̽��ֱ�� of Cambridge - palaeoanthropology

Fashion for pointy shoes unleashed a plague of bunions in medieval Britain

fpjl2 — Fri, 11 Jun 2021 08:12:51 +0000

Researchers analysing skeletal remains in Cambridge find a dramatic increase in ‘hallux valgus’ around the time that pointed shoes became de rigueur in the 1300s.

Evidence of a prehistoric massacre extends the history of warfare

fpjl2 — Wed, 20 Jan 2016 17:35:21 +0000

̽��ֱ��fossilised bones of a group of prehistoric hunter-gatherers who were massacred around 10,000 years ago have been unearthed 30km west of Lake Turkana, Kenya, at a place called Nataruk.

Researchers from Cambridge ̽��ֱ��’s Leverhulme Centre for Human Evolutionary Studies (LCHES) found the partial remains of 27 individuals, including at least eight women and six children.

Twelve skeletons were in a relatively complete state, and ten of these showed clear signs of a violent death: including extreme blunt-force trauma to crania and cheekbones, broken hands, knees and ribs, arrow lesions to the neck, and stone projectile tips lodged in the skull and thorax of two men.

Several of the skeletons were found face down; most had severe cranial fractures. Among the in situ skeletons, at least five showed “sharp-force trauma”, some suggestive of arrow wounds. Four were discovered in a position indicating their hands had probably been bound, including a woman in the last stages of pregnancy. Foetal bones were uncovered.

̽��ֱ��bodies were not buried. Some had fallen into a lagoon that has long since dried; the bones preserved in sediment.

̽��ֱ��findings suggest these hunter-gatherers, perhaps members of an extended family, were attacked and killed by a rival group of prehistoric foragers. Researchers believe it is the earliest scientifically-dated historical evidence of human conflict – an ancient precursor to what we call warfare.

̽��ֱ��origins of warfare are controversial: whether the capacity for organised violence occurs deep in the evolutionary history of our species, or is a symptom of the idea of ownership that came with the settling of land and agriculture.

̽��ֱ��Nataruk massacre is the earliest record of inter-group violence among prehistoric hunter-gatherers who were largely nomadic. ̽��ֱ��only comparable evidence, discovered in Sudan in the 1960s, is undated, although often quoted as of similar age. It consists of cemetery burials, suggesting a settled lifestyle.

“ ̽��ֱ��deaths at Nataruk are testimony to the antiquity of inter-group violence and war,” said Dr Marta Mirazón Lahr, from Cambridge’s LCHES, who directs the ERC-funded IN-AFRICA Project and led the Nataruk study, published today in the journal Nature.

“These human remains record the intentional killing of a small band of foragers with no deliberate burial, and provide unique evidence that warfare was part of the repertoire of inter-group relations among some prehistoric hunter-gatherers,” she said.

̽��ֱ��site was first discovered in 2012. Following careful excavation, the researchers used radiocarbon and other dating techniques on the skeletons – as well as on samples of shell and sediment surrounding the remains – to place Nataruk in time. They estimate the event occurred between 9,500 to 10,500 years ago, around the start of the Holocene: the geological epoch that followed the last Ice Age.

Now scrubland, 10,000 years ago the area around Nataruk was a fertile lakeshore sustaining a substantial population of hunter-gatherers. ̽��ֱ��site would have been the edge of a lagoon near the shores of a much larger Lake Turkana, likely covered in marshland and bordered by forest and wooded corridors.

This lagoon-side location may have been an ideal place for prehistoric foragers to inhabit, with easy access to drinking water and fishing – and consequently, perhaps, a location coveted by others. ̽��ֱ��presence of pottery suggests the storage of foraged food.

“ ̽��ֱ��Nataruk massacre may have resulted from an attempt to seize resources – territory, women, children, food stored in pots – whose value was similar to those of later food-producing agricultural societies, among whom violent attacks on settlements became part of life,” said Mirazón Lahr.

“This would extend the history of the same underlying socio-economic conditions that characterise other instances of early warfare: a more settled, materially richer way of life. However, Nataruk may simply be evidence of a standard antagonistic response to an encounter between two social groups at that time.”

Click on images to enlarge

Antagonism between hunter-gatherer groups in recent history often resulted in men being killed, with women and children subsumed into the victorious group. At Nataruk, however, it seems few, if any, were spared.

Of the 27 individuals recorded, 21 were adults: eight males, eight females, and five unknown. Partial remains of six children were found co-mingled or in close proximity to the remains of four adult women and of two fragmentary adults of unknown sex.

No children were found near or with any of the men. All except one of the juvenile remains are children under the age of six; the exception is a young teenager, aged 12-15 years dentally, but whose bones are noticeably small for his or her age.

Ten skeletons show evidence of major lesions likely to have been immediately lethal. As well as five – possibly six – cases of trauma associated with arrow wounds, five cases of extreme blunt-force to the head can be seen, possibly caused by a wooden club. Other recorded traumas include fractured knees, hands and ribs.

Three artefacts were found within two of the bodies, likely the remains of arrow or spear tips. Two of these are made from obsidian: a black volcanic rock easily worked to razor-like sharpness. “Obsidian is rare in other late Stone Age sites of this area in West Turkana, which may suggest that the two groups confronted at Nataruk had different home ranges,” said Mirazón Lahr.

One adult male skeleton had an obsidian ‘bladelet’ still embedded in his skull. It didn’t perforate the bone, but another lesion suggests a second weapon did, crushing the entire right-front part of the head and face. “ ̽��ֱ��man appears to have been hit in the head by at least two projectiles and in the knees by a blunt instrument, falling face down into the lagoon’s shallow water,” said Mirazón Lahr.

Another adult male took two blows to the head – one above the right eye, the other on the left side of the skull – both crushing his skull at the point of impact, causing it to crack in different directions.

̽��ֱ��remains of a six-to-nine month-old foetus were recovered from within the abdominal cavity of one of the women, who was discovered in an unusual sitting position – her broken knees protruding from the earth were all Mirazón Lahr and colleagues could see when they found her. ̽��ֱ��position of the body suggests that her hands and feet may have been bound.

The Nataruk remains are now housed at the Turkana Basin Institute, Turkwell Station, for the National Museums of Kenya.

While we will never know why these people were so violently killed, Nataruk is one of the clearest cases of inter-group violence among prehistoric hunter-gatherers, says Mirazón Lahr, and evidence for the presence of small-scale warfare among foraging societies.

For study co-author Professor Robert Foley, also from Cambridge’s LCHES, the findings at Nataruk are an echo of human violence as ancient, perhaps, as the altruism that has led us to be the most cooperative species on the planet.

“I’ve no doubt it is in our biology to be aggressive and lethal, just as it is to be deeply caring and loving. A lot of what we understand about human evolutionary biology suggests these are two sides of the same coin,” Foley said.

Skeletal remains of a group of foragers massacred around 10,000 years ago on the shores of a lagoon is unique evidence of a violent encounter between clashing groups of ancient hunter-gatherers, and suggests the “presence of warfare” in late Stone Age foraging societies.

̽��ֱ��deaths at Nataruk are testimony to the antiquity of inter-group violence and war

Marta Mirazón Lahr

Left: Skull of a man found lying prone in the lagoons sediments. ̽��ֱ��skull has multiple lesions consistent with wounds from a blunt implement. Right: ̽��ֱ��skull in situ.

̽��ֱ��text in this work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License. For image use please see separate credits above.

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Opinion: Finding a hunter-gatherer massacre scene that may change history of human warfare

Anonymous — Tue, 19 Jan 2016 13:09:24 +0000

̽��ֱ��area surrounding Lake Turkana in Kenya was lush and fertile 10,000 years ago, with thousands of animals – including elephants, giraffes and zebras – roaming around alongside groups of hunter gatherers. But it also had a dark side. We have discovered the oldest known case of violence between two groups of hunter gatherers took place there, with ten excavated skeletons showing evidence of having been killed with both sharp and blunt weapons.

̽��ֱ��findings, published in Nature, are important because they challenge our understanding of the roots of conflict and suggest warfare may have a much older history than many researchers believe.

Shocking finding

Our journey started in 2012, when Pedro Ebeya, one of our Turkana field assistants, reported seeing fragments of human bones on the surface at Nataruk. Located just south of Lake Turkana, Nataruk is today a barren desert, but 10,000 years ago was a temporary camp set up by a band of hunter-gatherers next to a lagoon. I led a team of researchers, as part of the In-Africa project, which has been working in the area since 2009. We excavated the remains of 27 people – six young children, one teenager and 20 adults. Twelve of these – both men and women – were found as they had died, unburied, and later covered by the shallow water of the lagoon.

Ten of the 12 skeletons show lesions caused by violence to the parts of the body most commonly involved in cases of violence. These include one where the projectile was still embedded in the side of the skull; two cases of sharp-force trauma to the neck; seven cases of blunt and/or sharp-force trauma to the head; two cases of blunt-force trauma to the knees and one to the ribs. There were also two cases of fractures to the hands, possibly caused while parrying a blow.

There must have at least three types of weapons involved in these murders – projectiles (stoned-tipped as well as sharpened arrows), something similar to a club, and something close to a wooden handle with hafted sharp-stone blades that caused deep cuts. Two individuals have no lesions in the preserved parts of the skeleton, but the position of their hands suggests they may have been bound, including a young woman who was heavily pregnant at the time.

Me and my colleague, Justus Edung, during the excavations. Credit: Robert Foley

We dated the remains and the site to between 10,500 and 9,500 years ago, making them the earliest scientifically dated case of a conflict between two groups of hunter-gatherers. Stones in the weapons include obsidian, a rare stone in the Nataruk area, suggesting the attackers came from a different place.

̽��ֱ��(pre)history of warfare

Today we think of warfare, or inter-group conflict, as something that happens when one group of people wants the territory, resources or power held by another. But prehistoric societies were usually small groups of nomads moving from place to place – meaning they didn’t own land or have significant possessions. They typically didn’t have strong social hierarchies either. Therefore, many scholars have argued that warfare must have emerged after farming and more complex political systems arose.

Man with an obsidian bladelet embedded into the left side of his skull, and a projectile lesion (possibly of a sharpened arrow shaft) on the right side of the skull. Marta Mirazon Lahr

Naturuk therefore challenges our views about what the causes of conflict are. It is possible that human prehistoric societies simply responded antagonistically to chance encounters with another group. But this is not what seems to have happened at Nataruk. ̽��ֱ��group which attacked was carrying weapons that would not normally be carried while hunting and fishing. In addition, the lesions show that clubs of at least two sizes were used, making it likely that more than one of the attackers were carrying them.

̽��ֱ��fact that the attack combined long-distance weapons such as arrows and close-proximity weaponry such as clubs suggests they planned the attack. Also, there are other, but isolated, examples of violent trauma in this area from this period in time – one discovered in the 1970s about 20km north of Nataruk, and two discovered by our project at a nearby site. All three involved projectiles, one of the hallmarks of inter-group conflict. Two of the projectiles found embedded in the bones at Nataruk and in two of the other cases were made of obsidian. This tells us that such attacks happened multiple times, and were part of the life of the hunter-gatherer communities at the time.

So why were the people of Nataruk attacked? We have to conclude that they had valuable resources that were worth fighting for – water, meat, fish, nuts, or indeed women and children. This suggests that two of the conditions associated with warfare among settled societies – territory and resources – were probably common among these hunter-gatherers, and that we have underestimated their role so far.

Evolution is about survival, and our species is no different from others in this respect. ̽��ֱ��injuries suffered by the people of Nataruk are merciless and shocking, but no different from those suffered in wars throughout much of our history – sadly even today. It may be human nature, but we should not forget that extraordinary acts of altruism, compassion and caring are also unique parts of who we are.

Marta Mirazon Lahr, Reader in Human Evolutionary Biology & Director of the Duckworth Collection, ̽��ֱ�� of Cambridge

This article was originally published on ̽��ֱ��Conversation. Read the original article.

̽��ֱ��opinions expressed in this article are those of the individual author(s) and do not represent the views of the ̽��ֱ�� of Cambridge.

Marta Mirazon Lahr (Leverhulme Centre for Human Evolutionary Studies) discusses the discovery, made by her and her team, of the oldest known case of violence between two groups of hunter gatherers.

Image by Marta Mirazon Lahr, enhanced by Fabio Lahr

Skull of a man with multiple lesions on the side, probably caused by a club.

̽��ֱ��text in this work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License. For image use please see separate credits above.

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Human parasites found in medieval cesspit reveal links between Middle East and Europe

fpjl2 — Thu, 19 Mar 2015 11:58:28 +0000

A new analysis of a medieval cesspit in the Christian quarter of the old city of Jerusalem has revealed the presence of a number of ancient parasite eggs, providing a window into the nature and spread of infectious diseases in the Middle East during the 15th century.

Researchers found evidence of six species of intestinal parasites in the over 500-year-old latrine. These included large quantities of roundworm and whipworm, both spread by faecal contamination of food and thought to be endemic to the region dating back to human evolution out of Africa.

Two of the parasites detected, Entamoeba dysentery and fish tapeworm, were common in northern Europe in the medieval period, but either very rare or almost completely absent among the populations of the medieval Middle East.

̽��ֱ��fish tapeworm was prevalent in northern Europe due to the popularity of fish as a food and the nature of its preparation: often eaten raw, smoked or pickled - which doesn’t kill the parasite. According to Arabic texts of the time, in inland Syrian cities such as Jerusalem fish was not commonly eaten, and when consumed was always cooked thoroughly in accordance with local culinary traditions. This cooking kills the parasite and prevents its spread.

̽��ֱ��team also found pieces of Italian pottery in the same cesspit, reinforcing the hypothesis of strong trading or religious links between Europe and Jerusalem during the late 1400s.

Researchers say the presence of these parasites in the latrine suggests it was either a town house whose owners were Jerusalem merchants that travelled to Europe on business, contracting parasites while there, or it was perhaps a hostel that accommodated European travellers such as merchants or pilgrims.

“While we can only suggest reasons as to why people made these journeys between northern Europe and Jerusalem’s Christian quarter, it does seem they brought with them unsuspecting hitch-hikers in their intestines,” said Dr Piers Mitchell from Cambridge ̽��ֱ��’s Division of Biological Anthropology, who conducted the study, recently published in the International Journal of Paleopathology.

“ ̽��ֱ��presence of the fish tapeworm - which can reach ten metres long in humans, and coils around inside the intestine - combined with the fragments of pottery made in Italy, most likely indicates that travellers from northern Europe used this latrine during a visit to Jerusalem,” Mitchell said.

̽��ֱ��team used a combination of microscopy and biomolecular analysis (ELISA) - to uncover parasite eggs - on 12 ‘coprolites’: fossilised faeces, and some cesspit sediment. ̽��ֱ��cesspit itself, located a short distance north of the Church of the Holy Sepulchre, was much more than a mere hole in the ground - with a vaulted roof, stone-built walls, and two ‘entry chutes’ for defecation on opposing sides.

All 12 coprolites were found to be riddled with both roundworm and whipworm, along with the sediment. These species are thought to have become progressively more common in the region following agriculture, and may have been spread by faecal contamination of food as a consequence of the use of human faeces as a crop fertiliser (as well as poor sanitation).

One coprolite tested positive for eggs of the fish tapeworm, which was the most unexpected discovery from the analysis. ̽��ֱ��researchers also found quantities of Taenia parasite eggs, indicating pork or beef tapeworm. Despite the dominance of Islam in the society during the Mamluk Period (1250-1516 AD), pigs would have still been consumed in the Christian quarter.

Mitchell says the health impacts of these parasites would have varied. “A light load of whipworm or roundworm would be likely to go unnoticed. A heavy load of these parasites in children, however, can lead to malnutrition, reduced intelligence and stunted growth. Dysentery may cause diarrhoea and abdominal cramps for a week or two and then settle, or it may cause death from dehydration and septicaemia.”

“This research highlights how we can use preserved parasite eggs in ancient toilets to spot past migrations and the spread of ancient diseases. Jerusalem’s importance to Christians in medieval Europe made it a key destination for both pilgrimage and trade. We can see these travellers took unexpected guests along with them.”

Inset image: Preserved Whipworm egg found in the medieval Jerusalem latrine. Credit: Hui-Yuan Yeh.

Analysis of a latrine in Jerusalem that dates back over 500 years finds human parasites common in northern Europe yet very rare in Middle East at the time, suggesting long-distance trade or pilgrimage routes and shedding light on prevalent infectious diseases of the age.

Jerusalem’s importance to Christians in medieval Europe made it a key destination for both pilgrimage and trade. We can see these travellers took unexpected guests along with them

Piers Mitchell

Right: Jean-Baptiste Humbert. Left: Hui-Yuan Yeh

Right: excavation deep down into the latrine by the Ecole Biblique de Jerusalem. Left: Taenia tapeworm egg in the latrine indicating either pork or beef tapeworm.

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