|
What's New? 3/10/08 Washington
University in St. Louis An international group of researchers has found evidence for the earliest transport use of the donkey and the early phases of donkey domestication, suggesting the process of domestication may have been slower and less linear than previously thought. Based on a study of 10 donkey skeletons from three graves dedicated to donkeys in the funerary complex of one of the first Pharaoh's at Abydos, Egypt, the team, led by Fiona Marshall, Ph.D., professor of Anthropology at Washington University in St. Louis, and Stine Rossel of the University of Copenhagen, found that donkeys around 5,000 years ago were in an early phase of domestication. They looked like wild animals but displayed joint wear that showed that they were used as domestic animals. “Genetic research has suggested African origins for the donkey,” said Marshall. “But coming up with an exact time and location for domestication is difficult because signs of early domestication can be hard to see. Our findings show that traces of human management can indicate domestication before skeletal or even genetic changes." The previously unpublished research was presented in “Domestication of the Donkey: New Data on Timing, Process and Indicators” in the March 10 online edition of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. Domestication of the donkey from the African wild ass was a pivotal point in human history. It transformed ancient transport systems in Africa and Asia and the organization of early cities and pastoral societies. The research team examined the 5,000-year-old Abydos skeletons along with 53 modern donkey and African wild ass skeletons. Analysis showed that the Abydos metacarpals were similar in overall proportions to those of wild ass, but individual measurements varied. Mid-shaft breadths resembled wild ass, but mid-shaft depths and distal breadths were intermediate between wild ass and domestic donkey. Despite this, all the Abydos skeletons exhibited a range of wear and other pathologies on their bones consistent with load carrying. Morphological similarities to wild ass show that despite their use as beasts of burden, donkeys were still undergoing considerable phenotypic change during the early dynastic period in Egypt. This pattern is consistent with recent studies of other domestic animals that suggest that the process of domestication is slower and more complicated than had been previously thought. 2/28/08 University
of Manchester Fans of the ancient Egyptians will be interested to know that University of Manchester Egyptologists have published two new books. Cleopatra – Last Queen of Egypt (Profile Books) is a revealing biography of one of Egypt’s greatest rulers told, not through the histories of the Romans or the lens of Hollywood myth-making, but through the expert knowledge of Joyce Tyldesley. Joyce, an Egyptian queens specialist in the KNH Centre for Biomedical Egyptology and Manchester Museum, has stripped away preconceptions and used her skills as an Egyptologist to give a rich picture of a country and its queen. “Cleopatra was the last monarch of the Macedonian dynasty of Ptolemies who had ruled Egypt for three centuries,” said Joyce. “Highly educated – she was the only one of the Ptolemies to read and speak ancient Egyptian as well as the court Greek – and clever – her famous trysts with Julius Caesar and Mark Antony were as much to do with politics as the heart – Cleopatra steered her kingdom through impossibly taxing internal crises and defended it against Roman imperialism.” The book explores the debate surrounding Cleopatra’s provenance and beauty, uncovers the history of the now-submerged ancient city of Alexandria, home to Cleopatra’s palace, as well as Cleopatra’s cultural afterlife – how the myth was made and preserved. A second book – Egyptian Mummies and Modern Science (Cambridge University Press) – has also been published, this time written by a long-established team of Manchester scientists. Edited by the Director of the KNH Centre, Rosalie David, the book aims to show how the team’s investigative methods are being used for new international research into disease evolution and ancient Egyptian pharmacy. Highlighting the unique resource of Manchester’s Egyptian Mummy Tissue Bank, the book looks at the progress of ancient DNA research and the treatments available for conserving mummified remains. “The main aims of this book are to show how biomedical and scientific techniques have led to a new understanding of some aspects of ancient Egyptian society,” said Rosalie. “There has been a remarkable increase in the number of scientific studies on mummies over the past two decades and people are now aware of the information that can be gained from such investigations, in terms of explaining the cultural context of human remains and in adding knowledge to how disease has evolved from ancient to modern times.” 2/12/08 UCLA Archaeologists from UCLA and the University of Groningen (RUG) in the Netherlands have found the earliest evidence ever discovered of an ancient Egyptian agricultural settlement, including farmed grains, remains of domesticated animals, pits for cooking and even floors for what appear to be dwellings, the National Geographic Society announced today. The findings, which were unearthed in 2006 and are still being analyzed, also suggest possible trade links with the Red Sea, including a thoroughfare from Mesopotamia, which is known to have practiced agriculture 2,000 years before ancient Egypt. "By the time of the Pharaohs, everything in ancient Egypt centered around agriculture," said Willeke Wendrich, the excavation's co-director and an associate professor of Near Eastern languages and cultures at UCLA. "What we've found here is a window into the development of agriculture some 2,000 years earlier. We hope this work will help us answer basic questions about how, why and when ancient Egypt adopted agriculture." Just centimeters below the surface of a fertile oasis located about 50 miles southwest of Cairo, the UCLA-RUG team excavated domestic wheat and barley and found the remains of domesticated animals — pigs, goats and sheep — along with evidence of fishing and hunting. None of the varieties of domesticated animals or grains are indigenous to the area, so they would have to have been introduced. The archaeological team also found a bracelet made of a type of shell only found along the Red Sea, suggesting a possible trade link with the cradle of agriculture in the Near East. In addition, they unearthed clay floors of what may have been simple structures — possibly posts with some kind of matting overhead. In the 1920s, British archaeologist Gertrude Caton Thompson found traces of the same domesticated grains in storage pits less than a mile from the current site. After the advent of carbon-dating technology, the grain was dated to 5,200 B.C., making the discovery the earliest evidence of agriculture in ancient Egypt. To this day, no earlier evidence of agriculture has been found in Egypt. But because no surrounding settlement was ever excavated, all kinds of questions remained about the context in which agriculture began to unfold in ancient Egypt. "We had evidence that there was agriculture by 5,200 B.C. but not how it was used in a domestic context," said excavation co-leader René Cappers, a professor of paleobotany at the University of Groningen, the second-oldest university in the Netherlands. "Now, for the first time, we have domesticated plants and animals in a village context." The latest findings date to the Neolithic period, a stage of human development that occurred at various times around world, beginning in 8,600 B.C. Sometimes called the New Stone Age, the period is characterized by the introduction of farming, animal husbandry and a movement away from hunting and gathering and toward a less nomadic way of life, with pots, tools and settlements. Few clues have been found of Egypt's Neolithic past in the Nile Valley, possibly because they were either buried under silt from the Nile or wiped away when the river changed its course, the archaeologists said. The UCLA-RUG excavation site is located just outside the river valley in what is now a desert region. With more than three feet of undisturbed strata at the site, the team expects to be able to piece together the evolution of domestication in the area between 5,200 B.C. and about 4,200 B.C. "The arrival of the entire Neolithic package in ancient Egypt has always been treated as a moment in time, but we're finding stratified layers that will allow us to tease out the development of agriculture in this area as it developed over the course of hundreds of years," said Wendrich, who is one of the core faculty members at UCLA's Cotsen Institute of Archaeology. Called the Fayum, the oasis where the team is working was surrounded by prehistoric sites, most of which were excavated in the 1920s. Generations of archaeologists had written off the area, until the UCLA-RUG team decided to re-explore the site. "We knew that the settlement existed, but the site had been under cultivation since the 1960s, so archaeologists assumed it had been destroyed," Wendrich said. "We got to this site in the nick of time." Modern laser-leveling farming techniques were about to annihilate the site in 2006, but the archaeological team succeed in rescuing the six-acre plot for future research by renting it for a year while they conducted their initial fieldwork. In the meantime, Egypt's Supreme Council of Antiquities has taken steps to permanently protect the site. Last updated 4/29/08. |