Telidjan Depression, Algeria

Snail Eating Capsian Hunter Gatherers Adapting to Climate Change (8,000 years ago)

The area straddling Algeria and Tunisia is dotted with hundreds of ash colored mounds, the remains of seasonal camps of one of the last hunter gatherer cultures in North Africa, the Capsians, who lived there 10,000 years ago.  If you get closer to them, you’ll notice that one of the primary consituents of these mounds are thousands of snail shells.  These people were among the greatest consumers of snails known.  These mounds are actually middens, the built up refuse of human activity over hundreds of years, and contain other remains of human activity as well, such as stone tools or skeletons.  The Europeans and scientific world refers to them as escargotiers after their Snail shell contents, while the local people call them ramdadiya, meaning ash colored in Arabic.  The people were named the Capsians, after the nearest town to one of the first escargotiers excavated in 1903, which was known as Capsia in the days of the Roman Empire (modern day Gafsa in Tunisia).  Much of what we now know about Capsians has been determined by excavating 3 escargotiers in the Telidjene Basin in Algeria near the Tunisian border.

The Telidjane Basin is the area drained by a wadi, a river that only flows during parts of the year, called Wadi Telidjane, which runs in a southwest direction.  The Telidjan Depression is an area within this basin flanked by high hills and cliffs, with the wari running between them.  Another set of cliffs and hills is at the south, giving the depression an oval like shape.  The Wadi Cheria and its associated depression runs parallel and to the West of it.  The Telidjene Depression has dozens of escargotiers in it, marking the location of seasonal camps of the Capsian hunter gatherers in the area.  Of those, three have been studied intensely with modern techniques and have materials in them that date to both main phases of the Capsian Culture, the Typical Capsian period and the Superior Capsian.  Relilai is located in a rock shelter in the south of the depression just to the east of the wadi.  Kef Zoura D is in another rock shelter nearby on the other side of the wadi.  Ain Misteheyia is in an open air site in the north end of the depression, about 20km from the other twi, and was by a smaller Wadi (Wadi Hamaja) and had a spring nearby (Ain Misteheyia spring).  Relilai was the first of these to be excavated (in 1936), but it’s material sequences weren’t continuous, making it a little hazier to draw conclusions from.  Ain Misteheyia was studied in the 1970s in great detail.  Since it was an open air site and not protected by rock overhangs, its soil layers were compressed over time, again making it more difficult for archaeologists to date, but they were able to work with it.  Unfortunately it was destroyed in the late 1970s during a soil reclamation project, so it cannot be followed up on using more modern techniques.  Kef Zoura D had the nicest and most preserved continuous archaeological sequence and was studied last.  The three sites were able to be compared and contrasted with each other, in effect “checking the work” of the findings of the other, so archaeologists could be confident in their conclusions.  

The Capsian culture can be divided up into two or three phases, depending on how you want to look at it.  The early phase was called the Typical Capsium (10 to 8 ka, meaning 10 thousand years ago to 8 thousand years ago).  The game tended to be larger, as were the snails.  The stone tools were also larger and less sophisticated, and were normally created by striking a hammer rock against another.  The second phase was the Superior Capsium (8 to 7 ka).  The game was smaller, as were the snails.  The stone tool technology had advanced so that the pressure flaking technique started being used to creatw tools.  This technique involved apply pressure of a sharp blade to the edges of the tool being crafted.  This led to finer control of the output and smaller tools to be created with more details, which allowed smaller game to be hunted.  In Europe and West Asia, introduction of this technology was the hallmark of the transition from the Paleolothic (old stone age) to the Mesolithic (middle stone age).  It occured about 20,000 years ago in Western Asia, and had reached most of Europe by 11,500 years ago.  The third phase of the Capsian is usually considered a post-Capsian phase, but still a continuation of it, and is called the Neolithic of Capsian Tradition (7 to 5 ka).  It involves neolithic (New Stone Age) activities, such as the domestication of animals being added to the Capsian tradition.   

Archaeologists wanted to understand when the transition from the Typical to the Superior Capsian occured.  Since they had ground containing artifacts spanning these phases, they were able to look for these artifacts and date them and then they determined that the transition happened about 8,200 years ago.  This turns out to correspond with the time that the 8.2 Kiloyear Event took place, which was the worse global cooling event that occured since the end of the Ice Age 11,600 years ago, which pretty much affected the whole world.  Ironically, according to one of the most acceoted theories, it is thought to have happened because the world was warming.  Glaciers used to cover much of North America and Eurasia during the Ice Age, but they began to melt when the temperatures rose.  There was a lake larger than all if the Great Lakes put together (Lake Agassi) in North America that was being held in its basin on one side by a glacier (essentially an ice dam).  When the glacier on the north side of the lake weakened enough, the force of the water in the lake caused the ice dam to burst and most of the water in that lake to drain into the oceans.  This rose the sea levels dramatically overnight (possibly the source of many of the flood myths in the world).  This new fresh water being poured into the Atlantic Ocean caused the ocean currents to get disrupted and weather patterns to change across the world.  Much of the world became colder for a few hundred years, while northern Africa became dryer.  Humans around the world, some of who had started farming, had to endure the changes in climate and adapt, move, or die.  This marked the end of the Greenlandian Age, which started at the beginning of our current Holocene Epoch, which started when the last ice age ended, and marked the start of the Northgrippian Age.  

The types of plants that could be supported in the Teledjene Depression after the 8.2 kiloyear event changed to plants that could survive with less water.  This was determined by noting the types of Phytoliths (remnants of plant cellular processes) of grasses and similar plants that were present in the ash at Ain Misteheyia around the transition which helped confirmed that the climate did get dryer there.    It is thought that the Capsians ate wild grasses like the ones found there, which prevented the need to plant their own crops at a time other cultures were already doing so.  

Remains from larger animals such as Hartebeests (their main source of protein), Barbary Sheep, Aurochs, Gazelles, Zebras, and Jackals were prevalent in the lower earlier layers, while smaller animals like Rabbits and Hares were more prevalent in the upper later ones.  This suggests the change in animal kinds available for hunting prompted an update in stone tools to be smaller and more sophisticated in order to hunt the smaller prey.  The culture thus shifted from the Typical Capsian to Superior Capsian.  I wonder if they figured out the pressure technique for stone tool making themselves as they found themselves needing to hunt smaller prey, or if they got it from an outside group, which may have been using the technique for a while.  Maybe they knew about it all along, but just never needed to use it before?  

The types of snails found also got smaller, and they appeared to have relied on snails more than ever before.  There is a theory that say snails may have been one of the first domestic animals, which might explain why they often appear to be consumed in large numbers shortly before a culture starts domesticating plants and larger animals, though I don’t think this theory is particularly accepted at the moment.  

At any rate, with the expected climate change in our world due to global warming, our own civilization might have to make a technological leap and lifestyle change similar to the ones the Capsians had to make after their world started changing.

Sources:

Scientific Papers:

Diet (Mar 1976) 

https://academia.edu/resource/work/20182658

Adult Skeleton (Aug 1979) 

https://academia.edu/resource/work/30985921

Edible Meditterrainean Snails (Jan 2004) 

https://academia.edu/resource/work/2025278  

Telidjene Basin (Aug 2008) 

https://academia.edu/resource/work/13345335

Plant Subsistence (Feb 2013) 

https://academia.edu/resource/work/37662698

Book Review (Jan 2016) 

https://academia.edu/resource/work/25294131 

https://academia.edu/resource/work/40462209 

https://academia.edu/resource/work/37948280 

https://academia.edu/resource/work/26724215

 

Point Europa, Gibraltar

An Anatolian Woman in Gibraltar (7,500 years ago)

In 1996 they found a skull of a 7,500 year old woman in a cave by Point Europa in Gibraltar.  This makes her the oldest known modern human resident of Gibraltar, although she was buried near other caves where Neanderthals had been buried 100,000 years ago.  Gibraltar is a peninsula off the coast of Spain, but is in British possession today.  It is one of the closest parts of Europe to Africa and you can see Africa across the sea from there.  Point Europa is the southermost tip of Gibraltar and has a light house on it, and some nearby caves.  The woman was named Calpeia, from the ancient name for Gibraltar, Mons Calpe.

In 2019, they studied Calpeia’s facial features (even though her skull had been deformed) and her DNA.  They were able to tell some of what she looked like, as well as trace her ancestey.  It turns out that only 10% of her dna was from the local Mesolithic hunter gatherers of the Iberian Peninsula (Spain/Portugal), whereas the other 90% of her was from the Neolithic farmers of Anatolia (modern day Turkey), located on the opposite end of the Mediterranean Sea.  This suggests that her recent ancestors must have migrated from Anatolia.  Since it would have taken many generations for her to reach overland, and likely picking up other genetic signals along the way, they must have arrived by a coastal route.  By my reckoning, since if 10% of her DNA was local, then I could imagine that one of her great grandparents was from the Iberian Peninsula, who would have married someone with Anatolian DNA, and their child (her grandparent) would marry someone else with Anatolian DNA (her other grandparent), so that their child (her parent) was 1/4 Iberian and 3/4 Anatolian, while her other parent could have made the trip straight from Anatolia.  That’s pretty fast to cross that big sea.  Since the population of the island of Sardinia is largely Anatolian, it seems likely that they crossed the sea West on boats.  The people of Iberia were Western Hunter Gatherers, while the Anatolians were some of the first people to farm.  The Anatolians spread across Europe, introducing agriculture, and interacting with the local hunter gatherers in various ways, sometimes trading with them, other times pushing them to niche lands while they took the best farmland for themselves, sometimes assimilating them, and other times maybe even enslaving them or treating them as lower class.  The Anatolians were newcomers to this area at this time, but had already built some stone circles in Iberia (they would go on to build Stonehenge a couple thousand years later after they reached the British Isles).  The Anatolians living at Gibraltar didn’t appear to do any agriculture though, and seemed to have gotten most of their food from hunting and fishing.  Evidence of farming nearby (125 miles) is present though in the form of wheat seeds.  

They were able to find out enough about what she looked like to recreate her face, and displayed a model of it in a museum.  Like most Anatolians, she had light skin, dark hair, and dark eyes.  The native Iberians would have had darker skin and blue eyes, which she did not inherit.  Calpeia would essentially look like a modern Spanish woman today, as most of Spain’s ancestry is from the Anatolians, since later waves of migration into Iberia from the West didn’t leave much of a genetic imprint.

Sources:

News Stories -

Unveiling Recreation (Sep 2019)  

https://www.chronicle.gi/unveiling-calpeia-the-face-of-the-first-known-gibraltarian/ 

Facial Recreation (Jun 2020)  

https://www.nationalgeographic.com/history/magazine/2020/05-06/face-7500-year-old-woman-reveals-gibraltar-earliest-humans/

Visiting (Jul 2020)  

https://www.chronicle.gi/a-visit-to-europa-point/

Videos:

Creating face - https://youtu.be/WeQyW4CObLo

Unveiling face - https://youtu.be/2241v3jqZC0

Monte Alto, Italy

 Oldest Lunar Calendar (10,000 years ago)

Today I’m taking a look at the oldest lunar calendar that archaeologists feel pretty confident about.  It takes the form of a pebble that some hunter gatherers were carving notches onto the side of about 10,000 years ago, presumably in order to count off the days until the next full moon (or new moon?).   The item was found left at the top of Monte Alto in the Alban Hills, just a little south of Rome, in 2007.  It wasn’t until 12 years later that someone noticed that the number of notches on the rock corresponded with the number of days in a lunar cycle.  The rock was somewhat shaped like a rectangular prism, with four long edges.  There were 7 notches along one long edge, 9 along another, and 11 on a third.  When you add them all up, you get the number of days in a lunar cycle, 27.  These notches (called tache) were made with different scraping rocks, making it appear as if they were added on different days, as if they were counting the days.  The pebble was pocket sized, but I find myself wondering if these hunter gatherers had pockets, or where they would keep them.  Maybe it was kept in a little pouch that they wore on their neck, waiste, or arm?  I wonder about all sorts of things.  Why was it important to have a portable calendar?  Maybe so you could tell what day it was when the Moon wasn’t visible?  Would one person be the date keeper?  Would everyone else go up to them and say “hey Larry, what day is it?”.  Or, “how many more days do we have before we all meet up by that one river for the party?”  Would the guy in charge of it be an astronomy nerd like me?  Maybe he just kept it to himself for his own amusement, ha.

I’m a little disappointed that the stone didn’t have 4 sides with 7 notches each (one for each “week”).  They could go from new moon to half moon along one side, then to full moon on another side, then to half, then back to new.  Was one of these phases deemed “more important” than the other in that it was given a seven day side?  Where the other notches just “the rest” of the month, divided onto the two sides randomly as they fit?  Did they really have three weeks in a month, with a seven day week, followed by a 9 day week, followed by a 11 day one?  Is it just easier to denote which day you’re on in rock art when they’re not the same length?

I also wonder if they were able to reuse the calendar, or would they start scratching up a new pebble once the lunar cycle is complete?  I’m imagining they could tie a string around the pebble and place it in between the grooves of the notches and  use that to mark what day it was, then reuse it as many times as they wanted.  The pebble was used for a long time before it was used as a calendar, so it’d be weird if they chucked it after 1 month.  It started out as a tool used chip at and touch up other stone tools, and was later used to bash and red ochre into paint.

I also wonder if the fact it was found on a high hill important.  Maybe, going up where it was high increased the chances that you could see the moon at a given time.  Maybe that’s just where they go for their astronomical stuff, a little observatory.

Of course, the stone only tells you what “day of the month” it is, but doesn’t tell you which month you were on.  Did they have some something else that kept track of the month?  How did they synch their lunar calendar with the seasons and solar cycle?  They found a site in Warren Field in Scotland from about the same time that might explain how they did that.  There, they found a series of twelve pits (one for each lunar month) and think that when the Sun was positioned in a particular way, they would reset their lunar calendars to align with the Sun.   It is thought that genetically, the people living in Italy and Scotland were both “Western Hunter Gatherers”.  If they had a similar culture in both places, maybe they had similar lunar/solar pit calendar up on that hill that was lost or we haven’t found yet?  

The Alban Hills are volcanic mountains which last erupted about 36000 years ago and is 5000 years overdue by for another eruption, likely within the next 1000 years, destroying nearby Rome.  They are situated in between two large lakes, which have supported human populations of various kinda for hundreds of thousands of years.  The calendar stone was created from rock outcrops several kilometers from where it was found, so the band would have been well traveled around this area.  During the Upper Pleistocene, the area was inhabited by Upper Paleolithic People (previously known as Cro-Magnon).  The people here were part of the Epigravetian stone tool culture, which encompassed Italy, the Balkans, and Ukraine.  From my reckoning, at some point there was a wave of hunter gatherers who entered Europe from the East, called the Eastern Hunter Gatherers, and they brought with them the advanced Mesolithic micro-blade stone tool technology.  They mixed with the Upper Paleolithic People they found there, and this mix became the Western Hunter Gatherer population, who occupied most of Europe west of Poland.  I’d like to have a better understanding of how old the calendar pebble really was and which group was using it.  I have been unable to read the full original paper on this lunar stone in Italy (without paying for it, ha), so I’m a little hazy on some of the details.  What made them think that it was 10,000 years old?  The news articles describe the artifact as being an Upper Pleistocene artifact, and some indicate that the Pleistocene ended at 10,000 years ago, so they said that the artifact was “at least” 10,000 years ago, and thus the oldest lunar calendar (the oldest other one being the one in Scotland).  Others just say it was dated at 10,000 years ago (how?).  As far as I know though, Italy was in the Mesolithic 10,000 years ago.  So maybe it’s actually a mesolithic artifact, or else it’s a Pleistocene artifact older than 10,000 years.    Unless this part of Italy was one of the last places to make the switch to the Mesolithic.  It’d be nice to know if it was truly contemporary to the one in Scotland.  

There are other artifacts suspected of being used as lunar calendars that are older than this one, but their use is considered controversial.  I guess if you start marking something with tallies each day, but didn’t get to the end of the month, there’s no way to tell if it was actually counting days of a lunar cycle, or just tallying any old thing.  It’s the fact that there’s 27 marks that make this one convincing.  There have been three controversial artifacts  found in France that could have been lunar calendars, including  a 28,000 year old baton found in Abri Blanchard, the 25,000 year old “Venus of Laussel”, and 17,000 year old paint marks among the cave paintings at Lascaux Caves.

Sources:

News Stories-

Lunar Stone (Jun 2019) https://www.academia.edu/40366419/A_new_notational_artifact_from_the_Upper_Paleolithic_Technological_and_traceological_analysis_of_a_pebble_decorated_with_notches_found_on_Monte_Alto_Velletri_Italy 

https://www.google.com/amp/s/nypost.com/2019/07/25/10000-year-old-engraved-stone-could-be-worlds-oldest-lunar-calendar/amp/ 

https://www.ancient-origins.net/news-history-archaeology/lunar-calendar-0012340 

https://archaeologynewsnetwork.blogspot.com/2019/07/10000-year-old-engraved-pebble-found.html?m=1 

https://www.eupedia.com/forum/threads/38935-The-oldest-lunar-calendar-is-a-pebble-engraved-10-000-years-ago-found-near-Rome 

https://www.thesun.co.uk/tech/9573269/stone-age-pebble-oldest-lunar-calendar/

Web Pages:

other lunar calendars: https://www.fundacionpryconsa.es/media/How-do-we-know-what-ancient-civilisation-knew-about-the-Moon.pdf

Marawah Island Settlement MR11, United Arab Emirates

 Early coastal trading village, oldest pearls (8,000 years ago)

Hey, it’s my first direct post on Blogger!  Recently, I’ve explored some potential settlements that were lost due to the rising sea level.  Today, I’m going to talk about a new settlement that was created thanks to the rising sea level.  During the height of the Ice Age, there was no Persian Gulf.  As the sea levels rose as the Earth warmed, the gulf began to fill in.  When humanity first domesticated livestock, the place that would become the Arabian Peninsula was not the desert we know now, but rather, it was a Savanna like land.  The people in the area started herding livestock, such as cattle, sheep, and goats.  They were nomadic pastoralists, moving their animals from pasture to pasture.  Then, around 8,000 years ago, the gulf coast reaches its roughly modern extent - even a little higher than today - and Marawah became an island off the coast of what is now the United Arab Emirates, about 100 km west of its capitol Abu Dabi.  The herders of the area decided to settle down on this island and take advantage of its sea resources and access to other parts of the gulf via boat.  We know of two such settlements at the west end of the island, MR11 (the better excavated one) and MR1 (mostly known just for some stone projectile points right now). Thus began a way of life that continues to the modern day.  

Archaeologists found houses in a settlement on the island that date back to 8000 years ago and remained in use for a couple hundred years.  Small single room houses were shaped like ovals or “pills”.  They had very thick walls of cobbled together stones.  It was originally thought that the stones would be placed in such a way so as to form a dome “igloo style”, although now they’re thinking they might have used something else to form a roof.  These little building units would be built adjacent to each other to form multi-room houses, sometimes with a door between them, other times without.  There appeared to be separate areas for livestock, so they continued to care for livestock even after settling down, though to a reduced capacity from their herding days.  Based on the content of vases found in the home, their main source of food was fish from the gulf though, which included requiem sharks, groupers, sea bream, and emperor fish.  They found stone sinkers near the water, indicating that they fished utilizing nets.  Shark teeth were punctured to make beads and likely used in necklaces.  They also ate marine mammals, such as Dugongs (sea cows).  Dugongs have been an important food source for the area until hunting them was banned in the 1970s.  Today, the island is a nature reserve with the second largest population of Dugongs after Australia.  Dolphins were also on the menu.  One dolphin jaw bone had grooves carved into it, perhaps as some kind of artistic display.  They also appeared to have hunted Gazelle.  It’s speculated that they might have introduced gazelles to the island so that there would be a supply available to hunt for when they wanted to eat them.  They had large stone spears that they would use to hunt these mammals, and stone knives for slicing them up.  

It seems that after some homes were no longer being used as residences for the living, that they would be reused as buriel places for the dead.  Two skeletons were found in the first house excavated in fetal positions, including “Marawah Man”. Unfortunately, they weren’t in good condition and scientists were unable to extract any dna from them due to difficulties in preservation due to the proximity of salt water.  

One thing that excites archaeologists is an indication of early trade with Mesopotamia.  They found a nearly complete vase from the Ubaid civilization there.  It is thought that such vases would be considered a luxury good.  They also found plaster vessels that appeared to be made locally and were painted in such a way as to mimic the Ubaid vase’s artistic patterns.  They later discovered the means by which they thought they may have “paid” for the vases.  They found the world’s oldest known pearl, dubbed the “Abu Dabi Pearl” in exhibitions, in one of the homes, which was about 7,700 years old.  They speculate that they must have boats that could have traversed the Persian Gulf and allowed the trade of pearls for vases and other goods.  Pearling has been a main source of income for the gulf coast into twentieth century, with records of it in the middle ages and a prime source for the pearls prized by Europeans in the 1600s.  It was the United Arab Emirates primary source of wealth before Japanese cultured pearls drove down their prices in the 1930s, forcing them to switch their economy to oil.  It’s neat to know that this industry has a history that stretches this far back.  International commerce along the gulf has had a history as long.  They also turned pearl oyster shells into buttons and made use of other shellfish for things like beads.

Unfortunately, this area started getting dryer and dryer, and the settlements were abandoned around 6,500 years ago.  By around 6,000 years ago, it was a desert.   

Sources:

News Stories - 

2004 Season (Aug 2004)  

https://studylib.net/doc/7613530/newsletter-adias-newsletter-may-2004  

First biosphere reserve (Aug 2007)  

https://gulfnews.com/uae/environment/marawah-is-uaes-first-biosphere-reserve-1.210810    

2004 Season Results (Aug 2008) 

https://www.academia.edu/2454404/Excavations_on_the_Neolithic_Settlement_of_MR11_on_Marawah_Island_Abu_Dhabi_United_Arab_Emirates_2004_season

Dugongs Hunted (Jun 2015)  https://www.thenational.ae/uae/environment/dugongs-were-once-on-the-menu-for-fishermen-in-abu-dhabi-1.106974

New Excavations  (Mar 2016)  https://gulfnews.com/entertainment/arts-culture/excavations-uncover-early-inhabitants-of-abu-dhabi-1.1698860    

2nd Skeleton Found (Aug 2016)  

https://www.thenational.ae/uae/ancient-house-for-the-dead-unearthed-on-uae-s-marawah-island-1.160716

3 Room House Detailed (Feb 2017)  https://www.thenational.ae/uae/abu-dhabi-archaeologists-unearth-rare-well-preserved-stone-age-house-1.74286

Rich past, boats (May 2017)  

https://gulfnews.com/entertainment/arts-culture/uaes-archeological-research-gives-insight-into-a-rich-past-1.2025618

Officials visit (Oct 2017)  

https://m.khaleejtimes.com/nation/abu-dhabi-archaeological-finds-shed-light-on-life-in-abu-dhabi-7000-years-ago

Settlement discovered (Jun 2018)  

https://www.thenational.ae/uae/heritage/earliest-village-discovered-on-abu-dhabi-island-is-evidence-of-an-8-000-year-old-gulf-superhighway-1.744398 

https://english.alarabiya.net/en/life-style/travel-and-tourism/2018/06/27/New-excavations-in-UAE-Island-uncover-8-000-year-old-village

Nice Life (Sep 2018)  

http://wam.ae/en/details/1395302752570

Vase expo (Jan 2019)  

https://m.khaleejtimes.com/nation/abu-dhabi/discover-arabian-tales-from-uaes-oldest-vase-at-louvre   

Earliest artwork (Apr 2019)  

https://gulfnews.com/uae/uaes-earliest-known-artwork-discovered-on-marawah-island-1.63071429 http://wam.ae/en/details/1395302752570 

https://www.thenational.ae/uae/heritage/priceless-discoveries-reveal-hidden-story-of-the-uae-and-humanity-1.844428  

Oldest perl (Oct 2019) 

https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1111/aae.12148 

https://www.google.com/amp/s/amp.france24.com/en/20191020-world-s-oldest-pearl-found-in-abu-dhabi https://www.archaeology.org/news/8123-191021-abu-dhabi-pearl 

https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.emirates247.com/news/emirates/world-s-oldest-known-natural-pearl-discovered-on-marawah-island-2019-10-21-1.690274%3fot=ot.AMPPageLayout  

Fish Bones (Oct 2019)  

https://www.thenational.ae/uae/heritage/ancient-fish-bones-shed-new-light-on-life-in-uae-s-first-villages-1.929012

History of the Emirates Review (Nov 2019)  

https://www.thenational.ae/arts-culture/television/history-of-the-emirates-review-we-may-never-look-at-the-uae-in-the-same-way-again-1.941884  

Khambhat Underwater Site, India

 Submerged advanced coastal cities? (9,500 years old?)

(originally posted 8/8/2020 on Facebook)

Today’s 10,000 year old site is steeped in myth, pseudo-archaeology, history, alien conspiracy theories, religion, and mystery.  The world is full of ancient flood myths and also full of people who would love to find evidence of antedilluvian (pre-flood) civilizations.  If there is any truth to the myths, it is likely that they are a memory of a series of ancient sea level rises that occured at the end of the last ice age, as the glaciers melted.  That is what some people thought was found when the Indian government announced the apparent discovery of ancient large twin cities at the bottom of the Gulf of Khambhat in 2001.  They saw what appeared to be large building structures on the sea floor built near some old river channels.  They had dredged up artifacts from the sea bottom, such as pottery shards, human bones, and stone tools.  Wood found at the site was carbon dated and used to suggest its age was a whopping 9,500 years old. This is twice as old as the bronze age Indus Valley Civilization, which flourished nearby, the oldest known civilization in India and contempory to ancient egypt, crete, mycenea, and china.  There were small scale urban centers in Turkey and the Levant at the time, but nothing on the scale of this “Khambhat Civilization”.  This intrigued Graham Hancock, who added this to a list of underwater sites from around the world that seemed to argue that a global civilization had existed before the sea level rise, but which had sunk into the sea, like Atlantis.  

Some linked this site to a the mythological city Davaraka (Dwarka).  Ancient Hindu holy text tells the tale of a great city in India that fell into the sea thousands of years ago, founded by the hero or god figure Krishna, called Dwarka, who reclaimed land from the sea to build it.  There is a modern city named Dwarka off of the coast in its honor, located on the other side of the coast of the state of Gujarat to the west of the Khambhat cities.  The city has a temple dedicated to Krishna and the memory of the original Dwarka, which is one of the four main pilgrim sites in Hindu where the devout retrace the life of Lord Krishna.  The original city is generally thought to be 3-5 thousand years old, perhaps part of the Indus Valley Civilizations.  Could it be connected to the newly found cities, or even actually be one of these two cities?  The hindu holy texts described the city being assaulted by flying machines, which were shot down by advanced weaponry reminiscent of rockets.  Krishna successfully defended the city, but upon his untimely death, it collapsed into the sea.  Could ancient civilizations have advanced technology that was later lost, or perhaps were these texts describing ancient alien ufos?  A good number of ancient mystery and ufo conspiracy documentaries were created on the topic.  It makes for good entertainment.

Now for a reality check.  Most archaeologists dispute the meaning of the 9,500 year old wood piece that was found.  It wasn’t obtained by normal archaeological means, such as by going down there, poking around, and finding it within a certain layer of sediment within a specific context.  Instead, a big machine floating at the surface just took a big drill and scooped it up.  There’s no way to know if it can actually be associated with the underwater city.  All it means is that there was probably a forest around there 9,500 years ago, the city could have been built later.  The wood could have drifted in from anywhere.  It’d be kinda cool if there was maybe a smaller more reasonable sized settlement there 10,000 years ago, but I don’t think there’s even enough evidence to suggest that.  Most archaeologies dismiss the claims of buildings on the site altogether, and consider them to be naturally occuring geological stone structures which were later submerged.  They point out other places in the world where similar looking natural stone features exist on land.  These may bear a striking resemblance to giant cut stone blocks forming a larger structure, but are actually naturally forming fractured stone structures caused in the aftermath of earthquakes.  There’s been other artifacts found that suggest an old age, but nothing that convinces mainstream scientists.  These artifacts may have been washed up by a river from the the Indus Valley Civilization town of Lothol, which is located near the coast of the gulf, or perhaps from elsewhere.  Other artifacts they say are likely not manmade at all, and instead are naturally formed rocks.  The whole site may simply be an illusion.  The site is well known for its earthquakes, so archaeologists don’t think it would be possible to get good chronological data from the place because everything would be jumbled up instead of in dateable layers, and not worth studying more.

Of course, scientists claiming something that someone wants to believe is something is in fact nothing remarkable causes some people to then believe they are really covering it up, and thus their curiosity is peaked and they become determined to get to the bottom of the conspiracy.  If only the government would restart excavating the area.  What are they trying to hide?  I don’t think there is anything that the Indian government is trying to cover up.  I think they’re just embarraced about the whole thing.  It seems like they originally announced the findings with glee to the world with the hopes of bolstering Indian national pride and identity by saying that they were the home of the world’s oldest advanced civilization.  But scientists around the world weren’t impressed and so after a few more years of research, they just backed off, probably hoping not to hear about it again.  I do hope they allow curious divers to take a look though if they haven’t already though.  Unless the currents really are too dangerous to handle I suppose.  The site still has its believers though.  Maybe they’ll have the last laugh as the detractors are shown to be overskeptical when it is looked at more closely.  I kinda doubt it though.

Longlin Cave, China

Archaic-modern human hybrids at the end of the ice age?  (11,500 years?)

 (originally posted 8/4/2020)

Today’s site from 10,000 years ago is pretty controversial and might just be due to a dating error.  But they found a skull in 1979 in Longlin Cave in south west China that in 2012 was radiocarbon dated to 11,500 years ago that they suspect is the result of hybridization between modern humans and a more archaic type of humans.  They say this because some of it features don’t look modern, but others do.  The most likely archaic human is the Red Deer Cave People, who themselves resemble a mix between Neanderthal and Homo Erectus.  Heck, we don’t really know what Denisovans looked like, so maybe they looked like them?  The bones for these people were found in a cave in a neighboring province and dated to about 12.6 to 14.3 thousand years ago.  Red ochre was found painted on one of their thigh bones, and it appeared to have been broken open in such a way as to get to the marrow.  This could be interpreted as ritual cannibalism, or maybe modern humans had dined on them.  If the skull in the Longlin Cave really was a hybrid between modern humans and these people, then they would have mated with them as well.  Of course, the most shocking part of this all was that it was dated so late.  Other archaic humans are though to have gone extinct or absorbed completely into modern human populations long before this.  For example, Neanderthals would have ceased to exist as a distinct species 40,000 years ago.  Could another type of human have survived right up until the end of the last ice age?  Could they have remained isolated from the rest of humanity for so long and delay their fate?  They suspect that the Red Deer People could have survived to that day so as to produce a hybrid, or there was a population of modern humans who had interbred with these archaic people, but then retained some of their archaic features for long times due to isolation from the rest of humanity.

The skull does not resemble modern East Asians very much, so they doubt that they are ancestors to modern Asians in the way that Denisovans are or Neanderthals are to Europeans.  One alternate possibility is that these are modern humans, but in the past, modern humans were more diverse, and they lost that diversity and skull features over time.  The scientists lament how they have not been able to obtain DNA samples from the bones in order to figure out where they fit in the family tree of humanity.  

In all likelihood though, we’re going to find out that this mystery can just be chalked up to inaccurate dating.  When they first discovered the “Hobbit” species of small humans in 2003 in Indonesia, they thought they had survived to an extremely recent time as well, as recent as 12,000 years ago.  However, after dating their materials better, they found that the bones they had found were around 50,000 years old, which would have been about the time they first encountered modern humans.  Last year, a paper was published that provided an alternative date for the Red Deer Cave people that was inconsistant with such a late date.  I couldn’t actually read the full article to see how old they thought they were, but it was probably closer to 50,000 years ago than 12,600 years ago.  They cautioned that water in many humid caves such as those in China might cause the radio carbon dates to become skewed.  Anyone dating in such a cave would have to be extra careful and come up with a date more than one way to be sure.  I’m not sure if the Red Deer Cave dates have been officially debunked though, just questioned.  I also haven’t seen any new papers that call into question the date of the Longlin Cave skull specifically, but have a feeling it’s only a matter of time.  But hey, until that happens, there’s always a chance there really could have been another type of human that survived to the end of the ice age.  Even if it does turn up to be bogus, it’s still always fun to ponder if some other archaic human had managed to survive that long, isolated, somewhere in this great big world of ours, just waiting to be discovered.  Or even into the modern age - like Big Foot!

Trail Creek Cave 2, Alaska, USA

Cousins to the first native americans (11,000 years old)

 (originally posted 8/3/2020)

Today’s 10,000 year old site is home to the oldest known human remains in the Arctic Circle, the Trail Creek Caves in Seward Penninsula in Alaska, which juts out towards Siberia.  The Bering Straight near these caves was created about 11,000 years ago, connecting the Arctic Ocean and Bering Sea and thus forever separating Siberia from Alaska, Eurasia from the Americas, and splitting the land known as Berengia into two.  The people who lived by these caves 10,000 years ago, the Ancient Berengians, are believed to be an offshoot of the first people who had crossed the old land bridge into America over 15,000 years ago, but who had remained in this area, as the remainder moved into the rest of North and South America.  

The caves themselves are rather small and thought to have been used only as a temporary shelter to wait out bad weather.  10,000 years old bone and antler artifacts were found to be made from Caribou.  A 9000 year old 1.5 year old’s tooth found here shows signs of a diet composed mostly of Caribou.  By that time, large mammals like Woolly Mammoths had died out in North America (though some remained on a nearby island off the far east Siberian coast in the Arctic, where no humans lived).  They didn’t appear to hunt marine mammals such as seals either, despite living near the Arctic Ocean coast.  The ancesters of the Inuit, who are famous for hunting these creatures, would not arrive in this area from Asia for another 5000 years.  Elk were plentiful though and were likely used for much of their needs.  Their antlers were used in their spear tips for one thing.  

One theory posed in about 2013 is that the ancestor to all Native Americans moved into Berengia, the land that connected Asia to North America, maybe 25,000 years ago during the height of the Ice Age.  They didn’t move into the rest of North America beyond Alaska because ice sheets blocked there path.  For 10,000 years, they remained isolated in Berengia and became a distinct people separate from Siberians and other East Asians. Then 15,000 years, the glaciers that impeded their movements melted and a path was cleared for them to enter the rest of North America and South America.  The Ancient Berengians would have been the ones who stayed behind and would be the closest related to the original Native Americans before they diversified. 

Some recent finding have poked holes in that theory though, with a 20,000 year old skeleton found in Mexico just a couple weeks ago.  In my mind, this matches some genetic information they recently gleaned from the tooth found in this cave and other samples done in a 2018 study. Genetic data says that the Ancient Berengians split off from the other ancestral Native Americans 21,000 years ago.  Maybe that is when the rest of the Native Americans left Berengia and entered the rest of the Americas, leaving the Ancient Berengians behind?  The genetic data also says that Ancestral Native Americans split off from East Asians and Siberians 23,000 years ago, so maybe that is when they first arrived in Baringia or at least became isolated?  We’ll see if that’s that’s what the theorists go with, ha. 

Some of these theories kind of assume that there was only one group of people who had crossed the land bridge from Asia to the Americas.  As far as we know, everyone who has entered into America had passed through these lands.  Some theories such as an early migration from Europe, Africa, or Australia due to similarities in skull shapes, stone technologies, and dna from these areas have mostly been refuted or explained away.  But maybe we’ll find evidence one of these days that other people crossed this land bridge that sticks.

The caves were first discovered in 1928 and the child’s tooth (the only human remains found here) in 1949 by a Danish archaeologist.  It was never analyzed and was put in a box and forgotten about until it was rediscovered in 2015.  There is only one other site with Ancient Beringian human remains, a site south of the Arctic Circle in Alaska with teeth from two infants called Upward Sun River Site.  The population seems to have died out and have no modern day descendants.  One theory is that they were replaced or absorbed by other native american tribes that later re-entered the area.

Windover Bog, Florida, US

Well preserved native bog cemetery (8,000 years old)

(originally posted 8/1/2020)

Spent a couple days learning about the Windover Bog site in Florida near the Space Coast that was first discovered in 1982.  From 8 to 7 thousand years ago, it was used as a burial site for a Native American tribe.  91 of the 168 skeletons found there are extremely well preserved and some even had brain matter preserved inside their skulls.  There’s also the oldest evidence of textiles in North America.  The face of one of the women buried there was recreated and put on display in a museum.  

The findings detail an elaborate burial ceremony and a window on life from those times.  The hunter gatherers would move around the area, but then come to this specific spot to bury their dead.  They wrapped their bodies in a cloth, carried them on wooden platforms into the marsh.  They would then set the bodies down and plunge wooden stakes that would hold the bodies and platforms under water and prevent them from rising back up.  One can easily imagine it being as somber an occasion of any modern day funeral, all those thousands of years ago.  This was a tradition held by a single tribe that lasted in this one place for over a thousand years, as those buried there were found to be closely related to each other.

The bodies showed a general peaceful life, with one apparent exception though.  Forensic scientists studied the events surrounding an apparent murder victim, who had a spear tip lodged in his bone and was decapitated, but then buried with care along with his kin.

Some other notable people who were buried here include a 15 year old boy who had spina bifida.  Another woman was in her 70s and likely died of abscesses.  One woman last ate elderberries, holly, and nightshade based on their remains where her stomach would have been.  Bones indicate they also ate ate white-tailed deer, raccoon, opossum, birds, fish and shellfish.

From the brain matter, they were able to perform one of the earliest dna extractions from someone from that long ago.  There was a documentary that claimed that the dna did not resemble any known native american groups and instead resembled European DNA.  This fit in with a hypothesis at the time that said that the Clovis people in North America could have entered the continent from Europe, based on the idea that the clovis points resembled points that the Solutrean population who lived in France during the Ice Age, and may thus be descended from the Solutreans.  This hypothesis has fallen out of scientific favor in more recent times, with the similarity in point structures being chalked up to coincidence and convergeant technology due to a similar life style, and similarity in DNA structure being chalked up to the fact that the hunter gatherers of Europe and those in North America shared a common ancestor in Eurasia a long time ago before the populations split off, with Europeans heading west to Europe, and Native Americans heading east through Alaska.  The hypothesis is still promoted by various white supremacist groups and other people who like the idea or are convinced by it though. I would imagine it would help assuage White guilt over taking over the Native American lands if it were shown that Europeans were here first for one thing, and help justify it.  The documentary that mentioned European similarities has since been reworked to indicate they found relations to Native Americans.  

I have not seen any scientific papers that suggests the people at the bog were from Europe, nor any that refute this (though maybe they exist), with most the arguments both ways I could find on the internet appearing on blogs and message boards.  I’ll choose to trust the scientists on this.  If modern studies find evidence of prehistoric European colonialization, I’m sure political correctness wouldn’t be enough to damper the scientists’ enthusiasm.  The current scientific consensus is that the dna showed the same ancestry as other native american groups (from asia), though I don’t think they’ve been tied to a particular living tribe. 

Some proponents of the European origin theory smell a scientific conspiracy that these bones and many others from this time have been reburied per the Native Americans’ wishes and are no longer available for further study.  It’s for cultural and spiritual reasons though and a matter of dignity.  There have been other instances of scientists respectfully working with the Native Americans to together learn about their past.  I hope we can find out as much possible while respecting natives’ wishes.

Xihuatoxtla Rock Shelter, Mexico

Earliest corn domestication in a rock shelter (8,700 years old)

 (originally posted 7/28/2020)

Learned about the earliest domesticated corn today.  In the early 1930s, it was discovered that corn was derived from a grass called Teosinte.  This is native to the Central Balsas River Valley in Mexico, somewhat south of Mexico City.  So scientists relatively recently looked in a number of caves in that area for the earliest signs of Corn domestication.  They found it in the Xihuatoxtla Rock Shelter in 2007.  This is basically an overhang beneath a giant rock that has been used by humans from 11 thousand to 4 thousand years ago.  They found a Milling Stone and several Hand Stones with the ground up remains of corn and squash that were 8.7 thousand years old.  The locals seemed to be hunting and experimenting with various plants.  Back then, the corn kernels would have been unrecognizable and probably weren’t used for food.  It would take several thousand more years before the kernels were big enough and the cobs had enough rows to be worth eating, with the earliest sign of corn in a humans diet being in Belize 4,700 years ago, and of being a staple 4,000 years ago.  So, it is surmised that in the earlier days of corn domestication, it would have been used for some kind of sugary fermented beverage.  Corn would go on to fuel the civilizations in Mesoamerica and the Andes Mountains, and is today the number one grown crop in the world.

Guitarrero Cave, Peru

Earliest agriculture in South America in a river side cave (10,500 years old)

(originally posted 7/27/2020)

I’ve been spending the last few days virtually rummaging through a 10,000 year old pantry in a cave in Peru called Guitarrero Cave.  Hmm, what do we have here?  10,000 year old common beans and Lima beans?  Some Aji and Habanero peppers?  Some Lacuma fruit?  Oh and here’s the oldest texttile work, made from an Agave plant.    Since the cave is named “The Guitarist’s Cave” in Spanish, it’s a shame I don’t see any 10,000 year old guitar picks in here.  I’m sure they made music somehow.

Guitarrero Cave is located in a cave cut into the the side of a steep valley above the Rio Santa river.  It’s thought that it was a seasonal shelter where hunters would go after hunting season, where they would attend to pioneering agricultural pursuits.  The valley has a relatively low elevation, and it is thought that from there they would explore higher ground and the people would later settle at higher altitudes as they aclimated to them.  The cave was occupied by humans right when the last ice age ended (human bones date from 12,600 years ago) at a time when big game was still around (mastadon bones were found in the cave, though i’m not sure how old they were).  I surmise that once the mastadons and other large game went extinct, they started experimenting with agriculture to supplement their smaller game.  The first signs of vegetables in the cave were 10,500 years ago, the same time the mastadon went extinct.  You could probably debate if these were early domestic vegetables or from the wild, but many suggest they were.

So, what was in their pantry?  The oldest vegetables were some chili peppers, including 10,500 year old Aji Peppers and maybe some Habanero peppers (I haven’s seen a reliable scientific source for this information, but several cooking websites mention it).  Yellow Aji peppers  are commonly used in modern Peruvian cuisine.  I ordered some Aji Paste on Amazon to get an idea of what they taste like.  Hope I can handle it haha, they’re quite hot.  They’re not as hot as the infamous Habanero pepper, whose name refers to the fact that it shipped from “from Havana”, Cuba’s capitol.

Beans were the next oldest veggies found, up to about 10,000 years old.  Wonder if they’re still good.  One type of bean was the “common bean”.  Lots of modern beans derive from this species, including Pinto Beans, Black Beans, Navy Beans, Kidney Beans.  Also green beans, french beans, and wax beans are also the same thing, just picked when they’re a little less developed.  Those are just the kinds I’m likely to have in my own pantry, ha.  The other type of bean they found that isn’t derived from the common bean is the Lima Bean (named for Peru’s capitol, aka Pallar Bean).  I am rather fond of that kind of bean and tend to mix it with tuna from a can, though I’m probably the only one who does that.

They also had several tubers that are still popular in Peruvian cuisine and are sometimes exported to other parts of the world as an alternative to the standard potato.  These include 9,500 year old Oca (Oxalis) and 7,500 year old Ulluca.  8,000 year old Ulluca was found in the Tres Ventanas caves further south.  I tried to find some chips made from these tubers on Amazon, but had no luck, oh well.  

They also had a Calabasa (Zapallo), which is a type of squash that seems as big as a pumpkin today.  I’ve seen pictures of them used as Jack O’ Lanters.

They had 8,200 year old Maize (corn), which was thought to have been domesticated in Mexico.  The fact that it’s here suggests that Peru and Mexico were connected via trade and perhaps travel back then.  It’s possible they had similar roots as well.  I’ll explore those possibilities later.

They found 7,500 year old Lucuma fruit.  Apparently, Lucuma powder is a common sugar alternative, with some health benefits, at least when compared to pure cane sugar.  I ordered some to see what it tastes like.  It’s weird to think that they didn’t have most of the fruit’s we’re used to today (apples, oranges, bananas), but that they had their own different types of fruits.  There was a later Moche civilization (100-700AD) along the coast of Peru that would include Lucuma and other foods in their artwork.

Old food isn’t the only thing Guitarrero Cave is known for.  The oldest textiles in the Americas was found here.  In more recent times, textiles are usually done with Llamas and Alpacas in Peru.  What they found back was 10,000 year old textile netting made from Agave, a thorny desert plant family sometimes mistaken for a cactus.  They surmise it could have been used for bags, baskets, wall or flooe coverings, or a mattress.  Later on, textiles would be used in a unique form of record keeping called Quipu that I first learned about playing Shadow of the Tomb Raider haha.  It came pretty close to a symbolic writing system and involved strings with symbolic knots.  Textiles had been around in the old world for a while before then though, a 30,000 year old flax fiber example was found in a cave in Georgia.

They also found 9,600 year old Echinopsis pachanoi cactus needles in the cave.  This type of cactus is known for its hallucigenic effects and is used today in rituals.  Apparently a lot of tourists stop by hoping to get their hands on it to experiment.  I wonder how much of the Andes’ people’s view of the cosmos was dreamt up while under the influence of this cactus all those millenia ago.

This cave is in close proximiry to a pretty cool temple of the first undisputed civilization of the Andes, the Chavin Civilization (900-200BC).  It is speculated that the people of this civilization were descendants of the peoples who occupied this cave.   The temple I’m thinking of is the Chavín de Huantar.  This is a huge temple with a huge hidden underground area and has been called the birthplace of South America.

Brown Bank, Netherlands

Search for submerged camp in Doggerland (10,000 years old)

 (originally posted 7/20/2020 on Facebook)

Today’s site that I learned about that was around 10,000 years ago is Brown Bank.  Back then, Britain was connected to Europe and the land in between Britain, France, Belgium, and the Netherlands was called Doggerland.  Brown Bank today is an elevated ridge on the bottom of sea floor beneath the North Sea between the UK and Netherlands, but back then, it was part of Doggerland.  Doggerland would sink beneath the sea over several thousand years as the oceans rose due to glaciers melting after the last ice age ended.  Fishing boats and survey boats near Brown Bank would occasionally accidentally pull up human artifacts such as stone or bone tools or human bones, and occasionally these items would be found along the Dutch coast.  This made scientists think there might have once been a human settlement down there 10,000 years ago.  So, they sent a ship to survey the ground to learn its topography, figuring humans would most likely settle near the prehistoric coast, and later dig up some of the sea floor where they thought humans would most likely be in hopes of finding direct evidence of this settlement.  They found remains of a petrified forest down there, an old river valley, and some flint and wood that humans would have used to start a fire.  They’re sending another expedition later this year, so hopefully they’ll find more interesting stuff.

Sources:

News stories-

2 year expedition about to start (Apr 2018)

https://blog.everythingdinosaur.co.uk/blog/_archives/2018/04/07/searching-for-ancient-settlements-at-the-bottom-of-the-north-sea.html

Topography expedition begins (Apr 2018)

https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&source=web&cd=&ved=0ahUKEwiWo9P0mt3qAhWIW80KHcMPDwsQxfQBCEEwBQ&url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.bbc.com%2Fnews%2Fworld-europe-43711762&usg=AOvVaw3jp_yY0JyqberyvP8yp6w5

Before RV Belgica May 2018 Voyage (May 2018)

https://www.theguardian.com/science/2019/may/08/mapping-begins-of-lands-lost-to-north-sea-during-the-stone-age

Forest Discovered (May 2018)

https://www.travelwires.com/scientists-find-possible-traces-of-a-lost-stone-age-settlement-beneath-the-north-sea-955

Brown Banks Expedition Starts (May 2019)

https://www.theguardian.com/science/2019/may/08/mapping-begins-of-lands-lost-to-north-sea-during-the-stone-age

Artifacts Found at 2 sites (June 2019)

http://www.vliz.be/en/press-release/update-research-prehistoric-settlements-North-Sea

https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&source=web&cd=&ved=0ahUKEwiB4Ofpqt3qAhVaCc0KHV8lAzs4ChDF9AEIJzAA&url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.bbc.co.uk%2Fnews%2Fuk-england-norfolk-48594701&usg=AOvVaw24S-VmeOr2Hlm7Efxo8RNT

https://www.iflscience.com/editors-blog/evidence-of-a-british-atlantis-discovered-in-the-north-sea/

https://www.rte.ie/news/uk/2019/0611/1054696-evidence-of-prehistoric-settlement-in-north-sea/

Hope to find lake (Jun 2019)

https://www.zmescience.com/science/archaeology/researchers-zoom-in-on-lost-doggerland-settlement-find-submerged-forest/

General Core Sample Exploring (Dec 2019)

https://www.abc.net.au/news/science/2019-11-20/searching-for-doggerland-archaeology-palaeontology-scandinavia/11707174

Netherlands Bank Artifacts (Jan 2020)

https://www.sciencemag.org/news/2020/01/relics-washed-beaches-reveal-lost-world-beneath-north-sea

Brown Banks Results (Jun 2020)

https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1040618220302275

Videos -

2019 Expedition: https://youtu.be/sGKfyrDCtmw

Acha 2 Camp, Chile

Oldest natural Chinchorro mummy at fishing camp in the Atacama desert (9000 years ago)

 (originally posted 7/23/2020)

The site from 10,000 years ago I learned about today was the Acha-2 Camp in Chile.  It was here that the oldest mummy of a culture that regularly mummified their dead before it was done in ancient egypt was found.  It was a simple seasonal fishing camp off a river in the Atacama desert that was set up 9000 years ago near the modern day city of Arica.  It was part of the Chinchorro culture, which had already been around for 4000 years by this point.  Fishing instruments like fish hooks made of cactus and bone sinkers were found nearby.  The were able to tell from the composition of the mummy that his diet was 80% marine animals, including fish and mammals.  When you’re in a desert by a river, there isn’t much else to eat than fish.  They didn’t practice agriculture, even though at the time other cultures in Peru and Bolivia were doing so.  But they could eat some plants and animals that existed along a very narrow band around the river.  Unfortunately, eating too much seafood can cause audio exostosis (a bony growth in the ear), and this guy suffered from it.  The river flowed from the Andes mountains only during the summer, so it’d make sense that the camp was only temporary or seasonal, as suggested by some round tent posts found at the site.  

This mummy, called Acha Man, was once thought to have been the oldest mummy in the world, but older ones in North America have been found.  It’s safe to call it the oldest known mummy in South America though.  The body was mummified naturally though.  The Atacama Desert is the dryest region on Earth, and bodies just do not compose there easily.  The skull of the mummy was found to be wrapped in a totoro reeds (which were also used in building homes and baskets) and given a proper buriel with grave goods.  Unfortunately, I wasn’t able to find any pictures of the mummy.  I saw an internet comment that someone had absconded with the body and that the mummy was lost, so if this comment can be trusted sadly they won’t get any dna from the mummy to be able to tell about where he came from and if he had any descendants.  

The Chinchorro culture was based in the Atacama desert and lived pretty much the way Acha Man did for thousands of more years, primarily fishing along seasonal rivers and getting other sea foods by the coast.  They started intentionally preparing mummies about 7000 years ago (taking out some internal organs and other preservation measures), about 1000 years before Egypt started doing the same thing.  The practice apparently started because young children started dying by arsenic poisoning and the mothers wanted to remember them better, but later they started doing it to everyone.  They weren’t a stratified culture like Egypt, so pretty much everyone was mummified, not just the elite, and they weren’t given elaborate tombs.  Mummies can be found all over the place today such that there isn’t even enough room in the museums to hold them, so they keep the mummies where they find them now.  

The Chinchorro culture transitioned to a new way of life after immigrants from the Andes Mountains came down to the desert 4 thousand years ago and introduced agriculture, and they then stopped mummifying their dead.  The culture is considered to have ended 500 years later at about 1500BC.  King Tut would later become Pharoah of Egypt and the most famous Mummy over 150 years later in 1325 BC and I would one day get to see his mummy on exhibition at the Science Museum of Minnesota.

Sources:

News Stories-

Sedentism (describes Acha-2 Site) (1994)

https://digitalscholarship.unlv.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=2309&context=rtds (see page 12)

7ka Life (1998)

https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.chicagotribune.com/news/ct-xpm-1998-05-13-9805130037-story,amp.html

Twined shrouds (2008)

https://digitalcommons.unl.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?referer=https://www.google.com/&httpsredir=1&article=1086&context=tsaconf

Egyptian Mummies (2014)

https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.haaretz.com/amp/archaeology/egyptian-mummies-earlier-than-thought-1.5259388

3 south american mummy cultures (Feb 2015)

https://www.theposthole.org/read/article/332