Archaeologists do it in holes: Tales from the stratigraphy

[viper37]

why are they shutting it down?  Not enough students/interest in the discipline?

[Sheilbh]

Maybe - I would be surprised if it's not also part of the universities crisis in this country.

[jimmy olsen]

why are they shutting it down?  Not enough students/interest in the discipline?

From what I read, it's just the government slashing funding of the humanities in general. They have enough students and there's been steady job growth.

[grumbler]

why are they shutting it down?  Not enough students/interest in the discipline?

That's what the school says.  There are only 11 staff in the department because of the lack of students. Covid is apparently only partly responsible.

And Sheffield archeology is ranked fifth of the seven Russel Group archeology departments (29th globally), so it hasn't been a stellar department anyway.  Good, for sure, but not stellar.  And the competition for students in the UK isn't going its way.

[jimmy olsen]

Very interesting work on the brain development of domesticated Russian foxes.

https://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2021-06/hu-dfd061121.php

[jimmy olsen]

More tablets and finds published from Ugarit of 1177BC fame.

https://www.archaeology.org/issues/430-2107/features/9752-ugarit-bronze-age-archive#art_page2

[Malthus]

More tablets and finds published from Ugarit of 1177BC fame.

https://www.archaeology.org/issues/430-2107/features/9752-ugarit-bronze-age-archive#art_page2

This is very interesting, but it is frustrating that they don't include any examples of actual translations from the archive.

[jimmy olsen]

Not sure how I feel about this? 

https://twitter.com/CSMFHT/status/1406759465483857927

We're coming back full circle to Roman funerary busts

[Tonitrus]

Don't worry, it'll get creepier when someone thinks to put head on a robot. 

[The Brain]

I didn't know Cate Blanchett was dead.

[Josquius]

Don't worry, it'll get creepier when someone thinks to put head on a robot. 

Black mirror did it.

[jimmy olsen]

Yeah...no. This is almost certainly going to be one of the Denisovan sub-populations.

https://www.theguardian.com/science/2021/jun/25/massive-human-head-in-chinese-well-forces-scientists-to-rethink-evolution

Massive human head in Chinese well forces scientists to rethink evolution
'Dragon man' skull reveals new branch of family tree more closely related to modern humans than Neanderthals

The discovery of a huge fossilised skull that was wrapped up and hidden in a Chinese well nearly 90 years ago has forced scientists to rewrite the story of human evolution.

Analysis of the remains has revealed a new branch of the human family tree that points to a previously unknown sister group more closely related to modern humans than the Neanderthals.

The extraordinary fossil has been named a new human species, Homo longi or "Dragon man", by Chinese researchers, although other experts are more cautious about the designation.

"I think this is one of the most important finds of the past 50 years," said Prof Chris Stringer, research leader at the Natural History Museum in London, who worked on the project. "It's a wonderfully preserved fossil."

The skull appears to have a remarkable backstory. According to the researchers, it was originally found in 1933 by Chinese labourers building a bridge over the Songhua River in Harbin, in China's northernmost province, Heilongjiang, during the Japanese occupation. To keep the skull from falling into Japanese hands it was wrapped and hidden in an abandoned well, resurfacing only in 2018 after the man who hid it told his grandson about it shortly before he died.

An international team led by Prof Qiang Ji at the Hebei Geo University in China drew on geochemical techniques to narrow down when the skull came to rest in Harbin, dating the bones to at least 146,000 years old. The skull has a unique combination of primitive and more modern features, with the face, in particular, more closely resembling Homo sapiens. One huge molar remains.

The skull, which is 23cm long and more than 15cm wide, is substantially larger than a modern human's and has ample room, at 1,420ml, for a modern human brain. Beneath the thick brow ridge, the face has large square eye sockets, but is delicate despite its size. "This guy had a huge head," said Stringer.

The researchers believe the skull belonged to a male, about 50 years old, who would have been an impressive physical specimen. His wide, bulbous nose allowed him to breathe huge volumes of air, indicating a high-energy lifestyle, while sheer size would have helped him withstand the brutally cold winters in the region. "Homo longi is heavily built, very robust," said Prof Xijun Ni, a paleoanthropologist at Hebei. "It is hard to estimate the height, but the massive head should match a height higher than the average of modern humans."

Advertisement
To work out where the Harbin individual fitted into human history, the scientists fed measurements from the fossil and 95 other skulls into software that compiled the most likely family tree. To their surprise, the Harbin skull and a handful of others from China formed a new branch closer to modern humans than Neanderthals.

The Chinese researchers believe the Harbin skull is distinct enough to make it a new species, but Stringer is not convinced. He believes it is similar to another found in Dali county in China in 1978.

"I prefer to call it Homo daliensis, but it's not a big deal," he said. "The important thing is the third lineage of later humans that are separate from Neanderthals and separate from Homo sapiens." Details are published in three papers in The Innovation.

Whatever the name, one possibility is that the Harbin skull is Denisovan, a mysterious group of extinct humans known largely from DNA and bone fragments recovered from Siberia. "Certainly this specimen could be Denisovan but we have to be cautious. What we need is much more complete skeletal material of the Denisovans alongside DNA," Stringer said.

Prof John Hawks, a paleoanthropologist at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, said the idea of a new lineage of humans was "a provocative claim", because skulls can look similar even among distant relatives. The skull being Denisovan was a good hypothesis, he added, though he was less keen on a new species name. "I think it's a bad moment in science to be naming new species among these large-brained humans that all interbred with each other," he said. "What we are repeatedly finding is that the differences in looks didn't mean much to these ancient people when it comes to breeding."

Mark Maslin, a professor of earth system science at UCL and the author of The Cradle of Humanity, said: "The beautifully preserved Chinese Harbin archaic human skull adds even more evidence that human evolution was not a simple evolutionary tree but a dense intertwined bush. We now know that there were as many as 10 different species of hominins at the same time as our own species emerged.

"Genetic analysis shows that these species interacted and interbred – our own genetics contain the legacy of many of these ghost species. But what is a sobering thought, is that despite all this diversity, a new version of Homo sapiens emerged from Africa about 60,000 years ago which clearly out-competed, out-bred, and even out-fought these other closely related species, causing their extinction. It is only by painstaking searching and analysis of their fossils, such as the Harbin skull, do we know of their existence."

A very important find, but I agree with Professor Hawks criticisms, which he posts in detail in this twitter thread. Lots of accompanying images posted here.

https://twitter.com/johnhawks/status/1408478633929461768

So, Homo longi. It's such a good name. Dragon people. And an amazing skull discovery. Adds to our knowledge of the Middle Pleistocene in China. But it's sad that the name is not going to stay

The boring reason why we can't use the Homo longi name is technical. The research puts the Harbin skull together with the Dali skull, and Xinzhi Wu gave that the name Homo sapiens daliensis more than 40 years ago. So IF there's a species, it has to be H. daliensis.

In case you wonder how close Harbin looks to Dali, here is Harbin on the left and Dali (which has some crushing to the maxilla) on the right. As Weidenreich might have said, they resemble each other as closely as one egg resembles another.

But technical problems are unsatisfying. The real question is whether the Chinese later Middle Pleistocene record represents a lineage, and whether we should consider such lineages, like Neandertals, as species. Are Homo daliensis and Homo neanderthalensis the right way to talk?

This is a deep problem upon which scientists have diverse opinions. I think that this new research on the Harbin fossil offers a window to a clearer future. Let's take a close look at that phylogeny, the one that places the Chinese MP fossils close to African H. sapiens...

The actual branch patterns are fascinating. H. antecessor groups with the Jinniushan-Dali-Harbin-Xiahe clade. Neandertals are an outgroup to these and moderns. Modern humans and H. antecessor are sister clades to the exclusion of Neandertals! It's nuts

Now, we have learned a few things from DNA and ancient proteins. H. antecessor is a sister of the Neandertal-Denisovan-modern clade. Neandertals, today's humans, and Denisovans share common ancestors around 700,000 years ago. Neandertals and Denisovans were related.

All known archaic groups with ancient DNA evidence interbred. Repeatedly. Seemingly every time they came into contact. Three distinct groups of Denisovans, all known from their ancient interbreeding with modern people. So. Much. Interbreeding.

We have the interesting question of whether the Harbin skull is a Denisovan. Dali, Jinniushan, Hualongdong, all Denisovans. Good hypothesis. Could be true. Knowing the answer, though, is not essential to the basic problem, which is: Morphology and DNA here are inconsistent.

There is no way to make this tree match what we know from DNA and protein. Neandertals are in the wrong place. H. antecessor is in the wrong place. Heck, even Liujiang and ZKD Upper Cave seem like they're in the wrong places. Morphology and DNA are inconsistent.

It's not a question of DNA being right and morphology being wrong. They just tell us about different things. Morphology tells us about adaptation, convergence, and retained features from deep ancestors. DNA tells us about phylogeny, incomplete lineage sorting, and introgression.

So are they species? I think that the appearance of morphological distinctiveness between these human groups is mostly a result of poor sampling. This new research shows that as we increase the sample, our picture gets blurrier and less likely to match DNA evidence of phylogeny.

We still have much to do to understand why lineages retained some genetic differentiation for hundreds of thousands of years, and we may yet find that speciation mechanisms such as fitness costs of hybridization may be a part of the explanation. But we're not there yet.

[The Brain]

But what is a sobering thought, is that despite all this diversity, a new version of Homo sapiens emerged from Africa about 60,000 years ago which clearly out-competed, out-bred, and even out-fought these other closely related species, causing their extinction.

Try it again, without the smugness.

[jimmy olsen]

Cave home of 9th century Anglo-Saxon king discovered
Ancient cave house may have been home to king who became a saint

https://www.cnn.com/travel/article/anglo-saxon-cave-house-scli-intl-gbr/index.html

[Maladict]

Cave home of 9th century Anglo-Saxon king discovered
Ancient cave house may have been home to king who became a saint

https://www.cnn.com/travel/article/anglo-saxon-cave-house-scli-intl-gbr/index.html

"May", being the operative word there.
A deposed king, who may have been the same person as a saint, who may have been buried near a cave that may date to the same period. Nothing will stop archaeologists from getting a headline (and some more funding).