Welcome back, everybody!  This is Rick Pettigrew to tell you about four fascinating news stories from this past week of Archaeologica!  Send us feedback on The Archaeology Channel Facebook page or post a message on our social networking site, ArchaeoSeek!

Deep excavation of a cave in central Germany yielded data showing, surprisingly, that modern humans, not Neanderthals, occupied the area at least 45,000 years ago.  Human footprints on a Moroccan beach amazingly turn out to be 90,000 years old.  When archaeologists conducted salvage excavations in a looted royal Maya tomb, they found something the looters missed: an elaborate jade mosaic mask.   And data from ocean cores show that three major epidemics during the Roman Period were associated with climatic cold spells.

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And now, here’s Laura Kennedy 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 Kennedy, and these are the headlines in archaeological and historical news for the week of January 28th through February 3rd, 2024.

Our first story this week comes from Germany, where genetic analysis shows that both modern humans and Neanderthals lived there at the same time, 45,000 years ago. 

As reported by Science Daily, new genetic analysis was carried out on 13 human bone fragments from the Ilsenhöhle site, or Ilsa's Cave, in central Germany.  The site, which lies near Ranis [RAH-nus], was first excavated in the 1930s.  Its huge inventory of late Paleolithic stone tools has been important in understanding the transition from earlier millennia, when Neanderthal humans dominated Europe, to the time when modern humans moved in and intermarried with Neanderthals, who eventually became extinct.  

For decades, the question has been which human subspecies left their bones in the cave:  Homo sapiens neanderthalensis, or Homo sapiens sapiens, our modern species. 

Archaeologists from the Max Planck Institute recently answered the question by carrying out new excavations at the site from 2016 to 2022, conducting  newer, more finely detailed analysis of both the newly found materials and those from the 1930s.  They removed a huge rock that had ended earlier excavations, and excavated all the way to bedrock.  In the process, they found additional hominid bones, animal bones and many more stone tools.

The new data and analyses produced more accurate dating for the site; more details on its environment and the climate at the time; and at last, a clear result regarding which group of humans lived in the cave.  The bones were all from modern humans. 

This makes the cave one of the oldest confirmed sites of modern human culture in northern Europe.  It also shows that both modern and Neanderthal humans were living in Europe at this time.  

Ilsa's Cave is known for its finely flaked, leaf-shaped stone tool blades.  Known as leaf points, they are similar to stone tools found at other sites in north-central Europe and the United Kingdom.  The tools are thought to have been produced by the same culture, dubbed the LRJ Culture after three of the main sites.  

The cave was known to be 40,000 years old or more, but without recognizable bones to help identify who made the tools, it had been unclear whether they were the product of late Neanderthals or early modern humans.

Now it is evident that at least some of the LRJ materials were made by modern humans, already living in northern Europe by this time.  

Mitochondrial DNA sequence analysis not only identified the bones, but showed family connections between some individuals in the cave.  

Animal bones from the cave layers show what the environment was like at that time, and reveal the diet of both humans and animals who used the cave over the millennia. The bones of reindeer, cave bears, wooly rhinoceros, and horses were found, indicating a very cold climate comparable to Siberia and northern Scandinavia today.  Humans used the cave only periodically, and ate large animals.  The main residents of the cave through most of the millennia were cave bears and hyenas.

This occupational pattern is similar to finds at other LRJ culture sites, and suggests that early modern humans, migrating into Europe from warmer environments, had already developed some ability to adapt to the harsh climate of Ice Age Europe. 

According to Sarah Pederzani, a postdoctoral fellow at the University of La Laguna in Spain, who led the paleoclimate study of the site, this is yet another new insight from the re-excavation and reanalysis of the cave. 

Next we go to Morocco, where footprints on a beach reveal human activity very long ago.

According to Phys.org, the international team of archaeologists that found this trackway, or trail left by a group, has published a paper on their ensuing investigation in the journal Scientific Reports.  It is the only known trackway from this time in this part of the world.

The footprints were found by accident on a rocky part of the Moroccan shoreline.  The research team was in the area studying boulders near the ocean when they saw an indentation.  It turned out to be two trails containing a total of 85 human footprints made by at least five people, including children, adolescents and adults.  Analysis by optically stimulated luminescence produced a date of 90,000 years, showing that the prints had been made during the Late Pleistocene and making them among the oldest found anywhere.

Researchers say it’s unclear what the group was doing on the beach.  They could have been gathering food, traveling somewhere, or simply cooling off along the shore. 

It’s rare to find footprints left thousands of years ago because they are so fleeting.  Their preservation relies on geological circumstances such as sediment filling them in, hardening and protecting them through the millennia.  In this case, the tracks were made on a rocky platform covered in clay sediments.  This enabled them to be preserved on the sandbar while the tides rapidly buried the beach. 

Because the platform is in a state of ongoing collapse, researchers will have to move quickly to learn more about the group that walked this Moroccan beach so long ago.

Our third story takes us to Guatemala, where archaeologists excavating a looted pyramid tomb discovered a mysterious interlocking jade mask believed to have belonged to a previously unknown Maya king.

The team, led by Francisco Estrada-Belli of Tulane University, was working at Chochkitam [CHOACH-kee-TAM], a little-known archaeological site near the Peten [peh-TEN] Basin, a subregion of the Maya Lowlands in northwest Guatemala.  This is the heartland of the Maya Classic Period, from AD 200 to 900.  The discovery of Chochkitam was first reported in 1909, and ongoing studies have revealed it contains three major monumental groups linked by a long central causeway.

For the Maya, the value of jade went far beyond its beauty.  As a protector of generations, living and dead, it was important for symbolizing both ancestors and deities, especially in burials. 

According to an article in National Geographic, recent work began after a 2021 LIDAR survey revealed that grave robbers had excavated a tunnel into the royal pyramid’s core.  On the ground, archaeologists  discovered that the intruders had overlooked an area within the pyramid’s inner chamber.

Excavating the area, they found a human skull and bones.  Some of the bones were carved with hieroglyphs.  They also discovered a coffin-shaped stone box; ceramic artifacts; and funerary offerings including a pot, oyster shells and multiple jade pieces that fit together to create a jade mask.

The carved bone fragments bear the name Itzam Kokaj Bahlam [eet-SAHM koh-KAHZH ba-LAHM].  This name may belong to the Maya king who ruled Chochkitam in about AD 350.  

All the artifacts and bones discovered in the Chochkitam tomb were brought to the Holmul Archaeological Project lab for cleaning and field analysis.

It was there that archaeologists put together the single blocks of jade that they had unearthed to reconstruct an entire jade mosaic mask.

According to lead archaeologist Estrada-Belli, the mask represents a manifestation of the Storm God worshiped by the Maya.

Interestingly, a carving on one of the bones shows the ruler clutching the head of a Maya deity, precisely like the image in the assembled jade mask.

We end the week with new historical research on the Roman Empire, showing that three famous pandemics there occurred during times of cooler temperatures and decreased rainfall. 

As reported by Science News, the strong association between cold, dry phases and outbreaks of epidemic disease is poorly understood.  However, the findings, which are based on climate reconstructions from around 200 BC to AD 600, help show that climate stress probably contributed to the spread of disease and the extent of the deaths. 

The research was the work of a team led by Kyle Harper of the University of Oklahoma in Norman, who previously studied the First Plague Pandemic during the reign of Emperor Justinian.  Harper argued that the combination of this plague with lower temperatures helped weaken the Roman Empire. 

Climate undoubtedly influenced the origin and spread of several plagues that advanced across the classical world, but it’s unclear how various factors like long-distance trade and densely populated settlements combined with climate shifts to make people more vulnerable. 

To reconstruct the ancient climate, marine palynologist Karin Zonneveld turned to an extensive sample of fossilized dinoflagellates, single-celled algae that were preserved in radiocarbon-dated slices from ocean sediment cores.  Dinoflagellates live in the sunlit upper part of the sea, and their population varies depending on air and water temperature.   Zonneveld and her team at the University of Bremen in Germany used changes in the dinoflagellates in sediment from the sea off Italy to see how late summer and autumn temperatures changed in southern Italy during the Roman Empire.  

The team also used dinoflagellates to gauge changes in ancient rainfall.  When rain falls in central and northern Italy, the rivers bring nutrient-rich water into the Gulf of Taranto.  Some dinoflagellates prefer plentiful nutrients, while others do better in nutrient-poor water.  The changing ratio of these in underwater sediment reflects periods of higher and lower rainfall. 

Dinoflagellate analysis revealed that from 200 BC to AD 100 the temperature was warm and stable, with regular rainfall.  That time is called the Roman Warm Period. 

Then came phases of increasingly cold and dry conditions, which occurred shortly before or during three pandemics.  The first was the Antonine Plague, which spread from Egypt to Europe and the British Isles in the late 1960s.  Next, the Plague of Cyprian struck during a time of political turmoil in the mid-200s.  Finally, the Plague of Justinian reached Italy by AD 543.  By the late 500s, average temperatures were about three degrees Celsius colder than the highest averages during the Roman Warm Period. 

The Roman Empire’s power and influence fell dramatically around the time of the Plague of Justinian, although the eastern half of the empire lasted until the fall of its capital in Constantinople in 1453. 

Although no one can yet say with certainty how temperature and rainfall shifts may have aided the spread of infectious diseases, Zonnefeld’s team has provided valuable new climate information from ancient Roman times. 

While it’s known that the Plague of Justinian was caused by the Black Death bacterium Yersinia pestis, specific disease-causing agents for the Antonine Plague and the Plague of Cyprian remain unknown.  

According to economic and social historian Colin Elliott in his new book, Pox Romana, the Antonine Plague came during a period of cold years when grain production in Italy and other parts of the Roman Empire fell.  As a result, many hungry people in the Italian countryside migrated to cities where imported grain was available, possibly bringing diseases with them and certainly being more susceptible themselves due to malnourishment. 

Intriguingly, though, a cooler and drier climate might have reduced malaria cases by killing temperature-sensitive mosquitoes that regularly transmitted the dangerous disease in southern Italy. 

The new study appears in the journal Science Advances.

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! Also, be sure to check out our growing subscription platform, Heritage Broadcasting Service, at heritagetac.org!

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