Philippa Kaur

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    in Humans

    Alice Roberts: Archaeology can create a world for stories to unfold in

    Alice Roberts has a lot on her plate: she is a biological anthropologist, an author and a broadcaster, as well as professor of public engagement in science at the University of Birmingham, UK. But she has also found time to write her first children’s book, Wolf Road. Set during the ice age 30,000 years ago, it follows the story of Tuuli, a prehistoric girl on a journey to her tribe’s summer camp who meets a strange boy on the way.
    Roberts joins New Scientist culture editor Alison Flood to talk about how she found writing fiction, the research she did for the novel and why she thinks it is important for children to know more about their past. “I wanted to write about the ice age,” she says. “I wanted to immerse people in that kind of ancient environment, in that ancient time, and use archaeology to build a world that then a story could unfold in.”
    Alice Roberts will be speaking at New Scientist Live in October. Tickets on sale now.

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    in Humans

    Ancient Babylonian arson in Jerusalem revealed by chemical clues

    Aerial view of the excavation site in Jerusalem, at the foot of the Temple MountYair Izbotski/City of David
    Archaeologists have reconstructed how Babylonian invaders burned down a building in Jerusalem more than 2500 years ago, using chemical clues in the debris.
    The building was destroyed as part of the Babylonian conquest of the Kingdom of Judah, which is presented as a turning point in the story of Judaism in the Hebrew Bible.
    Beginning in 601 BC, Judean kings launched a series of unsuccessful rebellions against the Babylonians, who had taken control of the region … More

  • 125 Shares199 Views

    in Humans

    Origin of Indo-European languages traced back to 8000 years ago

    The ancestor of Indo-European languages may have been spoken by farmers in southern Turkey 8000 years agoOdyssey-Images / Alamy Stock Photo
    The common ancestor of Indo-European languages, which are now spoken by close to half the world’s population, was spoken in the eastern Mediterranean around 8000 years ago, according to an analysis of related words.
    Indo-European languages, spanning from English to Sanskrit, have long been thought to share a common ancestor. The first linguist to make this link, William Jones, said in a lecture in 1786 that no linguist could examine Greek, Latin and Sanskrit together “without believing them to have sprung” from some common ancestor.
    But researchers have struggled to agree on the origin story of this so-called proto-Indo-European language, says Paul Heggarty, who is now at the Pontifical Catholic University of Peru. There are two main hypotheses, he says.Advertisement
    The first suggests that the language originated in the steppe region, north of the Black Sea, no earlier than 6500 years ago and then spread across Europe and parts of Asia with the domestication of horses.
    The second, known as the farming theory, argues that the language was spoken far earlier and originated in the north of the Fertile Crescent, in what is now south-east Turkey and north-west Iran, as early as 9500 years ago and spread to other regions with the rise of farming.
    To test these hypotheses, Heggarty and his colleagues created a database consisting of 170 words, such as “night” and “fire”, and their translations in 161 Indo-European languages, including 52 non-modern languages, such as ancient Greek.
    By analysing shared patterns between the words, the researchers could estimate how related the languages were to each other and try to piece together when one language split into two new languages. “Languages don’t really have a date of birth, but you can see where there’s a split,” says Heggarty. “English is related to German, but these lineages separated from each other around 2000 years ago.”
    Using this analysis, the team estimates that the root of all Indo-European languages dates back to around 8100 years ago. There is a good chance it originated in the Fertile Crescent as hypothesised by the farming theory, the researchers report. But while the farming theory suggests a close link between Indo-Iranic languages, such as Hindi, and Balto-Slavic languages, such as Latvian, the study found no clear evidence for this.
    Instead, the researchers theorise that Indo-European languages spread in multiple directions from the Fertile Crescent. “One of those directions took it to the steppe, and from there, there was a secondary expansion to Europe,” says Heggarty.

    They think this European expansion would have happened about 5000 years ago, as proposed by the steppe hypothesis. It is backed up by ancient DNA data that suggests there was a massive migration into Europe from the steppe region around that time. The team suggests that the Indo-Iranic branch of the language broke off earlier, around 7000 years ago.
    This new “hybrid” idea therefore takes aspects of both the steppe and farming hypotheses. “This is the best framework to be working with now, as more research is coming in, especially from ancient DNA,” says Heggarty.
    James Clackson at the University of Cambridge says this study is unlikely to be the final word on the origin of the Indo-European language family, but says it is a step in the right direction. “The creation of the open access database [of word meanings] is particularly welcome and I’m very grateful to the authors,” he says.

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    in Space & Astronomy

    The James Webb telescope may have spotted stars powered by dark matter

    The James Webb Space Telescope has spotted objects in the early universe that might be a new kind of star — one powered by dark matter.

    These “dark stars” are still hypothetical. Their identification in JWST images is far from certain. But if any of the three candidates — reported in the July 25 Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences — turn out to be this new type of star, they could offer a glimpse of star formation in the early universe, hint at the nature of dark matter and possibly explain the origins of supermassive black holes.

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    First proposed in 2007 by cosmologist Katherine Freese and colleagues, dark stars might have been some of the first types of stars to form in the universe (SN: 1/1/08). Though dark stars have yet to be observed, they’re thought to be powered by heat from dark matter interactions rather than by nuclear fusion reactions like in the sun.

    Dark stars “would be very weird looking,” says Freese, of the University of Texas at Austin. The hypothetical stars would have formed from clouds of hydrogen and helium that drew in locally abundant dark matter as they coalesced. Though the true nature of dark matter isn’t known — its presence is inferred largely via its effect on how stars move within galaxies — it’s possible that dark matter particles can interact with themselves, annihilating each other when they collide and producing vast amounts of light and heat (SN: 7/7/22). That heat would keep the cloud of hydrogen and helium from condensing into a dense, hot core like the stars that exist today.

    Because the heat from dark matter annihilations would keep the gas cloud from condensing, dark stars could grow to gargantuan size. Theoretically, dark stars could be 10 times as wide as Earth’s orbit around the sun. They could also be millions of times as massive as the sun and shine billions of times brighter — bright enough, potentially, to be spotted by JWST.

    To see if any dark stars are lurking in data from the orbiting observatory, Freese and colleagues pored over images from a JWST survey of early galaxies. In such images, JWST has so far discovered over 700 objects that may have originated in the first few hundred million years of the universe — the epoch when dark stars would have emerged (SN: 12/16/22). Light from these remote objects is stretched, or redshifted, as the universe expands. So Freese and colleagues zeroed in on four objects already confirmed to be highly redshifted, making them some of the oldest objects seen to date.

    Those objects are currently thought to be small galaxies from the universe’s relative infancy. But because they’re so far away, JWST can’t resolve them well enough to determine whether they’re actually galaxies or large, ultrabright stars, the researchers say.

    Three dark star candidates were identified from data collected by the JWST Advanced Deep Extragalactic Survey. One of the candidates, JADES-GS-z13-0, is shown here (arrow).NASA, ESA, CSA, JADES Collaboration

    The team ran computer simulations of how much light a hypothetical dark star might produce at various wavelengths. They compared those spectra to light from images collected by JWST at different wavelengths for each of the four objects. JWST data from three of those objects are consistent with the simulated dark star patterns, Freese and colleagues report.

    Some scientists are skeptical. Known types of stars could also create the observed light from the three candidates, says Sandro Tacchella, an astrophysicist at the University of Cambridge. And identifying any of the objects as a dark star would require that the simulated patterns fit well to more detailed spectra, says Brant Robertson, a theoretical astrophysicist at the University of California, Santa Cruz.

    If dark stars were to be found, though, “that would be revolutionary,” says study coauthor Cosmin Ilie, an astrophysicist at Colgate University in Hamilton, N.Y.

    Detecting dark stars would confirm the existence of a dark matter particle and hint at how it works (SN: 7/7/22). “Just having the information that [dark matter] is something that could annihilate would be really, really powerful,” says Tracy Slatyer, a theoretical physicist at MIT who was not involved in the study. That knowledge could help scientists look for dark matter elsewhere in the universe, she says.

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    Dark stars could also help explain the formation of supermassive black holes (SN: 3/16/18). Once the dark matter inside the star has annihilated itself, the remaining hydrogen and helium — millions of times the mass of the sun in a relatively compact space — would collapse in on itself and form a black hole. Those black holes could merge over time into black holes like the ones at the centers of most galaxies, millions or billions of times as massive as the sun.

    Future experiments, like looking for brighter or dimmer light at certain wavelengths, could help confirm whether any of the three objects are dark stars. Freese also expects to find more dark star candidates in future JWST data, she says. But for now, whether dark stars truly exist remains a mystery. More

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    in Humans

    Ancient utensils bear traces of 2000-year-old Vietnamese curry

    Spices were traded between south Asia and South-East Asia more than 3000 years agoPeter Schickert/Westend61/Gett​y Images
    People may have been cooking curries in South-East Asia for at least 2000 years, according to traces of spices found on freshly unearthed stone tools in Vietnam.
    During their digs at the Oc Eo archaeological site in southern Vietnam, Hsiao-chun Hung at the Australian National University in Canberra and her colleagues uncovered several sandstone grinding tools alongside remnants of spices.
    An analysis of 717 grains of starch recovered from the tools revealed eight types of spices: turmeric, ginger, galangal, sand ginger, fingerroot, clove, nutmeg and cinnamon. Many of the grains also showed signs of deformation, which suggests that they were damaged from grinding and look similar to the starch granules found in modern curry powder.Advertisement
    “This finding strongly suggests that the ancient inhabitants of Oc Eo utilised turmeric, ginger and other spices like cinnamon, clove and nutmeg as essential ingredients in their culinary practices, highly likely in the preparation of curry,” says Hung.
    A sandstone grinding slab found at Oc Eo in Vietnam, on which traces of spices were identifiedKhanh Trung Kien Nguyen
    Maritime trading routes between South-East Asia and south Asia were established more than 3000 years ago, with spices such as nutmeg and clove coming from Indonesia and others such as turmeric and cinnamon from south Asia.
    Stone grinding tools first appeared in South-East Asia 2000 to 3000 years ago, along with other cultural elements originating in south Asia, such as Indian ornaments and religious monuments. Therefore, it is highly probable that these tools, spices and recipes were introduced to the region by migrants or travellers from south Asia, says Hung. The spices found at Oc Eo probably came from traders, but could have been grown locally from seeds brought by traders, say the researchers.
    The findings provide valuable information about the dietary habits of South-East Asian societies at the time and also offer a glimpse into the cultural and trading connections between different regions over thousands of years, says Hung.

    Topics:archaeology/cooking More

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    in Space & Astronomy

    Ryugu asteroid samples are sprinkled with stardust older than the solar system

    Samples of the asteroid Ryugu contain bits of stardust that predate the birth of our solar system.

    Slivers of Ryugu material, snagged by the Japanese Hayabusa2 spacecraft, appear to come from the solar system’s frozen fringes, rather than from the asteroid itself, scientists report July 14 in Science Advances. These foreign fragments could illuminate details of the solar system’s history.

    Finding these fragments “is really unique,” says cosmochemist Ann Nguyen of NASA’s Johnson Space Center in Houston. “It’s showing us a new type of material, but also telling us about the dynamics of material from the outer solar system.”

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    The Hayabusa2 spacecraft visited the asteroid in 2018 and 2019, then returned to Earth with 5.4 grams of the space rock in 2020 (SN: 12/7/20). Scientists examined those samples in the lab in ways that can’t be done with telescopes or even spacecraft, like getting detailed measurements of chemical composition.

    So far, those examinations have shown that Ryugu is rich in carbon, that it’s made of the same material as some of the rarest meteorites found on Earth, and that it was altered by water at some point in its past (SN: 6/9/22). Scientists think that Ryugu formed from the debris of a larger asteroid, which broke up in a collision and re-formed into a loose pile of rubble (SN: 3/20/19).

    Nguyen, however, was searching for something different. “My focus of research is presolar grains,” tiny specks of material that formed from the ashes of dying stars, she says (SN: 1/13/20). “I was on the hunt for them.” These delicate grains contain different isotopes — atoms of an element that have different numbers of neutrons — than those formed by the sun, giving away their alien origins.

    Nguyen and her colleagues examined two samples of Ryugu, each less than a millimeter in size. They then picked out tiny slivers of rock, 50 to 200 micrometers wide, called clasts, that stood out from the rest of the Ryugu sample.

    Using scanning electron microscopes and other imaging techniques, Nguyen and colleagues found that two of the clasts are chemically different from the rest of Ryugu, with lower oxygen, magnesium and silicon contents, and greater amounts of iron and sulfur.

    Electron microscope images of a sliver of solar system material (outlined in white) in a sample of the asteroid Ryugu show that the material is different from the rest of the asteroid. The different colors highlight different elements in the sample: oxygen (magenta), magnesium (green), silicon (light blue), iron (dark blue) and sulfur (yellow). The slivers also contain grains of silicates (white arrows) that come from outside the solar system.A. Nguyen et al/Science Advances 2023

    The clasts also have much higher concentrations of presolar grains than the rest of the Ryugu material. The grains contain silicon carbide, which is easily destroyed by water, plus an extra abundance of organic matter.

    That means the grains could not have been part of Ryugu’s parent body, which was extensively altered by water. The researchers think the grains were bits of a comet that formed in the outer solar system’s Kuiper belt, where the conditions were cool and dry. Then the grains sprinkled onto the rubble that formed Ryugu sometime between the original asteroid’s destruction and the rubble pile’s formation.

    “Between these events, it kind of collected some other friends that came from other bodies, from different parts of the solar system,” Nguyen says. It’s not yet clear how material from the outer solar system found its way to Ryugu. Perhaps the asteroid formed farther from the sun — and hence, closer to the Kuiper belt — than it is today. “It’s interesting to visualize how this asteroid came about and what it gathered along the way.”

    The discovery is “very exciting,” says cosmochemist Philipp Heck of the Field Museum of Natural History in Chicago, who was not involved in the new work. “These clasts that got incorporated into Ryugu after it formed, they’re really valuable. I think they’re even more valuable than the Ryugu sample itself.”

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    The clasts can reveal what the unaltered ingredients that formed the solar system were made of. Think of the disk that formed the planets as bread dough, Heck says. Once the dough is well-mixed, it’s hard to tell what went into it. Clasts like the ones in the Ryugu sample are like bits of unmixed flour that survived intact in the final loaf, he says — not delicious, but very informative.

    “If we want to understand the ingredients from which the solar system formed, the original ingredients, we need to find these very rare, unaltered clasts,” Heck says. “This is one of them.” More

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    in Space & Astronomy

    Coronal rain has been seen splashing on the sun

    Plasma rain in the sun’s atmosphere makes a splash when it lands. New observations from the European Space Agency’s Solar Orbiter have revealed previously unseen details of how this coronal rain falls, including bright fireball effects and sudden upward surges in plasma.

    “These are the highest resolution images we have ever obtained from the solar corona,” says solar physicist Patrick Antolin of Northumbria University in Newcastle upon Tyne, England. He presented the results at the National Astronomy Meeting in Cardiff, Wales, the week of July 3 and in a paper to be published in Astronomy & Astrophysics.

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    The corona is the sun’s wispy upper atmosphere, the sizzling tangle of plasma and magnetism that is visible during a total eclipse (SN: 6/30/19). When clumps of scorching-hot plasma in the corona suddenly cool, they condense and fall toward the solar surface, just like water droplets in Earth’s atmosphere. This coronal rain has been observed before, but details of its formation and falling were fuzzy (SN: 5/24/18).

    The 2020 launch of Solar Orbiter promised to change that (SN: 2/9/20). The probe is making passes over the sun’s unexplored polar regions, carrying high resolution cameras and other instruments to investigate solar mysteries. In late March 2022, Solar Orbiter made its closest approach to the sun to date, swooping within 49 million kilometers of our star — about a third of the distance between the sun and Earth.

    In images from the spacecraft taken during that close encounter, Antolin and colleagues discovered a new feature in the coronal rain. As the plasma raindrops fell, the region immediately below them brightened. The researchers think the brightening came from other plasma below the falling rain getting compressed and heated, similar to the way meteors in Earth’s atmosphere can create fireballs just ahead of the falling rocks (SN: 2/15/13).

    “This is the first time we’ve seen that kind of compression from the rain falling this clearly,” says Emily Mason, a solar physicist at Predictive Science, a research company based in San Diego, who was not involved in the study. “The resolution just wasn’t there before.”

    Antolin and colleagues also saw a rebound and upward flow of material after coronal raindrops smacked onto the chromosphere, the thin layer of plasma that lies between the sun’s visible surface and the corona.

    “This rain is as dense as the chromosphere,” Antolin says. “It can fall to the chromosphere and then make a splash.” This sort of splash was predicted in computer simulations but had never been observed on the actual sun before.

    On their own, the observations won’t directly solve the biggest solar mysteries, like why the diffuse corona sizzles at millions of degrees Celsius higher than the surface of the sun (SN: 8/20/17). But more observations of the same phenomena can help figure out details of the coronal environment, like how easily its gas compresses, or what its chemical composition is.

    “We are not able to send a probe to the inner part of the corona because it’s so hot,” Antolin says. “So we can use these observations as indirect probes of the local environment.”

    The observations are “an important litmus test for Solar Orbiter itself,” Mason says. “It’s good to see what Solar Orbiter is capable of.” More

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    Tooth analysis reveals ancient Iberian leader was female

    The skeleton of a Copper Age person found at Valencina, Spain, dubbed the Ivory LadyResearch group ATLAS, University of Sevilla
    One of the most prominent figures in a Copper Age Iberian society was female, not male as originally thought, according to molecular analysis of their teeth.
    The Iberian Copper Age dates back to roughly 4000 to 5000 years ago and is marked by the emergence of copper smelting in what is now Spain and Portugal.
    In 2008, archaeologists at Valencina in south-west Spain – one of the largest Copper Age sites in Europe – unearthed the remains of an individual whose tomb was adorned with lavish goods, such as an ornate rock crystal dagger and ivory objects including an African elephant tusk.Advertisement
    They were also buried alone, unlike most people at the time. “This suggests that the individual was probably the highest status of their time in the Iberian peninsula or even western Europe,” says Leonardo García Sanjuán at the University of Seville in Spain.
    Based on an analysis of the skeleton when it was first uncovered, researchers deduced that this individual was probably male and was between 17 and 25 years old.
    But García Sanjuán and his colleagues have now determined that the figure was in fact female, based on a protein called amelogenin found in tooth enamel. Amelogenin is encoded by two genes called AMELX and AMELY, which are found on the X and Y chromosomes respectively. People produce different versions of amelogenin depending on which sex chromosomes they have, so analysis of the protein can reveal someone’s sex.
    García Sanjuán and his team have dubbed her the “Ivory Lady”. The burial sites of children from this era don’t feature treasured objects, suggesting that inheritance of wealth wasn’t common in this society and social status wasn’t ascribed by birth. The researchers therefore speculate that she must have earned her high rank.

    The findings suggest that women may have played a much more prominent role in Iberian Copper Age societies than was previously known, says García Sanjuán.
    “This opens up entirely new possibilities of research to understand what the political and social role of women was in these very complex societies, which, frankly, we know very little about,” he says.

    Topics:archaeology More