Two 100,000-year-old “toolkits” for processing ochre into paint have been found at the site of Blombos Cave in South Africa. Christopher Henshilwood of the University of Bergen in Norway and his colleagues think the paint may have been used to decorate skin or clothing. Other scientists think such a mixture may have been used as an adhesive. In any case, the kits point to the ability to plan and “an elementary knowledge of chemistry.”  There’s more information on making paint from ochre at NPR, where you can also listen to clips of Henshilwood and other scientists talking about the significance of the discovery.

Carlos Bustamante of the Stanford University School of Medicine is attempting to reconstruct the genetic features of the Taínos, the first American Indians to have contact with European explorers in the Caribbean. The Taínos were wiped out by European diseases, but, according to Bustamante, some of their genes remain in modern Puerto Ricans.

Instead of taking scrapings from ancient amphorae for chemical analysis, scientists led by Brendan Foley of the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution swabbed the shipping containers and searched for DNA. The tests revealed that eight of the nine amphorae tested held combinations of foods such as olive oil, olives, grape products, herbs, and juniper berries.

Three sets of human remains have been exposed during mining operations in a remote area of Australia that has been home to Aboriginal people for millennia. “This is where our most important law men were buried,” said Michael Woodley, himself a senior law man for the Yindjibarndi Aboriginal Corporation.

Göbeklitepe, located in southeastern Turkey, has been called home to the oldest temple in the world. Recent excavations suggest that the people who lived there 12,000 years ago also grew and processed wheat, made leather and sculptures, and had a belief system.

Students from the University of Oklahoma uncovered seven bison skeletons at a kill site this past summer. “What we are looking at is how early peoples in Oklahoma were hunting animals, how they designed kill sites or hunts, what time of year they were making these kills,” explained their teacher, Lee Bement.

This entry was posted by Jessica E. Saraceni on Friday, October 14, 2011. Discussion of this blog entry is now closed.

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