Welcome back, everybody!  This is Rick Pettigrew with your weekly batch of the 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 demonstrates that severe drought took place on the Arabian Peninsula in the early sixth century, possibly setting the stage for the rise of the new religion of Islam.  An archaeological excavation in Georgia offers evidence that democratic systems of government in the Americas long predated the Iroquois Confederacy. Excavations in the Jordan Valley of Israel reveal the earliest cultivation of olive and fig trees 7000 years ago.  And teeth from burials in Kyrgyzstan show that the Black Death pathogen was in Central Asia well before it decimated the population of Europe.

The Audio News Team would like to thank our friends for helping us continue this show without a break since we started more than 21 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!

Thanks to you also for supporting our subscription platform, Heritage Broadcasting Service, available at heritagetac.org.  We now have 217 titles you can binge upon with your smart TVs on Roku.  Please help us spread the word!  Again, that link is heritagetac.org.

And now, here’s Laura Kennedy with the Audio News from Archaeologica.  Some of you might already have noticed Laura’s name change, which I can assure you was a happy event!  We hope you find our show to be a valuable part of your day!

Welcome to the Audio News from Archaeologica!  I’m Laura Kennedy, and these are the headlines in archaeological and historical news for the week of June 12th through the 18th, 2022.  

Our first story this week brings us to the southern Arabian peninsula, where new research has determined that widespread drought in the region may have contributed to the decline of a powerful kingdom and made way for the rise of the new religion of Islam.

As reported in Heritage Daily, traces of the ancient south Arabian kingdom of Himyar can still be found today on the plateaus of Yemen.  Himyar was established around 110 BC, and maintained nominal control in Arabia until AD 525.  Its kings converted the country to Judaism in the fourth century.  For many years, it was an important link between East Africa and the Mediterranean.

A research team led by Professor Dominik Fleitmann, professor of palaeoclimatology and archaeology at the University of Reading [RED -ing], recently analyzed layers of a stalagmite from Al Hoota Cave, a famous archaeological site and tourist attraction spanning 5 kilometers in length, in present-day Oman. 

By analyzing the stalagmite layers, the team was able to determine annual rainfall amounts around the time of the decline of Himyar.  The research determined that extreme drought occurred in the early sixth century AD.  Analysis of historical data confirmed that severe drought took place.  The researchers hypothesize that extreme drought may have destabilized the Himyar kingdom and contributed to a period of crisis during the sixth century.  This period culminated with Himyar’s conquest by the neighboring Christian kingdom of Aksum in what is now northern Ethiopia and Eritrea. 

According to this proposal, the critical scarcity of water may have contributed to the prevalence of political unrest and war during this time, potentially creating the conditions on the peninsula that opened up the opportunity for the spread of the emerging religion of Islam.  

According to Fleitmann, war, starvation and lack of water would have caused immense hardship for the people of this region, and the desire for hope or spiritual guidance may have made them particularly open to this new faith when it appeared on the Arabian Peninsula in the early seventh century.. 

While drought certainly did not bring about the emergence of Islam directly, it was likely an important factor that helped fuel the social conditions that led to its rise. 

The research is yet another example of how environmental conditions can be critical in shaping social and cultural developments.  These findings were originally published in the journal Science.  We expect to see others weighing in on this remarkable new proposal.

Our next story takes us to the U.S. state of Georgia, where new research suggests that democracy independently arose in the area around 1,500 years ago. 

As reported by Phys.org, researchers from the University of Georgia Laboratory of Archaeology—in partnership with the indigenous Muscogee Nation—have determined that inhabitants of this region likely practiced democratic-style collective governance for at least one thousand years prior to European contact. 

While the emergence of democracy is often thought of as a Mediterranean phenomenon, arising in Athens, artifacts found at the Cold Springs site in central Georgia suggest that Europe does not lay exclusive claim to the creation of democratic processes. 

The discovered items indicate the presence of a "council house" on the site.  Radiocarbon dating has indicated the structure was occupied at least 1,500 years ago.  Council houses are large, circular structures that can hold thousands of people during gatherings in which collective decisions are made. They are still used by indigenous communities today.

Historically, council houses have been tied to earthen platform mounds—concentric circles of post holes that are the greatest indicator of a former council house.  Since European arrival, a common narrative has developed that mounds and houses were only for ceremonial purposes and that at some point indigenous political structures rapidly changed to favor rule by a village chief.

According to the University of Georgia’s tribal partners, this directly conflicts with the traditions of indigenous communities, which tell of collective governance being practiced for “hundreds of generations.” 

Perhaps the most famous example of collaborative governance in the Americas, the Iroquois Confederacy, was a collection of five indigenous nations in what is now the northeastern U.S. which partnered together to make decisions around the mid-15th century, before contact with Europeans.

The analysis of the findings at the Cold Springs site suggests that democratic systems likely emerged in the Americas much earlier than this.  The researchers believe that this is important evidence demonstrating that democracy was an established and long-lived institution in communities in the Americas for possibly several millennia before European arrival. 

The research was recently published in the journal American Antiquity. 

Our third story brings us to the Jordan Valley, where archaeologists excavating the Tel Tsaf site in Israel have discovered some of the earliest evidence of fruit tree cultivation in the world. 

As reported by Sci-News.com, a joint team from Tel Aviv University and the Hebrew University analyzed findings at the Tel Tsaf site believed to have been inhabited between 7,200 and 6,700 years ago. 

The team, led by Dr. Dafna Langgut and Professor Yosef Garfinkel, says that the site is particularly significant because of the presence of storage silos on a scale not seen at other prehistoric Near Eastern sites.

The team analyzed the remains of ancient trees by examining charcoal at the site, such as those found in hearths, to determine the anatomical structure of trees burned in the area.  From this, they were able to determine which kinds of trees grew naturally in the area, and around what time humans began cultivating fruit trees.

The research found substantial evidence of charred olive wood at the site as well as the charred remains of pruned branches of young fig trees, suggesting that these trees were deliberately cultivated.

Carbon dating of the charred remains found that they were approximately 7,000 years old, the oldest known example of such cultivation in the world. 

The researchers believe that fruit tree cultivation and horticulture allowed for ancient peoples to develop more elaborate social structures and institutions since  food like olive oil, table olives and dry figs keep well, making them well-suited for long-distance trade and taxation.

The findings were published in the journal Scientific Reports. 

Our final story this week brings us to Kyrgyzstan in Central Asia, where the excavated remains of a 14th-century woman have given clues to the origins of the devastating Black Death.

As reported by Scientific American, a study led by Maria Spyrou of Germany’s University of Tübingen was analyzing human remains in the Kara-Djigach cemetery, about seven miles outside Kyrgyzstan’s capital city of Bishkek. 

The study analyzed the teeth of five women and two men who were exhumed in the late 19th century from two cemeteries.  The skulls had previously been stored in the Peter the Great Museum of Anthropology and Ethnography in Saint Petersburg, Russia..

The recent study honed in on the remains of a woman called Bačaq (ba-CHACK) who died in the year 1338 or 1339 and was four feet, eight inches, tall and in her 40s at the time of her death. Inscribed in Syriac, an Aramaic dialect, her tombstone noted her cause of death as “pestilence,” or plague. 

Bačaq was one of 114 people buried during that two year span.  Those 114 accounted for a full quarter of the entire cemetery’s population, despite the fact that it was active for a full century, suggesting some type of major event contributed to a significant increase in deaths during this period. 

Genomic research examining Bačaq’s teeth determined the presence of an ancestral strain of the Yersinia pestis bacterium, the cause of the Black Death which decimated somewhere between 30 and 60 percent of Europe’s population in the mid-14th century. 

Scientists compared the Yersinia pestis strain recovered from the teeth with 203 modern and 47 historical genomes of the species to determine it was an ancestor of the strains that evolved around this time to spark the second wave of the Black Death.

The cemeteries’ location along the Silk Road bolsters the idea that trade played a role in the dissemination of the plague during the Black Death.

Various hypotheses over the years have suggested different regions in Asia as the origin of the plague.  However, no solid genetic or historical data about the origins of the plague have yet been found outside Europe or western Eurasia until this discovery. 

The research was published in the journal Nature. 

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 Kennedy, and I’ll see you next week!