Mesolithic monolith from Sicilian Channel

Journal of Archaeological Science: Reports Volume 3, September 2015, Pages 398–407

A submerged monolith in the Sicilian Channel (central Mediterranean Sea): Evidence for Mesolithic human activity

Emanuele Lodolo, Zvi Ben-Avraham

The ancient geography of the Mediterranean Basin was profoundly changed by the increase in sea level following the Last Glacial Maximum. This global event has led to the retreat of the coastlines, especially in lowland areas and shallow shelves, such as the Sicilian Channel. The NW sector of this shelf, known as Adventure Plateau, is studded by isolated shoals mostly composed of Late Miocene carbonate rocks and by some volcanic edifices. These shoals, until at least the Early Holocene, formed an archipelago of several islands separated by stretches of extremely shallow sea. One of these submerged features – the Pantelleria Vecchia Bank – located 60 km south of Sicily, has been extensively surveyed using geophysical and geological methods. It is composed of two main shoals, connected seaward by a rectilinear ridge which encloses an embayment. Here we present morphological evidence, underwater observations, and results of petrographic analysis of a man-made, 12 m long monolith resting on the sea-floor of the embayment at a water depth of 40 m. It is broken into two parts, and has three regular holes: one at its end which passes through from part to part, the others in two of its sides. The monolith is composed of calcirudites of Late Pleistocene age, as determined from radiocarbon measurements conducted on several shell fragments extracted from the rock samples. The same age and composition characterize the metre-size blocks forming the rectilinear ridge. The rest of the rocks composing the shoals are mostly Tortonian limestones–sandstones, as revealed by their fossil content. Extrapolating ages from the local sea level curve, we infer that seawater inundated the inner lands at 9350 ± 200 year B.P., the upper limit which can be reasonably taken for the site abandonment. This discovery provides evidence for a significant Mesolithic human activity in the Sicilian Channel region.

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Y-chromosomes of Sicilian and Calabrian Arbereshe

European Journal of Human Genetics advance online publication 1 July 2015; doi: 10.1038/ejhg.2015.138

Shared language, diverging genetic histories: high-resolution analysis of Y-chromosome variability in Calabrian and Sicilian Arbereshe

Stefania Sarno et al.

The relationship between genetic and linguistic diversification in human populations has been often explored to interpret some specific issues in human history. The Albanian-speaking minorities of Sicily and Southern Italy (Arbereshe) constitute an important portion of the ethnolinguistic variability of Italy. Their linguistic isolation from neighboring Italian populations and their documented migration history, make such minorities particularly effective for investigating the interplay between cultural, geographic and historical factors. Nevertheless, the extent of Arbereshe genetic relationships with the Balkan homeland and the Italian recipient populations has been only partially investigated. In the present study we address the genetic history of Arbereshe people by combining highly resolved analyses of Y-chromosome lineages and extensive computer simulations. A large set of slow- and fast-evolving molecular markers was typed in different Arbereshe communities from Sicily and Southern Italy (Calabria), as well as in both the putative Balkan source and Italian sink populations. Our results revealed that the considered Arbereshe groups, despite speaking closely related languages and sharing common cultural features, actually experienced diverging genetic histories. The estimated proportions of genetic admixture confirm the tight relationship of Calabrian Arbereshe with modern Albanian populations, in accordance with linguistic hypotheses. On the other hand, population stratification and/or an increased permeability of linguistic and geographic barriers may be hypothesized for Sicilian groups, to account for their partial similarity with Greek populations and their higher levels of local admixture. These processes ultimately resulted in the differential acquisition or preservation of specific paternal lineages by the present-day Arbereshe communities.

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Iceman stories begin arriving!

The National Geographic has info, a teaser for an October 26 Nova special:

The genetic results add both information and intrigue. From his genes, we now know that the Iceman had brown hair and brown eyes and that he was probably lactose intolerant and thus could not digest milk—somewhat ironic, given theories that he was a shepherd. Not surprisingly, he is more related to people living in southern Europe today than to those in North Africa or the Middle East, with close connections to geographically isolated modern populations in Sardinia, Sicily, and the Iberian Peninsula. The DNA analysis also revealed several genetic variants that placed the Iceman at high risk for hardening of the arteries. ("If he hadn't been shot," Zink remarked, "he probably would have died of a heart attack or stroke in ten years.") Perhaps most surprising, researchers found the genetic footprint of bacteria known as Borrelia burgdorferi in his DNA—making the Iceman the earliest known human infected by the bug that causes Lyme disease.

It seems that my prediction that the Iceman will turn out to be Mediterranean in terms of his autosomal genetic components was right!

I don't get, however, how lactose intolerance is incompatible with being a shepherd, since milk is widely used in southern Europe both as a raw product and for its cheese. I lack the lactose tolerance gene myself, but that doesn't keep me from having a glass of milk nearly every day. Lactose tolerance makes it possible for people to drink lots of milk; lactose intolerance does not make it impossible for them to drink any, or to enjoy its secondary products (such as cheese and butter).

The genius of Archimedes

The conference program of the conference that took place in Syracuse a few weeks ago. The proceedings from Springer.

A few interesting papers from the volume:

Archimedes’ Cannons Against the Roman Fleet?

Cesare Rossi

In the paper is discussed the possibility that Archimedes built and used against the Roman fleet a steam cannon. It is well-known that Archimedes, during the siege of Syracuse, designed and built several war machines to fight against the Romans. Among these war machines, the legend about the large concave mirrors that concentrated the sun rays burning the Roman ships is rather interesting. On this topic are also interesting some drawings by Leonardo Da Vinci where a steam cannon is described and attributed to Archimedes. Starting from passages by ancient Authors (mainly Plutarchos, Petrarca and Da Vinci), the author investigates on the possibility that Archimedes built a steam cannon and used it to hit the Roman ships with incendiary proiectiles.

Archimedes Arabicus. Assessing Archimedes’ Impact on Arabic Mechanics and Engineering

Constantin Canavas

Archimedes is an author who is frequently quoted in Arabic texts in relationship with mathematics and mechanics, including hydraulic devices such as water-clocks. The present study traces transmission paths and evidence for an assessment of the impact of the Archimedean works on the Arabic tradition of mechanics and hydraulics.


The Heritage of Archimedes in Ship Hydrostatics: 2000 Years from Theories to Applications


Horst Nowacki

Archimedes left to posterity his famous treatise “On Floating Bodies”, which establishes the physical foundations for the floatability and stability of ships and other maritime objects. Yet since this treatise was long lost and also simply ignored by practitioners, it took many centuries before Archimedes’ brilliant insights were actually applied in ship design and ship safety assessment. This article traces the tedious acceptance of Archimedes’ principles of hydrostatics and stability in practical applications. It will document important milestones and explain how this knowledge was passed down through the centuries and ultimately spread into ship design practice.

Archimedean Science and the Scientific Revolution

Agamenon R. E. Oliveira

According to Richard Westfall (Westfall, 1977) the Scientific Revolution of the seventeenth century was dominated by two themes: the Platonic-pythagorean tradition “which looked on nature in geometric terms” and mechanical philosophy “which conceived of nature as a huge machine”. This paper is an attempt to study the appropriation of Archimedean science in the Scientific Revolution in Western Europe.

The Influence of Archimedes in the Machine Books from the Renaissance to the 19th Century

Francis C. Moon

The influence of Archimedes on the so-called theatre of machines books is reviewed using original manuscripts from the 15th to the 19th centuries. The evidence shows continuity of knowledge of ancient Greek theory of machines as well as Archimedes principles of statics, hydrostatics and concepts of centers of gravity on the development of machine science.

Orientation of ancient Greek temples

From the paper:

One reason for the difference in results might be the context of their construction. Temples in Greece were frequently built upon sites that had been sacred for generations, reaching back into the Bronze Age at places like Thermon, where the later classical temples were built over the remains of Mycenaean era megaron. [21] There was the matter of historical tradition which meant that temples built in the archaic and classical periods might be built not only according to the cosmology of the time of construction, but also within the restraints of prior religious thought. The temples in Sicily were built in cities that, at the time of building, saw themselves as immigrants in a distant land. [22] Therefore there was no historical precedent to shape the construction of the temples. They were much more likely to be purely the products of seventh-, sixth- and fifth-century cosmology. The lack of prior foundations gave the Sicilian Greeks more freedom to express current thought in religious practice through their temples.

The self-identification of Sicilian Greeks as Greeks living overseas may have also made adherence to a Greek ideal more of an imperative to reassure both themselves and visitors from the homeland that their location made them no less Greek. It is interesting to note that Greek sanctuaries in Greece could be out in the hinterland tying territory to the city, while Sicilian temples were all built in urban or suburban sites. An ‘astronomical fingerprint’ may, along with other elements such as the architectural form and religious practice, have been part of a drive to prove the Hellenic character of a settlement. Hence, perhaps, the stronger results in Sicily than Greece. This could be testable by comparison with temple alignments in other locations like the Black Sea colonies or Hellenistic Asia. A lack of a similar adherence to astronomical orientation for temples in these regions would be a surprising result given the emphatic nature of the results in Sicily and Greece.

Related: Soil and Greek temples

PLoS ONE doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0007903

The Astronomical Orientation of Ancient Greek Temples

Alun M. Salt

Abstract

Despite its appearing to be a simple question to answer, there has been no consensus as to whether or not the alignments of ancient Greek temples reflect astronomical intentions. Here I present the results of a survey of archaic and classical Greek temples in Sicily and compare them with temples in Greece. Using a binomial test I show strong evidence that there is a preference for solar orientations. I then speculate that differences in alignment patterns between Sicily and Greece reflect differing pressures in the expression of ethnic identity.

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Origin of San Teodoro Paleolithic Sicilians

Journal of Human Evolution doi:10.1016/j.jhevol.2009.02.002

Late Pleistocene human evolution in Sicily: comparative morphometric analysis of Grotta di San Teodoro craniofacial remains

Giuseppe D'Amore et al.

Abstract

The paleoanthropological remains from Grotta di San Teodoro near Acquedolci (province of Messina, Italy) represent the oldest and largest skeletal collection yet found documenting human settlement of Sicily. The sample, attributed to the Late Epigravettian (between 14,000 and 10,000 years B.P.), consists of seven variously complete adult individuals (San Teodoro 1–7). We compare the cranial sample to an array of both prehistoric and recent samples using multivariate techniques including D2 distance analysis, canonical variate analysis, cluster analysis, and multidimensional scaling. Overall, the San Teodoro cranial sample displays a morphometric pattern close to Western European groups of similar antiquity, in particular those from Central and Southern Italy. The morphometric affinities indicate that these people probably came from peninsular Italy by sea during the Late Epigravettian epoch. An alternative hypothesis is that they descended from immigrants that arrived by land during a low sea level episode corresponding to the maximum Würmian regression, about 18,000 years B.P, with gene flow accounting for the morphological homogeneity with the populations of peninsular Italy. The San Teodoro skeletal sample provides the first reliable evidence for human settlement of Sicily.

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Y chromosome haplogroup E-M78 subtyping in Italians

The overall frequency of haplogroup E-M78 was 7.78% in the Piedmont and 11.44% in Siily, with E-V13 present at a frequency of 3.33% and 5.93% respectively. The Sicilian sample is the same as in di Gaetano et al.. The paper includes Y-STR minimum haplotype data in its supplementary material.

International Journal of Legal Medicine doi:10.1007/s00414-009-0350-y

Subtyping of Y-chromosomal haplogroup E-M78 (E1b1b1a) by SNP assay and its forensic application

S. Caratti et al.

Abstract
The continual discovery of new single-nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) has led to an increased resolution of the Y chromosome phylogeny. Some of these Y-SNPs have shown to be restricted to small geographical regions and therefore may prove useful in the forensic field as tools for the prediction of population of origin of unknown casework samples. Here, we describe a system for the molecular dissection of haplogroup E-M78 (E1b1b1a), consisting of multiplex polymerase chain reaction and minisequencing of M78 and nine population-informative Y-SNPs (M148, M224, V12, V13, V19, V22, V27, V32, V65) in a single reaction. Sensitivity and admixture studies demonstrated that the SNP protocol allows robust genotyping from as little as 50 pg of male DNA, even in the presence of 500-fold amounts of female DNA. In order to evaluate the suitability of E1b1b1a, subhaplogrouping for population-of-origin prediction, the distribution of E-M78 and its derived variants was determined in an Italian population sample (n = 326).

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Huge Greek necropolis from Himera, Sicily

The discovery of such a large number of burials is a rare opportunity for an ancient DNA study of the Greeks of Sicily. The age of the samples, and the fact that they are from freshly excavated graves will make it relatively easy to extract useful DNA from them. Let's hope that we see some results in the next few years.

Ancient Mass Graves of Soldiers, Babies, Found in Italy

More than 10,000 graves containing ancient amphorae, "baby bottles," and the bodies of soldiers who fought the Carthaginians were found near the ancient Greek colony of Himera, in Italy, archaeologists announced recently.

"It's probably the largest Greek necropolis in Sicily," said Stefano Vassallo, the lead archaeologist of the team that made the discoveries, in September.

The ancient burial ground was uncovered during the construction of a railway extension.

"The remains of Himera's buildings had been known and studied for a long time, and we knew there should be some graves. We didn't expect so many graves", said Vassallo, who works for the Italian province of Palermo's government.

"Each [mass grave] contains from 15 to 25 skeletons. They were all young healthy men and they all died a violent death. Some of the skeletons have broken skulls and in some cases we found the tips of the arrows that killed them," Vassallo said.

He thinks the human remains are from soldiers who died fighting the Carthaginians in a famous 480 B.C. battle described by Greek historian Herodotus of Halicarnassus.

Sicilian Y-chromosomes: Greek and North African influences

In retrospect, posting my E-V13/Ancient Greek colonization theory a week before the appearance of this article was a very timely move. I was pondering whether I should wait in or post it; I'm glad I did not wait.

And here is the money shot:

The mutation rate used is the average of rates taken from Gusmao et al27 for DYS460 and from the Y Chromosome Haplotype Reference Database (YHRD, http://www.yhrd.org) for the other microsatellites.

I feel slightly vindicated given my recent interest in Y-STR mutation rates.

Also of interest:

Haplogroup R1b1c-M269, the most frequent Y-chromosome Hg in Europeans, is differentially distributed among eastern (18.4%) and western (30.3%) areas of Sicily. ... E3b1a-M78, G2-P15 and J2-M172 show frequencies (0.22, 0.32,0.33), respectively. E3b1a2-V13 is present in both WSI (6.5%) and ESI (5.3%), whereas G2-P15 and J2-M172 are non-randomly distributed, occurring at higher frequencies in the eastern areas of the island ... Furthermore Q-P36- or M242-derived chromosomes also detected significant similarities between Sicily (2.54%) and Lebanese populations (1.53%).

The G2 frequency looks like a typo to me. It's listed as 4.1% (West) and 7.02% (East). J-M241 is more frequent in the West (7.38%) than in the East (1.75%). The paragroup J2*(xM67, J2a1k) is more frequent in the East (14.91%) than the West (6.55%). The overall haplogroup I breakdown is (5.08% I-M253, 1.27 % I-M26, 0.42% I-M223, and 0.85% I*)


European Journal of Human Genetics advance online publication 6 August 2008; doi: 10.1038/ejhg.2008.120

Differential Greek and northern African migrations to Sicily are supported by genetic evidence from the Y chromosome

Cornelia Di Gaetano et al.

Abstract

The presence or absence of genetic heterogeneity in Sicily has long been debated. Through the analysis of the variation of Y-chromosome lineages, using the combination of haplogroups and short tandem repeats from several areas of Sicily, we show that traces of genetic flows occurred in the island, due to ancient Greek colonization and to northern African contributions, are still visible on the basis of the distribution of some lineages. The genetic contribution of Greek chromosomes to the Sicilian gene pool is estimated to be about 37% whereas the contribution of North African populations is estimated to be around 6%.

In particular, the presence of a modal haplotype coming from the southern Balkan Peninsula and of its one-step derivates associated to E3b1a2-V13, supports a common genetic heritage between Sicilians and Greeks. The estimate of Time to Most Recent Common Ancestor is about 2380 years before present, which broadly agrees with the archaeological traces of the Greek classic era. The Eastern and Western part of Sicily appear to be significantly different by the chi2-analysis, although the extent of such differentiation is not very high according to an analysis of molecular variance. The presence of a high number of different haplogroups in the island makes its gene diversity to reach about 0.9. The general heterogeneous composition of haplogroups in our Sicilian data is similar to the patterns observed in other major islands of the Mediterranean, reflecting the complex histories of settlements in Sicily.

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Reconstructed face of Paleolithic woman from Sicily

'First' Sicilian Woman Gets Face

PALERMO (ANSA) - The face of a late Stone Age woman who lived in Sicily has been reconstructed by a sculptor working with anthropologists at Palermo University.

The skeleton of the woman, who lived 14,000 years ago, was discovered in a cave near Messina in 1937, along with the incomplete skeletons of six other humans, presumably her family.

The face was reproduced using reconstruction techniques that calculate the appearance of features from the form of the cranium. The same techniques have been used recently to recreate the faces of Egyptian pharaohs and Italy's own Count Ugolino, a 13th-century Tuscan noble whose bones were found in 2001.

Artistic licence was used when deciding to give the ancient Sicilian the same black hair common in modern women from southern Italy.

Thea, as she has been nicknamed, spent most of her life hunting, or gathering fruit and plants. At 165 cm, she was tall for her time. Experts estimate that when she died she was about 30, much older than the normal life expectancy in the late Stone Age.

"This means that she must have had a healthy and regular lifestyle," said Valerio Agnesi, director of the 'Gemmellaro' museum where the face, along with a recreation of her cave environment, is now on display.