Welcome back, everybody!  I’m Rick Pettigrew with a summary 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 DNA study of early farmers in Xinjiang Province of northwest China reveals they were indigenous, not migrants from the west.  Artifacts now being mined for profit from a Sumatran river appear to pinpoint the capital of an ancient empire.  A new study of Chaco Canyon points to a substantial resident population rather than just a seasonal one.  And a reconsideration of evidence about ancestral humans names a new species and reorganizes the whole system of nomenclature.

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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 24th through the 30th, 2021.

The analysis of DNA recovered from thirteen well preserved mummies from China’s Tarim Basin is providing new insight into the origins and cultures of ancient peoples.

As reported by the journal, Nature, researchers based in China, South Korea, Germany, and the United States used the preserved DNA to trace the ancestry of these early farmers to Stone Age hunter-gatherers who lived in Asia around 9,000 years ago.  Their analysis demonstrated that these individuals are solely related to hunter-gatherers who lived in southern Siberia and what is now northern Kazakhstan.

The mummified remains came to light in cemeteries belonging to the Xiaohe SHYAO-her) Culture, scattered across the Taklamakan Desert, in the southern regions of Xinjiang (shin-JIAHNG) Province.  This region today is within the homeland of the Uighur people, who speak a Turkic language.

The heat, aridity, and salt of this desert had naturally preserved the corpses and burial adornments, keeping materials, including hair and woolen clothing, fully intact.  The remains are dated to a time of significant change in Xinjiang’s history, during which ancient communities were shifting from hunting-and-gathering to farming.

Researchers originally hypothesized that these people were originally migrants from the west, who brought highly developed farming practices along with them as they went.  The graves here contained traces of millet, wheat, animal bones, and dairy products.  This evidence of agricultural and pastoral technologies is characteristic of cultures in other regions of Eurasia. 

These individuals seem to have been genetically isolated, but despite this, had somehow learned to raise livestock and grow grains in the same way as other groups to the west.

DNA analysis was used to study thirteen individuals who lived between 4,100 and 3,700 years ago.  This sample came from the deepest known layers of the Tarim Basin cemeteries.

Next, the team analyzed the DNA from five other sets of mummified remains from 5,000 and 4,800 years ago.  These mummies were found hundreds of kilometers away, in the northern areas of Xinjiang.

Researchers also analyzed calcified dental plaque from the teeth of some of the older mummies from the Tarim Basin.

They found that the northern Xinjiang individuals shared some parts of their genomes with Bronze Age migrants from the Altai Mountains of Central Asia, who lived about 5,000 years ago.  However, the individuals from the Tarim Basin did not share this ancestry. 

The newly released genomic analysis suggests that the remains found across Tarim Basin were from indigenous peoples, who apparently adopted their agricultural methods from other groups.

Our next story takes us to the Indonesian island of Sumatra, where local fishermen have taken up nighttime diving to retrieve sunken treasures from the Musi River near Palembang.

As described by The Guardian, a new article by marine archaeologist Sean Kingsley in the latest issue of Wreckwatch Magazine details some of the underwater finds within a larger discussion of the ancient Maritime Silk Road.

Extraordinary relics have turned up, including a life-size, eighth-century Buddhist statue, and gold and bronze rings studded with precious jewels.  A wide variety of minted coins and elaborately adorned weaponry have also been retrieved, some engraved with intricate markings and religious symbols.  None of these discoveries have been retrieved by professional archaeologists, but instead are being gathered up and sold on the antiquities market.

The local divers work at night, and in dangerous conditions.  They often rely on crude equipment, cobbling together breathing and lighting systems with scavenged gear.

Artifacts with imagery representing the god Kala, and other ceremonial wares, have been brought to the surface.  Unfortunately, many of these items have already been sold illegally to dealers of antiquities for a fraction of their actual value, and before the artifacts could be properly identified and catalogued. 

Srivijaya was an empire that existed from the 7th to the 13th century.  It was a fabled kingdom known in ancient times as the Island of Gold.  For hundreds of years, the rulers of Srivijaya mastered the trade routes between the Middle East and imperial China. 

The city lay at the heart of a colossal economic market in which local, Chinese and Arab goods were traded.

Srivijaya became an international crossroads of commerce, and had access to the finest products of the merchant trades of the time.

While the western Mediterranean world was entering the dark ages in the eighth century, one of the world’s greatest kingdoms erupted onto the map of southeast Asia. 

It is a civilization that explorers have tried in vain to find long after its unexplained disappearance from history around the 14th century.  It’s been long known that the Srivijyan capital was near today’s Palambang, on the banks of the Musi River, but its precise location has been uncertain.  The fishermen apparently have found it. This is not far from Srivijaya Archaeological Park in central Palambang, once but no longer considered possibly the Srivijaya capital.

Kingsley believes that when the civilization ended, the wooden houses, palaces and temples all sank along with all their goods into the river.  However, exactly why the kingdom collapsed remains unknown. 

Kingsley speculates that it may have fallen victim to Indonesia’s periodic volcanic activity, or that perhaps the city was overtaken by rising sea levels, or by shifts in the river’s course.

Without official excavations, evidence that could answer such questions will stay hidden on the floors of the Indonesian Sea.  So far, we have no word that the looting of the river bottom will be stopped or that a professional archaeological survey of the area is planned.

Our third story takes us to the United States and ancient Chaco Canyon, a distinctive archaeological district in the American southwest, long considered by many to have been primarily a ceremonial rather than a place where people lived.

As reported by Phys.org, University of Cincinnati researcher and professor of biology David Lentz has been working there for decades and has recently co-authored a study being published in the journal, PLOS One.

Through on-site pollen and botanical analysis and lidar mapping during the last decade, Lentz and a select group of national collaborative scientists have gathered new evidence about the canyon’s human populations over time, offering proof that the place had a substantial residential population.

It quickly became clear to the researchers that ancient Puebloans had left a distinct impact on the environment through deforestation.  The new findings add to existing data and reveal measurable changes in the juniper pinyon woodlands that occurred before 600 B.C.  This coincides with the era when the food procurement systems transitioned from hunting and gathering to agricultural production.

According to Lenz and his colleagues, the shift in ancestral Puebloan food resource management enhanced their ability to sustain larger populations in a harsh landscape for several centuries.  As a result, they kept their society thriving in this area for more than 1,000 years, adapting their agricultural practices and developing a distinct pottery style.

Until now, however, Lentz says studies lacked evidence to demonstrate human management of the canyon's precarious environment for daily living. 

The research team used lidar aerial mapping technology to evaluate environmental impacts by the ancestral Puebloans.  The analysis of various ancient substances, including carbon isotopes, pollen content and chemical composition of soils, provided additional information. 

Evidence for the heavy use of local juniper trees, primarily for firewood, was especially important.  It would have been used primarily for cooking locally cultivated corn, beans and squash.  The native pinyon pine nuts provided a valuable source of food and were protected from over-harvesting for firewood or architecture. 

The juniper trees were not spared from this extensive harvesting.  These juniper trees were essential for holding the soil in place, and when the inhabitants removed those woodlands, the eventual result was severe erosion and the deterioration of croplands.  The ongoing clearing of the juniper trees had placed an inexorable demand on their environment, and once the barren land lost its capacity to hold nutrients and water, the local people struggled to survive in this unpredictable environment.

The study markedly illustrates the rate and process of early environmental change by ancient societal consumption practices, and the subsequent acceleration of environmental degradation due to climatic fluctuations.  It also changes the overall image of Chaco Canyon, which no longer can be considered mostly a place where people came for special occasions.

We end this week with a story detailing the proposed renaming of fossilized remains from ancient ancestors of Homo sapiens.  Scientists have named a new species that may be the direct ancestor of modern humans. 

The newly proposed species, Homo bodoensis, lived more than half a million years ago in Africa and may help untangle how human lineages moved and interacted across the globe. 

As reported by Live Science, a new study hopes to provide clarity to the naming conventions used by the scientific community.  The study was published recently in the journal, Evolutionary Anthropology: Issues, News, and Reviews.

Although modern humans, Homo sapiens sapiens, are the only surviving human lineage, plenty of evidence indicates that other human species once roamed Earth.  Deciding whether a set of ancient human fossils belongs to one species or another is often a challenging problem open to personal interpretation. 

For instance, some researchers suggest that skeletal differences between modern humans and Neanderthals mean they were different species, although clearly they interbred and thus would both fit within Homo sapiens.  Other examples include the many facial and other features seen in East Asian human fossils that differ from those seen in European and African fossils of the same age.

In the new study, researchers analyzed human fossils dating from about 774,000 to 129,000 years ago.  This period was once known as the Middle Pleistocene and has now been renamed the Chibanian.  Previous work suggested that modern humans arose during this time in Africa, while Neanderthals emerged in Eurasia.

Recent DNA evidence has revealed that some fossils in Europe dubbed Homo heidelbergensis were actually from early Neanderthals.  Similarly, recent analyses of many fossils in East Asia now suggest they should no longer be called Homo heidelbergensis.  The scientists also noted that Homo rhodesiensis was a poorly defined label that was never widely accepted in science.

To help deal with all this confusion, the researchers now propose the existence of a new species, Homo bodoensis, named after a 600,000-year-old skull found in Bodo D'ar, Ethiopia, in 1976.  This new name would encompass many fossils previously identified as either Homo heidelbergensis or Homo rhodesiensis.

The researchers suggest that Homo bodoensis was the direct ancestor of Homo sapiens, together forming a different branch of the human family tree than the one that gave rise to the Neanderthals. 

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!