Welcome back, everybody!  I’m Rick Pettigrew, with our four top 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!

A new lidar analysis of Classic Maya settlements in Central America has led to a much larger estimate of the population.  Stone tools dating between 1 and 1.5 million years ago on the Indonesian island of Sulawesi dramatically push back the dating of human ancestors there.  Careful excavations at Pompeii make it clear that some people returned to the city to live, even centuries after the Vesuvius eruption.   And a DNA study of the southern Caucasus areas of Georgia and Armenia has revealed a detailed picture of population stability and migration.

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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 August 3rd through the 9th, 2025.

Our first story this week comes from the forests of the Maya Lowlands in modern Guatemala, Belize and Mexico, where archaeologists have significantly revised their earlier population estimates of the Maya civilization 1400 years ago.  

As reported by Live Science, a team from Tulane University’s Middle American Research Institute has reanalyzed lidar data from their 2018 study and supplemented that with additional lidar data from an expanded sample.  They now claim that the Maya population during the Late Classic Period was something between approximately 9.5 and 16 million.  The new estimate is about 35 to 45 percent larger than their previous tally between 7 and 11 million.

Lidar is a technique that uses lasers shot from a plane to create a 3D map.  The count of buildings on this map indicate population density and the total population count.  The team reassessed lidar scans of ruins throughout 36,000 square miles of the Lowlands.  

Researchers found that Maya settlements during the Late Classic Period, which lasted from about AD 600 to 900, were much more interconnected than had been previously suggested. 

In both rural and urban areas, almost every settlement had a central plaza, where elite citizens lived and where the Maya held ceremonial and civic events.  The new analysis reveals that most settlements have structures placed within three miles of the plaza.   These discoveries suggest that even rural communities were deeply integrated into the political and religious systems of the Maya heartland. 

Archaeologists additionally found that, contrary to previous notions, the northern regions of the Maya Lowlands were as densely populated and urbanized as the southern regions.  The north featured widespread agricultural networks that were likely managed by elites.

The study helps reframe the Maya civilization as a vast, densely populated and well-organized society rather than a collection of fragmented settlements.  This research raises new questions about how those dynamics may have contributed to the civilization’s eventual decline between AD 800 and 1000. 

The team published their study in the Journal of Archaeological Science.

Next, we head to the Indonesian island of Sulawesi [soo-luh-WAY-zee], where archaeologists have uncovered stone tools dating between 1 and 1.5 million years ago.  This provides evidence of human ancestors in the region long before modern humans existed.

As reported by Live Science, archaeologists from Australia and Indonesia have unearthed seven ancient stone tools from a site in Calio, a locality on the island.  While the tools themselves are clearly made by hominins, the identity of their makers remains unknown. 

Archaeologists found the tools during excavations between 2019 and 2022.  They represent the oldest-known hominin presence in Wallacea, the island zone between mainland Asia and Australia.  The earliest evidence of human activity on Sulawesi before this dated to under 200,000 years ago. 

According to professor of archaeology at Griffith University and co-author Adam Brumm, the stone tools are simple sharp tools that would have been used for general cutting and scraping.  They were crafted from chert, a hard sedimentary rock, using percussion techniques.  Percussion flaking uses a hammer stone to strike a core rock in order to make a sharp edge.  One tool was even retouched and further sharpened.

Researchers are still unsure which species made these tools.  One suggestion is that the implements were made by Homo erectus, known to have lived in nearby Java around 1.6 million years ago.  An alternative hypothesis is that the craftspeople were relatives of small-bodied species like Homo floresiensis or Homo luzonensis.  

Although the exact purpose of the tools remains unclear, researchers speculate that they were used for working with organic materials to make tools or process food.  However, currently no signs of tool use are seen on the recovered animal bones. 

This discovery pushes back the timeline of human activity in Sulawesi by over a million years and opens new avenues for studying early human migration across Wallacea. 

The new study is published in the journal Nature.

Our third story takes us to the Roman city of Pompeii in Italy, where researchers have uncovered evidence that the city did not remain abandoned after the catastrophic eruption of Vesuvius in AD 79.

As detailed by the Greek Reporter, archaeological excavations in Pompeii have revealed that some survivors returned to live among the ruins, possibly joined by newcomers seeking shelter or valuables.  Researchers claim that these inhabitants established an improvised community that endured up to at least the fifth century.

The eruption killed an estimated 15 to 20 percent of the population and buried the city in ash.  The settlers repurposed what remained of the city.  They lived on the upper floors of damaged homes and brought ovens and grain mills into the ash-filled lower levels.  Despite these adaptations, the settlement lacked basic Roman amenities like running water, sewage or organized urban infrastructure.

According to Gabriel Zuchtriegel [tsook-TREE-gel], director of the Pompeii Archaeological Park, these settlements were relatively rudimentary and resembled camps and shanty towns.  The lack of development would have stood in stark contrast to the former grandeur of the city.

Researchers claim that earlier excavations often prioritized uncovering frescoed villas and intact artifacts, inadvertently erasing subtler traces of post-eruption life without proper documentation.  New evidence, however, shows temporary shelters erected in those luxurious villas, and signs that inhabitants scavenged for jewelry, tools and other valuable belongings. 

Historical records indicate that Emperor Titus ordered two former consuls to lead recovery efforts in Pompeii.  However, these efforts ultimately failed to restore the city to its previous status.  Its few remaining inhabitants persisted in living under precarious and disorganized conditions until another eruption in 472, known as the Pollena event, likely prompted the final abandonment in the fifth century.

This discovery sheds light on an overlooked chapter of Pompeii’s history.  Archaeologists suggest that it redefines the city in terms of its adaptation and survival, as well as the resilience of the human spirit. 

We end this week in the southern Caucasus region of modern-day Georgia and Armenia, where archaeogeneticists have unveiled an extraordinary portrait of population history spanning over 5,000 years. 

As reported by Phys.org, an international team from Germany, Georgia, Armenia, and Norway analyzed ancient DNA from 230 individuals across 50 archaeological sites.  This allowed them to reconstruct the region’s human story from the early Bronze Age around 3,500 BC to the early Middle Ages around AD 700.

From their data, researchers have determined a remarkable continuity of local ancestry.  They claim that for millennia the gene pool remained largely stable, even when material culture changed.  This is unique in comparison to other parts of western Eurasia, which experienced dramatic population turnovers.

Geneticists, however, detected genetic contributions during the later Bronze Age from the neighboring region of Anatolia and from pastoralists from the Eurasian steppe.  These traces indicate cultural exchange, technological diffusion and the spread of mobile pastoralism.  

Cranial deformation is one of the most compelling discoveries of the study.  The team found early Medieval individuals from the Iberian kingdom in modern Georgia with deformed skulls, a custom associated with the Central Asian steppes.  Some of the individuals had genetic ancestry from Central Asia, including the Avars and Huns, but genetic testing revealed that most were actually locals.  This discovery suggests that the practice had been adopted into local tradition after being introduced by migrants.

Research indicates that, as urban centers emerged, especially around early Christian sites in eastern Georgia, genetic diversity rose.  Mountain corridors and trade routes helped increase individual mobility, gradually transforming these hubs into genetic melting pots.  

These discoveries will help shape our understanding of the populations that developed in the Caucasus.  The study also creates a new standard for uncovering the population histories of previously understudied regions. 

The team, which is organized through the Max Planck Harvard Research Center for the Archaeoscience of the Ancient Mediterranean, published their study in the journal Cell.

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!