Archaeology News Online

The EU-funded TRACSYMBOLS project, which closed in 2015, investigated archaeological sites in South Africa for early use of symbols by homo sapiens, examining painting kits, spear points, beads and ostrich egg shell engravings. They also studied the usage of the reddish iron-rich rock, ochre. And it was to ochre that members of the project team have more recently returned. View of Porc-Epic Cave [Credit: A. Herrero] Recently writing in the open-access journal PLOS ONE members of the TRACSYMBOLS project team explain that ochre is commonly found at Middle Stone Age (MSA) sites. The state in which it is often found, with pieces modified through grinding and scraping to produce red powder along with ochre-stained objects such as lithic and bone tools, lead researchers to treat its presence as an indicator of modern symbolically mediated human behaviour. In this latest research the team analysed the largest known East African MSA ochre collection at Porc-Epic Cave, Ethiopia. It comprised a...

A sound night’s sleep grows more elusive as people get older. But what some call insomnia may actually be an age-old survival mechanism, researchers report. A Hadza man sleeps on the ground on an impala skin in northern Tanzania  [Credit: David Samson] A study of modern hunter-gatherers in Tanzania finds that, for people who live in groups, differences in sleep patterns commonly associated with age help ensure that at least one person is awake at all times. The research suggests that mismatched sleep schedules and restless nights may be an evolutionary leftover from a time many, many years ago, when a lion lurking in the shadows might try to eat you at 2 a.m. “The idea that there’s a benefit to living with grandparents has been around for a while, but this study extends that idea to vigilance during nighttime sleep,” said study co-author David Samson, who was a postdoctoral fellow at Duke University at the time of the study. The Hadza people of northern Tanzania live by hunting and...

The EU-funded TRACSYMBOLS project, which closed in 2015, investigated archaeological sites in South Africa for early use of symbols by homo sapiens, examining painting kits, spear points, beads and ostrich egg shell engravings. They also studied the usage of the reddish iron-rich rock, ochre. And it was to ochre that members of the project team have more recently returned. View of Porc-Epic Cave [Credit: A. Herrero] Recently writing in the open-access journal PLOS ONE members of the TRACSYMBOLS project team explain that ochre is commonly found at Middle Stone Age (MSA) sites. The state in which it is often found, with pieces modified through grinding and scraping to produce red powder along with ochre-stained objects such as lithic and bone tools, lead researchers to treat its presence as an indicator of modern symbolically mediated human behaviour. In this latest research the team analysed the largest known East African MSA ochre collection at Porc-Epic Cave, Ethiopia. It comprised a...

A sound night’s sleep grows more elusive as people get older. But what some call insomnia may actually be an age-old survival mechanism, researchers report. A Hadza man sleeps on the ground on an impala skin in northern Tanzania  [Credit: David Samson] A study of modern hunter-gatherers in Tanzania finds that, for people who live in groups, differences in sleep patterns commonly associated with age help ensure that at least one person is awake at all times. The research suggests that mismatched sleep schedules and restless nights may be an evolutionary leftover from a time many, many years ago, when a lion lurking in the shadows might try to eat you at 2 a.m. “The idea that there’s a benefit to living with grandparents has been around for a while, but this study extends that idea to vigilance during nighttime sleep,” said study co-author David Samson, who was a postdoctoral fellow at Duke University at the time of the study. The Hadza people of northern Tanzania live by hunting and...