Welcome back, everybody!  I’m Rick Pettigrew, passing along the top news stories that appeared this past week on Archaeologica!  Send us feedback on The Archaeology Channel Facebook page or post a message on our social networking site, ArchaeoSeek!

A new high-tech analysis has pushed back the age of a really old human skull in east Africa. A rare suit of leather scale armor made an appearance in a 2500 year old tomb in far western China .  It turns out that Medieval war horses were much smaller than the ones we see in Hollywood movies.  And a systematic study of a recently developed West African script shows how invented scripts change over time..

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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 January 9th through 16th, 2022. 

We begin this week in Ethiopia, where a new study has dated early Homo sapiens remains significantly earlier than previously believed. 

As reported by Smithsonian Magazine, researchers have used a new data method for examining layers of volcanic ash to arrive at a base for the possible age of the famous fossil Omo One [ OH-Moh ].

Omo One, discovered in 1967, is among the oldest existing Homo sapiens skulls in the world.  Scientists originally dated freshwater mollusk shells that were found with the skull and concluded that the remains were about 130,000 years old.  In 2005, radioactive dating pushed back the age of the skull to 195,000 years ago.  This new study of the volcanic ash at the site now suggests that Omo One is much older still.

By matching the layer of volcanic ash blanketing the fossil to a specific volcanic eruption, they discovered that Omo One is at least 36,000 years older than previously believed.   Ash from an enormous eruption of the Ethiopian Rift’s Shala volcano fell on the sediment layer containing the Omo One fossil approximately 233,000 years ago, which means that Omo One lived at least that long ago.  

According to University of Cambridge volcanologist Celine Vidal, every eruption has a unique geochemical signature that can be used to figure out exactly which eruption on the Ethiopian Rift would have created a certain layer of volcanic ash.  The team was able to find a match for the ash layer that covers the fossils, which has a known age.

The study does not reveal the maximum possible age for Omo One, but it may be possible to determine if the team can similarly identify another volcanic layer from below the fossil. 

The era in which Homo sapiens likely first appeared and gradually evolved in Africa, between about 360,000 years ago and 100,000 years ago, was one of cataclysmic volcanic activity.  Enormous eruptions rocked the region, depositing thick layers of ash that made some localities uninhabitable. 

Dates for important fossils like Omo One are valuable to scientists working to piece together an evolutionary timeline of Homo sapiens.  They provide a framework to help track changes in evolution, like human appearance, or in behavior, like tool technologies.  They also lend context to events like dramatic climate shifts that may have helped to drive those adaptations.

Omo One’s skull shape shows that humans living in eastern Africa 230,000 years ago had already evolved to look much like ourselves.

The study was published this week in the journal Nature.

For our second story, we move to Xinjiang [ shin-Jee-ANG ], China, where archaeologists have found a rare example of leather scale armor in an ancient cemetery.

As reported by LiveScience.com, researchers unearthed the leather garment at Yanghai [yang-HAI ] Cemetery, an archaeological site near the city of Turfan at the rim of the Taklamakan [ taa-lah-mah-KAWN ] Desert in the Xinjiang Uygur [ WEE-ghur ] Autonomous Region of Northwest China. 

Local villagers discovered the ancient cemetery in the early 1970s.  Since 2003, archaeologists have excavated more than 500 burials there, including the grave with the leather armor.  Their findings show that ancient people used the cemetery continuously for nearly 1,400 years, from the 12th century BC to the second century AD.  

While these people did not leave written records, ancient Chinese historians called the people of the Tarim Basin the Cheshi people and noted that they lived in tents, practiced agriculture and were proficient horse riders and archers.

The armor, which resembles an apron, could be donned quickly without the help of another person.  According to study lead researcher Patrick Wertmann of the University of Zurich, the defensive garment is lightweight and a one-size-fits all, making it ideal for the soldiers of a mass army. 

The armor is a rare find.  The only other examples of well preserved ancient leather scale armor are armor discovered in the tomb of King Tutankhamun, from the 14th century BC, and another well preserved example dating from the eighth to the third century BC but of unknown origin, housed at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City.

A reconstruction of the body armor revealed that it is formed from 5,444 small leather scales and 140 larger scales, likely made of cow rawhide.  A plant thorn stuck into the armor gave a radiocarbon date between 786 and 543 BC. 

East Asian engineers developed scale armor to protect chariot drivers in about 1500 BC, when chariotry became part of the military.  After that, this style of armor spread northward and eastward to the Persians and Scythians and eventually to the Greeks.

However, according to study co-researcher Mayke Wagner, the scientific director of the Eurasia Department of the German Archaeological Institute, it appears that this armor was not made in China at all.  The researchers propose that the armor was crafted in the Neo-Assyrian Empire or surrounding areas.  If true, the garment would represent rare evidence of West-East technology transfer across Eurasia during the first half of the first millennium B.C.

How the armor ended up in the cemetery remains unclear.  The researchers suggest that the wearer could have been employed by the Assyrians as a soldier, captured the armor from a foreign opponent or could have been Assyrian himself. 

The study was published in November 2021 in the journal Quaternary International.

Our third story takes us to England, where a new study has challenged the modern image of medieval warhorses. 

As announced by the University of Exeter, horses during the medieval period were often below 14.2 hands high.  For comparison, small modern riding horses are often about 15 hands high at the shoulder. 15 hands converts to approximately 5 feet tall.

Researchers analyzed a dataset of English horse bones dating between AD 300 and 1650, found at 171 separate archaeological sites.

The study, published in the International Journal of Osteoarchaeology, shows that breeding and training of warhorses was influenced by a combination of biological and cultural factors as well as behavioral characteristics of the horses themselves, like temperament.

Size was clearly not everything, as historical records indicate huge sums were spent on developing and maintaining networks for the breeding, training and keeping of horses used in combat.  Warhorses needed to succeed in a wide range of different functions, including tournaments and long-distance campaigns.

Depictions of medieval warhorses in films and popular media frequently portray massive horses 17 to 18 hands high.  However, the evidence suggests that horses 16 or even 15 hands were very rare.  Even at the height of medieval horse breeding during the 13th and 14th centuries, animals of this size would have been seen as very large by medieval people.

The tallest Norman horse recorded was found at Trowbridge Castle, Wiltshire, estimated to be about 15 hands high.  The high medieval period sees the first emergence of horses of around 16 hands high, and it is not until the post-medieval period that the average height of horses becomes significantly larger, approaching the sizes of modern warmblood and draft horses.

According to researcher Helene Benkert from the University of Exeter, no historic records give the specific criteria for what characteristics defined horses used in war.  Traits favored in warhorses probably changed over time

For our last story this week we head back to Africa, where a study of a local writing system has yielded insights into the development and evolution of writing.

The world's very first invention of writing took place over 5000 years ago in the Middle East before it was also developed in China and Central America.  However, we know little about how writing evolved in its earliest years. 

As reported by Phys.org, a team of researchers at the Max Planck Institute for the Science of Human History, in Germany, showed that writing very quickly becomes simplified for efficient reading and writing.

This insight comes from examination of a rare writing system developed in the 19th century for the Liberian language Vai, .

According to lead author Dr. Piers Kelly of University of New England, Australia, the Vai script of Liberia was created from scratch by eight completely illiterate men in 1834 who used ink made of crushed berries. 

According to Vai teacher Bai Leesor Sherman, the script was always taught informally from a literate teacher to a single student.  It remains so successful that today it is even used to communicate pandemic health messages.

According to Kelly, the script’s isolation and relatively short history made it a good candidate to examine for the evolution of writing systems.

The team scrutinized manuscripts in the Vai language from archives in Liberia, the United States and Europe.  By analyzing year-by-year changes in its 200 syllabic letters, they traced the entire evolutionary history of the script from 1834 onwards.  Applying computational tools for measuring visual complexity, they found that the letters really did become visually simpler with each passing year.

This pattern of simplification can be observed over much longer time scales for ancient writing systems as well.

Visual complexity helps illiterate readers pick up on the contrast between signs and learn the language more quickly, but over time this complexity hinders efficient reading and reproduction, so complexity gives way to greater simplicity and standardization.

Elsewhere in West Africa, illiterate inventors reverse-engineered writing for languages spoken in Mali and Cameroon, while new writing systems are still being invented in Nigeria and Senegal. In response to the study, Nigerian philosopher Henry Ibekwe [ EE-bek-wey ] commented: "African indigenous scripts remain a vast, untapped repository of semiotic and symbolic information. Many questions remain to be asked."

The study is published this month in the journal Current Anthropology.

That wraps up the news for this week!

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