Humans

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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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

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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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.

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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.

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The Ellestad stone, inscribed between AD 500 and 700, appears to include encrypted runesUnknown/Creative Commons
People living in Scandinavia may have written encrypted messages in runes – the alphabet later used by the Vikings – several centuries earlier than previously thought.
In runic writing systems, each rune can represent both a sound and a word. For example, in an early runic system called the Elder Futhark, the rune that corresponds to the letter S also means “sun”.
It is generally possible to translate runes into modern languages. But we have long known that … More

Inside the Tabon Caves on Palawan island in the PhilippinesHemis/Alamy Stock Photo
The prehistoric inhabitants of the Philippines were able to make ropes and baskets from plant fibres almost 40,000 years ago, according to an analysis of stone tools. The find suggests the people living then may have been able to produce more sophisticated constructions, such as boats and buildings, than previously thought.
“Mastering fibre technology was a very important step in human development. It allows to assemble different objects together and to build houses, make composite objects, hunt with bows,” says Hermine Xhauflair at the University of the Philippines Diliman. “Eventually, the existence of ropes allows people to attach a sail to canoes and create boats that can be used to go very far away.”
Because of this, archaeologists are keen to study ancient fibres, but their organic nature means few have been preserved – the oldest ever found is a 50,000-year-old piece of string thought to have been made by Neanderthals.Advertisement
This lack of specimens means archaeologists often have to rely on indirect evidence for textile production, such as depiction in art, the seeds of fibre plants, or signs of fibre processing on stone tools.
Xhauflair and her colleagues have done just that, in their case analysing 43 stone tools dating from 33,000 to 39,000 years ago that had been excavated from the Tabon Caves on Palawan island in the Philippines.
To see if these tools had been used to make textiles, Xhauflair learned fibre-processing techniques from modern-day Indigenous inhabitants of the island, the Pala’wan people, then used replicas of the tools, which are made from a stone known as red jasper, to thin the fibres from bamboo, palm and other plants. The researchers examined these replica tools with a microscope to look for patterns of wear created by plant processing, then compared these marks with the ancient tools.
Three stone tools from the cave showed similar marks, suggesting they were once used for transforming rigid plants into supple strips. These signs included a brush stroke-type pattern of striations, micro-polish and micro-scars on the surface of the tools. The team also found residues on one of the cave tools that came from a plant in the Poaceae family, of which bamboo is a member.
Xhauflair isn’t so sure what the prehistoric Filipinos did with these supple strips. Today, the Pala’wan people use them to make baskets and traps or to tie objects together, so they may have had the same use in the past. “What we can conclude is that prehistoric people had the capacity to do all these things as soon as they knew how to process fibres,” she says.

“The study is intriguing as it opens the door to investigating aspects of past human behaviour that is typically not preserved in archaeological sites,” says Ben Shaw at the Australian National University. “Even though the plant remains are long gone, [the team’s] detailed approach has made them visible by looking at the tools used to process them.”
With this evidence of early fibre technology, Shaw says it would be worth re-examining previously excavated sites in the region, as activities such as boat making or building construction may have been overlooked if rope making wasn’t considered part of the ancient inhabitants’ toolkit.

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Bonobos, unlike chimpanzees, aren’t usually violent towards other groupsSergey Uryadnikov/Alamy
The last common ancestor of humans, chimpanzees and bonobos wasn’t especially prone to violence, according to a study attempting to reconstruct the evolution of warlike behaviour among apes. Hostility between groups of this ancestor may have been tempered by bonds between unrelated females, the study suggests – but researchers warn that its conclusions are highly speculative.
The question of whether violence is integral to human nature has been debated for centuries. Biologists have tried to answer it by looking at chimpanzees, which, along … More