Harappan Technology, Homo Floresiensis, Foraminifera

Some exciting readings for you- 

1)  Manufacture of synthetic stone in the Bronze Age Harappan Civilization.

Stone beads were important in Harappan culture and trade. They were made out of agate, an amorphous or cryptocrystalline form of silica. The Kutch region was the primary source of these agates. Stone and bead processing Harappan age workshops abound in this region. The tradition continues today. Some of the best ornamental agate is still being sourced from Kutch. The agates precipitate as secondary silica in cavities of the Deccan Basalts and associated silica rich lava.

To perforate these agates, the Harappans needed tools such as drill bits which were harder than the agate. For this, they manufactured a synthetic stone, now called Ernestite, by high temperature sintering of sand and laterite raw materials. Reaction temperature needed to fuse these materials into a cohesive rock would have reached 1100 deg C! Mesozoic sandstone, found all over Kutch, provided the sand, and the laterite came from iron rich weathered layers capping the Deccan Basalt.

A terrific study by M.K. Mahala and coworkers that details the provenance and fabrication of this interesting artificial stone has just been published in Nature Heritage Science. There is a lot of mineralogy and geochemistry described in the paper, but the conclusions are clearly laid out for all to understand.

2) Climate change and the decline of the Hobbit.

Why are small isolated populations of animals vulnerable to extinction?

Inbreeding, small geographic range, limited access to resources, reliance on one or few food sources, a chance catastrophic event, all may be factors making them susceptible to extirpation.

A case in point is the Hobbit or Homo floresiensis, the diminutive hominin discovered on Flores Island, Indonesia, in 2003. The archaeologic record shows it lived on the island for at least one million years. Homo floresiensis is thought to be a descendant from an early Homo species which dispersed from Africa 2 million years ago. The other famous inhabitant of the island that coexisted with the Hobbit and was its main food source is the dwarf elephant Stegodon.

A careful analysis by Michael Gagan and coworkers, published in Nature Communications Earth and Environment, using geochemistry of calcite from cave deposits show how climate change and decrease in water availability may have increased competition for resources and made life challenging for the inhabitants.

Summer rainfall began declining around 76,000 years ago with record low rainfall between 61,000 to 55,000 years ago. Both the Hobbit and Stegodon fossils become rarer during this interval and disappear by 50,000 years ago. Modern humans entered Flores Island around 46,000 years ago, and whether the Hobbit interacted with them on Flores Island is uncertain. 

3) The history of the ocean, as told by tiny beautiful fossils. 

The tiny fossils are planktonic foraminifera living suspended in the upper sunlit portion of the ocean. Their shells are made of calcium carbonate. They occur in huge numbers and have short lives. Their shells drop down and carpet the ocean floor, making them valuable archives for understanding evolution. Scientists make use of them for studying climate change too. Certain changes in the chemical composition of their shell are a function of water temperature. Tim Vernimmen has written a short piece on how foraminifera inform us about past environmental crisis and ocean conditions.

Holiday Readings: Ancient Amputations, First Americans, Fossil Molluscs

Wishing my readers a very Happy New Year! I hope these readings will be to your liking.

1) Can ancient amputations tell us about the care systems of our ancestors? Paleoanthropologist John Hawks surveys the fossil record of ancient humans for signs of severed limbs due to trauma or disease. He also presents cases of limb loss in other primates and offers a perspective on what all this can tell us about past social systems. 

"Both humans and nonhuman primates show us that survival and life after extreme injuries happen under varied circumstances. Bioarchaeologists tend to highlight severe injuries, which stand out from the more subtle patterns of osteological signs of disease that can be understood only across large samples of skeletons. But such individual stories rarely yield unambiguous interpretations".

2) Finding the First Americans. Anthropologist Jennifer Raff brings together often conflicting genetic and archaeological data on this ever vexing and complicated question of how the Americas were populated. 

3) Finding Molluscs. This podcast (with transcript) is part of an excellent continuing series of earth science and paleontology podcasts by Mongabay India. In this episode, host Sahana Ghosh talks with paleoecologist Devapriya Chattopadhyay on her research on fossil molluscs. Dr. Chattopadhyay uses these creatures to track ancient environmental conditions and ecology. She also speaks on the urgent need for India to create a national fossil repository and museum which will help preserve our deep history for future generations.

Links: Fire Use, Deep Water, Europa Geology

Sharing some interesting readings:

1) The Discovery of Fire by Humans. Jungle Book's primate king Louie was certainly aware of the transformative power of fire. As J.A.J Gowlett writes in a very informative review, many animals engage in fire foraging, opportunistically increasing their access to resources made available by natural fires. Early hominins too would have interacted with natural fires. The archeological record informs us that human engagement with and ultimately our control over fire was a long and convoluted process with evidence for early fire use going back to 1.5 million years ago. And would you believe it if I told you that the earliest preserved human fingerprint may be 80,000 years old and documents fire use? It was imprinted on a lump of pitch which is made by prolonged heating of tree bark. Pitch was used as a fixative in hafting. Fasinating stuff.  

2) The Deep Cycle of Water: Every schoolkid is taught about the hydrologic cycle wherein water moves between the atmosphere and shallow surface reservoirs. But water is present much deeper inside the earth, in fact it is present thousands of kilometers deep. It occurs not as free flowing H2O, but is incorporated inside the atomic structure of minerals as OH anions. It can escape this prison when minerals dehydrate during metamorphic reactions. The released water then rises and is expelled at the surface via volcanoes. In an alternate pathway, carried by sinking pieces of tectonic plates, water can reach even deeper in the earth, affecting the properties of the lower mantle and even the core. A short summary in Nature Geoscience on the state of our knowledge about this topic. 

3)  Plate Tectonics on Europa. The earth's outer silicate shell is broken up into tectonic plates which move around and jostle driving geologic activity and transforming the surface through geologic time. Scientists are looking to Jupiter's moon Europa and finding that its icy shell shows features indicative of intermittent plate motions, although the driving mechanisms will be different.  In Phys.Org, by Morgan Rehnburg. 

Links: Noisy Soils, First Art, Mars Geology

A few readings for your perusal.

1) Biologists are poking senors into soil to listen to the hum of life. Amazing article by Ute Eberle on what we can learn from acoustic signals given off by animals living within a soil profile.

Life in the soil was thought to be silent. What if it isn’t?

2)  When was the first 'árt' made? Is there a neat sequence from abstract scratches on rock and bone to representational art that adorns the walls of caves? Excellent article by Amy McDermott on this question, bringing together the viewpoints of archeologists and cognitive scientists. 

What was the first “art”? How would we know?

3) One year on, NASA's Mars Perseverance has been drilling into rock, collecting samples and finding some surprises along the way. It will now head towards an ancient delta to look for past life! Alexandra Witze reports on the progress.

A year on Mars: How NASA’s Perseverance hit a geological jackpot.

 

Readings: Mars Geology, Human Diversity, India Rock Art

 A few interesting readings:

1) NASA's Mars Perseverence Rover is hard at work. It has an amazing collection of geochemical instruments which are probing the surface with the aim of categorizing the mineralogy and chemistry of surface materials. The hope is to pinpoint regions which could have hosted microbial life.

Signs of Life on Mars: NASA's Perseverance Rover Begins the Hunt 

2) How are Andaman Islanders closer to Swedes than to Africans?

Razib Khan explain in this informative essay on patterns of human diversity and what it tells us about human migrations and population admixture over the past 100,000 years.

Out of Africa's midlife crisis-on bottlenecks, crashes and what diversity really looks like: How are Andaman Islanders closer to Swedes than to Africans?

3) On the Aravalli ranges quartzite rock faces in the state of Haryana is art created as long as 20,000 years ago. The locals always knew about it, but the Archeological Survey has just begun studying it in detail. 28 ancient sites have been found. I hope all of them get protection immediately. Smithsonian Magazine has a summary describing these finds. The final photo of rock art in the article depicts mounted warriors. Are they mounted on donkeys/mules or horses? Curious to know what readers think. I am leaning towards them being donkeys or mules.

These Millennia-Old Cave Paintings May Be Among India’s Oldest. 

Readings: Myanmar Geology, Holocene Human Populations, Indian Archaeology

Some interesting readings over the past few weeks:

1) Myanmar Geology- Oblique convergence, where plates converge or collide at an angle, has produced some stunning geological features in Myanmar. Lon Abbot and Terri Cook sail down the Irrawaddy River describing vestiges of volcanic arcs, strike slip faults, en echelon sedimentary basins, and fold mountains, with a fair bit thrown in about the architecture and cultural history of the country.

Sailing Through A Subduction Zone.

2) Genetics And Human Evolution- Razib Khan compiles a nice list of the many aspects of human evolution and especially Holocene population history that has been brought out by recent work in genomics and ancient DNA.

What I'm Thankful To Know About Genetics And History In 2020.

3) Indian Archaeology- A sort of historiography of the field of Indian archaeology from Colonial times to today. Dilip Menon writes about the push and pull of ideas of conquest, politics, and nationalism that influence Indian archaeology research and narratives.

How Archaeology Has Shaped India’s Imagination Of Itself. 

Links: Petroglyphs, Language, Urban Groundwater, Dams

Some interesting articles I came across past few days.

1) Pleistocene Rock Art in India- New York Times covers the discovery of ancient rock art (40k-10K yr old?) carved on laterite plateaus of Ratnagiri District, S. Maharashtra. Good to see credit given to the stellar work of two amateur archaeologists Sudhir Risbud and Dhananjay Marathe.

Link: Ancient Rock Art In The Plains Of India.

2) Language Evolution- Linguistic analysis suggests that the Sino-Tibetan language family originated about 7200 years ago among millet farming communities in northern China.

Links: Paper - Dated language phylogenies shed light on the ancestry of Sino-Tibetan.
Summary - Origin of Sino-Tibetan language family revealed by new research.

3) Urban Groundwater- This is an issue that is gaining importance as cities in India grow and municipal water supply from surface reservoirs becomes inadequate. S. Vishwanath crunches some numbers on the ground water potential of the shallow aquifer underneath Bengaluru. It comes to more than hundred billion liters! Similar situations exist underneath other Indian cities as well, but urban groundwater has been a neglected area of study. More quantitative understanding of aquifers is needed along with a focused effort to recharge ground water.

Link:  Revisiting The Shallow Aquifer. 

4) Environmental Implications of Pancheshwar Dam, Uttarakhand - A review in Current Science of environmental concerns regarding the proposed Pancheshwar Dam in Uttarakhand implies that critical aspects of seismicity, slope instability, and high sedimentation rates have not been addressed in detail during the planning stages in the environment impact assessments carried out so far.

Link: Environmental implications of Pancheshwar dam in Uttarakhand (Central Himalaya), India.

Geology And Homo Sapiens Habitats Pleistocene Indian Subcontinent

Came across an interesting passage from this review paper:

Environments and Cultural Change in the Indian Subcontinent: Implications for the Dispersal of Homo sapiens in the Late Pleistocene - by James Blinkhorn and Michael D. Petraglia

Yet beyond relief, the geological structure of the Indian subcontinent plays another important role in patterns of habitability in the region. The analysis of the structure of geological basins within the Indian subcontinent led Korisettar (2007) to the conclusion that the Purana basins exerted a strong influence on hominin dispersals and occupation history. Although direct precipitation within the Purana basins is lower than other regions of the subcontinent, perennial supplies of freshwater are available because of spring activity from aquifers that deliver water resources from regions that receivemuch higher monsoonal precipitation.As a result of reliable water resources and abundant raw materials for stone tool manufacture, these geological basins are thought to have acted as refugia not only for hominin populations but also for varied flora and fauna (Korisettar 2007).

The importance of such Purana basins for providing refugia is well exemplified by the recent study of fauna from the Billasurgum caves, located within the Cuddapah Basin. Here, excavations revealed the first stratified sequence to document patterns of faunal occupation spanning the late Middle Pleistocene to Late Pleistocene (Roberts et al. 2014). This study illustrated the long-term continuity of large-bodied fauna within South Asia with only a single taxon of twenty-four identified as having gone extinct across the subcontinent (Roberts et al. 2014).

The "Purana" basins are Proterozoic in age. They are scattered all over Peninsular India. A common lithology is silica cemented sandstone or quartzite which forms prominent hill ranges, ridges and escarpments with ledges, overhangs and caves. These hard quartzites would have been one source of raw material for stone tools.  The rocks are also fractured and networks of pervasive cracks allow the storage and movement of groundwater.

The map (from a different paper) below shows the distribution of Middle Paleolithic sites (red dots) in India, Arabia and Eastern Africa. I have outlined in black (very approximate!) the location of three Purana basins. V stands for Vindhyan, C for Cuddapah and B&K for Bhima and Kaladgi.

 Modified from Huw S. Groucutt et.al. 2015

This paper have lots of information about climate change, ecology and stone tool record found in India. The authors discuss the Late Acheulean (130k - 100 K) ,  Middle  Paleolithic (94k - 34 K) and the Late Paleolithic ( < 45 K). These terms refer to particular styles of stone tool manufacture.

The India skeletal fossil record is very poor. However, based on comparisons with Middle Paleolithic of Africa and Homo sapiens fossils and tool associations in SE Asia and Australia, the authors are in favor of a wave of  Homo sapiens migrating into India as early or perhaps a little earlier than 100 k ago. This was followed by a later wave around 50 k years ago.  Do changes in cultural style and tool use point to changing populations.. with an intrusive population replacing an earlier one?.. that is an intriguing question. Some recent genetic work suggests that people from these earlier migrations died out without leaving a genetic legacy in us. All non African humans have descended from migrants who left Africa between 50K-80K years ago.  I had summarized these results in an earlier post on human population continuity in India.

See also other papers from this special volume of Current Anthropology on Human Colonization of Asia In the Late Pleistocene. 

Open Access.

The Social Utility Of Archaeology

Archaeologist Graeme Barker has been working on a Neanderthal site in the Kurdistan region in northern Iraq. In August 2014 he had to leave that region due to advances made by ISIS forces. Last month he returned to continue his studies.

He makes a pointed observation on the social uses of archaeology.

You have also worked in Libya through civil war and conflict. What has driven you to persist with these digs?

People say to me they won’t go on holiday where I choose to work next, but in both cases we embarked on the excavations in conditions of stability and then events took over! But these excavations are enormous intellectual opportunities. They are ways of tackling big, fundamental questions about the human past, using the techniques of modern archaeological science.

There is also a broader social purpose. Archaeology is often thought of as a cosy sort of subject, but most of the killing that is going on around the globe relates to people's sense of whether they are similar or different to each other, all of which is rooted in how they feel about their past and where they come from. Archaeology has a huge role to play in building civil societies that are comfortable with the complexity of their past.

This is very relevant to the situation in India too, where tension between ancient social divisions erupts into communal violence from time to time. 

Theories Of Dispersal Of Homo Sapiens From Africa

Huw S. Groucutt and colleagues in Evolutionary Anthropology lay out the evolving story of the dispersal of Homo sapiens from Africa. The review brings together fossil, genetic  and archaeological data which now strongly leans towards a scenario of multiple migrations of Homo sapiens out of Africa beginning more  than hundred thousand years ago. These migrations followed ecological  windows of opportunity.  Interglacial phases resulted in wetter climate in the Levant and Arabia and may have made viable migration routes following either coastal contours or more interior passages towards the rest of Europe and Asia.

An Excerpt:

A variety of dispersal models (Table 1) address the period between the widely accepted African origin of Homo sapiens by around 200-150 ka and the arrival of our species at the margins of the Old World, including Australia, Siberia, and northwest Europe, by 50-40 ka.1–4 The evolutionary, demographic, and cultural processes between these milestones remain unclear, but a variety of recent studies add important new data.Whereas earlier models focused on assessing the geographical origins of our species based on fossil data, more recent approaches seek to combine fossil, genetic, archeological, and paleoenvironmental data to illuminate the nuances of dispersal into Asia (Table 1). These models emphasize different hypotheses concerning factors such as when dispersals began, how many occurred and which routes were followed. Recent models have largely fallen into two broad categories, emphasizing Marine Isotope  Stage (MIS) 5 (early onset dispersal model) or post-MIS 5 (late dispersal model) time frames (Table 1). This, however, is not a rigid dichotomy. For example, models proposing an early onset to dispersal are consistent with subsequent post-MIS 5 dispersals having also played an important role in patterns of human diversity.

The map below shows the distribution of Middle Paleolithic sites plotted on a modeled precipitation map of the last interglacial (MIS 5). The abundance of sites in the interior of Arabia speaks against a strictly coastal migration route into India. The interior of Arabia during humid phases would have been a mix of grasslands and riparian corridors offering potential dispersal routes into India and the rest of Asia.

Source: Huw S. Groucutt et. al. 2015

What is the Indian context?  The generally accepted earliest  modern Homo sapiens skeletal record in South Asia are ~35 k old fossils in Sri Lanka. But the tool record indicates presence of modern humans in India much before that. This review suggests that the totality of the tool records favors the theory that Homo sapiens may have entered India during MIS 5 more than a hundred thousand years ago, followed by additional  migrations beginning around fifty thousand years ago. Groucutt et. al. mention that future fossil discoveries from South Asia have the potential to transform ideas about the dispersal of Homo.

As of date the skeletal record of Homo in India consists of just a few fossils . Research by A.R.  Sankhyan and colleagues show that all of these have been found in the Narmada valley at Hathnora and a few km away at Netankheri . At Hathnora, hominin fossils occur in fluvial conglomerate and sand layer. One is a partially preserved calvarium and has been identified as a "robust" late Homo erectus or an archaic Homo sapien. Its cranial capacity is estimated to be 1200 cc to 1400 cc putting in the range of modern humans. It is associated with a collection of heavy duty large flake Acheulian hand axes and cleavers and chopping tools. The other fossil find at Hathnora consists of two clavicles and a partial 9th rib, interpreted to be belonging to a separate population of "short and stocky" archaic Homo sapiens associated with smaller Middle Paleolithic implements.  The cranium has been dated to the Middle Pleistocene ~ 250 k, while the clavicles and 9th rib appear to be younger with an estimated date to be ~150K range. A change in the ecology of this region is seen in the younger deposits based on the faunal content. The large flake tool industry disappears at this point in time . This has been interpreted to mean a migration of the larger robust archaic hominin away from this area based on appearance on this tool typology further north of this region and as far southeastwards to the Bastar region of Bihar.

At Netankheri, a partial femur and a humerus have been found. The femur occupies the same stratigraphic level as the Hathnora calvarium  and has been interpreted as belonging to late Homo erectus -archaic Homo sapien. The humerus though is of the "short and stocky" morphology and interpreted to represent an early modern Homo sapiens. Delicate bone implements have been found along with this fossil.  It is thought to be much younger, dated to be around 75 k, based on its stratigraphic position just below the Baneta Formation which contains Younger Toba Ash layers (ash deposits of the Toba eruption). The researchers interpret this to mean evolution from an archaic to a modern form, population continuity and continuous occupation of this area by this morphologically distinct hominin through the Middle and Late Pleistocene.

In summary, the skeletal and tool record points to presence of two culturally and physically distinct archaic hominin populations occupying the Narmada valley in the Middle Pleistocene. The tool record shows that Homo has been present in India for more than a million years and these physically distinct Middle Pleistocene hominins may be indicating the evolution of distinct hominin lineages in India. Or, was this population differentiation and morphological evolution inherited from an older African population structure, representing separate Middle Pleistocene migration episodes? And how they fit into the broader story of modern Homo sapiens dispersal and occupation of India remains to be worked out.

What is the margin of error on the 150 k date of the "short and stocky" hominin. Could they be younger and represent the early MIS 5 dispersal from Africa ( 100-125 K)?  Of interest are the ~35 K old Homo sapiens fossils from Sri Lanka which are physically distinct from the Netankheri "short and stocky" population. This points to another more recent (MIS 3) migration from Africa. Did these recent arrivals interbreed with the resident archaic hominins?  More fossils from South Asia are needed to fill in these gaps in our understanding of hominin evolution in India.  The authors of the Narmada hominins paper suggest that the "short and stocky" population may have contributed ancestry to later short bodied  populations of South Asia including the pygmies. Certainly, recent genetic work shows interbreeding between modern humans and other differentiated hominins like Neanderthals and Denisovans in Europe and East Asia respectively. Perhaps the Indian story is also one of assimilation of the earlier hominin populations with later human entrants.

Amazonia Before Columbus

This is an interesting article published in the Royal Society's Proceedings B.

During the twentieth century, Amazonia was widely regarded as relatively pristine nature, little impacted by human history. This view remains popular despite mounting evidence of substantial human influence over millennial scales across the region. Here, we review the evidence of an anthropogenic Amazonia in response to claims of sparse populations across broad portions of the region. Amazonia was a major centre of crop domestication, with at least 83 native species containing populations domesticated to some degree. Plant domestication occurs in domesticated landscapes, including highly modified Amazonian dark earths (ADEs) associated with large settled populations and that may cover greater than 0.1% of the region. Populations and food production expanded rapidly within land management systems in the mid-Holocene, and complex societies expanded in resource-rich areas creating domesticated landscapes with profound impacts on local and regional ecology. ADE food production projections support estimates of at least eight million people in 1492. By this time, highly diverse regional systems had developed across Amazonia where subsistence resources were created with plant and landscape domestication, including earthworks. This review argues that the Amazonian anthrome was no less socio-culturally diverse or populous than other tropical forested areas of the world prior to European conquest.

I had read 1491 by Charles Mann so none of this came  as a surprise  to me. I would recommend Mann's book  too.  It is a very well researched richly detailed book on the human landscape of the America's (south and north) before the European conquest. The Amazon basin is covered too and the two things that stuck with me are the "anthrosols" or soils produced or rather enriched in organic matter and nutrients by humans activity like mulching and composting. The map below shows the distribution of these anthropogenic soils.

 Source: Clement C.  et.al. 2015

Their concentrations along the banks of rivers match early European descriptions of farming communities settled along river bluffs, with the interfluvial areas being occupied by semi-nomadic and nomadic hunter gatherers.

The other aspect that fascinated me was the observation of Europeans of the incredibly varied fruit trees from the Amazon jungles. Many true wild fruit are generally small, sour, bitter, thorny, spiky. The native people over millennia had transformed them by selective breeding into the edible fruit smorgasbord that one sees today. Imagine large areas of "virgin" Amazon forests were actually abandoned fruit orchards!

Read this article though.

Can You Publish Poetry In The Journal Science?

In the late 1800's this doggerel:

And Holmes cries "rejected,
They're nothing but Indian chips."
He glanced at the ground,
Truth, fancied he found,
And homeward to Washington skips...

So dear W.J.,
There is no more to say,
Because you'll never agree
That anything's truth,
But what issues, forsooth,
From Holmes or the brain of McGee.

This I found in 1491: New Revelations of The Americas Before Columbus by Charles C. Mann and the context is the contempt with which federal scientists looked upon amateurs who hunted for ancient American Indian artifacts and skeletons. Charles Abbot a physician from New Jersey was one such amateur and in 1872 he found arrowheads, scrapers and other implements on his farm in the Delaware Valley. Consulting a geologist he found out that the gravels containing the implements were ten thousand years old, implying a very old presence of Indians going back maybe to the ice ages in north America. Off course in those days there was no absolute dating methods available to ascertain the age of rocks. Geologists used context, in this case for example the gravels were older than historical layers. Then using educated guesses on rates of processes like sedimentation rates a likely age was proposed.

This went against the prevailing wisdom which regarded Indians as a more recent entry in to the continent sometime during historical times, perhaps a few hundred years before colonial times to the first millennium B.C. at most. The Bureau of American Ethology's scientist William Henry Holmes and the United States Geological Survey's W.J. McGee assigned to investigate Abbot's claim stuck to the official position and rubbished the find.

Hence Abbot vented his frustration in verse in the journal Science (I guess publishing in Science was easier in those days!).

Its not that Holmes and McGee were incompetent. But they clearly did not like amateurs messing around their domain, ever so often announcing sensational finds and spinning stories not backed up by any evidence.

Another concern was that amateurs often disturbed an archaeological site and made later documenting artifacts and skeletons in their proper stratigraphic context and exact location very difficult.

The issue of a Pleistocene presence of Indians in north America was settled in 1927 when a team led by Jesse D. Figgins of the Colorado Museum of Natural History found at Folsom New Mexico a spear point stuck inside a bison skeleton. Earlier, federal scientists fed up by Figgins's claims of a half a million year antiquity to human presence in North America had insisted that Figgins unearth any new discoveries only in the presence of independent experts. The site was excavated in the presence of three well considered scientists who agreed that the find was real and could have only one explanation which was that people were present in north America in the Pleistocene.

Battling For The One True History Of Israel

The Chronicle of Higher Education has a fascinating article on several new archaeological finds in Israel. There is serious scholarship addressing these finds and reasonable scientists have different opinions on the significance of ruins and artifacts, particularly on the correspondence of archaeological finds and biblical stories. On the other hand there is some apprehension that these findings are being used by some to push forward a nationalistic version of the history of Israel.

The wild card and one that may be having a damaging impact on the field of archaeology is the recent interest shown by cable TV and film producers:

In the old days, scholars could spend years excavating a site, and then more years, perhaps decades, marshaling material and publishing their conclusions.

In recent years, a new hunger for publicity and acclaim has changed all that. As the cost of excavations and scholarship has risen, archaeologists have turned to private sponsors and commercial organizations to underwrite their expeditions. Publicity has become a key tool for raising money. With the proliferation of cable TV, channels like National Geographic and Discovery, and then independent film producers, were able to provide huge injections of cash in return for exclusive access and production rights to the most camera-friendly expeditions. After such heavy investment, the producers expect discoveries that would create headlines and attract large audiences.

In the past decade, a steady stream of spectacular discoveries linked to well-known biblical stories has come from a mixture of outright charlatans, religious foundations, highly regarded mainstream archaeologists, and even the Israel Antiquities Authority, an official government agency that oversees all archaeological work in Israel. Some of the announcements read like a modern-day search for holy relics.

Suddenly, every archaeologist is being compared with Indiana Jones, and filmed in what appear to be similar settings.

Violence Part Of The Social Experience In Indus Civilization

Researchers Gwen Robbins Schug and Veena Mushrif Tripathy in an interview with Anthropology news have this to say about Harappan society:

It was argued that Harappa was a rare example of a peaceful, heterarchical state. The human skeletal material was never consulted to address this question. Based on our evidence for both exclusion and social differentiation in the mortuary practices at Harappa, we argue that Harappa was not entirely peaceful and social differentiation was part of life. We hope archaeologists working in this area will plan future excavations to include the peripheral areas outside the cities; excavation outside the city walls will tell us more about Indus society.

We are using the human skeletons as artifacts of the social experience. We used the concept of structural violence in our most recent work because it accounts for the clear distinctions we see in the burial practices, ritual aspects, prevalence of trauma and infection. The mortuary and bioarchaeological evidence at Harappa suggests that the social experience in South Asia was not exceptionally different from other early urban civilizations; the kinds of suffering and the patterns of violence present at Harappa suggests structural violence—unequal power, uneven access to resources, and oppression that leads to denial of basic needs and even violence.

Lest some people get too excited about the use of the words Harappa and violence in the same sentence, let it be made clear that this violence refers to interpersonal violence present in any complex society and not violence inflicted by outsiders during war.
 

Imagination And Art In The Cave Of Forgotten Dreams

Filmmaker Werner Herzog got a once in a lifetime opportunity to enter the Chauvet caves in France which has some exquisitely preserved rock paintings, dated to about 30 thousand years ago. He made a 3D movie of the interior of the cave.

On Fresh Air he talks about his experience:

GROSS: And they wanted you to keep on the walk so that you didn't contaminate the rest of the cave, yeah.

Mr. HERZOG: Oh, you never - can never touch anything. It's not just contaminating. There are footprints, fairly fresh footprints. You do not want to superimpose your print of your hiking boot upon it. There's...

GROSS: Oh, over the cave-bear print. Yeah. 

(Soundbite of laughter) 

Mr. HERZOG: Yes, you just don't do this. And there's a footprint of a child, maybe eight-year-old, this very mysterious. We couldn't film it. We were not allowed, because it was deep in the recess of the cave.

The mysterious thing is that next to this footprint, probably a boy, probably around eight years old, parallel to it runs the footprint of a wolf. And I was very, very puzzled: Did the wolf stalk the boy? Or did they walk together as friends? Or did the wolf leave its footprints 5,000 years later? It's stunning. The lapse of time is completely and utterly stunning.

 
What a context for an artist to let loose his imagination! The Cave of Forgotten Dreams indeed.. but also the Cave of Infinite Imagination.

Werner Herzog also recently joined physicist Lawrence Krauss and author Cormac McCarthy in a conversation about how science and art inspire each other. Speaking about the differences between art and science Krauss remarks:

Science is imagination in a straitjacket.

Not quite so for the artists in the Cave Of Forgotten Dreams.

Listen / Transcript

Another Indian Academic Blogging: Sheila Mishra on Archaeology

It's always big news when an Indian academic starts a blog. Here is a very interesting one. Sheila Mishra is writing with gusto on her work and on the work of colleagues in the field of archaeology and anthropology.

Dr. Mishra is with the Department of Archaeology, Deccan College, Pune. She also maintains a publication page where you can download many of the papers on various aspects of the Indian Quaternary.

The content on the blog so far is mostly on the Indian archaeological record of various lithic cultures ("stone age cultures") with implications for human migration and evolution.

Tip: John Hawks Weblog

Pre Clovis Tools - American Archaeology and Earth Sciences

Science Friday had an entertaining talk with Michael Collins of Texas State University about the discovery of blades and spear points in Texas that pre date Clovis tools which are thought by many to represent the earliest people in the Americas.

From the transcript:

FLATOW: But why do you go deeper, where some other scientists might have stopped?

Dr. COLLINS: Well, we're working against an inertia, two inertias, really, that one has said for very many years that Clovis was the oldest culture in the Americas, at around 13,000 to 13,200 or 13,300 years ago. And some people haven't gotten over that, in spite of the fact for the last nearly 20 years we have had quite a few sites with strong indications of people being here before Clovis

.

And another thing - and that's improving. More and more people are accepting the concept or are at least willing to investigate it.

The other thing, the other inertia that we have, and it's also improving rapidly and greatly: American archaeology has - grew up in the social sciences. 

And not long ago, the vast majority of practicing archeologists in this country had very little background in the earth sciences and consequently didn't really think about the fact that okay, I have found cultural material here, I'm backing this excavation to Clovis, so that's the oldest culture, I'll just quit here, without thinking: You know, the dirt below that is just a little bit older. Why don't I look at that and see what's in it? There just wasn't that - that mindset was not particularly common. But happily, both of those things are changing for the better.

I find the stuff about the lack of earth sciences background hindering exploration a little hard to swallow. You don't need a background in earth sciences to motivate yourself to poke around in slightly older layers.

Just common sense..and perhaps overcoming the first inertia that a mainstream theory could be wrong.

Papers On Indian Quaternary: Paleoclimate, Geoarchaeology And Such..

I came across this treasure trove of articles on the Indian Quaternary. They are from the research group based at Deccan College, a well known centre for Quaternary research in Pune, western India.

The page has been created by Sheila Mishra, faculty at Deccan College. The papers represent a range of topics from paleoclimate, Paleolithic tool and material record of early humans, fluvial geomorphology and insights into neotectonics, Quaternary stratigraphy based on tuff chronology and so on..

The list is long but in a sense restrictive since it represents the work of one group. Geographically too it is biased towards the western and north western parts of the country..the states of Maharashtra and Rajasthan feature prominently.

Still it is a treasure trove, since the journals in which these papers have been published are either behind pay-walls or don't have an online presence.

There are plenty of topics here to explore if you are into Quaternary geology and geo-archaeology.

I am left wondering though whether authors can just scan their publications and allow free access to them without the journal objecting to such practices. I've managed to download papers not just from this website but from other faculty websites in India, papers which are simultaneously behind pay-walls at the journal websites.

Its possible that some journals police this better than others and I'm sure I am not the only one making use of this free access to the author's copy.

Beats paying $ 30/- or so for one download.

Genetic History Of Indian Populations

Partha P. Majumder summarizes population level genetic data from south Asian populations in a special issue of Current Biology on Archaeogenetics, the attempted synthesis of archaeology and genetics. The paper is open access.

South Asia — comprising India, Pakistan, countries in the sub-Himalayan region and Myanmar — was one of the first geographical regions to have been peopled by modern humans. This region has served as a major route of dispersal to other geographical regions, including southeast Asia. The Indian society comprises tribal, ranked caste, and other populations that are largely endogamous. As a result of evolutionary antiquity and endogamy, populations of India show high genetic differentiation and extensive structuring. Linguistic differences of populations provide the best explanation of genetic differences observed in this region of the world. Within India, consistent with social history, extant populations inhabiting northern regions show closer affinities with Indo-European speaking populations of central Asia that those inhabiting southern regions. Extant southern Indian populations may have been derived from early colonizers arriving from Africa along the southern exit route. The higher-ranked caste populations, who were the torch-bearers of Hindu rituals, show closer affinities with central Asian, Indo-European speaking, populations.

Nothing radically new, but its good to have a review article that compiles genetic studies done on extant Indian populations along with references to primary literature.

Missing though from this emerging data bank is ancient - but within a historical time frame- skeletal material and DNA from the subcontinent for comparison, which could potentially answer many vexing and controversial questions about historical migrations into India.

In this regard the recent find of Harappan age skeletons along with pottery and artifacts from Farmana, Haryana about 60 km from Delhi gains significance as recovered DNA from these skeletons could give data about the relatedness of these ancient northwestern Indian populations with Eurasians and central Asians and clarifying to some extent when admixtures of central Asian and Eurasian genes with Indian populations occurred.

There are other excellent articles in this issue. Particularly the one by Pritchard et.al. on The Genetics of Human Adaptation: Hard Sweeps, Soft Sweeps, and Polygenic Adaptation.

Buddhist Rock Cut Monuments And Deccan Lava Flows

During my recent field trip to the Konkan west coast one of the geologists leading the trip mentioned that all the famous Buddhist rock cut monuments situated in the Deccan volcanic province were excavated in lavas of the Bushe Formation.

I had never given any thought to this before. If you look at the various famous Buddhist rock monuments...Ellora, Ajanta, Bhaja, Karla, Elephanta ...they do occupy  similar looking basalt slopes and escarpments. Those are the lavas belonging to the Bushe Formation confirmed the geologist.

The Deccan Basalt lava pile is subdivided into hierarchical geological units - each corresponding to an eruptive episode - based on their geochemical similarities. Here is the basic chemical stratigraphy:

The Bushe Formation is quite thick and made up of compound lava flows. That means that eruptive episodes were made up of blobs of lava units that spread and overlapped and coalesced with other lava units to form a compound unit, forming a humpy undulating lava pile in the process.

Like a overlapping stack of pancakes...like this one..with the Bushe Formation for comparison..

So why did Buddhist monks and artisans choose these lava flows out of the many rock slopes and escarpments from other lava flows available..?

My quick speculations:

1) East of the Western Ghat escarpment is the Deccan plateau which is dissected into spurs of Deccan Traps and flat valleys. The Bushe Formation is well exposed in these spurs forming slopes and thick rock escarpments.

2) The locations of the caves in this part of the Deccan where the Bushe Formation is prominent are along ancient trade routes. Patronage from sympathetic merchants and rulers provided sustenance for the monks and artisans.

3) The Bushe Formation occupies a convenient middle tier in the multi-storey Deccan landscape.

Landscape evolution has transformed the Deccan lava pile in to a series of steep slopes and escarpments. The Bushe Formation especially the escarpments are situated above forested slopes which grade into the valley floors. That would have made Bushe escarpments ideal locations... isolated enough from the roads and villages to suit the Buddhist monastic lifestyle but still accessible via the forested slopes. Many of these caves also acted as resting stops for traders and merchants and so making them not too inaccessible by going too far up the landscape might have been a consideration.

Here is a picture of the Bhaja caves near Pune...occupying a steep rock slope.

Formations younger than Bushe form the upper story escarpments of the Deccan landscape. Access to these may have been too tough to negotiate.

4) The workability of the rock material.

Maybe there is a difference in the way rock material of the Bushe gives way to hammers and chisels compared with other especially the younger lavas. The Bushe has been described as a blocky kind of a lava while the younger lava which also form escarpments have been described as having splintery properties that may not give way to form the rounded and blocky shapes the artisans wanted.

I don't know. This is a problem that some experimental Archaeology can throw light on.

These rock-cut monuments are a wonder. If you are in the area don't miss out visiting them.