson, who presented the findings at the BOREAS conference in Rovaniemi, Finland, on 31 October.

"This is significantly shorter than what has been suggested before, but it is plausible," says Derek Vance of the University of Bristol, UK. Hans Renssen, a climate researcher at Vrije University in Amsterdam, the Netherlands, says recent findings from Greenland ice cores indicate the Younger Dryas event may have happened in one to three years. Patterson's results confirm this was a very sudden change, he says.

The mud slices from the end of the Big Freeze show that it took around two centuries for the lake and climate to recover.

Patterson says that sudden climate switches like the Big Freeze are far from unusual in the geological record. The Younger Dryas was brought about when a glacial lake covering most of north-west Canada burst its banks and poured into the North Atlantic and Arctic OceansMovie Camera. The huge flood diluted the salinity-driven North Atlantic Ocean mega-currents, including the Gulf Stream, and stalled it. Two studies published in 2006 show that the same thing happened again 8200 years ago, when the Northern hemisphere went through another cold spell.

Some climate scientists have suggested that the Greenland ice sheet could have the same effect if it suddenly melts through climate change, but the 2007 report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change concluded this was unlikely to happen this century.

Patterson's team have now set their sights on even more precise records of historical climate. They have built a robot able to shave 0.05 micrometre slivers along the growth lines of fossilised clam shells, giving a resolution of less than a day. "We can get you mid-July temperatures from 400 million years ago," he says.

http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg20427344.800-mini-ice-age-took-hol...

Stone Age humans crossed Sahara in the rain

Grandpa — Wed, 11 Nov 2009 04:21:29 -0800

Stone Age humans crossed Sahara in the rain

* 20:00 09 November 2009 by Jeff Hecht
* For similar stories, visit the Human Evolution Topic Guide

Wet spells in the Sahara may have opened the door for early human migration. According to new evidence, water-dependent trees and shrubs grew there between 120,000 and 45,000 years ago. This suggests that changes in the weather helped early humans cross the desert on their way out of Africa.

The Sahara would have been a formidable barrier during the Stone Age, making it hard to understand how humans made it to Europe from eastern Africa, where the earliest remains of our hominin ancestors are found.

Isla Castañeda of the Royal Netherlands Institute for Sea Research and colleagues studied land plant hydrocarbons in Saharan dust that has settled on the sea floor off west Africa over the past 192,000 years. From the ratio of carbon isotopes in the hydrocarbons they can work out which types of plants were present at different times.
Wet spells

While about 40 per cent of hydrocarbons in today's dust come from water-dependent plants, this rose to 60 per cent, first between 120,000 and 110,000 ago and again from 50,000 to 45,000 years ago. So the region seemed to be in the grip of unusually wet spells at the time.

That may have been enough to allow sub-Saharan Stone Age Homo sapiens to migrate north: the first fossils of modern humans outside Africa date from 93,000 year ago in Israel. And both genetic analysis and archaeology show that humans didn't spread extensively beyond Africa until 50,000 years ago, suggesting a second migration at the time of the second wet spell.
Fossil record

Ian Tattersall of the American Museum of Natural History in New York is impressed by the findings. "They tie in approximately with the information we have from the fossil record."

Castañeda's team is not the first to suggest that wet spells may have come in handy. Last year, Anne Osborne of the University of Bristol, UK, suggested that the first migrants may have used a now-buried network of river channels in the Libyan Sahara, which dates roughly 120,000 years.

http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn18127-stone-age-humans-crossed-sah...

MartiniLush — Fri, 11 Sep 2009 13:20:22 -0700

In what was slated to be the site of a new 122-room hotel, archaeologists say they have discovered one of the world's oldest synagogues in Northern Israel.

The site, which was unearthed as preparations were being made for construction of the hotel near the Sea of Galilee, is believed to date back some 2000 years from 50BCE to 100CE.

In the middle of the 120 square meter main hall of the synagogue archaeologists discovered an unusual stone carved with a seven branched menorah . "We are dealing with an exciting and unique find," said excavation director and Israeli Antiquities Authority archaeologist Dina Avshalom-Gorni.

The menorah engraving is the first of its kind to be discovered from the Early Roman period according Avshalom-Gorni who said the site joins just six synagogue locations that are know to date from the same time.

She said synagogues from this period were extremely rare in part because many Jews during that time were in the habit of visiting the main temple in Jerusalem three times a year as opposed to attending local houses of worship.

Avshalom-Gorni posited that the engraved menorah was done by an artist who had visited the main synagogue in Jerusalem known as the Second Temple where the actual menorah was believed to be kept. In addition to the engraved stone Avshalom-Gorni said they discovered preserved frescoes on the walls with "vivid" colors.

The synagogue was discovered in area called Migdal, historically an important settlement along the Sea of Galilee, which researchers say was mentioned in ancient Jewish texts as playing a prominent role during what is known as the Great Revolt, when Jews attempted to rebel against Roman rule. Migdal also figures in early Christian writings as the place where Mary Magdalene accompanied Jesus and the Apostles.

Jose Miguel Abat, a legal representative for the company developing the land, Ark New Gate, said the company was thrilled at news of the find and planned to establish a multi-cultural and multi-religious center at the location.

"We are sure this finding and the planned center will attract tourists and visitors from Israel and from around the World," Abat said in a statement.

Find this article at:
http://www.cnn.com/2009/WORLD/meast/09/11/jerusalem.synagogue/index.html...

A skull that rewrites the history of man

Grandpa — Wed, 09 Sep 2009 16:07:00 -0700

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/science/a-skull-that-rewrites-the-hist...

A skull that rewrites the history of man

It has long been agreed that Africa was the sole cradle of human evolution. Then these bones were found in Georgia...

By Steve Connor, Science Editor

Wednesday, 9 September 2009
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One of the skulls discovered in Georgia, which are believed to date back 1.8 million years

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The conventional view of human evolution and how early man colonised the world has been thrown into doubt by a series of stunning palaeontological discoveries suggesting that Africa was not the sole cradle of humankind. Scientists have found a handful of ancient human skulls at an archaeological site two hours from the Georgian capital, Tbilisi, that suggest a Eurasian chapter in the long evolutionary story of man.

The skulls, jawbones and fragments of limb bones suggest that our ancient human ancestors migrated out of Africa far earlier than previously thought and spent a long evolutionary interlude in Eurasia – before moving back into Africa to complete the story of man.

Experts believe fossilised bones unearthed at the medieval village of Dmanisi in the foothills of the Caucuses, and dated to about 1.8 million years ago, are the oldest indisputable remains of humans discovered outside of Africa.

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•Steve Connor: The story of humans unravels
But what has really excited the researchers is the discovery that these early humans (or "hominins") are far more primitive-looking than the Homo erectus humans that were, until now, believed to be the first people to migrate out of Africa about 1 million years ago.

The Dmanisi people had brains that were about 40 per cent smaller than those of Homo erectus and they were much shorter in stature than classical H. erectus skeletons, according to Professor David Lordkipanidze, general director of the Georgia National Museum. "Before our findings, the prevailing view was that humans came out of Africa almost 1 million years ago, that they already had sophisticated stone tools, and that their body anatomy was quite advanced in terms of brain capacity and limb proportions. But what we are finding is quite different," Professor Lordkipanidze said.

"The Dmanisi hominins are the earliest representatives of our own genus – Homo – outside Africa, and they represent the most primitive population of the species Homo erectus to date. They might be ancestral to all later Homo erectus populations, which would suggest a Eurasian origin of Homo erectus."

Speaking at the British Science Festival in Guildford, where he gave the British Council lecture, Professor Lordkipanidze raised the prospect that Homo erectus may have evolved in Eurasia from the more primitive-looking Dmanisi population and then migrated back to Africa to eventually give rise to our own species, Homo sapiens – modern man.

"The question is whether Homo erectus originated in Africa or Eurasia, and if in Eurasia, did we have vice-versa migration? This idea looked very stupid a few years ago, but today it seems not so stupid," he told the festival.

The scientists have discovered a total of five skulls and a solitary jawbone. It is clear that they had relatively small brains, almost a third of the size of modern humans. "They are quite small. Their lower limbs are very human and their upper limbs are still quite archaic and they had very primitive stone tools," Professor Lordkipanidze said. "Their brain capacity is about 600 cubic centimetres. The prevailing view before this discovery was that the humans who first left Africa had a brain size of about 1,000 cubic centimetres."

The only human fossil to predate the Dmanisi specimens are of an archaic species Homo habilis, or "handy man", found only in Africa, which used simple stone tools and lived between about 2.5 million and 1.6 million years ago.

"I'd have to say, if we'd found the Dmanisi fossils 40 years ago, they would have been classified as Homo habilis because of the small brain size. Their brow ridges are not as thick as classical Homo erectus, but their teeth are more H. erectus like," Professor Lordkipanidze said. "All these finds show that the ancestors of these people were much more primitive than we thought. I don't think that we were so lucky as to have found the first travellers out of Africa. Georgia is the cradle of the first Europeans, I would say," he told the meeting.

"What we learnt from the Dmanisi fossils is that they are quite small – between 1.44 metres to 1.5 metres tall. What is interesting is that their lower limbs, their tibia bones, are very human-like so it seems they were very good runners," he said.

He added: "In regards to the question of which came first, enlarged brain size or bipedalism, maybe indirectly this information calls us to think that body anatomy was more important than brain size. While the Dmanisi people were almost modern in their body proportions, and were highly efficient walkers and runners, their arms moved in a different way, and their brains were tiny compared to ours.

"Nevertheless, they were sophisticated tool makers with high social and cognitive skills," he told the science festival, which is run by the British Science Association.

One of the five skulls is of a person who lost all his or her teeth during their lifetime but had still survived for many years despite being completely toothless. This suggests some kind of social organisation based on mutual care, Professor Lordkipanidze said.

Giant statues give up hat mystery

MartiniLush — Sun, 06 Sep 2009 22:01:22 -0700

Archaeologists have solved an ancient mystery surrounding the famous Easter Island statues.

At 2,500 miles off the coast of Chile, the island is the world's most remote place inhabited by people.

Up to one thousand years ago, the islanders started putting giant red hats on the statues. The research team, from the University of Manchester and University College London, think the hats were rolled down from an ancient volcano.

Dr Colin Richards and Dr Sue Hamilton are the first British archaeologists to work on the island since 1914. They pieced together a series of clues to discover how the statues got their red hats. An axe, a road, and an ancient volcano led to their findings.

Dr Richards said: "We know the hats were rolled along the road made from a cement of compressed red scoria dust."

Each hat, weighing several tonnes, was carved from volcanic rock. They were placed on the heads of the famous statues all around the coast of the island. Precisely how and why the hats were attached is unknown.

An axe was found in pristine condition next to the hats. The scientists think it might be an ancient offering. Dr Richards told BBC News: "These hats run all the way down the side of the volcano into the valley.

"We can see they were carefully placed. The closer you get to the volcano, the greater the number.

"It's like a church; you can't just walk straight to the altar.

"The Polynesians saw the landscape as a living thing, and after they carved the rock the spirits entered the statues."

Dr Richards and Dr Hamilton are joint directors of the "Rapa Nui (Easter Island) Landscapes of Construction Project". They will be working on the island over the next five years. Dr Richards added: "We will look to date the earliest statues. Potentially this could rewrite Polynesian history."

Story from BBC NEWS:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/go/pr/fr/-/2/hi/science/nature/8236349.stm

Grandpa — Sat, 05 Sep 2009 14:34:17 -0700

Earlier Date for First Refined Stone Tools in Europe

LinkedinDiggFacebookMixxMySpaceYahoo! BuzzPermalinkBy HENRY FOUNTAIN

Published: September 2, 2009 New York Times science section
Stone Age peoples weren’t always so stone age. As time went on, they became more refined in their toolmaking, able to create larger double-faced implements like hand axes and cleavers.

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Michael Walker
Photos and sketches of a hand axe found at the Estrecho del Quípar site, which has been determined to be about 900,000 years old.

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These kinds of Acheulian artifacts, as they are known, have been found in Africa dating back about 1.5 million years. But in Europe, the oldest hand axes that had been found dated to only half a million years ago. Scientists have wondered why it took so long for early humans with such refined toolmaking to show up in Europe.

Now research from two sites in southeastern Spain provides an answer: it didn’t take that long, after all.

Using paleomagnetic dating, Gary R. Scott and Luis Gibert of the Berkeley Geochronology Center in California have determined that rather than being about 200,000 years old, the two sites, Solano del Zamborino and Estrecho del Quípar, are about 760,000 and 900,000 years old, respectively.

Paleomagnetic dating takes advantage of the fact that the Earth’s magnetic field has reversed itself often on geological timescales. By analyzing the polarity of magnetic minerals in rock, scientists can determine when the rock formed. Fossil remains - in this case, of rodents and other small mammals from an ancient basin near one of the two sites - can help correlate the dates.

At each site, the researchers took samples at regular intervals above and below the level where hand axes were found. The last complete magnetic reversal was 780,000 years ago, and both sites dated back to about this time.

Dr. Gibert said the finding, which was published in Nature, adds to mounting evidence that early humans migrated to Europe from Africa earlier than previously thought.

“The question is, which route did they follow?” he said. Rather than coming through the Middle East and then westward, Dr. Gibert said he is convinced they came across at Gibraltar. “We think the Gibraltar straits were a permeable barrier,” he said. “It’s a provocative interpretation but I think there is enough information to support it.”

"Human-Faced" Missing Link Found in Spain??

MartiniLush — Fri, 12 Jun 2009 13:19:39 -0700

Move over Ida-you're last month's news. There's a new (purported) "missing link" in town. An 11.9-million-year-old fossil ape species with an unusually flat, "surprisingly human" face has been found in Spain. The discovery suggests humans' ape ancestors split from primitive apes in Europe, not Africa-the so-called cradle of humanity-a new study says.

The species, Anoiapithecus brevirostris, may also represent the last known common ancestor of humans and living great apes-including orangutans, gorillas, and chimpanzees-researchers say. "With this fossil, our opinion is that the origin of our family very probably took place in the Mediterranean region," said study leader Salvador Moyà-Solà of the Catalan Institute of Paleontology in Barcelona.

Unearthed at a fossil-rich site near Barcelona in 2004, the fragmented skull remains suggest a species with human-like facial features, Moyà-Solà said. But a familiar face in and of itself doesn't mean the fossil "has any special specific relationship with modern hominds"-humans and the great apes-the paleontologist added. Rather, the human-like face is evidence of great diversity among ape species in the Mediterranean region 12 million years ago, he said.

Resembling both primitive ape species and our early ancestors, Anoiapithecus could be called a missing link. The ape's wide nose and long palate, for example, resemble those of the ancient apes from which great apes and humans arose, the study says. But Anoiapithecus' thickly enameled teeth and robust jaw are like those of primitive Kenyapithecus fossil apes, which lived in both Africa and Europe, according to the team. Kenyapithecus species have been proposed as common ancestors of humans and great apes.

Until now, however, there hasn't been a fossil linking Kenyapithecus to later apes thought to have evolved into more direct human ancestors, according to the study, published last week in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

The Spanish ape suggests this key evolutionary transition occurred after Kenyapithecus arrived in Europe from Africa some 15 million years ago-likely crossing over before the Mediterranean Sea formed, separating Africa from Europe-Moyà-Solà said. "The 'folks' that migrated from Africa to the Mediterranean area were in fact completely primitive, without the [hominid] features that identify the members of our family," he said. "The ancestors of gorillas, chimps, and humans then went back to Africa close to some nine million years ago." There, they would give rise to the first humans, the thinking goes.

The new study isn't the first to hint at a European origin for hominids. A similar theory has been advanced, for instance, based on 10- to 13-million-year-old fossils of the chimplike Dryopithecus group from France, Hungary, and Spain. Anthropologist David Begun of the University of Toronto believes the evolution of African apes can be traced to Dryopithecus species that had migrated from Africa to Europe during the pre-Mediterranean Sea period.

"The new Spanish fossils do indeed support that hypothesis," said Begun, who was not involved in the new study and whose work has been partially funded by the National Geographic Society's Committee for Research and Exploration. (The National Geographic Society owns National Geographic News.)

However Begun "does not see any compelling evidence" linking Kenyapithecus with the newfound Spanish species. "Frankly, [the new species] does not look like Kenyapithecus to me," he added.

Moyà-Solà, the study leader, doesn't rule out the possibility that each of the great ape species evolved independently from different Kenyapithecus species. And it's possible that Africa could yet yield a species that, like the new Spanish ape, bridges the gap between early human ancestors and more primitive apes, he admitted. "It's impossible to test our hypothesis [as of yet], because the fossil record in Africa from this period is very poor," Moyà-Solà said. "We need more and better fossils from Africa."

To that end, he said, the team's next major scientific stop will be somewhere south of the Mediterranean.

Source

What Ancient Graffiti Can Tell Us About Life in the Ancient World

MartiniLush — Fri, 05 Jun 2009 19:54:32 -0700

This article is specifically geared toward Biblical Archaeology, but I am sure the same would hold true for any archaeological site. I had never thought about graffiti being something that even EXISTED in ancient times! And I was amazed at what they could determine about ancient life based upon it. I found this article to be immensely interesting. Can you imagine thousands of years in the future, when archaeologist uncover one of our cities and see all the graffiti?!? I wonder what they will think about it and how they will interpret it?

Biblical Views: The Writing on the Wall
By Ben Witherington III

A fascinating session at last year’s annual meeting of the Society of Biblical Literature (SBL) in Boston was dedicated to graffiti, especially early Christian graffiti in Izmir (ancient Smyrna), Turkey.

But what counts as graffiti? Does the word “graffito” imply something clandestine, something possibly illegal, like the defacing of a building by modern graffiti artists in major American cities? Ancient graffiti were basically of two types: (1) advertisements for politicians or for various sorts of businesses-often for sex or for the sale of property; (2) religious comments, usually about and for minority or illegal religions or philosophies. We can also distinguish between graffiti that were meant to be timely and were therefore put up only in a semi-permanent way (e.g., painted on a wall) and graffiti that were meant to have a longer shelf life (inscribed into stucco, stone or brick). The amount of ancient graffiti is surprising, if not shocking.

For example, scholars have identified some 10,000 political advertisements in Pompeii! One wonders if the ancient Pompeiians lamented as we do the “billboards” besmirching the beauty of their landscape. If we count up all the graffiti in Pompeii, there seem to have been more writings on the walls than inhabitants within them! Considering the amount of graffiti evidence (usually not the work of the upper classes) plus the evidence on ostraca (pottery sherds with writing on them), this suggests a higher level of literacy in the Greco-Roman world than previously suspected. Usually estimates are that between 10 and 15 percent of the population could read and write. This is likely a very conservative estimate.

In my judgment there is a difference between the ability to read and the ability to write. Reading seems to have been a more widespread skill than writing in the first century. Writing was more of a specialized art, especially when it involved engraving texts into hard surfaces, which would require a skilled scribe or artisan. Propaganda graffiti surely assumed that a significant segment of the population could read the inscriptions.

One of the most enlightening lectures at the SBL session was Roger Bagnall’s “New Graffiti from Smyrna in the Context of Early Christianity.” He concentrated on what was found in a basilica basement in the vast Smyrna agora. (In the Roman world a basilica was a type of public building, often a hall of justice; only later was its architectural pattern taken over by the church and used as a design for churches.) The basilica had collapsed in 178 A.D. due to a massive earthquake but was later reconstructed. The part of the basilica Bagnall focused on comes from the late first and early second centuries. Plaster or stucco covered the walls that had graffiti on them. The assortment of graffiti was considerable, focusing on sex, love, civic pride, politics and religion, all jumbled together.

One of the most interesting of Bagnall’s examples reads ό δεδωκως πvεύμα (“the one who has given the Spirit”-namely Kyrios, the Lord Jesus). Bagnall claims that this is probably the earliest evidence of Christian graffiti ever discovered. What was the function of this graffito, inscribed in a public place? It does not seem to have been an advertisement to bring in outsiders, but rather for insiders (Christians), who knew the key clichés, phrases and code words to make sense of the graffito. To insiders it announced that there were Christians in the city with whom other Christians could socialize and worship. The reason for the coded communication is obvious. It could be dangerous to be an early Christian in ancient Smyrna. Polycarp, a bishop in Smyrna in the first and second centuries, after surviving an attempt by the authorities to burn him at the stake, was stabbed to death.

Christianity was categorized as a superstition in the Roman Empire before Constantine legalized it in the fourth century, and as such Christians were subject to persecution, prosecution and occasionally execution. The Christian graffiti in Izmir are significant because they confirm both the early presence of Christians in that city and their need to communicate in code.

The papers at the SBL session also help us to understand the level of literacy in the early Christian world. That world was by no means populated only by “women, slaves and minors” (i.e., the illiterate) as we might assume from the polemics of Greco-Romans who despised early Christianity. On the contrary, Christians left their mark not only through epistles and gospels, but also through graffiti.

Source

"Missing Link" found??

MartiniLush — Tue, 19 May 2009 14:13:57 -0700

A discovery of a 47 million-year-old fossil primate that is said to be a human ancestor was announced and unveiled Tuesday at a press conference in New York City. Known as "Ida," the nearly complete transitional fossil is 20 times older than most fossils that provide evidence for human evolution.

It shows characteristics from the very primitive non-human evolutionary line (prosimians, such as lemurs), but is more related to the human evolutionary line (anthropoids, such as monkeys, apes and humans), said Norwegian paleontologist Jørn Hurum of the University of Oslo Natural History Museum. However, she is not really an anthropoid either, he said.

The fossil, called Darwinius masillae and said to be a female, provides the most complete understanding of the paleobiology of any primate so far discovered from the Eocene Epoch, Hurum said. An analysis of the fossil mammal is detailed Tuesday in the journal PLoS ONE.

"This is the first link to all humans ... truly a fossil that links world heritage," Hurum said.

Here is some context for the age of the new primate fossil: Anatomically modern humans (Homo sapiens) first emerged about 200,000 years ago, but early humans such as Australopithecus afarensis and Australopithecus anamensis reach back 3 million to 4 million years ago or even earlier. Humans are thought to have split off from a group that includes chimpanzees and gorillas about 6 million years ago. And a group that includes all the great apes (including us) and Old World monkeys (called simians or anthropoids) diverged from New World monkeys in the Eocene, just after the time of Ida. So our primate roots reach back to this time.

For the past two years, an international team of scientists led by Hurum has conducted a detailed forensic analysis of the fossil. The fossil was apparently discovered in 1983 by private collectors who split and eventually sold two parts of the skeleton on separate plates: The lesser part was restored and, in the process, partly fabricated to make it look more complete.This part was purchased for a private museum in Wyoming, and then described by Jens L. Franzen, part of Hurum's team, who recognized the fabrication. The more complete part has just come to light, and it now belongs to the Natural History Museum of the University of Oslo.

Ida was preserved in Germany’s Messel Pit, a mile-wide crater containing oil-rich shale that is a significant site for fossils of the Eocene Epoch. Opposable big toes and nail-bearing tips on the fingers and toes confirm that the fossil is a primate, and a foot bone called the talus bone links Ida directly to humans, Hurum said. The fossil also preserved the primate's gut contents, including fruits, seeds and leaves. X-rays reveal both baby and adult teeth, plus the lack of a "toothcomb" or a "grooming claw," which is an attribute of lemurs (which are also primates, like us, but are considered more primitive and part of a family different from great apes and us).

The scientists estimate that Ida was about 9 months old at death, and measured about 3 feet in length. Her forward-facing eyes are like ours - which would have enabled her fields of vision to overlap, allowing 3-D vision and an ability to judge distance. She was probably nocturnal, Hurum and his colleagues say.

Ida lived at a time when mammals were evolving quickly on a planet that was basically a vast jungle. Early horses, bats, whales and many other creatures, including the first primates, thrived at this time when the climate was subtropical. The Himalayas were being formed. X-rays reveal that a broken wrist may have contributed to Ida’s death - her left wrist was healing from a bad fracture, Hurum said. She could have been overcome by carbon dioxide gas while drinking from the Messel lake: the still waters of the lake were often covered by a low-lying blanket of the gas as a result of the volcanic forces that formed the lake and which were still active. Hampered by her broken wrist, Ida possibly slipped into unconsciousness, was washed into the lake and sunk to the bottom, where the unique conditions preserved her for 47 million years, Hurum said.

A replica of Ida will go on display later this week at the American Museum of Natural History's new "Extreme Mammals" exhibition. A book and a TV documentary, both titled "The Link," have been timed for release to coincide with the publication of the research. Dozens of reporters swarmed to the museum for Tuesday's announcement at the museum, where even New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg was on hand to extol the discovery. The fossilized creature lay on its side, suspended in a block of amber-colored material sitting in a brightly lit specimen case.Before Tuesday's event, the fossil was shrouded in secrecy, and its unveiling unfolded more like a Hollywood production than a scientific discovery. When asked if the publicity was overdone, Hurum said he didn't think so.

URL: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/30826552/?GT1=43001

Full-Figured Statuette, 35,000 Years Old, Provides New Clues to How Art Evolved

Grandpa — Fri, 15 May 2009 16:48:19 -0700

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/05/14/science/14venus.html?_r=1&ref=science

Full-Figured Statuette, 35,000 Years Old, Provides New Clues to How Art Evolved

No one would mistake the Stone Age ivory carving for a Venus de Milo. The voluptuous woman depicted is, to say the least, earthier, with huge, projecting breasts and sexually explicit genitals.

H. Jensen

Sexual images in early Homo sapiens European art: A. A "Venus" figurine from Willnedorf, Austria, 105 millimeters in height, dated about 28,000 years ago; B. Female "vulvar" symbols carved on a limestone block from the La Ferrassie rock shelter, southwest France, dated about 35,000 years ago; C. A phallus, carved from the horn core of a bison, from the Blanchard rock shelter, southwest France; the carving is about 36,000 years old and is 250 millimeters long.
Nicholas J. Conard, an archaeologist at the University of Tübingen, in Germany, who found the small carving in a cave last year, said it was at least 35,000 years old, “one of the oldest known examples of figurative art” in the world. It is about 5,000 years older than some other so-called Venus artifacts made by early populations of Homo sapiens in Europe.

Another archaeologist, Paul Mellars of the University of Cambridge, in England, agreed and went on to remark on the obvious. By modern standards, he said, the figurine’s blatant sexuality “could be seen as bordering on the pornographic.”

The tiny statuette was uncovered in September in a cave in southwestern Germany, near Ulm and the Danube headwaters. Dr. Conard’s report on the find is being published Thursday in the journal Nature.

The discovery, Dr. Conard wrote, “radically changes our view of the origins of Paleolithic art.” Before this, he noted, female imagery was unknown, most carvings and cave drawings being of mammoths, horses and other animals.

Scholars say the figurine is roughly contemporaneous with other early expressions of artistic creativity, like drawings on cave walls in southeastern France and northern Italy. The inspiration and symbolism behind the rather sudden flowering have long been debated by art historians.

Commenting in the journal on the discovery, Dr. Mellars, who did not take part in the research, wrote that the artifact was one of 25 similar carvings found over the past 70 years in other caves in the Swabian region of southern Germany, “a veritable art gallery of early ‘modern’ human art.”

These sites, he concluded, “must be seen as the birthplace of true sculpture in the European - maybe global - artistic tradition.”

Scholars say the large caves were presumably inviting sanctuaries for populations of modern humans migrating then into Central and Western Europe. These were the people who eventually displaced the resident Neanderthals, around 30,000 years ago.

Dr. Conard reported that the discovery was made beneath three feet of red-brown sediment in the floor of the Hohle Fels Cave. Six fragments of the carved ivory, including all but the left arm and shoulder, were recovered. When he brushed dirt off the torso, he said, “the importance of the discovery became apparent.”

The short, squat torso is dominated by oversize breasts and broad buttocks. The split between the two halves of the buttocks is deep and continuous without interruption to the front of the figurine. A greatly enlarged vulva emphasizes the “deliberate exaggeration” of the figurine’s sexual characteristics, Dr. Conard said.

The object reminded experts of the most famous of the sexually explicit figurines from the Stone Age, the Venus of Willendorf, discovered in Austria a century ago. That Venus is somewhat larger and dated about 24,000 years ago, but it is in a style that appeared to have been prevalent for several thousand years. Scholars speculate that these Venus figurines, as they are known, were associated with fertility beliefs or shamanistic rituals.

The Hohle Fels artifact, less than 2.5 inches long and weighing little more than an ounce, is headless. Carved at the top, instead, is a ring, evidently to allow the object to be suspended from a string or thong.