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