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The Megalithic Portal and Megalith Map : Index >>
Stones Forum >> New Sites and Finds in Asia
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New Sites and Finds in Asia |
bat400
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|  Posted 25-04-2011 at 06:49
The following are news accounts of sites and finds in Asia that either don't merit a site listing because of the minor nature of the find (e.g. An individual artifact find), or information is lacking to locate the site.
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bat400
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| Posted 25-04-2011 at 06:52
2000 year old town found in Wadee, Myanmar.
Archaeologists in Myanmar have discovered parts of a religious building and a wall that circled an ancient town dating back to 100 B.C. during the Pyu era, a media report said Sunday.
The town remnants were found after an excavation in two sites in Wadee in central Myanmar during July-August this year, Xinhua reported citing the official daily New Light of Myanmar.
The new find showed that the town was established during the time of the Pyu era (100 B.C.-840 A.D.), the report said.
The archaeologists found ancient bronze sheets, bronze bells, sand slabs, charcoal and iron rivets among other items.
They also concluded that the funeral customs at the ancient town included burial of the body, or burning it and putting the ash and bones together in an urn and then burying it.
Source: http://www.newkerala.com/news/world/fullnews-93671.html. Thanks to coldrum for the link.
[ This message was edited by: bat400 on 2011-04-25 06:53 ]
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bat400
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| Posted 25-04-2011 at 19:15
Ancient tomb from Jin Dynasty unearthed in Jiangxi
The Gao'an City Museum in Jiangxi has disclosed that an ancient tomb was found in Xiangang village of Lanfang town in Gao'an, Jiangxi Province. The archaeologists unearthed a total of 18 celadon porcelains and pottery wares from Jin Dynasty (265–420).
The curator of Gao'an City Museum, Liu Jincheng said that the tomb is located 15 kilometers southeast of Gao'an. The tomb is 4.5 meters long, 1.7 meters wide and 1.7 meters high. The top of the tomb takes an arched shape and was built with bricks on which there are delicate decorative patterns. In addition, there is also an inscription revealing it is originary of the Jin Dynasty.
The unearthed relics include ceramic warehouses, pots, kettles, bowls and a rare celadon bowl originated from Hongzhou Kiln of Jiangxi Province.
The tomb is of great value to archaeological studies on funeral customs of the Jin DynastyJin Dynasty which consists of two dynasties, Western Jin Dynasty (265-316) and Eastern Jin Dynasty (317-420).
Source: http://life.globaltimes.cn/travel/2010-11/595932.html. Thanks to coldrum for the link.
[ This message was edited by: bat400 on 2011-04-25 19:25 ]
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bat400
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| Posted 25-04-2011 at 22:46
Neolithic site discovered in Shanxi's Xinzhou
A Neolithic site was discovered at the excavation site of two previously-discovered ancient tombs on Nov. 21, according to the Shanxi Xinzhou Heritage Management Office. Currently, the excavation of this site is in progress and its mystery is expected to be unveiled in one or two days.
Wang Jiping, leader of the archaeological team from the Xinzhou Heritage Management Office, measurements show that the site has a relatively large area and covers more than 2,000 square meters. It has been initially proven that there are more than seven ash pits.
Wang also said that the pottery fragments belong to pottery tripods. The tripod was a kind of cooking utensil in ancient China which is equivalent to the cooking pot, and the small shells were used as money and jewelry in ancient times. The ash pits were the places where the ancients used to dump their rubbish. Generally speaking, where there are ash pits, there will be an ancient residential site nearby.
Guo Yintang, director of the Xinzhou Heritage Management Office, hopes that high-value heritage relics will be discovered during the large-scale excavation. "However, the discovery of the Neolithic site will have important research value in learning about prehistoric human lives and customs in Shanxi's Xinding Basin," Guo said.
For more, see People's Daily. Thanks to coldrum for the link.
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bat400
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| Posted 25-04-2011 at 22:54
Chinese archaeologists unearth 2,400-year-old 'soup'
Chinese archaeologists have unearthed what they believe is a 2,400-year-old pot of soup, state media report.
The liquid and bones were in a sealed bronze cooking vessel dug up near the ancient capital of Xian - home to the country's famed terracotta warriors.
Tests are being carried out to identify the ingredients. An odourless liquid, believed to be wine, was also found.
The pots were discovered in a tomb being excavated to make way for an extension to the local airport.
"It's the first discovery of bone soup in Chinese archaeological history," the newspaper quoted Liu Daiyun of the Shaanxi Provincial Institute of Archaeology as saying.
"The discovery will play an important role in studying the eating habits and culture of the Warring States Period (475-221BC)."
The scientists said the tomb could have held the body of either a member of the land-owning class or a low-ranking military officer, the report said.
Xian served as China's capital for more than 1,100 years.
Source: BBC. Thanks to coldrum for the link.
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bat400
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| Posted 25-04-2011 at 23:16
Prehistoric cave may unveil mysteries of ancient Gelao people
Ruins in a prehistoric cave have been found at Daozhen Miao and Gelao Autonomous County in Guizhou Province, Xinhua reported on Dec. 6.
The cave, which is located at the Monkey Cave in Zhongxin Town, Daozhen County, might shed light on the daily lifestyles and culture of the Gelao people's ancestors. As of now, archaeological departments of Guizhou Province have sent a professional team to join the investigation and research work with the local cultural relics administration, and the investigation report has been released before further excavation.
Primary exploration shows that the Monkey Cave is 8 meters wide, 7 meters deep and 5.2 meters high; the cave's bottom is flat with sufficient sunshine and dry air. However, four huge stones, which fell during the early period of the cave, take up most of the space inside. Stones on the top of cave are loose, so it is not safe to stay in the cave for long time.
It might carry cultural elements belonging to the Gelao people's ancestors, who were the first people to develop China's southwestern region. But they left behind little archaeological evidence for modern people to observe. At the same time, the cave might also provide new hints for research of the Gelao people's history, ancient Ye Lang culture and the ancient Ba Kingdom.
Source: People's Daily. Thanks to coldrum for the link.
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bat400
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| Posted 10-04-2012 at 05:12
Cultural change of Indian civilisation linked to Monsoon
Over the last few millennia there has been a fundamental shift of the Indian Monsoon, from a steady humid monsoon that favoured lush vegetation to extended periods of drought. A new and controversial study led by researchers at the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution (WHOI) is trying to understand the implications of the monsoon’s response to climate change.
The Indian subcontinent sustains over a billion people, yet lies at the same latitude as the Sahara Desert. Without a monsoon, most of India would be dry and uninhabitable and so the ability to predict the timing and amount of the next year’s rainy season is vital, yet our knowledge of its past variability remains incomplete.
One key to this understanding lies in the core monsoon zone (CMZ) – a region in the central part of India that is a very sensitive indicator of the monsoon throughout the India peninsula.
“If you know what’s happening there, you know more or less what’s happening in the rest of India,” said Camilo Ponton, a student in the MIT-WHOI Joint Program in Oceanography and lead author of the study recently published in Geophysical Research Letters, Holocene Aridification of India. “Our biggest problem has been a lack of evidence from this region to extend the short, existing records.”
Reconstructing 10,000 years of climate
The study made use of a sediment core collected by the National Gas Hydrate Program of India in 2006. Sailing around India aboard the drilling vessel JOIDES Resolution for several months, Giosan enlisted colleagues from India and US to help with the project. Extracted from a “sweet spot” in the Bay of Bengal where the Godavari River drains the central Indian peninsula and over which monsoon winds carry most of the precipitation, the core has provided the basis for a 10,000-year reconstruction of climate in the Indian peninsula’s CMZ .
Every centimetre of sediment from this river contains 10 to 20 years’ worth of information, allowing for a high temporal resolution.
When put together, the research tells the story of growing aridity in India, enables valuable insights into the impact of the monsoon on past cultures, and points scientists toward a way to model future monsoons.
To assemble the 10,000-year record, the team looked to both what the land and the ocean could tell them. Contained within the sediment core’s layers are microscopic compounds from the trees, grasses, and shrubs that lived in the region and remnants of plankton fossils from the ocean.
“The geochemical analyses of the leaf waxes tell a simple story,” said Giosan. “About 10,000 years ago to about 4500 ago, the Godavari River drained mostly terrain that had humidity-loving plants. Stepwise changes starting at around 4,000 years ago and again after 1,700 years ago changed the flora toward aridity-adapted plants. That tells us that central India – the core monsoon zone – became drier.”
Archaeobotanist Dorian Fuller of the Institute of Archaeology, University College London was interested in what this information reflected, and noted the new paleo-climatic information showed a shift towards more arid conditions around 4,000 years ago which corresponded with the expansion of agricultural populations.
The geological record and archaeological evidence may now tell a story of the possible fate of India’s earliest civilizations. Cultural changes occurred across the Indian subcontinent as the climate became more arid after ~4,000 years. In the already dry Indus basin, the urban Harappan civilization failed to adapt to even harsher conditions and slowly collapsed. But aridity favoured an increase in sophistication in the central and south India where tropical forest decreased in extent and people began to settle and carry out more agriculture. Human resourcefulness proved crucial in the rapid proliferation of rain-collecting water tanks across the Indian peninsula, just as the long series of droughts settled in over the last 1,700 years.
According to Ponton, “How the monsoon will behave in the future is highly controversial. Our research provides clues for modelling and that could help determine whether the monsoon will increase or decrease with global warming.”
“We found that when the Asian continent is least heated by the sun, the northward movement of the rain appears to hesitate between the Equator and Asia, bringing less rain to the north,” said Giosan. “The fact that long droughts have not occurred over the last 100 years or so, as humans started to heat up the planet, but did occur earlier, suggest that we changed the entire monsoon game, and may have inadvertently made it more stable!”
Thanks to coldrum for the link: See more at: http://www.pasthorizonspr.com/index.php/archives/03/2012/cultural-change-of-indian-civilisation-linked-to-monsoon
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bat400
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| Posted 07-06-2012 at 13:52
4000-year-old cliff paintings discovered in N China
Eighteen cliff paintings dating back over 4,000 years have been discovered by archaeologists in northern China's Inner Mongolia autonomous region, an official said Sunday.
The prehistoric portraits were unearthed in the Yinshan Mountains in Urad Middle Banner (an administration division of the Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region), said Liu Binjie, head of the Cultural Relics Bureau of Urad Middle Banner.
The patterns are still clear and the paintings have been arranged in an orderly manner on the cliffs. Liu added that they are the finest of their kind that have been unearthed so far. Among the paintings, seven faces were exaggerated and monstrous, and have been interpreted as the seven stars of the "Big Dipper" constellation. Liu concluded that these may have been drawn by prehistoric men for worship.
Liu said paintings of faces found on Yinshan Mountains cliffs are similar to those in the Helan Mountains, located on the boundary between Ningxia and Inner Mongolia. They are also similar to those in eastern Russia, showing close connections with ancient peoples' migration patterns, and sacrificial and worship ceremonies.
They are very precious materials for the research on prehistorical life, said Liu.
Local government and relevant departments have made efforts to protect the cliff paintings in this area, including restrictions on grazing and the installation of monitoring equipment.
Thanks to coldrum for the link: http://www.chinadaily.com.cn/china/2012-04/22/content_15109659.htmhttp://www.chinadaily.com.cn/china/2012-04/22/content_15109659.htm.
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bat400
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| Posted 07-06-2012 at 13:56
Palaeolithic Period stone weapons found in Jaffna
Some stone weapons belonging to the Palaeolithic period have been unearthed in the Jaffna peninsula. This has also been assessed by Dr Shiran Deraniyagale, an expert on the pre-historic period, Deputy Archaeological Director Dr Nimal Perera told the Daily News.
"Evidence has been found pertaining to the Palaeolithic period in locations in South India, South Asia and Africa. However, this is the first time in Sri Lanka's history that such objects have been found relating to the Palaeolithic period in the country," he said.
"These findings were made in Manikkai, close to Point Pedro in 1984. Nevertheless due to the 30 year war, excavation came to a halt making it impossible to unearth any evidence. "Under the excavation project of Kantharodei, a combined project was launched by the Archaeological Department and the Jaffna University. Prof Krishna Raja of the Jaffna University found the stone weapons from the Jaffna peninsula," the deputy director said.
Dr Perera said he inspected these weapons which were brought to Colombo and shown to Dr Deraniyagala who confirmed that the stone weapons belonged to the Palaeolithic period.
He said there are four ancient and important historic towns in Sri Lanka. "They are Anuradhapura, Tissamaharama, Mathota and Jaffna. No pre- historic evidence was found in Jaffna upto now. The department has begun excavations in the area now," he said.
Thanks to coldrum for the link: Palaeolithic Period stone weapons found in Jaffna]http://www.dailynews.lk/2011/10/03/news11.asp[B]Palaeolithic Period stone weapons found in Jaffna.
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bat400
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| Posted 07-06-2012 at 14:04
3,000-year-old human remains uncovered in western Nepal
What could well be compared to Shangri-La as envisioned by British author James Hilton in his 1933 novel Lost Horizon, recent findings of human history dating back to over 3,000 years in the caves of Upper Mustang in western Nepal have unraveled a significant portion, if not the whole of that virgin unknown.
According to Monday's The Kathmandu Post, a team of national and international climbers, scientists, archaeologists, historians and anthropologists has found evidence of thousands of years of civilization in this mystical land. After beginning the first phase of its research in 2008, the team discovered human remains dating back to 3,000 years, bringing out untold stories of an " independent" civilization.
According to Mohan Singh Lama, an archaeologist with the Department of Archaeology (DoA), the findings go back to the pre- history period (before the beginning of the Christian era) when the Indus Valley and the Chinese civilizations were slowly making inroads into Nepal via present day India and the Tibetan plateau. "Since cave settlement was not popular in other places around, we can view this as an independent civilization," he said, adding that one of the most important cultures of the past that they found out is the unique burial pattern.
According to him, dead bodies used to be buried in caves, along with jewelry and utensils. The team found square coffins in the caves with human skeletons, perched under kilos of jewelry and utensils. "This makes the entire area rich in underground treasure, but many of the graves were dug by treasure hunters," Lama said. Though not practiced now, treasure hunting used to be one of the most sensational businesses for many people in and around Mustang until a couple of centuries ago, experts say.
The team that includes experts from the National Geographic channel and the DoA has so far been able to explore at least nine caves.
Mark Aldenderfer, an archaeologist at the University of California who is leading the excavation team, claims people have been living in the Mustang valley since 10,000 years. "Our team found stone tools near Kagbeni. These tools resemble those from lower elevations. Their presence suggests people have been moving into the valley for a very long time," Aldenderfer told the daily.
Thanks to coldrum for the link: http://english.people.com.cn/90777/7673533.html
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Godzilla1
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| Posted 23-06-2012 at 01:11
Hi All,
Any discussions/comments/insights into Gobekli Tepe excavations in Turkey? These seem stupendous and I haven't seen any follow-up articles on significance.
http://www.smithsonianmag.com/history-archaeology/gobekli-tepe.html?c=y&page=2
Thx, Godzilla
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Runemage
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| Posted 23-06-2012 at 02:26
Hi Godzilla and welcome,
We have quite a bit of info on our site page that may interest you, http://www.megalithic.co.uk/article.php?sid=14968
Rune
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bat400
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| Posted 01-07-2012 at 05:31
Achaemenid palace found in Iran
Archeologists have unearthed an ancient palace dating back to the Achaemenid dynasty in Dahaneh Gholaman located in Iran's southeastern province of Sistan-Baluchestan. [Within 50 miles of Zabol]
Comparing the structure in the Dahaneh Gholaman site with Achaemenid palaces in Takht-e Jamshid and Pasargaad proved that the newly-found site dates to the Achaemenid era, said Kourosh Mohammadkhani, leader of the archeological team, IRNA reported.
He added that the finding is the most significant achievement in the current phase of the recent study.
The Dahaneh Gholaman site comprises of 54 ancient structures, most of which were discovered during the years 1959 and 2008.
Thanks to coldrum for the link. For more, see http://www.presstv.ir. Also, see: About Archaeology.
[ This message was edited by: bat400 on 2012-07-01 05:32 ]
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bat400
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| Posted 01-07-2012 at 06:22
Prehistoric man emerges from Haldummulla, Sri Lanka
A special team led by Prof. Raj Somadeva recently made spectacular findings on a series of excavations which underpin the idea that Sri Lankan Culture is not something borrowed from any country or region. The excavations carried out in Haldummulla and Ranchamadama of Embilipitiya on Walawe valley offer a convincing picture of prehistoric man's transition to agricultural mode from hunting culture.
According as Prof. Raj Somadeva says, the generalised view that the arrival of Aryans in Sri Lanka [created] Sri Lankan culture [fails] as [signs] of a well organised prehistoric culture and civilisation begin to come- out from the earth. Considerable evidence of the hunting life of prehistoric man were earlier found in minor excavations and caves at Belilena, Pahien lena of Bulathsinhala, Batadomba lena of Kuruwita. What made him to leave high lands (such as Horton Plains) and settle down in lower regions of the country?
Dr. Shiran U. Deraniyagala believes that Horton Plains where Sri Lankan prehistoric man had inhabited was hit by a large scale drought that virtually left Horton Plains scorched and rendered it unfit for human habitation. The man migrated to the lower regions such as Haldummulla and Ranchamadama of Embilipitiya - regions which from time to time presented archaelogical riddles but concrete proof that prehistoric man lived there.
The expedition headed by Prof. Raj Somadeva is excavating in a site near Haldummulla town - a few metres off the Tamil school in Badulla district. This freezing region of excavation is situated 835 metres above sea level on the Southern Platform of central hills and is the oldest recognisable human settlement at a geographically staggering height. [They are] discovering earliest graves and tools.
According to Prof. Raj Somadeva, this evidence represents the man's transition to agricultural lifestyle from hunting in stone age and what has been unearthed, will create a cross-section of man's evolution with social customs around 3000 years back.
Comments Prof. Raj Somadeva further, "We excavated the graves on the way to Tamil Mahavidyalaya of Haldummulla in the year 2010. Above all, these finding belong to a period some 3750 years ago. This is the grave discovered from the highest elevation thus far (near the famous world's end). However, the excavated grave provided limited picture of the human settlement as it revealed only the facts about funeral rites. We excavated the sites in Haldummulla and found remains of human habitation which lay adjacent to the graves and which included tools and pottery resembling to what was found in graves..."
"These houses have been built on foundations made of unhewn stone. The foundation had long been covered by a huge stones that had rolled down from atop the mountain. On the excavations of these houses, we found painted pots, some tools of iron, a ring and some beads made from clay. These remains speak volumes for the prehistoric man's enthusiasm for fashionable living. At the sametime, the prehistoric man has skillfully used iron for various purposes. They have uncovered blackish red fragments of pottery and stone tools among the remains..."
He is of the view that the fundamental factor for building a civilisation is the knowledge of bronze technology and the works of prehistoric man uncovered in the Haldummulla excavations proves prehistoric man's expertise in bronze technology.
Thanks to coldrum for the link. For more, see http://www.sundayobserver.lk and http://www.presstv.ir. Haldummulla
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bat400
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| Posted 10-07-2012 at 20:51
West Asian Bead Found in Anhui Provence Ancient Tomb
A West Asian dragonfly-eye-shaped bead was found in a 2,000-odd-year Chinese tomb in Dangtu, Anhui province, indicating noblemen living in China's Warring States period (475 BC-221BC) were exposed to West Asian civilization.
Excavated from the roughly 400-sqm tomb were more than 40 cultural relics, of which most were potteries and celadon wares. Judging from those possessions, the occupant is expected to be an aristocrat of Yue, one of the seven major countries in the Warring States period, archaeologists said.
The most eye-catching burial object is a glass bead resembling a dragonfly eye in appearance. Such kind of jewellery was made by nomadic tribes in Mediterranean countries in the 10th century BC and believed to keep misfortune away from the wearers as well as to play the role of money, Gong Xicheng, deputy director of the provincial archaeological institute said.
Much contact between nomadic tribes of West Asia and China enabled the dragonfly-eye-shaped jewellery to take off in Chinese privileged class in the Warring States period, Gong said.
Thanks to coldrum for the link.
Source: http://english.anhuinews.com/system/2011/10/12/004484612.shtml.
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bat400
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| Posted 11-07-2012 at 15:51
Ancient skeleton in Taiwan linked to Polynesia
A human skeleton formally buried almost 8000 years ago on a small strategic island off China's coast is creating excitement that it may represent a direct line to the world's youngest race - New Zealand's Maori and Polynesians. Genetic evidence has long suggested Polynesians - including their youngest branch the Maori - derived from Taiwan's aboriginal people.
Now the link may be made in the skeleton found on 400 square metre Liang Island, part of Taiwan controlled Matsu islands, within shelling range of China's Fujian Province.
The skeleton was discovered by the Taiwanese military who were building a road on the unpopulated island. Taiwan's Council for Cultural Affairs says more scientific investigation is need after a local archaeological team exhumed the remains, believed to be 7900 years old.
The bones are thought to have belonged to a male, around 167 centimetres tall, who was between 30 and 35 years of age at the time of his death.
"We will send the remains to the US and Germany for more professional accelerator mass spectrometry radiocarbon dating and DNA biochemistry analysis," the Council said in a statement.
"Judging from the way the body was buried, it could be a person from what we now call the Austronesia language family," said Chen.
Taiwan's aborigines belong to the same language family, as do the people who migrated through Melanesia, as the Lapita people, and out across the Pacific, reaching as far as Hawaii, Rapanui and New Zealand.
Chen told AFP the body was buried in a foetal position like the one used by Taiwan's aborigines as late as the 20th century.
The find, if proven, could link all Polynesians and Taiwanese aboriginal people to southern China.
Thanks to coldrum for the link. For more, see http://www.stuff.co.nz/science/6700701.
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Godzilla1
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| Posted 12-07-2012 at 02:55
What Ho, Rune.
Thanks your reply - should've known MP would have covered this site.
I am astounded by the estimated age of occupation - 5k years before Malta sites? Yikes.
Peace, G
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tDrusin
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|  Posted 17-07-2012 at 16:30
wow!! thank you soooo much for posting so much fascinating information about asian history, this is very helpful to me!! love to all at the mp 
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bat400
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| Posted 31-07-2012 at 14:52
Archaeological dig in Qatar reveals fascinating material about the terrain and climate of Qatar seven millennia ago.
Carbon dating of ancient organic remains from Wadi Debay’an, a site a few kilometres south of Al Zubara on Qatar’s north-west coastline, has yielded the earliest yet known date for human occupation in Qatar – 7,500 years before present.
This was revealed by Environmental archaeologist Dr Emma Tetlow (Qatar National Environment Record (QNER)) in a presentation to the Qatar Natural History Group on recent investigations at Wadi Debay’an. (QNER is a combined project of the Qatar Museums Authority and the University of Birmingham, UK, directed by Dr Richard Cuttler.)
Previous to the work of the QNER, the application of environmental archaeology and geoarchaeology to sites in Qatar has been limited, but now geomorphological and sedimentological data are being used to establish sites which would have been favourable for human occupation. Applying analytical techniques to pollen, macroscopic plant remains and those of insects – Tetlow’s special field of research – is revealing fascinating material about the terrain and climate of Qatar seven millennia ago.
“In Europe,” observed Dr Tetlow, “waterlogged deposits are perfect retainers of ancient organic material, ideal for carbon dating – being anaerobic the contents of these deposits decay very slowly and can survive for thousands of years.
“When I came to Qatar I thought – well, this is a desert – we are not going to find any waterlogged deposits here. How wrong I was! At Wadi Debay’an we are using an electrically powered auger, known as an Atlas Copco Window Sampler, to drill deep beneath the surface terrain of loose stones and sand and the layer of concrete-like gypsum that lies under it, into layer upon layer of organic deposits containing vast quantities of material.”
Among the organic remains is that of a midden – an accumulated pile 2.5m thick where people dumped their rubbish, including thousands of fish bones. By identifying the bones, especially tiny ear bones known as otoliths, specialists can determine which species were found in the Arabian Gulf at the time and which formed preferred fish catches.
There are also sea shells, including those of pearl oyster shells and murex, and bivalves which have been pierced for use as ornaments, flint tools and fragments of pottery.
The 41 lithics (stone tools) found so far date to the late Neolithic period of around 6000 years ago and are finely worked. Some are made from a beautiful chocolate-coloured tabular flint. There are also 141 sherds of painted Ubaid pottery, made in Mesopotamia in what is now modern Iraq, at the same period.
Evidence of trade routes that covered thousands of kilometres, is borne out by the discovery of a deposit of obsidian, which has been sourced from the Taurus Mountains in Turkey. It is clear that these fish-eating inhabitants of Qatar were not living in isolation but as part of a wide pattern of settlements throughout Asia.
What may prove to be a post-hole for a dwelling has been excavated; evidence that at least for part of the year people were staying beside their main food source rather than leading a purely nomadic existence. A hearth near the post-hole yielded the earliest date of 7,500 years ago.
Dr Tetlow said that carbon dates have revealed evidence of continuous occupation of the Wadi Debay’an sites from the Neolithic right through to the Bronze Age, covering a span of some 5000 years.
Recently, deep within a trench, the archaeologists came across what looked like a wall built of stones. They now think that this is possibly a fish trap, of the type that was constructed around Qatar’s shores until very recently. Many can still be seen – long lines of stones stretching out into the shallow water at right angles to the shore, on which nets would have been fastened to trap fish as the tide went out.
Organic remains of insects, plants, wood and diatoms yield a wealth of information once under the microscope. From these experts can learn much about the climate at the time, the vegetation coverage and the fauna.
Excavations and research at Wadi Debay’an will continue through 2011 into 2012, and more discoveries at this remote and lonely site, on the surface so apparently barren but so rich in evidence of the lives of the ancestors of the Qatari people, will continue to shed light on ancient Qatar.
Thanks to coldrum for the link. For more click here: http://www.gulf-times.com/site/topics/article.asp?cu_no=2&item_no=468921&version=1&template_id=36&parent_id=16
[ This message was edited by: bat400 on 2012-07-31 15:00 ]
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bat400
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| Posted 29-08-2012 at 18:45
'Red Deer Cave people' may be new species of human
The fossilised remains of stone age people recovered from two caves in south west China may belong to a new species of human that survived until around the dawn of agriculture.
The partial skulls and other bone fragments, which are from at least four individuals and are between 14,300 and 11,500 years old, have an extraordinary mix of primitive and modern anatomical features that stunned the researchers who found them.
Named the Red Deer Cave people, after their apparent penchant for home-cooked venison, they are the most recent human remains found anywhere in the world that do not closely resemble modern humans.
The individuals differ from modern humans in their jutting jaws, large molar teeth, prominent brows, thick skulls, flat faces and broad noses. Their brains were of average size by ice age standards.
"They could be a new evolutionary line or a previously unknown modern human population that arrived early from Africa and failed to contribute genetically to living east Asians," said Darren Curnoe, who led the research team at the University of New South Wales in Australia.
"While finely balanced, I think the evidence is slightly weighted towards the Red Deer Cave people representing a new evolutionary line. First, their skulls are anatomically unique. They look very different to all modern humans, whether alive today or in Africa 150,000 years ago," Curnoe told the Guardian.
"Second, the very fact they persisted until almost 11,000 years ago, when we know that very modern looking people lived at the same time immediately to the east and south, suggests they must have been isolated from them. We might infer from this isolation that they either didn't interbreed or did so in a limited way."
One partial skeleton, with much of the skull and teeth, and some rib and limb bones, was recovered from Longlin cave in Guangxi province. More than 30 bones, including at least three partial skulls, two lower jaws and some teeth, ribs and limb fragments, were unearthed at nearby Maludong, or Red Deer Cave, near the city of Mengzi in Yunnan province.
At Maludong, fossil hunters also found remnants of various mammals, all of them species still around today, except for giant red deer, the remains of which were found in abundance. "They clearly had a taste for venison, with evidence they cooked these large deer in the cave," Curnoe said.
The stone age bones are particularly important because scientists have few human fossils from Asia that are well described and reliably dated, making the story of the peopling of Asia hopelessly vague. The latest findings point to a far more complex picture of human evolution than was previously thought.
"The discovery of the Red Deer Cave people shows just how complicated and interesting human evolutionary history was in Asia right at the end of the ice age. We had multiple populations living in the area, probably representing different evolutionary lines: the Red Deer Cave people on the East Asian continent, Homo floresiensis, or the 'Hobbit', on the island of Flores in Indonesia, and modern humans widely dispersed from northeast Asia to Australia. This paints an amazing picture of diversity, one we had no clue about until this last decade," Curnoe said.
Much of Asia was also occupied by Neanderthals and another group of archaic humans called the Denisovans. Scientists learned of the Denisovans after recovering a fossilised little finger from the Denisova cave in the Altai mountains of southern Siberia in 2010.
The fossils from Longlin cave were found in 1979 by a geologist prospecting in the area. At the time, researchers removed only the lower jaw and a few fragments of rib and limb bones from the cave wall. The rest of the skeleton was left encased in a block of rock, which sat in the basement of the Yunnan Institute of Cultural Relics and Archaeology in Kunming, Yunnan, for 30 years. The fossils were rediscovered in 2009 by Ji Xueping, a researcher at the institute, who teamed up with Curnoe to examine the remains.
"It was clear from what we could see that the remains were very primitive and likely to be scientifically important. We had a skilled technician remove the bones from the rock, and they were glued back together. Only then was it clear what we had found: a partial skeleton with a very unusual anatomy," Curnoe said.
Lumps of charcoal uncovered alongside the Longlin fossils were carbon dated to 11,500 years, a time when modern humans in southern China began to make pottery for food storage and to gather wild rice in some of the first steps towards full-scale farming.
Marta Mirazón Lahr, an evolutionary biologist at Cambridge University, is convinced the remains are from modern humans. The unusual features, she said, suggest the Red Deer Cave people are either "late descendants of an early population of modern humans in Asia" or a very small population that developed the traits through a process known as genetic drift.
Chris Stringer, head of human origins at the Natural History Museum, London, was similarly sceptical. "The human remains from the Longlin Cave and Maludong are very important, particularly because we do not have much well-described and well-dated material from the late Pleistocene of China.
"The fossils are unlike recent populations of modern humans in several respects, and the mosaic of more archaic features could indicate the dispersal of a poorly known and more primitive form of modern human that left Africa before the main exodus at about 60,000 years. This dispersal could have reached as far as China, surviving there for many millennia, before disappearing in the last 12,000 years."
But he added: "There might be another possible explanation for the more archaic features. Could these alternatively be attributed to gene flow from a more archaic population that survived alongside modern humans? In the case of the Longlin Cave and Maludong fossils, the most likely candidate would be the enigmatic Denisovans who apparently interbred with the ancestors of modern Australasians somewhere in south east Asia. Could these Chinese fossils be further evidence of such hybridisation?"
Thanks to coldrum for the link. For more, see http://www.guardian.co.uk/science/2012/mar/14/red-deer-cave-people-species-human
[ This message was edited by: bat400 on 2012-08-29 18:48 ]
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