While examining modern and ancient DNA from horses as part of an effort to figure out when the animals were domesticated, a team of genetic scientists realized that the Paleolithic representations of horses at France’s Pech-Merle Cave are realistic representations of what people saw in the wild. “What we found is that there were really only these three color patterns – spotted or dappled; blackish ones; and brown ones. These are the three phenotypes we find in the wild populations. And then we realized these three phenotypes are exactly the ones you see in cave paintings,” said Michael Hofreiter of the University of York.

New, high-resolution photographs of Tanzania’s Laetoli footprints have led to a different interpretation of this earliest record of an upright, bipedal gait. It had been thought that the prints represented a family of three Australopithecus afarensiswalkers. “So instead of having three individuals of different sizes, with the sizes related to different ages, there are probably four individuals of the same size moving through this area, perhaps not traveling as a group,” explained Brent Breithaupt of the U.S. Bureau of Land Management.

The earliest-known dates for human occupation of Qatar have been obtained from a 7,500-year-old hearth preserved far beneath the desert sands. Shell ornaments, flint tools, pottery, food remains, and obsidian from Turkey have also been found.

The Bogazköy Sphinx returned to Turkey from Germany last summer, and will soon go on display in its home region of Central Anatolia. It will be reunited with a second sphinx that had been housed in Istanbul.

Susan Kane, director of the Cyrenaica Archaeological Project, plans to build a new relationship with Libya’s Department of Antiquities with the help of a grant from the U.S. Ambassadors Fund for Cultural Preservation. “We weren’t sure the Gaddafi government would ever support this project. This is a fragile time for Libya. There is a concern about whether or not the government will take cultural heritage under consideration. I think there will be more interest from the interim government in preserving these sites,” she said.

This entry was posted by Jessica E. Saraceni on Tuesday, November 8, 2011. Discussion of this blog entry is now closed.

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