Ancient World Review

Study Of Ancient Dog DNA Traces Canine Diversity To The Ice Age

"A global study of ancient dog DNA ... presents evidence that there were different types of dogs more than 11,000 years ago in the period immediately following the Ice Age." Source: Science Daily.

"In their study ... the research team sequenced ancient DNA from 27 dogs, some of which lived up to nearly 11,000 years ago, across Europe, the Near East and Siberia. They found that by this point in history, just after the Ice Age and before any other animal had been domesticated, there were already at least five different types of dog with distinct genetic ancestries."

Interesting detail: In many ways the early history of dogs -- their genetic mixing and diversification into different breeds -- mirrors the processes that were occurring with human beings at the time, but there was one mysterious exception when a single species of dog apparently took over prehistoric Europe, completely wiping out the canine diversity on the continent:

"... there are also cases when human and dog histories do not mirror each other. For example, the loss of diversity that existed in dogs in early Europe was caused by the spread of a single dog ancestry that replaced other populations. This dramatic event is not mirrored in human populations, and it remains to be determined what caused this turnover in European dog ancestry."

Some monster dog like the Hound of the Baskervilles moved into Europe and took over, no doubt. Dogs used to be ferocious hunters and fighters. These days they've devolved (like humans themselves) to the point where they're so lazy they can't even bother to get up when they eat.

A typical example of the modern dog.

Top 10 Terrifying Animals That Lived Alongside Prehistoric Man

"Despite the façade of modernity and a world under technical human control, being alone in the dark far from others can show us a different side of humanity.  Alone in unfamiliar places we quickly become more cautious, more observant and sometimes even fearful. The genes that helped us survive a much more savage world still whisper to us the truth in the dark; we were prey before we were top predators." Source: Earth.com.

Sex In A World Of Fear: Scared Rodents Produce More Offspring

"Rodent mothers produce more offspring after smelling odors produced by frightened males. This is reported by a team of biologists from Finland and the Netherlands and bring new information the proximate and ultimate explanations of small mammal behavioral responses." Source: Phys.org (2018).

"Fear of being eaten has the power to shape populations and drive evolution. The effect the authors report is large: exposed mothers produce litters with about fifty percent more pups compared to unexposed control mothers."

Comment: If the rat population can grow so explosively in places like India where they're venerated, I hate to think how quickly they reproduce when living in a state of fear. Rats, of course, are considered to be vermin in the West but they're actually nothing to be afraid of according to the noted English rat expert, James Herbert.

Cave Bear Mummy Discovered In Siberia

"Reindeer hunters in Siberia have unearthed the remains of an extinct ice age beast: a mummified cave bear — the only adult of its species ever discovered that still has intact soft tissues, including its fur and even its black nose, according to news reports." Source: Live Science.

"The hunters found the cave bear (Ursus spelaeus) mummy on Bolshoy Lyakhovsky island, in the East Siberian Sea. Meanwhile, on the mainland in the Republic of Sakha (also known as Yakutia), another group discovered the mummy of a cave bear cub, according to a statement from the North-Eastern Federal University (NEFU) in Yakutsk."

Note: "Between the years 1917 and 1923, the Drachenloch cave in Switzerland was excavated by Emil Bächler. The excavation uncovered more than 30,000 cave bear skeletons. It also uncovered a stone chest or cist, consisting of a low wall built from limestone slabs near a cave wall with a number of bear skulls inside it. Also, a cave bear skull was found with a femur bone from another bear stuck inside it. Scholars speculated that it was proof of prehistoric human religious rites involving the cave bear, or that the Drachenloch cave bears were hunted as part of a hunting ritual, or that the skulls were kept as trophies." (Wikipedia)

Monkey Pets From India Buried Like "Sleeping Babies" In Ancient Egypt

"The remains of monkeys found buried at an ancient port in Egypt reveal that they were imported from India as household pets, say archaeologists." Source: Archaeology News Network.

"The monkeys, discovered in an animal cemetery in the ancient port of Berenice and found to have been carefully arranged like sleeping babies, were initially thought to have been local to the area.

"But by using 3D scanners and comparing the bones with others, researchers found the primates were actually rhesus macaques from India."

Note: Apparently the monkey's owners were Romans rather than native Egyptians:

"Zooarchaeologist Dr. Marta Osypińska from the Institute of Archaeology and Ethnology of the Polish Academy of Sciences in Poznań said: 'This is a unique find. Until now, no one has found Indian monkeys at archaeological sites in Africa. Interestingly, even ancient written sources don’t mention this practice.'

"She added: 'When Egypt was annexed to the Roman Empire 2,000 years ago, we believe that the wealthy Romans who stayed in Berenice, a distant outpost, in the first and second centuries AD, wanted to spend time in the company of various animals. Among them were monkeys.'"

Termite-Fishing Chimpanzees & The Evolution Of Technology

"Unlike chimpanzees in East and West Africa, who use a single tool to extract termites, chimpanzees in Central Africa's Congo Basin use tool sets -- puncturing sticks or perforating twigs plus fishing probes -- to harvest the insects from underground nests or towering earthen mounds scattered across lowland forests." Source: Science Daily.

"'Chimpanzees have the most complex tool behaviors of any animals outside of humans, so studying how their youngsters become proficient at these tasks can help us better understand how early humans might have acquired complex technological skills,' said [Stephanie] Musgrave, an assistant professor in the Department of Anthropology and lead author of the study published in the American Journal of Physical Anthropology."

Note: Chimps aren't the only primates besides Man who understand the concept of tools. Macaque monkeys also make use of primitive technology and there's something eerily human about the way they use rocks to crack open shells.

The use of tools by chimps is pretty amazing, granted, but despite Science Daily's claim that they show the most complex tool behaviors of any animals other than man, they're nowhere near as advanced as crabs who have actually learned how to use weapons to defend themselves against apex predators.

Why Did Humans Lose Their Fur?

"Millions of modern humans ask themselves the same question every morning while looking in the mirror: Why am I so hairy? As a society, we spend millions of dollars per year on lip waxing, eyebrow threading, laser hair removal, and face and leg shaving, not to mention the cash we hand over to Supercuts or the neighborhood salon. But it turns out we are asking the wrong question—at least according to scientists who study human genetics and evolution. For them, the big mystery is why we are so hairless." Source: Smithsonian Magazine.

Nobody has the slightest idea why humans lost their fur. Of course this question is only a mystery if you assume that humans were actually covered with fur in the first place. Nevertheless, if we did evolve (like the modern apes) from some "fruit-eating, slow-climbing primate that resembled a baby gibbon," then presumably at one time Homo Sapiens was just as furry as the gibbons of today.

I don't buy any of the explanations given in the top video. According to the new research described in the Smithsonian article, we may have lost our fur because of a genetic mutation which could also be responsible for baldness:

"A researcher studying the plantar region of rabbits noticed that an inhibitor protein, called Dickkopf 2 or Dkk2, was not present in high levels, giving the team the fist clue that Dkk2 may be fundamental to hair growth. When the team looked at the hairless plantar region of mice, they found that there were high levels of Dkk2, suggesting the protein might keep bits of skin hairless by blocking a signaling pathway called WNT, which is known to control hair growth."

According to this still speculative theory, something happened early in human evolution which led to an increase in Dkk2, which in turn inhibited the growth of hair. It's still unclear, at least to me, why a genetic mutation like this could effect an entire species, but these things can apparently spread very quickly.

Sled Dogs Closely Related To 9500-Year-Old "Ancient Dog"

"Sledge dogs are much older and have adapted to Arctic conditions much earlier than previously thought. In a new study from the QIMMEQ project, researchers from the University of Copenhagen show that ancestors of modern sledge dogs have worked and lived with humans for over 9,500 years." Source: Science Daily.

"...In addition to advancing the common understanding of the origin of sledge dogs, the new study also teaches the researchers more about the differences between sledge dogs and other dogs. Sledge dogs do not have the same genetic adaptations to a sugar and starch rich diet that other dogs have. On the other hand, they have adaptations to high-fat diets, with mechanisms that are similar to those described for polar bears and Arctic people."

How Coastal Life Shaped Human Evolution

Video from 2019.

The Pinnacle Point region in South Africa provides a classic example of the way human evolution was shaped by coastal environments:

"Researchers have discovered a new migration pattern (or lack of) at Pinnacle Point, a now-submerged region in South Africa. While it was first believed large omnivores would travel to follow the growth of vegetation to survive, researchers came to a completely new conclusion through studying antelope teeth. They discovered that this region was an 'Eden' to all living species that called it home, including the earliest humans." Source: Science Daily (May 2020).

Related: Mossel Bay heritage - Curtis Marean lecture, June 2015.

Neanderthals Choosy About Making Tools?

Video from 2013.

"Evidence continues to mount that the Neanderthals, who lived in Europe and Asia until about 40,000 years ago, were more sophisticated people than once thought. A new study shows that Neanderthals chose to use bones from specific animals to make a tool for specific purpose: working hides into leather. " Source: Science Daily (2020).

Note: As shown in the video above, the bone tools used in this study were discovered years ago:

"Naomi Martisius, research associate in the Department of Anthropology, studied Neanderthal tools from sites in southern France for her doctoral research. The Neanderthals left behind a tool called a lissoir, a piece of animal rib with a smoothed tip used to rub animal hides to make them into leather. These lissoirs are often worn so smooth that it's impossible to tell which animal they came from just by looking at them."

Bones were used to make all sorts of weapons and tools back in the Stone Age. Next video (2019) describes several of these finds. The section on the lissoirs discovered in France starts at approximately 1:31.

In this recent discovery, researchers used "highly sensitive mass spectrometry to look at residues of collagen protein from the bones" found in France. The analysis was used to identify the species of animal that provided the bones:

"The results show that the bones used to make lissoirs mostly came from animals in the cattle family, such as bison or aurochs (a wild relative of modern cattle that is now extinct). But other animal bones from the same deposit show that reindeer were much more common and frequently hunted for food. So the Neanderthals were choosing to use only ribs from certain types of animals to make these tools."

The argument here is that the Neanderthals deliberately used cattle bones for scraping hides because these bones were larger than reindeer bones. That makes sense and while there's no real dispute that Neanderthals were highly intelligent I'm not sure that it takes a lot of brains to make a decision like that.