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Earliest testimony of war in Human history: the massacre of Nataruk

A chilling prehistoric ‘war grave’ containing the smashed remains of hunter-gatherers is the first evidence of a human massacre and demonstrates the terrifying aggression of early man.The fossilised bones of a group of 27 hunter-gatherers, who were murdered 10,000 years ago, was discovered at Nataruk near Lake Turkana in Kenya.Four victims, including one heavily pregnant woman were bound by the hands and feet before they was slaughtered. The others showed signs of extreme violence and some had blades and arrows still buried in their skulls. 

       The origins of human aggression are controversial, with many archaeologists believing that hunter-gatherers were largely peaceful, and did not resort to warfare until after the agricultural revolution, when groups grew jealous of the land and possessions of their rivals. Before the find, the earliest war grave was in Darmstadt, Germany, and dated to around 5000BC.  

         But the new site suggests that early man was also capable of acts of extreme violence. Researchers believe the Nataruk massacre is the earliest scientifically-dated historical evidence of human conflict.

Study author Professor Robert Foley, also from Cambridge’s Leverhulme Centre for Human Evolutionary Studies said the findings show that violence is as much part of the human character as the altruism which allowed us to be the most cooperative species on the planet.“I’ve no doubt it is in our biology to be aggressive and lethal, just as it is to be deeply caring and loving,” he said.“A lot of what we understand about human evolutionary biology suggests these are two sides of the same coin.” The 27 skeletons included at least eight women and six children. Twelve of the skeletons were relatively complete, and showed clear signs of a violent death, including smashed skulls and cheekbones, broken hands, ribs and knees and evidence of arrow wounds to their necks. 

          Arrow tips were lodged in the skull and chest of two men.Several of the skeletons were found face down with the faces smashed, possibly by wooden clubs, and none had been buried.“The deaths at Nataruk are testimony to the antiquity of inter-group violence and war,” said lead author Dr Marta Mirazón Lahr. “These human remains record the intentional killing of a small band of foragers with no deliberate burial, and provide unique evidence that warfare was part of the repertoire of inter-group relations among some prehistoric hunter-gatherers.”

         Archaeologists believe the victims represent an extended family who were attacked and killed by a rival group of prehistoric foragers. The massacre is likely to have occurred between 9,500 to 10,500 years ago, around the start of the Holocene: the geological epoch that followed the last Ice Age.At that time the area around Nataruk was a fertile lakeshore bordered by marshland and forest giving covetable access to drinking water and fish.

      “The Nataruk massacre may have resulted from an attempt to seize resources – territory, women, children, food stored in pots – whose value was similar to those of later food-producing agricultural societies, among whom violent attacks on settlements became part of life,” added Mirazón Lahr.“This would extend the history of the same underlying socio-economic conditions that characterise other instances of early warfare: a more settled, materially richer way of life. “. Antagonism between hunter-gatherer groups in recent history often resulted in men being killed, with women and children subsumed into the victorious group. At Nataruk, however, it seems few, if any, were spared. The remains of a six-to-nine month-old foetus were recovered from within the abdominal cavity of one of the women.

       One adult male skeleton had an obsidian ‘bladelet’ still embedded in his skull. It didn’t perforate the bone, but another lesion suggests a second weapon did, crushing the entire right-front part of the head and face.“The man appears to have been hit in the head by at least two projectiles and in the knees by a blunt instrument, falling face down into the lagoon’s shallow water,” said Mirazón Lahr. Another adult male took two blows to the head – one above the right eye, the other on the left side of the skull – both crushing his skull at the point of impact, causing it to crack in different directions. 

The research was published in Nature

Infornation and photo extracted from  The Telegraph online version

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/earth/environment/archaeology/12111005/Prehistoric-war-grave-reveals-bodies-from-first-ever-human-massacre.html

WWI soldier room unchanged since 1918

The name of dragoons officer Hubert Rochereau is commemorated on a war memorial in Bélâbre, his native village in central France, along with those of other young men who lost their lives in the first world war. But Rochereau also has a much more poignant and exceptional memorial: his room in a large family house in the village has been preserved with his belongings for almost 100 years since his death in Belgium. A lace bedspread is still on the bed, adorned with photographs and Rochereau’s feathered helmet. His moth-eaten military jacket hangs limply on a hanger. His chair, tucked under his desk, faces the window in the room where he was born on 10 October 1896. 

          He died in an English field ambulance on 26 April 1918, a day after being wounded during fighting for control of the village of Loker, in Belgium. The village was in allied hands for much of the war but changed hands several times between 25 and 30 April, and was finally recaptured by French forces four days after Rochereau’s death. The parents of the young officer kept his room exactly as it was the day he left for the battlefront. When they decided to move in 1935, they stipulated in the sale that Rochereau’s room should not be changed for 500 years.

“This clause had no legal basis,” said the current owner, retired local official Daniel Fabre, who showed the room to the Nouvelle République newspaper. But nevertheless he and his wife, who inherited the house from her grandparents, have respected the wishes of Rochereau’s parents and will continue to do so. 

     The room contains the spurs of the cavalry officer, his sword and a fencing helmet, and a collection of pistols. A flag is propped up beside the wall. His pipes are on his desk and the stale smell of English tobacco comes from a cigarette packet. Rochereau, a second lieutenant with the 15th Dragoons Regiment based in Libourne, outside Bordeaux, received a posthumous croix de guerre, the French equivalent of being mentioned in dispatches, and the Legion of Honour for his extreme bravery on the battlefield. As well as being commemorated at the local war memorial, his name is also on the monument to the fallen in Libourne.      

     The regiment’s history recounts how Rochereau’s commander was killed by a bullet to the head after giving the “heroic” order to counterattack in Loker. On Rochereau’s desk is a vial on which, in keeping with tradition, a label records that it contains “the soil of Flanders on which our dear child fell and which has kept his remains for four years”. 

    The battlefields of Flanders, which stretched from north-east France into Belgium, saw some of the fiercest fighting of the 1914-18 war. To commemorate the 580,000 soldiers who died on that part of the western front, a memorial by the architect Philippe Prost is due to be inaugurated by the French president, François Hollande, on 11 November. 

      The soldiers who died there came not only from the UK, France, Belgium and Germany but also from as far afield as Canada, South Africa, New Zealand, Australia and India. The memorial at Notre-Dame-de-Lorette, France’s biggest national war cemetery, where the remains of 40,000 French soldiers are interred, is a giant ring of gilded metal bearing the names of the dead. Prost says he intended the Ring of Memory to symbolise unity and eternity.

from http://www.theguardian.com

Amazing news!!:Found after 500 years, the wreck of Christopher Columbus’s flagship the Santa Maria

More than five centuries after Christopher Columbus’s flagship, the Santa Maria, was wrecked in the Caribbean, archaeological investigators think they may have discovered the vessel’s long-lost remains – lying at the bottom of the sea off the north coast of Haiti. It’s likely to be one of the world’s most important underwater archaeological discoveries.

 “All the geographical, underwater topography and archaeological evidence strongly suggests that this wreck is Columbus’ famous flagship, the Santa Maria,” said the leader of a recent reconnaissance expedition to the site, one of America’s top underwater archaeological investigators, Barry Clifford. 

“The Haitian government has been extremely helpful – and we now need to continue working  with them to carry out a detailed archaeological excavation of the wreck,” he said.

So far, Mr Clifford’s team has carried out purely non-invasive survey work at the site – measuring and photographing it.

              Tentatively identifying the wreck as the Santa Maria has been made possible by quite separate discoveries made by other archaeologists in 2003 suggesting the probable location of Columbus’ fort relatively nearby. Armed with this new information about the location of the fort, Clifford was able to use data in  Christopher Columbus’ diary to work out where the wreck should be.

              An expedition, mounted by his team a decade ago, had already found and photographed the wreck – but had not, at that stage, realized its probable identity. It’s a current re-examination of underwater photographs from that initial survey (carried out back in 2003), combined with data from recent reconnaissance dives on the site (carried out by Clifford’s team earlier this month), that have allowed Clifford to tentatively identify the wreck as that of the Santa Maria.

             The evidence so far is substantial. It is the right location in terms of how Christopher Columbus, writing in his diary, described the wreck in relation to his fort.The site is also an exact match in terms of historical knowledge about the underwater topography associated with the loss of the Santa Maria. The local currents are  also consistent with what is known historically about the way the vessel drifted immediately prior to its demise. The footprint of the wreck, represented by the pile of ship’s ballast, is also exactly what one would expect from a vessel the size of theSanta Maria. Using marine magnetometers, side-scan sonar equipment and divers, Mr. Clifford’s team has, over several years, investigated more than 400 seabed anomalies off the north coast of Haiti and has narrowed the search for the Santa Maria down to the tiny area where the wreck, which the team thinks may well be Columbus’ lost vessel, has been found.

              A re-examination of the photographic evidence taken during the 2003 initial survey of the site by Mr. Clifford and his son Brandon has also provided evidence which is consistent with the vessel being from Columbus’ era - including a probable early cannon of exactly the type  known to have been on-board the Santa Maria. When Clifford and his team returned to the site earlier this month, their intention was to definitively identify the cannon and other surface artefacts that had been photographed back in 2003. But tragically all the key visible diagnostic objects including the cannon had been looted by illicit raiders.

            “We’ve informed the Haitian government of our discovery – and we are looking forward to working with them and other Haitian colleagues to ensure that the site is fully protected and preserved. It will be a wonderful opportunity to work with the Haitian authorities to preserve the evidence and artefacts of the ship that changed the world,” said Mr. Clifford.

“I am confident that a full excavation of the wreck will yield the first ever detailed marine archaeological evidence of Columbus’ discovery of America.” “Ideally, if excavations go well and depending on the state of preservation of any buried timber, it may ultimately be possible to lift any surviving remains of the vessel, fully conserve them and then put them on permanent public exhibition in a museum in Haiti. “I believe that, treated in this way, the wreck has the potential to play a major role in helping to further develop Haiti’s tourism industry in the future,” he said.

              Mr Clifford, who discussed the wreck site with the President of Haiti, Michel Martelly last year, is one of the world’s most experienced explorers of underwater archaeological sites. He has carried out survey work on dozens of historic wrecks in different parts of the world over the past four decades –  and was the discoverer and excavator of the world’s first fully verified pirate shipwreck, the Whydah, back in 1984,  and more recently discovered Captain Kidd’s flagship off Madagascar.

The Santa Maria was built at some stage in the second half of the 15 century in northern Spain’s Basque Country. In 1492, Columbus hired the ship and sailed in it from southern Spain’s Atlantic coast via the Canary Islands in search of a new western route to Asia.

After 37 days, Columbus reached the Bahamas – but, just over ten weeks later, his flagship, the Santa Maria, with Columbus on board, drifted at night onto a reef off the northern coast of Haiti and had to be abandoned. Then, in a native village nearby, Columbus began building his first fort – and,  a week later, leaving many of his men behind in the fort, he used  his two remaining vessels to sail back to Spain in order to report his discovery of what he perceived as a new westerly route to Asia  to his royal patrons  - King Ferdinand and Queen Isabella of Spain.

              A leading American maritime archaeologist, Professor Charles Beeker of Indiana University, who accompanied Mr Clifford’s recent reconnaissance expedition to Haiti and who also carried out an underwater visual assessment of the site, says that it “warrants a detailed scientific investigation to obtain diagnostic artefacts”.“There is some very compelling evidence  from the 2003 photographs of the site and from the recent reconnaissance dives that this wreck may well be the Santa Maria,”“But an excavation  will be necessary in order to find more evidence and confirm that,” said Professor Beeker who is Director of the University of Indiana’s Office of Underwater Science.

             The investigation into the wreck is being supported by the American TV network, the History channel, which has secured the exclusive rights to produce a major television programme on the subject.

from http://www.independent.co.uk/

Reasons for admission in Mental hospitals in 1864 - 1889

Read carefully the list and then think...considering reasons for admission in a mental hospital would you be able to avoid it today?

Ancient Roman wine preserved in glass bottle

Scientists want to study samples of the world’s oldest wine, currently on display at the Historical Museum of the Palatinate in the western German city of Speyer. There’s just one problem: everyone’s afraid to open the bottle.

The glass bottle, thought to be at least 1,650 years old, was found in a Roman grave near Speyer in 1867 and put on display at the museum. Since then, it’s been handled extremely carefully, and been on display in the exact same spot in the museum for 100 years.

Museum directors fear that a moment's carelessness could shatter the bottle, destroying its priceless content. Though scientists would like to test it to figure out exactly how old the wine is and where it comes from, as well as perhaps seeing how it tastes – cracking it open is out of the question. 

“It’s not clear what would happen if air gets into the wine,” said Ludger Tekampe, who heads the department responsible for storing it. 

There’s also the danger that, after all this time, it could have become poisonous, although scientists suspect the alcohol would not be dangerous, but just taste disgusting.

In any event, the ultra-old wine has survived a lot, including ancient drinkers, handling on its way to the museum, and two world wars, with nary a problem. 

Tekampe said he hasn’t observed any changes in the wine or its container in his 25 years at the museum, the bottle appears to have been carefully constructed by the Romans to prevent the wine from decomposing.

“The content is remarkably stable,” Tekampe said. 

Still he’s the only one who handles the bottle. Everyone else is just too afraid.

“I held the bottle in my hand twice during renovations. It was a strange feeling,” Tekampe said.

from http://www.thelocal.de/

Archaeologists uncover a scene of horror at 'Swedish Pompeii'

Swedish archaeologists have uncovered what appears to be a 5th-century murder mystery at an island fort that's being compared to Italy's Pompeii ruins. "It's more of a frozen moment than you normally see in archaeology," said Helene Wilhelmson, a researcher who specializes in the study of bones at Sweden's Lund University. "It's like Pompeii: Something terrible happened, and everything just stopped." Five bodies already have been unearthed amid the ruins of one of the settlement's houses on the island of Öland, just off the Swedish coast. In a news release, Lund University said more human bones have been identified in other parts of the fort, suggesting there may be scores or hundreds of bodies yet to be dug out. 

                "There are so many bodies, it must have been a very violent and well-organized raid," Wilhelmson said. She and her colleagues say the scene dates to what's known as the Migration Period, when tribes moved out from Scandinavia and other areas of northern Europe to confront a Roman Empire in decline. 

                       During this era, it was customary for Scandinavians to burn their dead, and very few uncremated remains have previously been recovered, the university said. Was no one left to light the funeral pyre on Öland? Another puzzling fact is that archaeologists found gilded brooches that hadn't been plundered by the attackers — and were still buried at the site 1,500 years later. Wilhelmson wonders whether the site became taboo. "I don't think anyone dared to go near it for a very long time," she said. 

                      Lund University archaeologist Nicolo Dell'Unto is creating computerized 3-D models of the ruined fort to reconstruct the crime scene — and perhaps solve the mystery surrounding the massacre. "Using 3-D modeling gives us the unprecedented opportunity to see all the bodies simultaneously, even though the skeletons were removed one by one," Dell'Unto said.

from http://www.nbcnews.com/science/

The mass grave of Hastings finally found?

Historian believes the 10,000 victims of the Battle of Hastings may be buried in a field one mile north west of the official site at Battle.

 

The site of where the Battle of Hastings has been commemorated for the last 1,000 years is in the wrong place, it has been claimed.

Ever since the 1066 battle that led to the Norman Conquest, history has recorded the event as happening at what is now Battle Abbey in the East Sussex town.

But although some 10,000 men are believed to have been killed in the historic conflict, no human remains or artefects from the battle have ever been found at the location.

This has given rise to several historians to examine alternative sites for the battle that was a decisive victory for William the Conqueror and saw the death of King Harold.

Now historian and author John Grehan believes he has finally found the actual location - on a steep hill one mile north west of Battle.

It is documented that Harold assembled his English army on Caldbec Hill before advancing on Senlac Hill (Battle Hill) a mile away to meet the invading Normans.

But Mr Grehan believes his research shows Harold never left his defensive hilltop position and the Normans took the battle to the English.

He has studied contemporaneous documents in the national archives and built up a dossier of circumstantial evidence that, when put together, make a more than convincing argument in his favour.

Witness accounts from 1066 state the battle was fought on steep and unploughed terrain, consistent with Caldbec Hill. Senlac Hill was cultivated and had gentle slopes.

The Normans erected a cairn of stones on the battle site to commemorate their victory, known as a Mount-joie in French. The summit of Caldbec Hill is still today called Mountjoy.

One English source from the time, John of Worcester, stated the battle was fought nine miles from Hastings, the same distance as Caldbec Hill. Senlac Hill is eight miles away.

Harold is supposed to have abandoned his high position to meet William on lower ground, a tactical move that makes no sense at all as he would have been moving away from his reinforcements.

Furthermore, Mr Grehan believes he has identified the site of a mass grave where the fallen soldiers were buried after the battle at a ditch at the foot of Caldbec Hill.

He is now calling for an archaeological dig to take place there straight away.

If he is proven right, the history books published over the last millennium may have to be re-written.

Mr Grehan, a 61-year-old historian from Shoreham, West Sussex, has made his arguments in a new book about to be published called 'The Battle of Hastings - The Uncomfortable Truth'.

He said: "I assumed everything was known about the Battle of Hastings but I found that almost nothing is known by way of fact.

"The evidence pointing towards Caldbec Hill as the scene of the battle is, at present, circumstantial, but it is still more than exists for the current Battle Abbey site.

"Excavations have been carried out at Battle Abbey and remnants pre-dating the battle were found but nothing relating to the conquest.

"The Battle of Lewis took place 200 years later 20 miles down the road and they dig up bodies by the cart load there.

"Some 10,000 men died at the Battle of Hastings; there has to be a mass grave somewhere.

"You would have also expected to find considerable pieces of battle material like shields, helmets, swords, axes, bits of armour.

"Having carried out the research, there are 11 main points which suggest the battle was fought in the wrong place.

"Harold is supposed to have abandoned his assembly point on Caldbec Hill to take up a position on the lower ridge of Battle Hill even though many of his men had still not arrived.

"This means that even though he could see the Normans approaching he moved further away from his incoming reinforcements. This makes no sense at all.

"The primary sources state Harold was taken by surprise.

"This means he could not have been advancing to meet the Normans as his troops would have been in some kind of formation.

"The only possible interpretation of this can be that Harold was not expecting to fight at that time and was taken unawares at the concentration point with his army unformed.

"This must mean that the battle was fought at the English army's assembly point."

Mr Grehan said he believes the human remains from the battle were hastily rolled down the hill and buried in an open ditch by the victorious Normans.

He said: "Two days after the battle the Normans moved on towards Winchester. They had two days to get rid of the thousands of bodies. You can't dig that many graves in such a short space of time.

"At the bottom of Caldbec Hill is Malfose ditch, I believe the bodies were rolled down the hill and dumped in this ditch which was filled in.

"A proper archaeological dig of that ditch now needs to happen.

"Whatever the outcome, it doesn't make a difference which hill the battle was fought on.

"But history books may need to be re-written if I am proved right."

Roy Porter, the regional curator for English Heritage which owns Battle Abbey, said they were obliged to look into alternative theories for the battle site.

But he said the spot the abbey is built on was not the most obvious at the time as it required major work to dig into the hill.

He said: "Archaeological evidence shows that the abbey's impractical location required extensive alterations to the hill on which it sits.

"Any suggestion that the battle occurred elsewhere needs to explain why this difficult location for the abbey was chosen instead.

"The tradition that the abbey was founded on the site of the Battle of Hastings is based on a number of historical sources, including William of Malmesbury and is documented before 1120.

"It would be premature to comment on Mr Grehan's thesis until the book is published.

"The interpretation of our sites is subject to periodic revision and this process involves our historians reassessing the available evidence and considering new theories.

"Battle Abbey will be the subject of this work in due course but at the present time there is little reason to discount the scholarly consensus regarding the site."

from http://www.telegraph.co.uk 

sunday October 28th 2012

 

First europeans cradle

This is a interactive web page designed by digital edition of  "El Mundo" newspaper, where are explained, easily and in a fully - visual way, most important facts of one of the most important anthropological sites in the world, located near the spanish city of Burgos. It is, as you might have guess by now,  Atapuerca. Here´s the link:

http://www.elmundo.es/especiales/2007/07/ciencia/atapuerca/cronica.html

data in this link can be complemented in this other link, the "official" web page of Atapuerca project

http://www.atapuerca.tv/

the clumsy walking Hominid

A fossil discovered in Ethiopia suggests that humans' prehistoric relatives may have lived in the trees for a million years longer than was previously thought.

The find may be our first glimpse of a separate, extinct, branch of the human family, collectively called hominins. It also hints that there may have been several evolutionary paths leading to feet adapted for walking upright.

The fossil, a partial foot, was found in 3.4-million-year-old rocks at Woranso-Mille in the Afar region of Ethiopia. Bones of the hominin Australopithecus afarensis — the species to which the famous 'Lucy' skeleton belongs — have also been found in this location and from the same period.

But unlike Au. afarensis, the latest find has an opposable big toe — rather like a thumb on the foot — that would have allowed the species to grasp branches while climbing. Modern apes have similar toes, but the youngest hominin previously known to have them is Ardipithecus ramidus, which lived about 4.4 million years ago. The details of the discovery are published today in Nature¹.

Au. afarensis has a big toe that is more closely aligned with the other digits on the foot, an adaptation that provides support during upright walking. Au. afarensis “was fully bipedal and had already abandoned life in the trees”, says study author Yohannes Haile-Selassie of the Cleveland Museum of Natural History in Ohio, whereas the newly discovered creature had not seemingly committed to life on the ground.

Other features of the fossil foot show that it did not belong to an ape, but that it is truly a member of the hominins, says Haile-Selassie. The latest specimen is “very much like the Ardipithecus foot, which I believe had many hominin features, so it’s likely to be a hominin”, agrees Daniel Lieberman, an anthropologist at Harvard University in Cambridge, Massachusetts, who was not involved in the study.

Good grasp of history

The discovery shows that one hominin lineage had grasping feet for at least a million years after Ar. ramidus. The creature was probably more agile in the trees than Au. afarensis but less nimble on two feet, says William Harcourt-Smith, an anthropologist at the City University of New York’s Lehman College. “We can only get a tantalizing glimpse at this, but its bipedal gait is likely to have been very different from Lucy’s and was probably a lot less efficient,” he says.

The finding will force a rethink regarding the course of early hominin evolution, Harcourt-Smith adds. The addition of a mystery hominin species at this crucial time period suggests that the new species' lineage split from that leading to Lucy earlier in hominin history, and provides further evidence against the idea that modern humans evolved via a linear progression of species from apes. “This [finding] is fascinating, and makes the evolution of this defining behaviour not a single, linear evolutionary event, but a far more complex affair,” Harcourt-Smith says.

Extracted from www.nature.com news March 2012

PREHISTORIC DOG FOUND WITH MAMMOTH BONE IN MOUTH

The remains of three Paleolithic dogs, including one with a mammoth bone in its mouth, have been unearthed at Předmostí in the Czech Republic, according to a newJournal of Archaeological Science paper. The remains indicate what life was like for these prehistoric dogs in this region, and how humans viewed canines. The dogs appear to have often sunk their teeth into meaty mammoth bones. These weren’t just mammoth in terms of size, but came from actual mammoths.In the case of the dog found with the bone in its mouth, the researchers believe a human inserted it there after death.

"The thickness of the cortical bone shows that it is from a large mammal, like a rhinoceros, steppe bison or mammoth," lead author Mietje Germonpré told Discovery News. "At Předmostí, mammoth is the best represented animal, with remains from more than 1,000 individuals, so it is probable that the bone fragment is from a mammoth."

Germonpré, a paleontologist at the Royal Belgian Institute of Natural Sciences, and colleagues Martina Laznickova-Galetova and Mikhail Sablin, first studied the remains, focusing on the skulls, to see what animals they represented. In the fossil record, there is sometimes controversy over what is a wolf, dog or other canid. "These skulls show clear signs of domestication," Germonpré said, explaining they are significantly shorter than those of fossil or modern wolves, have shorter snouts, and noticeably wider braincases and palates than wolves possess. She described them as large, with an estimated body weight of just over 77 pounds. The shoulder height was at least 24 inches. "The shape of their skull resembles that of a Siberian husky, but they were larger and heavier than the modern Husky," she said.

Dog skull with mammoth bone in his mouth

The dogs died when they were between 4 and 8 years old, suffering from numerous broken teeth during their lifetimes. Based on what is known of the human culture at the site, the researchers believe these dogs “were useful as beasts of burden for the hauling of meat, bones and tusks from mammoth kill sites and of firewood, and to help with the transport of equipment, limiting the carrying costs of the Předmostí people.” Since mammoth meat was likely the food staple, the scientists further believe that the surplus meat “would have been available to feed the dogs.” The dog skulls show evidence that humans perforated them in order to remove the brain. Given that better meat was available, the researchers think it’s unlikely the brains served as food. Instead, based on these archaeological finds and the ethnographic record, it’s possible that the body manipulation after death held ritual importance.

"Among many northern indigenous peoples, it was believed that the head contains the spirit or soul," Germonpré explained. “Some of these peoples made a hole in the braincase of the killed animal so that the spirit might be released.” The mammoth bone in the dog's mouth could signify "that the dog was 'fed' to accompany the soul of the dead person on its journey." Rob Losey, an associate professor of anthropology at the University of Alberta, told Discovery News that the new study is "very convincing," and shows "quite clearly that the dog domestication process was underway thousands of years earlier than previously thought." He added, "The distinctive treatment given some of the remains also is compelling, and this indicates to me that a special connection had developed between people and some canids quite early on -- long prior to any good evidence for dogs being buried."

From http://news.discovery.com/animals/paleolithic-dogs-111007.html

Two thousand year old roman aqueduct discovered

A pair of British amateur archaeologists believe they have found the hidden source of a Roman aqueduct 1,900 years after it was inaugurated by the Emperor Trajan

The underground spring lies behind a concealed door beneath an abandoned 13th century church on the shores of Lake Bracciano, 35 miles north of Rome.

Exploration of the site has shown that water percolating through volcanic bedrock was collected in underground grottoes and chambers and fed into a subterranean aqueduct, the Aqua Traiana, which took it all the way to the imperial capital. Centuries later, it provided water for the very first Vatican, after Rome began to convert to Christianity under the Emperor Constantine.

The underground complex, which is entangled with the roots of huge fig trees, was discovered by father and son documentary makers Edward and Michael O'Neill, who stumbled on it while researching the history of Rome's ancient aqueducts. They recruited a leading authority on Roman hydro-engineering, Prof Lorenzo Quilici from Bologna University, who confirmed that the structure was Roman, rather than medieval as had long been believed.

Using long iron ladders to descend into the bowels of the sophisticated system, they found that the bricks comprising the aqueduct's walls are laid in a diamond shape known as "opus reticulatum" – a distinctive Roman style of engineering.

"A lot of the stone work bears the original Roman tool marks," Edward O'Neill said.

The underground labyrinth of galleries has remained almost unknown to archaeologists because for hundreds of years it was full of water. It was only when modern bore pumps started directing the supply to the nearby town of Bracciano that the water level dropped dramatically and the subterranean complex became accessible.

The vaulted ceiling was decorated with a rare type of paint known as Egyptian Blue, which led the O'Neills to speculate that the grotto was a Roman nymphaeum – a sacred place believed to be inhabited by water gods. "The paint was very expensive to make, but it was painted all over the walls, which suggests an imperial link," said Mr O'Neill.

It may even have been inaugurated by Trajan himself in AD 109. Historical records show that the emperor may have been in the area on June 24 of that year. By coincidence, the O'Neills first explored the aqueduct on June 24 2009 – exactly 1,900 years later. A coin minted during Trajan's reign commemorates the opening of the aqueduct, the documentary makers believe. It depicts a river god holding an urn and a reed – traditionally symbols of a spring – and reclining in what looks like a cave, over what may be the representation of a tunnel. The documentary makers hope to raise funds to pay for the site to be excavated by professional archaeologists.

From Daily Telegraph.co.uk (01/25/2010)