Oldest cheese? What a stink...

Anyone's who's worth their biscuit knows how well a good piece of cheese goes with a cream cracker. Unless you're lactose intolerant of course, which before the domestication of livestock most humans appear to have been, and in many parts of the world still are.  But here, despite this and coming up to Christmas, it seems inevitable that the old fashioned cheeseboard will once again make its lovely ripe rounds on the dining table. But exactly how old is cheese? And not just the moldy old Stinking Bishop at the back of the fridge - but the "invention", or more accurately the creation of the process, of making cheese?

Evidence of lipids on ceramic archaeological evidence from 7th millennium BC north-western Anatolia has been around for a while now, but up til now no-one has been entirely sure the use of the substance. Early Neolithic 6th millennium BC potsherds with straining holes have also been found in number in temperate Europe, but no-one could prove their useage as cheese strainers. But two days ago a paper published by Nature journal by a team from the University of Bristol made of Melanie Salque, Peter Bogucki and others has made claims for the earliest evidence of cheese production.  How can they know it was cheese when no evidence of cheese can/has been found?

Simply, chemistry. By analysing the δ¹³C and  ∆¹³C values in the organic residues on these strainer vessels it appears that the sheer abundance of milk fats is conclusive evidence for the process of cheese making in the separation of fat-rich milk from lactose-rich whey. This also explains why cheese is more readily digestible by lactose-intolerant stomachs than pure milk, as it contains less lactose.  They hypothesize that dairy products in the form of cheese would therefore have been more popular among earlier farmers as it would preserve as well as being more tolerable to digest. 

The analysis of Linear Pottery, some of which had been deemed 'cheese strainers' by Bogucki previously (1984), had also been debated as being flame covers, honey strainers of a part in the beer-making process.  However, the team used gas-chromographic, spectrometric and the good ol' isotopic analysis methods on the organic remains of Linear potsherd remains from Kuyavia, Poland and compared the results with other types of pottery (coarse/ 'cookingware' potsherds from Ludwinowo from early, classic and late periods of Linear Pottery in Kuyavia (about 5,400 - 4,800 calibrated BC).  

The results were pretty cool. About 40% of the sieve sherds contained lipid residue, similar to food processing vessels at other sites. But the cool thing is that triacylglycerides (I did Chemistry at A Level, so I'm secretly a bit of a science geek) and the products from their degradation were found in 90% of the animal fats showing a high preservation of residues, and this was different to the levels in the cooking pots, indicating a specialisation of vessel.  That's the first evidence of vessel specialisation in the early Neolithic.  Beeswax was also found in 3 sieves, which could have helped in waterproofing the ceramic, whilst making it kind of 'non-stick'.  All this with the evidence of such ceramic holes perfect for cheese making? Sounds like cheese to me. Additionally, they say their data is concordant with lactase persistence in Europe too to boot. Here's a snippet from the article:

"The evidence for the specialized use of Linear Pottery sieves in association with milk is important for three main reasons:

(1) the typology of the sieves and the presence of dairy fats are consistent with milk processing, providing the earliest evidence of cheese making, which is notable because the manufacture of cheese increases the ease of handling of milk and allows the nutritional properties of milk to be
readily available through the year; 

(2) the processing of milk to manufacture low-lactose-content cheese is consistent with the predicted low
level of lactase persistence in northern Europe in the early Neolithic, and 

(3) the evidence of milk use by the people of the Linear Pottery culture is consistent with the predicted increase in frequency of the 213,910*T allele associated with lactase persistence among prehistoric northern Europeans in this region." (Salque et al. 2012: 4)

Seems like cheese really can kick up a stink after all this time. You can read the full article here: http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/vaop/ncurrent/full/nature11698.html

'Homo Evolutis' and neo-evolution

The idea that humans evolved from an evolutionary phylogeny is widespread and the best-represented theory by known evidence.  But have you ever thought that we are still evolving - and with technological advances being around now for a while, doesn't it seem that we live a very different lifestyle which we may have adapted to, compared to people in earlier history? Juan Enriquez has a great talk on TED on 'Homo Evolutis'. He's funny too, and makes the case that we are continually 'upgrading', as seen in the archaeological evidence of the human evolutionary tree. Are we the 'be-all, end-all' sole purpose of creation? Or is it more likely that we are continually evolving to our environments? In our evolutionary history, there have been multiple species existing at the same time. Why should we be alone as a singular species, when some individuals may have adapted to become Homo Evolutis - a newer, better-adapted (to our current societies respectively), species?



I love TED talks as they make procrastination feel like work. They're also inspirational and really make you think.  Here's another on neo-evolution by Harvey Fineberg:



Personally, I think it's only a matter of time before a new species does emerge, but I think it will be among our existing Homo sapiens species. Cultural diversity in tandem with technological advances taking effect within certain areas and groups of people will, like Darwin's finches, inevitably lead to a diversity that will create species difference. Are we mid-upgrade? Will we be able to use technology to change our bodies and adapt to lifestyles? Sheldon Cooper from The Big Bang Theory thinks he's 'clearly too evolved for driving'. Hmm... I'm not convinced...

Tattoos, mummies and the internet

Remember Oetzi the Iceman? Mummified by the cold, lactose intolerant and tattooed on Brad Pitt's arm? (Click this link if you don't: http://diggingandgigging.blogspot.co.uk/2012/05/otzis-oldest-blood.html)
Well, get this: you can get up close and personal with Oetzi over the internet. And I'm not talking about a dating website, that would be weird. The Iceman Photoscan is a website launched in 2009 which allows you to see high definition images of Oetzi - it is possible to zoom in to see details down to 1mm small on his body. If that wasn't good enough, you can also view him in UV, pinpoint his tattoos and zoom into them (preserved beautifully), and you can even see him in 3D if you own a pair of old style red-and-cyan glasses.
Here is the website: http://iceman.eurac.edu/

I have not been this excited about the internet being able to transmit such a high level of photographic detail since I found out about Google Art Project, which I subsequently used in a talk about science and art when I was at school. Something about being able to see an object in such detail without actually being there amazes me, and that you can access this kind of information resource for free is brilliant. Even better, it allows the viewer to see Oetzi without interfering with the very sensitive conditions that preserve his body.

Some may question the right to use photos of Oetzi like this, but so long as people remember to respect Oetzi he lends a huge hand in developing educational resources, and scientific methods too, whilst of course finding out more about himself.

If you want to find out more about Oetzi beyond the pictures, you can watch videos about his wax model reconstruction and interviews with the people who have been studying him here: http://www.youtube.com/user/OetziTheIceman?feature=relchannel (he's got his own channel on Youtube!)

Oetzi isn't the only mummy with tattoos, though. The 'Siberian Ice Maiden' made the news last month as she went back to the Altai Republic where she was found on the Ukok Plateau 2500m in the mountains in 1993 by Natalia Polosmak. The body has been dated to around 2500 years old and she is thought to have died aged 25. Preserved by the permafrost, they found her in a burial chamber dressed in Chinese silk and wearing a horsehair wig, alongside jewellery, a mirror, and six saddled horses amongst other things. But her tattoos are the things have have preserved the best. Thought to belong to the nomadic Pazyryk people, their tattoos are according to Dr Polosmak 'most complicated, and the most beautiful' among mummies in the archaeological record. Here's a drawing of a mummified soldier's tattoos from the same plateau:

Drawings by Elena Shumakova, Institute of Archeology and Ethnography, 

Siberian Branch of Russian Academy of Science

To quote from this wonderful little online booklet about the findings (http://www.scribd.com/doc/96350466/Tombs-of-Altai-Mountains), in Altai art there appears to be 4 main motifs; "the horned horse, the flying“beaked” deer, the crested griffin and the elk with lobed antlers." (p36)

The cool thing is that all of these images are rooted in "common steppe tradition", a purely local Altai art that only incorporated other cultural influences during the 5th and 4th centuries AD, when the nomads would have exchanged objects, and ideas, with the Chinese and Greek. But don't think it was a one-way transfer; some of the main motifs that came out of north Western China was inspired by the Altai, seen in the reversed back legs of this elk from a belt plaque which carried into China but is also seen in some of the Altai tattoos.

©Mission Archéologique Françaiseen Asie Centrale (CNRS-MAE) H.-P.Francfort.

If we compare this spread of iconic motifs to the present day, has much really changed? As populations migrated, so did their ideas. In the same sense, tattoos help to spread these ideas, as well as represent part of the person's identity with its meaning and its connotations. Think about the internet today; this is like a virtual net of migrations, when ideas can spread at the touch of a button. You go on Google images, and one will pop up from the other side of the world. So before anyone says that some modern tattoos (say, a little Hello Kitty or something) are pointless or meaningless, maybe these are the iconic motifs of the present day - well, in the world of the internet anyway. As such, why should I have been surprised that Brad Pitt had a tattoo of Oetzi on his arm? Oetzi, all over the internet, books and journals, has become an icon. And tattoo useage still has its roots in its most basic functions; self-beautification, identity and beliefs. It appears none of these factors for having one have changed over time - only the images themselves.

Kent Caverns and the story of a jawbone

I went to Kent Caverns today in Torquay with my family. We've been on holiday in Devon and I've been keen to visit the caves since I found out that they are home to the oldest archaeological remains of anatomically modern humans in Europe. Apparently that's how geeky I can be.

Photo of inside the cavern system

In 1927, a piece of human jawbone with teeth was found that dated between 44,200 - 41,500 years old.  It was identified as being Homo sapiens sapiens, anatomically modern human, and not Neanderthal despite Neanderthals existing at the same time on the European continent. But there's a little back story about dating the maxilla (upper jaw). It was dated in Oxford in 1989 as younger - 31,000 years old - but because the jawbone had traces of glue on it that held it together, they weren't sure whether they had an accurate date for the jawbone. So, a recent study by Prof. Thomas Higham (Oxford) and Chris Stringer of the Natural History Museum in 2011 has confirmed the jawbone isn't Neanderthal.  How do you do that? By creating a 3D model of the jawbone, of course, and distinguishing AMH characteristics against Neanderthal ones. It was further dated by radiocarbon dating animal bone in the immediate layers around where the jawbone was found.  Using Bayesian statistic modelling (which I find just a bit bamboozling) they narrowed the dates to 44,500 - 41,500 years old. 

The implications for modern humans at the time so far north in Europe are incredible. Firstly, it confirms that Neanderthals and anatomically modern humans co-existed in time, but secondly that spatially AMH dispersed perhaps different than we previously assumed. 

Quoting Professor Higham (you can see his profile here: http://www.arch.ox.ac.uk/TH1.html):

"We believe this piece of jawbone is the earliest direct evidence we have of modern humans in northwestern Europe, at a site at the very outermost limits of the initial dispersal of our species. It confirms the presence of modern humans at the time of the earliest Aurignacian culture, and tells us a great deal about how rapidly our species dispersed across Europe during the last Ice Age."

Which is pretty wicked in the Upper Paleolithic world.

So off we went today on a cave tour, led by the lovely Alan and his Mag-lite, who explained the history of the archaeological digs in the 19th and 20th century. Willian Pengelly led the excavations pre-1900, and his team found flint tools and animal bones, including hyena and woolly mammoth remains. Alan showed  examples of one of each tooth, or 'tuth', as Alan says. Pengelly was good in that he brought order to the archaeological excavation techniques, excavating by a set area and depth.  Unfortunately,  Pengelly destroyed a chunk of the material debris in the cave by blowing it up. Woops.

We also saw some pretty cool stalagmites, stalactites, pillars and flowstone which looked like it came straight from Alien. Alan also decided to ask me if I knew what creature Diego was in Ice Age, and then put a saber tooth next to my face and said to everyone that it suited me. Alan, you charmer. But here is evidence of Smilodontini (small Smilodons) found in the caves, as well as bears (vegetarian and carnivorous) and other species. It's just their speculation, but it may've been one of these creatures that killed the poor person whose jawbone was found.

Some of the animal species remains found at the Kent Caverns

All in all, a great geeky day out - I even bought a Cavog the Caveman pencil.

You can read more about the jawbone in this Nature article here: http://blogs.nature.com/news/2011/11/who_ere_europes_first_humans.html

And on the Kents Cavern website here:

http://www.kents-cavern.co.uk/sub.cfm?main=242&sub=448  

Summer diggin'... Part 2

So, one day back home to wash and re-pack my case, and I was on my plane to Spain...

I stayed for 3 weeks in total around Catalonia, originally to dig on a site with the University of Barcelona. This was also part of the fieldwork requirements for my course.  First day, I travelled to Sants Station and found the hostel where I spent the night.  However, I ran into a bit of a pickle on my second day in Barcelona; as soon as I met the dig supervisor, he told me as we drove north that due to the Spain's current economy and the knock-on effects, the Uni had run out of money for the site funding and the dig was cut to 1 and a half weeks. Oops. Bad for my requirements, and also meant I had nowhere to stay for a week and a half.  But I was in a Zen mood and decided that stuff would figure itself out.

Montlleó (France in the background)

The site is thought to have been a key crossing point in the Pyrenees 15,000 years ago in the early and middle Upper Paleolithic, here called the Magdalenian. In fact, the site was initially dated by the Oxford Radiocarbon Lab. What really attracted me to this site was the prospect of finding such old evidence of human occupation in this area, like the perforated shells that they've previously found here. So I was very happy when a perforated shell was found when we were excavating.  We also found a cut straight snail shell (caracol, en español), animal bone and worked flint, and what may be evidence of a hearth.  However, we'll have to wait til the results are published to find what it all means (and I'm not allowed to say too much here!).  What I can say is that the site is a very curious mixture; it is 1130m above sea level but an open site - extremely hot but with a breeze; it's also on a slope, making it hard to excavate evenly!

Team photo

Ger, Cerdanya, where our hotel was near the excavation

The site!

Eve with one of the shells

Unfortunately, I felt ill after about a week, collapsed on the lobby floor and was in bed for a day and a half. By this time, the dig finished and I found myself by the grace of the wonderful students there being put up by Silvia, a lovely student who lives in an apartment in Badalona. Thank goodness they're so nice! The original plan was that I was going to work in the Uni labs for the next week and a half doing post-excavation work, but this was abandoned since a) they'd finished all the work there and b) it was closed. El problema segunda. Nevermind - instead, I hung out with Silvia and her boyfriend and we went sight-seeing and shopping (perhaps a kind of cultural anthropological study, no?) in Barcelona and Badalona.
Olé olé olé!

Chillin' with Silvia and Marta at Badalona beach

La Sagrada Familia

Parc Guell

Oh, and we visited Port Aventura. What can I say? I like to make the best of a bad situation...!

Us at Shambala!

I also met up with my godparents who happen to live close to Barcelona. They showed me the botanic gardens and the Olympic Stadium for the 1992 Barcelona Olympics, all this while the Olympics were going on back in England.

Part of the Olympic park

Silvia took me clubbing in Barcelona too - different, but amazingly fun! I could say it was an anthropological experience too, but I had probably drunk enough calimocho that my amount of dancing far outweighed any critical observations I could have made. However, there is apparently (I say this because I googled it) an anthropologist at the New University of Lisbon whose post-Ph.d work explores "seduction techniques" in nightclubs. And you thought I made up these things. You can read one of her papers here: http://www.inter-disciplinary.net/wp-content/uploads/2011/08/lamygpaper.pdf 

At the end of my trip, I was very reluctant to leave Spain, its glorious sunniness and its wonderful people and its interesting past, but I was glad to stop living out of a suitcase... well, for a little while anyway!

You can read about the site of Montlleó here: http://www20.gencat.cat/docs/CulturaDepartament/DGPC/Documents/Arxiu/Trib03-04.pdf p.23-44 (It's in Catalan so copy and paste it into an internet translator if you can't understand it!)

Summer diggin'... Part I

As you can see by the date of my last post, I've been away lately, so sorry to anyone who actually follows this - there are lots of new updates to come, promise...

What's been happening:

• Last term I was revising for my end of year exams (Hon Mods) whilst training for Summer Eights.  Our crew survived Eights (with some funky stash and some blesséd weather), unfortunately dropping 2 or 3 places but had a brilliant time overall - despite breaking the front of our bow(!) Exam-wise, after a week and a half of living in the library and wondering if I would make it out alive of the exam halls, I passed!

• For my course I went on a 2-week training excavation at Dorchester-on-Thames, near Oxford.  On the Roman site, at the end of an allotment, the most important find was a Saxon coin discovered by my friend (who received a bottle of bubbly for it!). Digging a cross-section of a ditch we could map the curvature of the ditch, and intersecting ditches with it by identifying what and how much of what we found in it.  For example, different levels of animal bone, its size, and how the bone stuck out of the ground gave a good indication of where the lines could be drawn, as it were. 

Team photo

Unfortunately, our group didn't get to excavate much of the Neolithic site - a great shame for me! We were taught to use total stations, about identifying different pottery (and there was a lot) and how to photo sites.  I also learnt that bathing in a lake isn't so bad (if a bit chilly) since our campsite had no showers, but the pub dinners definitely made up for it.

The Roman site

In all, Dorchester-on-Thames has a lot more history than I thought, and I found some pretty funky stuff; copper coins, nails (all shapes and sizes), Oxford faux-Samianware, and some huge animal jaws. 

Vampires in Bulgaria

Two Medieval human skeletons found at Sozopol, near the Black Sea in Bulgaria, have been excavated and found to have an iron rod piercing them through the chest.  A little odd, no?

The plot (or should I say clot) thickens: this phenomenon has been found in about 100 other skeletons from the Balkans.  Archaeologist Petar Balabanov in 2004 found six nailed-down skeletons at a site near the eastern Bulgarian town of Debelt according to BBC News.

Bozhidar Dimitrov, from the Bulgarian National History Museum, said "These skeletons stabbed with rods illustrate a practice which was common in some Bulgarian villages up until the first decade of the 20th Century".

According to her, it was pagan practice as a rite to 'pin down' these dead so they would not come back and terrorise the living, in accordance with vampire folklore it seems.

Image courtesy of the National History Museum of Bulgaria/HO/EPA

Well, it's a great coincidence then that a Victorian vampire-slaying kit is going on auction in Yorkshire, isn't it?

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-york-north-yorkshire-18367300

Whether or not they were actually thought of as vampires is probably just a media hype.  But I can't wait to get my teeth into the findings when they're published.