Humans

The first members of our species to reach China might have entered the region from the northEsteban De Armas / Alamy
Modern humans were living in what is now China by 45,000 years ago. The finding means our species reached the area thousands of years earlier than generally thought, possibly via a northerly route through modern-day Siberia and Mongolia.
A team co-led by Francesco d’Errico at the University of Bordeaux in France re-examined an archaeological site called Shiyu in northern China. It was originally excavated in 1963 during the unrest of China’s cultural revolution. “This was not the best moment to find such an important site,” says d’Errico.

Advertisement
Shiyu is an open-air site in a river gully. It holds a 30-metre-deep deposit of sands and other sediment, which the original excavators divided into four horizontal layers, the second from bottom of which was found to hold evidence of human occupation.
The excavators found over 15,000 stone artefacts and thousands of animal bones. There was also a single piece of hominin skull, which anthropologist Woo Ru-Kang identified as a modern human (Homo sapiens).
Some of the artefacts were later transferred to the Institute of Vertebrate Paleontology and Paleoanthropology in Beijing. But those left at the local facilities – including the hominin bone – were lost. “We have perhaps 10 per cent of the stone tools,” says d’Errico.
D’Errico and his colleagues have re-excavated Shiyu to determine its age. They dated 15 samples of sediment using a technique called optically stimulated luminescence, and carbon-dated 10 animal bones and teeth. The hominin layer is about 44,600 years old.
D’Errico is confident that the skull was correctly identified, as the excavators were “knowledgeable”.
The Shiyu hominins were probably H. sapiens, says Arina Khatsenovich at the Institute of Archaeology and Ethnography in Novosibirsk, Russia, who was not involved in the study.
As such, the new study implies modern humans had reached northern China about 45,000 years ago. This pushes back our species’ arrival in China by about 5000 years. D’Errico argues the next oldest H. sapiens site in China is Tianyuan cave, which is 40,000 years old.
Some researchers have claimed our species arrived earlier, potentially up to 260,000 years ago. But d’Errico points out that researchers have critiqued much of the evidence for such an early human presence in the region.
It may be that, as humans entered Asia from Africa, they spread out via multiple routes, says Khatsenovich. As well as exploring the tropical southern regions of Asia, they also went further north. Khatsenovich says there are signs of a modern human presence in this region, including at Obi-Rakhmat Grotto in Uzbekistan from 48,800 years ago. It may be that our species reached Shiyu, and China, via this northern route.

As modern humans reached new areas, they encountered hominins that already lived there like the Neanderthals and, further east, the Denisovans. Genetic evidence has shown we interbred with them. There may also have been cultural exchanges: the artefacts at Shiyu include some that look more like archaic human tools.
There is also evidence of long-distance exchanges. The Shiyu team identified four pieces of obsidian, a volcanic glass. They were able to trace them to sites 800 and 1000 kilometres north-east of Shiyu. D’Errico says it is unlikely the inhabitants travelled these distances themselves, so they were probably part of a network of groups. In line with this, Khatsenovich says some of the Shiyu artefacts resemble pieces found in Korea, far to the east.

Topics:archaeology/humans More

Lidar scans of the Upano valley in Ecuador showing raised platformsStephen Rostain
Aerial surveys have revealed the largest pre-colonial cities in the Amazon yet discovered, linked by an extensive network of roads.

“The settlements are much bigger than others in the Amazon,” says Stéphen Rostain at the French National Center for Scientific Research in Paris. “They are comparable with Maya sites.”Advertisement
What’s more, at between 3000 and 1500 years old, these cities are also older than other pre-Columbian ones discovered in the Amazon. Why the people who built them disappeared isn’t clear.
It is often assumed that the Amazon rainforest was largely untouched by humans before the Italian explorer Christopher Columbus reached the Americas in the 15th century. In fact, the first Europeans reported seeing many farms and towns in the region.
These reports, long dismissed, have in recent decades been backed up by discoveries of ancient earthworks and extensive dark soils created by farmers. One estimate puts the pre-Columbian population of the Amazon as high as 8 million.
Rostain and his colleagues have been studying archaeological sites in the Upano valley of the Ecuadorian Amazon, in the foothills of the Andes, since the 1990s. Traces of ancient settlements were first found there in the 1970s, but only a handful of sites have been excavated.
In 2015, Rostain’s team did an aerial survey with lidar, a laser scanning technique that can create a detailed 3D map of the surface beneath most vegetation, revealing features not normally visible to us. The findings, which have only now been published, show that the settlements were far more extensive than anyone realised.
The survey revealed more than 6000 raised earthen platforms within an area of 300 square kilometres. These are where wooden buildings once stood – excavations have revealed post holes and fireplaces on these structures.
Most platforms are around 10 by 20 metres and 2 metres high, and are thought to be the former sites of houses. The largest is 40 by 140 metres and 5 metres high, and was thought to be the site of monumental buildings used for ceremonies.
Around the platforms were fields, many of which were drained by small canals dug around them. “The valley was almost completely modified,” says Rostain.
Analysis of pottery suggests that maize, beans, manioc and sweet potatoes were grown.
Overall there were five major settlements in the area surveyed. They could be described as garden cities, says Rostain, due to their low density of buildings.
The survey also revealed a network of straight roads created by digging out soil and piling it on the sides. The longest extends for at least 25 kilometres, but might continue beyond the area that was surveyed.
The Upano valley in EcuadorStephen Rostain
What is peculiar is that the Upano people went to great lengths to make the roads straight, says Rostain. In places they dug down 5 metres rather than follow contours, for instance. So the roads probably had symbolic significance, as there was no practical reason to make them straight, he says.
In places there are also signs of defensive structures such as ditches, so there may have been some conflict between groups.
In the rest of the Amazon, many settlements were abandoned after the arrival of Europeans, probably because diseases and violence unleashed by the invaders killed a large proportion of the population.
All the Upano artefacts dated by Rostain’s team are older than 1500 years, however, suggesting the settlements in the valley were abandoned after this time, long before the colonial era. Why isn’t clear, but the team has found layers of volcanic ash, so it is possible a series of eruptions forced people to leave the valley.

“This shows an unprecedented degree of complexity and density of settlement for this early time frame,” says Michael Heckenberger at the University of Florida. “The authors justifiably conclude that the complexity and scale are comparable with better known cases, such as the Maya, at this time.”
“This is the largest complex with large settlements so far found in Amazonia,” says Charles Clement at the National Institute of Amazonian Research in Manaus, Brazil.
What’s more, it was found in a region of the Amazon that other researchers had concluded was sparsely inhabitated during pre-Columbian times, says Clement.

Topics:archaeology More

Stone age paintings in Chauvet cave in FranceFine Art Images/Heritage Images/Getty Images
This is an extract from Our Human Story, our newsletter about the revolution in archaeology. Sign up to receive it in your inbox for free every month.
At this point it’s a truism that the story of human evolution is being rethought. Discoveries in recent years have forced us to rethink many crucial points, such as how old our species is – about 300,000 years old as opposed to 200,000 – and what extinct hominins like the Neanderthals were really like.
2023 was equally dizzying: discoveries continued to come thick and fast. But because there are so many species and eras involved, it’s hard to discern the common threads linking them – at least, beyond “we found out some more stuff”.Advertisement
However, I do think it’s possible to draw out some overall messages from the blizzard of archaeological finds. Two things stand out to me. One is the growing evidence that many supposedly “advanced” behaviours, such as architecture and art, can be traced much further back in time than we thought, often to hominins that existed before modern humans. And the other is that we have badly misunderstood gender roles in prehistoric societies, imposing patriarchal values onto cultures that had very different ideas about how women should behave.

Ancient achievements
Let’s start with architecture. At Kalambo Falls in Zambia, researchers found buried logs that had been shaped with stone tools so that they interlocked. They seem to have once been part of a larger structure, perhaps a building. Which would be unsurprising if they weren’t 476,000 years old. That’s almost 200,000 years before our species, Homo sapiens, evolved.
Extinct hominins also managed to settle in extreme places. For instance, we now know that hominins like the Denisovans lived on the frigid heights of the Tibetan plateau 200,000 years ago – upending the old notion that the plateau was only settled by modern humans around 3600 years ago.
Art also seems to have been invented by older hominins. We already had evidence that Neanderthals painted on cave walls, and 2023 saw more Neanderthal art from La Roche-Cotard cave in France. Even earlier species like Homo erectus may also have made art, for example by engraving patterns on shells.
By far the most contentious claim in this area is that Homo naledi made art. H. naledi lived around 250,000 years ago, making it a contemporary of our species. However, it had quite a small brain, typical of older hominins – and was therefore, according to palaeoanthropological dogma, incapable of complex behaviours.
Nevertheless, in the Rising Star cave system in South Africa where the H. naledi remains were found, researchers have found what seem to be etchings on the cave walls, though these have yet to be firmly dated. They also claim to have found evidence of H. naledi burying their dead in the cave. These assertions were the subject of a Netflix documentary, Cave of Bones.

To say these claims are controversial is to understate the situation. Many researchers say the evidence presented so far is completely inadequate to support them. The dispute has only been heightened by the way the results were released, in a non-traditional journal that publishes peer reviews publicly alongside the paper.
My views on the H. naledi controversy are complicated. I do think more evidence is needed: in particular, I want to know how old the engravings are. At the same time, I think the species’ small brains are a distraction. Palaeoanthropologists got fixated on brain size because it was what they could see: if what you have is skeletons, then all you know about brains are their shapes and sizes. But other properties like the brain’s internal wiring are surely equally important and may explain how a species like H. naledi could do complicated things despite their small brains.
In a sense, we shouldn’t be surprised that so many of these behaviours had their origins in older, extinct hominins. Evolution usually works by gradual steps, and so does technology – the first birds weren’t great at flying, and the first mobile phones weren’t great at, well, anything really.
The idea that there was a sudden explosion of intelligence and creativity at some point in our evolution isn’t inherently ridiculous: sometimes a system hits a tipping point and undergoes runaway change. But there was never that much evidence that human evolution worked this way. Instead, it seems that Homo erectus, the Neanderthals and many others all walked so we could run.

Alternative societies
One way or another, the H. naledi story is going to be an example of letting our preconceptions get in the way of the evidence. The same is true for our ideas about gender in prehistory. Archaeology was invented by societies with sexist ideas, and those notions bled into the research (see also: scientific racism and homophobia). Researchers are now trying to unpick this stuff, and 2023 saw some significant steps.
Perhaps the most dramatic was the demolition of “Man the Hunter”. This was the idea, promoted for decades, that in most prehistoric societies the men went out to hunt and the women stayed home. However, a meta-analysis published in June compiled data on several dozen foraging societies and found women hunted in 80 per cent of them. In line with this, it emerged that an ancient spear-throwing tool called an atlatl enables women to launch projectiles at the same speed as men.

We have also seen growing evidence of women occupying positions of power in ancient societies. The Viking queen Thyra may have helped unify Denmark in the 900s. Going further back, an Iberian leader from around 4000 years ago turned out to be female, not male as many had assumed, when proteins in her teeth were analysed.
So I want to end 2023 on a hopeful note. The more we learn about past societies, the more our preconceptions about the ways society “has to be” turn out to be wrong. Inequality, authoritarianism and patriarchy aren’t inevitable. They’re choices, and prehistory shows us that we can choose differently.

Topics: More

Test your wits against this epic set of interlinked space puzzles

Fed up with bog-standard crosswords? Bored by suduko? Here’s a set of interlinked, space-themed puzzles to download as a pdf that will really put your brain through its paces More

Didgeridoo players can use their vocal cord reverberations to manipulate the resonances produced by the woodKate Callas
The traits that make the best didgeridoos have now been identified, and it has also given us a better understanding of how people use their vocal cords to make sounds with the instruments.
Didgeridoos, used by the Indigenous peoples of northern Australia for at least 1500 years, are “the principal musical instrument of the world’s oldest continuous culture”, say John Smith and Joe Wolfe, both at the University of New South Wales in Australia.… More

Elaine Knox
IN OCTOBER, the US Department of Homeland Security made an urgent announcement. New barriers and roads were needed along the Texas-Mexico border – but construction was impeded by federally mandated surveys and permits. These protect the environment and archaeological sites. They also take time to complete. To speed construction, the Biden administration waived compliance with 26 federal laws, eight of which regulate archaeological and/or sacred Indigenous sites.
In 1888, it was looters, not governments, who were barrelling through the past. Anthropologists Alice Fletcher and Matilda Stevenson knew the looters were winning. They proposed legislation to preserve US archaeological sites on… More

Stonehenge was built between 3000 and 2000 BC and is one of the world’s most famous prehistoric monuments. Each year, the site attracts thousands of visitors during the summer and winter solstices. Whether used for ceremonial, astronomical or spiritual events, Stonehenge remains a subject of intrigue. Now, using the latest scientific technologies such as radiocarbon dating and 3D laser scanning, archaeologists are understanding how this colossal stone circle was built and what its purpose was, as well as gaining new insight into how our Stone Age human ancestors lived. New studies even suggest some of the stones could align with the moon during rare lunar events.
Read more: We’ve finally figured out where Stonehenge’s giant boulders came from

Topics: More

Cannabis edibles offer a different way to consume the drugShutterstock/Brian Goodman
For people who want their cannabis without the smoke, edibles provide an increasingly popular alternative. And it isn’t just pot brownies, either. Gummies, tinctures and other products can be laced with the drug.
“The availability of different types of products makes it so that there’s something for everyone,” says Jibran Khokhar at Western University in Canada.
[special_article_unit title=”The science of cannabis” description=”As the use of marijuana and its compounds rises around the world, New Scientist… More