Welcome back, everybody!  I’m Rick Pettigrew with a preview of the latest weekly batch of top news stories that appeared on Archaeologica!  Send us feedback on The Archaeology Channel Facebook page or post a message on our social networking site, ArchaeoSeek!

A new study of ancient horse DNA reveals the origin of all modern domesticated horses.  The popularity of gold in the south Caucasus region apparently waned for centuries during the Bronze and Iron ages.  A known spike in extraterrestrial radiation has made possible the precise dating of the only known Viking habitation site in North America.  And satellite imagery shows that humans long ago made significant environmental changes in Madagascar.

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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 for the week of October 17th through the 23rd, 2021.

Our first story today takes us to the steppes of central Russia, courtesy of an international team that has published a study on the DNA of ancient horses in the scientific journal, Nature.  

This research has potentially wide-ranging implications on the timeline for early domesticated horses and how their subsequent use affected patterns of human migration and culture.

As reported by the University of Leiden website, the study finds that the ancestors of all modern domestic horses can be traced to a small population domesticated some five thousand years ago in the western Eurasian steppes, in what is now central Russia.

Researchers studied the DNA from 273 ancient horse skeletons collected from a wide region from Spain to Central Asia.   The earliest known domesticated horses are documented at Botai, in northern Kazakhstan, about 5500 years ago, but these are not the direct ancestors of domesticated horses we are familiar with today.  The general consensus is that horse domestication may have taken place several times after this time, involving different ancestral horse populations. 

The primary conclusion of the new study is that the horse we are familiar with today descends from a breed domesticated in the region of the lower Don and Volga rivers prior to 4000 years ago, which spread quickly and widely across Eurasia during the early Bronze Age, around 4000 years ago.

According to Guus Kroonen, a linguist at the University of Leiden, this finding dismisses an important archaeological and linguistic hypothesis.  

Linguists have long sought an explanation for the rapid spread and success of Indo-European languages.  One popular but unproven hypothesis has been that the use of domesticated horses by humans for transportation explained the sudden and broad geographic spread of these languages.  

To test this proposition, Kroonen and his colleagues carried out a sub-study that he says definitively shows that the domestication of horses was not the cause of the rapid spread of Indo-European languages across Europe. 

Kroonen and his team examined the remains of horses from the period when the earliest-known Indo-European languages were spreading throughout Europe.  DNA examinations revealed that none of these European horses were descended from the western Eurasian horses that came to be dominant a few centuries later.  

The research team proposes that the first Indo-European immigrants, who originated in Central Asia, must have come to Europe on foot, bringing their languages with them and leaving the horses behind in Russia.  The study concludes that, although early domestication was progressing around the same time as the growth of Indo-European languages across Europe, the two processes are not directly related   In their view, the domestication of horses was neither widespread nor advanced enough to make it a distinct advantage for migrating humans until centuries later, when Indo-European speakers spread into India.  Indo-European languages were introduced there a thousand years later than in Europe, alongside evidence of horse-drawn chariots and other riding equipment.

We expect that the study’s conclusions will be disputed, as the study also appears to show potential movement of Central Asian horses into western Europe between 5000 and 4000 years ago.  Contrary to the study’s conclusion and that of the University of Leiden website, this does not demonstrate that domesticated horses were not brought into western Europe by early Indo-Europeans, although it does show that modern horses spread later and from a different location.

Stay tuned for more stories about this controversial topic!

Next, we go to the south Caucasus, where a study of Bronze- and Iron-Age artifacts suggests that gold lost both its popularity and value for a period of hundreds of years.

As reported by Heritage Daily, researchers at England’s Cranfield Forensic Institute studied gold objects from eighty-nine sites across the south Caucasus that had experienced known declines in the use of gold from 1500 to 800 BC.  The study employed geospatial analysis, examining the archaeological evidence to test possible explanations for the decline in areas which had previously developed complex metallurgical traditions.

Spatial modelling indicated that there was no correlation between ease of access to gold deposits and decline in gold use.  This suggested that the scarcity of raw materials was not a prime cause for the interruption in production.  Archaeological evidence and genetic studies also found no clear demographic disruption or social collapse to explain the changes.  Instead, the findings demonstrate a period of prosperity and innovation, particularly in metal technologies other than gold.

According to Dr. Nathaniel Erb-Satullo, of Cranfield University, the evidence suggests that gold fell out of fashion due to cultural reasons and shifts in societal structures.

The researchers believe that, in the centuries leading up to the decline in its production, gold had become a symbol of elitism.  As societies developed over time, this may have contributed to a decline in gold’s popularity.  For example, in addition to the lack of gold production, large burial mounds became less common here.  The researchers suggest that a move toward a more centralized political and religious social order is demonstrated by the presence of large fortresses and centralized public shrines.

According to Erb-Satullo, the culture in this region during this time may have shunned ostentatious displays of individual wealth altogether, instead focusing on collective projects meant to improve the living conditions of the society at large. 

Our third story takes us to Newfoundland, where a new study reveals the precise dating of Norse occupation of North America to 1021.

As reported by Smithsonian Magazine, a new study of wooden artifacts was recently published in the journal, Nature.  Researchers arrived at this date by utilizing new data found in the growth rings of trees. 

Radiation left behind from a unique cosmic ray event that bathed Earth with high energy particles in AD 993 left an invisible but distinct mark.

There is evidence from around the world that this cosmic radiation event, probably a solar storm, caused a huge spike in atmospheric radiocarbon levels that can be measured in tree ring samples.

After identifying this radiation spike in tree rings, scientists were then able to count additional rings outside that mark to pinpoint the exact year when these trees were cut for timber.

The wood samples came from the L’Anse aux Meadows site in what is now known as Newfoundland.  This well documented site contains the remnants of  a temporary or seasonal base camp for Viking explorers.

Hundreds of wood chips, shavings and discarded pieces have come to light from workshops at the site.  Study co-author Margot Kuitems, of the University of Groningen, selected three particular artifacts from the site for examination.

These were chosen based on clear signs of being worked by metal tools, linking them to Vikings, and not indigenous peoples using stone implements.

After identifying the noted spike in the tree ring history of each artifact from the Viking settlement, it was fairly simple to count each year’s growth ring all the way to the outer bark layer.  The team determined that each one of the three different trees used to produce the wooden artifacts was felled in 1021,exactly 28 years after the major cosmic-ray spike. 

The date is intriguing, because it has been believed from evidence in Icelandic sagas that the Norse had left Greenland, their westernmost permanent settlement, around that time, which the new data now substantiate.

Whether the Norse continued to travel back and forth between Vinland and Greenland in the years following 1021 is unclear, and no doubt will be the focus of future studies.

We end this week in Madagascar, where researchers from Penn State University have used data from satellite imagery to identify areas where ancient foragers permanently altered their surroundings.

Madagascar was one of the latest major landmasses to be colonized by humans, who arrived there from Indonesia by about AD 550, and possibly earlier.  They practiced slash-and-burn agriculture, clearing coastal rainforests for cultivation.  Foraging activities no doubt also took place.

As reported by Phys.org, the researchers used high-resolution PlanetScope satellite imaging, along with vegetative indices, to show how the landscape evolved with human activities over the past thousand years.  The research has been published in the open-access, online journal, Frontiers in Ecology and Evolution.

The study area included 250 to 300 square miles, using an algorithm and statistical analysis, to quantify the amount that humans had changed their surroundings.  The evidence revealed that humans ultimately changed seventeen percent of this area.

This area of Madagascar contains several known archeological sites in the form of periodically occupied rock shelters.  While the areas around these shelters appear untouched to the untrained eye, they contain subtle but widespread signs of human foraging activity.

According to Penn State graduate student Dylan S. Davis, satellite images show a shift in spectral reflectiveness, indicating a difference in soil's capacity to absorb water.  Animals in this area are drought-adapted, so a slight increase in moisture could certainly make an impact in fauna that occupied the areas around inhabited sites

The researchers compared the areas around known archaeological sites to areas without known activity, finding a significant statistical difference between the two landscapes.  They found indications that the distribution of plants differed between known sites and uninhabited areas.

According to the researchers, long-lasting and large-scale effects appear to relate to the known human settlements.  Their work reinforces previous research, which found that ancient communities actively modified their ecological surroundings in ways that increased the suitability of previously settled areas.

According to Kristina Douglass, also of Penn State, the function of the altered soil chemistry is not yet clear.  Douglass notes that in landscapes across the world, early humans and their ancestors modified their environments in subtle but permanent ways to increase their odds of survival.  These changes may have allowed better crop survival during recurring drought conditions, or allowed for the cultivation of different plants entirely.

That wraps up the news for this week!

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

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