Welcome back, everybody!  This is Rick Pettigrew to deliver another weekly installment of four top news stories that came out this past week on Archaeologica.  Send us feedback on The Archaeology Channel Facebook page or post a message on our social networking site, ArchaeoSeek!

Researchers in Israel have tasted the fruit of a date tree that grew from 2000-year-old seeds.  Drone footage and remote sensing have revealed a large earthwork at the large Native American town of Etzanoa in today’s Kansas.  Analysis of messages written on potsherds shows a high literacy rate in ancient Israel. And a new summary of evidence explains why human culture advanced only after our physical nature was already set in place.

The Audio News Team would like to thank our friends for helping us continue this show without a break since we started more than 19 years ago.  If you’re not already a supporting member, please go to archaeologychannel.org and click on the Donate button.  Especially now, we can use all the help we can get!

For the intrepid travelers out there, we welcome you to register now for one of our upcoming 2021 tours!  Please contact us soon about that, and see about all our upcoming tours at archaeologychannel.org/tours.  You won’t have to stay home forever!

And now, here’s Laura Pettigrew with the Audio News from Archaeologica.  We hope you find this to be a valuable part of your day.

Welcome to the Audio News from Archaeologica!  I’m Laura Pettigrew and these are the headlines in archaeological and historical news from Audio News for September 6th through the 12th, 2020.

Our first story this week takes us to Israel, where ancient date seeds have grown into mature modern date trees.  With their revival comes a long-extinct variety of the succulent species that has been part of history in the region for thousands of years.

The date is often mentioned in the Bible and the Quran and became praised as symbols of property and opulence both for their sweet fruit and the tree’s precious shade. 

The New York Times reported this year’s successful harvest as the culmination of fifteen years of effort by the team of Dr. Sarah Sallon, a pediatric gastroenterologist, and Dr. Elaine Soloway, a specialist in arid agriculture.

The project began in 2005 when Dr. Sallon began searching for the ancient date seeds found in the region.  She obtained seeds discovered in the 1990’s at Masada, near the Dead Sea. 

The seeds were then passed on to Dr. Soloway, who utilized advanced horticultural techniques in an attempt to revive the seeds.  Still, the expectations for successful germination were low.

However, within weeks, sprouts had emerged.  Now, the resulting tree is planted in Kibbutz Ketura, outside of Dr. Soloway’s office at the Arava Institute for Environmental Studies. 

The tree was later genetically identified as male and named Methuselah after the long-lived biblical patriarch.  As date trees require plants of male and female genetics to produce fruit, the hunt for a female companion began. 

Dr. Sallon gained access to over 30 other seeds from archaeological sites in the Judean desert, some from Qumran, where the Dead Sea Scrolls were found.  The seeds were planted in Ketura with the original Methuselah between 2011 and 2014.  This batch successfully produced 6 additional trees, all given the names of biblical figures. 

A female, later named Hannah, came to life from a seed radio-carbon dated between the first and fourth centuries BC, making it one of the oldest known seeds to be successfully germinated. 

Six years later, Hannah revealed another surprise and produced flowers.  Dr. Solloway began to cross-pollinate the trees by hand, with pollen from Methuselah sprinkled on Hannah’s flowers. 

The resulting fruits were given Hebrew blessings before harvesting, and the resulting fresh flavored fruits stood in strong contrast with the prolonged incubation period of their parent’s seeds. 

The celebration of a successful harvest was short, as the dates were measured, weighed and sent off for further analysis, but not before they were sampled and pronounced highly delicious.

A team of researchers from Dartmouth College and Wichita State University is using drone technology to survey an area in southeastern Kansas, believed to have been on the route of a Spanish colonial expedition.

Previously, archaeologists had proposed that the remains of Etzanoa, a Native American town of about 20,000 inhabitants visited by Spanish conquistador Juan de Onate in 1601, were buried near this location.  

The new study, published in the journal American Antiquity and reported by a Dartmouth University press release, researches 18 hectares alongside Arkansas City, near the Oklahoma border south of Wichita, in the Great Plains region of the central United States. 

The potential earthworks were identified by high-resolution drone surveillance on a landscape that appears relatively flat to the naked eye. 

The finding’s most prominent features are the potential remains of two house pits and a large ring, considered likely to be a “council circle” due to its similarity to five other earthworks in the region.  Near-infrared technology identified the ancient underground ditch feature that measures 50 meters across and 2 meters deep. 

Over time, the ditch gradually became filled by the erosion of the surrounding earth, leaving marked soil patterns caused by different water and thermal retention properties that create distinct visual signatures and growth patterns in the grasses that grow there. 

The team examined aerial photography, satellite imagery and LiDAR data from the U.S. Department of Agriculture to cross-reference their findings.  These images revealed some faintly visible outlines of the circular formation and helped corroborate the drone footage. 

Archaeologists have presented many explanations for the circular structures like this, from astronomical to ceremonial and socio-political.

Lead researcher Jesse Casana, chair of the Department of Anthropology at Dartmouth, noted that while the exact purpose of the structures may never be fully understood, the circular formations clearly were created by humans who occupied this region.

These findings suggest that the drone techniques used here may uncover other earthworks nearby.  Researchers hope this and future discoveries can add to the growing knowledge of the lives and cultures of the people who once lived here. 

And we should note that our film, Quivira: Conquistadors on the Plains, covers field research undertaken at Eztanoa in 2015, including the finding of direct evidence from a 1601 battle between the Spanish intruders and native people.  That film was broadcast in the May 2016 edition of our cable TV show, Strata: Portraits of Humanity, which you can see on-demand on The Archaeology Channel at archaeologychannel.org.

Tel Aviv University has combined old-fashioned forensic detective work with cutting-edge computer technology to re-evaluate written evidence from the ancient Jewish stronghold of Arad.

As reported by the Times of Israel, the findings shed light on the broader literacy rates across the kingdom of Judah in the Negev Desert around 600 BC.

The authors of the study, originally published in PLOS One, hypothesize that the evidence indicates an educated, literate society with multiple individuals capable of making written transcriptions of important texts, perhaps including the Bible.

The researchers re-examined a collection of some hundred ostraca [OSS-tra-ka], shards of pottery inscribed with ink, that were ordinally collected from Arad in the 1960s. 

Most of these writings appear to be everyday military correspondences from the guards stationed at Arad, ranging from transfer requests of soldiers to supply requests. 

New multispectral imaging techniques revealed that some shards, originally believed to be blank, actually contain faint traces of writing.  This find results in a larger sample size, expanding the possibility of more authors than previously thought. 

The high-resolution imagery, complex algorithms and independent handwriting analysis combined to identify at least 12 individual authors from the 18 samples, a significant increase from the 4 to 7 authors originally identified with computer analysis alone. 

The study uses the talents of long-time handwriting specialist Yana Gerber, of the Israeli Police’s Division of Identification and Forensic Science.  Her analysis drastically changed perceptions of literacy rates among the military and the general population of the time. 

The size and placement of the fortress at Arad play key roles in identifying the literacy rates of the small, isolated location.  Most paleo-demographic estimates claim the fort housed 20-30 soldiers. With at least 12 distinct writers, the literacy rate becomes statistically significant. 

This led the authors to conclude that a formal education system likely existed in the kingdom of Judah.  This would have allowed the transfer of knowledge and writing skills to at least a portion of the population, estimated to have been 120,000 people. 

This educational system certainly would have included military and religious leaders who traveled far from Jerusalem, bringing these valuable skills with them. 

The high literacy levels in the region may have been short-lived, due to the destruction of Jerusalem by the king of Babylon, Nebuchadnezzar [neb-buh-kud-NEH-zr], in 586 BC, ending recorded Hebrew literary activity for the next four centuries. 

Our final story this week focuses on the gap between the estimated fossil record dates and the dates of found artifacts, such as tools and artistic renderings, left by our ancient human ancestors. 

While DNA analyses of human remains mark the presence of physically modern Homo sapiens in Africa beginning around 300,000 years ago, most of the archaeological records indicating complex human culture and technology are much more recent, dating from just 50 to 65,000 years ago. 

This discrepancy has been long debated.  Some scientists argue that, while the original Homo sapiens was genetically nearly identical to current populations, they had not yet fully developed the societal behaviors associated with modern humans. This view uses the fossil record to show biological modernity, while artifacts reveal cultural evolution. 

The lag in technological advances relative to the presence of anatomically and genetically modern humans, as well as the sudden advances in tool production, art and travel some 60, 000 years ago, has led to many hypotheses to reconcile the discrepancies. 

Author Nick Longrich, an evolutionary biologist at the University of Bath, contends in an article from Phys.org that a confluence of events probably led to this swift cultural change known as “the great leap forward.” 

The first of these events came approximately 100,000 years ago, as Homo sapiens migrated out of Africa, where the ancestors of all currently living humans originated.  This migration introduced modern humans to different parts of the planet, creating unique environmental challenges and newfound resources.  The survival of these people in their new environment would have depended on their innovation and creativity. 

Over this period, populations began to rise, allowing for increased specialization and larger-scale cooperative efforts.  Growth in the population drove innovations in everything from artistic representation to more advanced weaponry. 

The forces of migration, adaptation and population mixed, creating a cycle in which the advancing cultural development led to population growth which eventually outgrew the existing ecosystem, eventually forcing the development of agriculture.  This new technology further led to the near-exponential growth of cultural evolution.  Items from sewing needles to symbolic figures became commonplace in the archaeological record. 

Longrich argues that, while the human brain itself hasn’t changed much in the past 300,000 years, human culture has had many dramatic shifts.  Modern humans still share most DNA characteristics with our ancestors, with much in common uniting us. 

With the current population approaching 8 billion, humans are now spread across the globe and have literally re-shaped the planet faster than our own genetic make-up. 

That wraps up the news for this week! 

For more stories and daily news updates, visit Archaeologica online at www.archaeologica.org, where all the news is history!

I'm Laura Pettigrew and I'll see you next week!