Ancient History (3500 BC – 499 AD)

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weatheriscool
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Re: Ancient History (3500 BC – 499 AD)

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Study finds nearly 500 ancient ceremonial sites in southern Mexico

by University of Arizona

A team of international researchers led by the University of Arizona reported last year that they had uncovered the largest and oldest Maya monument—Aguada Fénix. That same team has now uncovered nearly 500 smaller ceremonial complexes that are similar in shape and features to Aguada Fénix. The find transforms previous understanding of Mesoamerican civilization origins and the relationship between the Olmec and the Maya people.

The team's findings are detailed in a new paper published in the journal Nature Human Behavior. UArizona anthropology professor Takeshi Inomata is the paper's first author. His UArizona coauthors include anthropology professor Daniela Triadan and Accelerator Mass Spectrometry Lab director Greg Hodgins.

Using data gathered through an airborne laser mapping technique called lidar, the researchers identified 478 complexes in the Mexican states of Tabasco and Veracruz. Lidar penetrates the tree canopy and reflects three-dimensional forms of archaeological features hidden under vegetation. The lidar data was collected by the Mexican governmental organization Instituto Nacional de Estadística y Geografía and covered a 32,800-square-mile area, which is about the same size as the island of Ireland.

Publicly available lidar data allows researchers to study huge areas before they follow up with high-resolution lidar to study sites of interest in greater detail.

"It was unthinkable to study an area this large until a few years ago," Inomata said. "Publicly available lidar is transforming archaeology."
weatheriscool
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Re: Ancient History (3500 BC – 499 AD)

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DNA analysis confirms 2,000-year-old sustainable fishing practices of Tsleil-Waututh Nation
https://phys.org/news/2021-11-dna-analy ... shing.html
by Simon Fraser University

Ancient Indigenous fishing practices can be used to inform sustainable management and conservation today, according to a new study from Simon Fraser University.

Working with the Tsleil-Waututh Nation and using new palaeogenetic analytical techniques developed in SFU Archaeology's ancient DNA lab, directed by professor Dongya Yang, the results of a new collaborative study featured in Scientific Reports provides strong evidence that prior to European colonization, Coast Salish people were managing chum salmon by selectively harvesting males.
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caltrek
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Re: Ancient History (3500 BC – 499 AD)

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^^^While I did find this topic to be very interesting, I was a little frustrated in that I previously had no idea who the Tsleil-Waututh Nation of peoples are (or were). Here is a Wikipedia link that helps in that regard:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tsleil-Wa ... rst_Nation

Introduction:
(Wikipedia) The Tsleil-Waututh Nation (Halkomelem: səlilwətaɬ IPA: [səlilwətaɬ]), formerly known as the Burrard Indian Band or Burrard Inlet Indian Band, is a First Nations band government in the Canadian province of British Columbia. The Tsleil-Waututh Nation ("TWN") are Coast Salish peoples who speak hən̓q̓əmin̓əm̓, the Downriver dialect of the Halkomelem language, and are closely related to but politically and culturally separate from the nearby nations of the Squamish and xʷməθkʷəy̓əm (Musqueam), with whose traditional territories some claims overlap.

The TWN is a member government of the Naut'sa mawt Tribal Council, which includes other governments on the upper Sunshine Coast, southeastern Vancouver Island and the Tsawwassen band on the other side of the Vancouver metropolis from the Tsleil-waututh. There are almost 600 members with 287 living on the reserve as of January 2018.

According to the 2011 national Community Well Being Index, Burrard Inlet 3 is considered the most prosperous First Nation community in Canada.
There is also a nice location map available at the Wikipedia link.
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caltrek
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Re: Ancient History (3500 BC – 499 AD)

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Edit: Moved to correct time-period forum.
Don't mourn, organize.

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R8Z
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Re: Ancient History (3500 BC – 499 AD)

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Very interesting Russian Youtube channel that goes into details on how ancient artifacts were built, dismissing many fringe theories that although at face value seem plausible, in practice are just pseudoscience. One of the videos that I liked the most was the one about drilling into granite (a very strong rock) in ancient Egypt using softer materials and leaving "drill marks" along the way as if the tool was carving very fast onto the stone. I think it was a very strong video to settle the argument on how these drill holes were made.

And, as always, bye bye.
weatheriscool
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Re: Ancient History (3500 BC – 499 AD)

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The toilet of a First Temple period luxury villa reveals the Jerusalem elite suffered from infectious disease
https://phys.org/news/2022-01-toilet-te ... villa.html
by Tel-Aviv University
A new study by Tel Aviv University and the Israel Antiquities Authority has exposed the remains of 2,700-year-old intestinal worm eggs below the stone toilet of a magnificent private estate. The egg remnants belong to four different types of intestinal parasites: roundworm, tapeworm, whipworm, and pinworm. According to the researchers, the stone toilet seat was in the estate's "restroom," and the presence of the worms indicates that even the wealthy residents of Jerusalem at that time suffered from diseases and epidemics. The article was recently published in the International Journal of Paleopathology.

The study was led by Dr. Dafna Langgut of Tel Aviv University's director of the Laboratory of Archaeobotany and Ancient Environments at the Institute of Archaeology and the Steinhardt Museum of Natural History. Dr. Langgut collected sediment samples from underneath the stone toilet, where the cesspit was located. Next, in her laboratory, she chemically extracted the parasite eggs, scrutinized them under a light microscope, and identified them. The egg remains were discovered as part of a salvage excavation by the Israel Antiquities Authority, recently carried out at the Armon Hanatziv Promenade in Jerusalem.
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caltrek
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Re: Ancient History (3500 BC – 499 AD)

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A Rare, Isolated Script Invented From Scratch Holds Clues to The Evolution of Writing
by Tessa Koumoundouros
January 12, 2022

https://www.sciencealert.com/rare-scrip ... of-writing

Introduction:
(Science Alert) A rare script from a language in Liberia has provided some new insights into how written languages evolve.

"The Vai script of Liberia was created from scratch in about 1834 by eight completely illiterate men who wrote in ink made from crushed berries," says linguistic anthropologist Piers Kelly, now at the University of New England, Australia.

"Because of its isolation, and the way it has continued to develop up until the present day, we thought it might tell us something important about how writing evolves over short spaces of time."

We might all take the written word for granted these days, but researchers still don't know exactly how this early human technology came to develop into the ubiquitous necessity that it is today.

As far as we know so far, the invention of writing occurred around 5,000 years ago in the Middle East and has been reinvented over and over again. New writing systems are still being created today, in places like Nigeria and Senegal.
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caltrek
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Re: Ancient History (3500 BC – 499 AD)

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Ancient Peruvian Politicians Partied Way Harder Than We Thought
by Elana Spivack
January 12, 2022

https://www.inverse.com/science/ancient-peru-empire

Introduction:
(Inverse) IN THE PRINCE, Machiavelli advises would-be tyrants to rule their kingdoms by making subjects both fear and love them, in that order. He doesn’t mention anything about hosting extravagant feasts where everyone hallucinates together, but this strategy seems to have worked exceedingly well for one of the world’s most successful empires: The Wari, who ruled what is now Peru, a millennia ago.

Long before Columbus arrived in the “New World,” South America was home to vast empires. Some 600 years-worth of evidence suggests some imperial houses used both hallucinogens and alcohol to maintain their power, and one such drug is vilca. Vilca, or Anadenanthera colubrina, is a plant that grows in dry, tropical forests like Ayacucho. Its earliest known use dates back to 2000 B.C.E. in northern Argentina. This legume-producing plant, it seems, may have been key to the Wari’s power.

WHAT’S NEW — In a study published the Journal of Antiquity on Wednesday, archaeologists reveal the first evidence of vilca being used among the Wari people. It seems the Wari blended the use of drugs and alcohol — marking a pivotal time period in South American history when cultural practices began to shift.

“This is the first time in a Wari context that we have it in an archeological sites where people were living and doing their day to day lives,” says Matthew Biwer. Biwer is an archaeology professor at Dickinson College and the paper’s first author.

The study states that during the Formative period (900–300 B.C.E.), civilizations throughout South America primarily used only hallucinogens to solidify their alliances, power, and ritual. But by the Late Horizon, around 1450– 1532 C.E., alcohol had supplanted hallucinogens as the preferred psychoactive substance of the ruling elite. The Wari fall during the Middle Horizon (600–1000 C.E.) — and it seems they ingeniously combined hallucinogens with alcohol.
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caltrek
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Re: Ancient History (3500 BC – 499 AD)

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Japan's Genetic History
by Daniel Weiss

https://www.archaeology.org/issues/453- ... -migration

Entire Article (excluding photographs):
(Archaeology.og) The genetic origins of modern Japanese people have traditionally been traced to two populations: Jomon hunter-gatherers and Yayoi farmers. New research has identified evidence of a third ancestral strand, dating to the imperial Kofun period (A.D. 300–700), when the modern Japanese state began to take shape. A team led by geneticist Shigeki Nakagome of Trinity College Dublin analyzed 12 newly sequenced genomes—nine from the Jomon and three from the Kofun period. The team also studied five previously published genomes—three from Jomon and two from Yayoi individuals.

Their findings show that the emergence of the Jomon lineage dates to around 20,000 years ago, when a land bridge connected the Korean Peninsula to Japan. Around 17,000 years ago, sea levels rose, submerging the land bridge and isolating the Jomon from continental Asia for millennia, until agriculturalists arrived starting around 3,000 years ago and developed the Yayoi culture. According to the team’s analysis, these wet-rice farmers appear to have come from northeastern Asia. Unlike in Europe, where newly arrived farmers supplanted local hunter-gatherers, the Yayoi assimilated with the Jomon.

The researchers found that during the Kofun period, people with East Asian ancestry, most likely Han Chinese, migrated to Japan and added their genes to those of the Jomon and Yayoi. Archaeological evidence and historical records have suggested that a group of migrants arrived around this time, but this is the first genetic evidence of Japan’s tripartite lineage. “Previous studies that looked at modern genomic variation proposed that there might have been more than two major migrations to Japan,” says Nakagome. “But because they only looked at the modern population, they couldn’t identify when and where the additional genetic component came from.”
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weatheriscool
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Re: Ancient History (3500 BC – 499 AD)

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Archaeologists discover ancient highways in Arabia
https://phys.org/news/2022-01-archaeolo ... rabia.html
by University of Western Australia

Archeologists from The University of Western Australia have discovered people who lived in north-west Arabia in the Early to Middle Bronze Age built 'funerary avenues'—long-distance corridors linking oases and pastures, bordered by thousands of elaborate burial monuments.

Dr. Matthew Dalton, from UWA's School of Humanities, is lead author of the findings published in the journal The Holocene.

"Funerary avenues were the major highway networks of their day, and show that the populations living in the Arabian Peninsula 4,500 years ago were far more socially and economically connected to one another than we previously thought," Dr. Dalton said.
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