Grizzly details about ancient child sacrifices, maps of lost cities in the Amazon, and answers to the mysteries of Stonehenge are some of this year’s insights into human history.
past brain
Finding human brains in archaeological sites is more common than you think. The new archive catalogs approximately 4,400 ancient brains found dried, frozen, or otherwise preserved (SN: 3/19/24). The brain’s amazing robustness may be due to its chemical structure.
ancient arts and crafts
The oldest rock art in the Americas may be a series of cave paintings in Argentina dating back about 8,200 years (SN: 3/9/24, p. 16). This is thousands of years older than other rock art in the area. The approximately 900 murals in the cave, known as Cueva Huenul 1, contain geometric patterns and human and animal figures, helping to preserve cultural knowledge from generation to generation of hunter-gatherers. There may be.
pastoralist heritage
The Yamnaya nomads, who arrived from southwest Asia, rewrote the genetic history of Europe starting about 5,000 years ago, according to DNA from more than 1,600 ancient humans.SN: 2/10/24, p. 14). Northern Europeans may have Yamnaya ancestry, and may be grateful for their height and light skin color, as well as their susceptibility to multiple sclerosis. Eastern Europeans, on the other hand, may have inherited the Yamnaya gene mutation associated with Alzheimer’s disease.
egyptian ergonomics
Ancient Egyptian scribes carried their burdens by bending over their scrolls (SN: June 27, 2024). The skeletons of 30 scribes buried in the Abu Sir pyramid complex show signs of arthritis and other damage caused by poor posture.
Stonehenge Scotland’s centerpiece
The mysterious altar stone at the center of Stonehenge probably came from Scotland (SN: 8/14/24). Previously thought to share Welsh origins with other Stonehenge blocks, this stone closely matches the mineral composition of the Orcadian Basin, a rock formation in Scotland.
A terrible, terrible, no good, very bad day in Pompeii
Pompeii’s infamous apocalypse was worse than expected. When Mount Vesuvius erupted in 79 AD, it not only blanketed nearby cities with deadly hot gases, ash and rock, but also caused deadly earthquakes, leaving behind collapsed buildings and shattered skeletons. Research has been discovered (SN: 8/7/24).
Maya removes her mask and offers a sacrifice.
DNA reveals that all the children sacrificed in Mayan burial chambers in the Yucatan Peninsula were boys, overturning the theory that women were sacrificed there in fertility rituals (SN: 6/12/24). The boys who were sacrificed between 500 and 900 AD may have been killed to appease the rain god.
There are no more lost cities
Laser scanning reveals the earliest and largest known urban complex in the Amazon (SN: 1/11/24). Beneath the trees of Ecuador’s Upano Valley, thousands of mounds that were once homes and community spaces lie along with the remains of roads and farms. Inhabited from approximately 500 BC to 1500 AD, the city shows how sophisticated Amazonian civilization was long before European conquest.
X marks the spot
In a rare case of productive social media scrolling, researchers have identified part of a lost civilization’s alphabet from a photo of a carved stone tablet posted to X (SN: June 24, 2024). Discovered in Spain, this tablet belongs to the Tartessian civilization, which disappeared in the 5th century BC. This writing system is associated with the Phoenician alphabet, which formed the letters of Latin, Spanish, and English.
Agriculture was not inevitable
For thousands of years, a group of Stone Age hunter-gatherers known as the Iberomaurs ate a vegetarian diet based on wild plants. And they did it without growing those plants as crops, according to an analysis of some 15,000-year-old human bones and teeth unearthed from a Moroccan cave (SN: 6/1/24, p. 14). These findings challenge the conventional idea that plant-based diets will eventually lead humans to grow their own food.
Population boom idea ends in failure
Contrary to popular belief, the early Polynesian settlers of Rapa Nui, also known as Easter Island, may not have experienced a population boom large enough to destroy their civilization and the island’s environment. Ground surveys and satellite data show that Polynesian islanders, who arrived about 800 years ago, established a modest agricultural system and maintained a stable population of fewer than 4,000 people until the arrival of Europeans 300 years ago. suggests (SN: 8/10/24, p. 14).
