Alert Iruña-Veleia: quite apparent new destruction of archaeological evidence

Tonight I got a most undesirable alert: the controversial archaeological site of Iruña-Veleia, has been again excavated with heavy machinery, with the very possible intent of destroying key evidence.

For background see here, here, here, here, here and here.

The area affected by the destructive excavation by the partisan director Julio Núñez is exactly within the bounds of the exceptional graffiti findings area that triggered all the controversy (conservative linguists and historians didn't like what was found, as it challenged their "theories", so they organized an Inquisition of sorts to condemn, hide and even destroy the evidence). The following map published at Ama Ata, shows the original situation of the ancient house upon the intervention by the institutions:

In red: the area of exceptional findings (texts)

Judging on J.M. Elexpuru's photos, the whole sector has been dug and then recovered with new earth, what is totally not what archaeologists usually do, much less with such a hurry:

The visual survey of the discard pile shows at least one piece of sigilata pottery and a broken millstone, as well as a common fossil. This is surely just the tip of the iceberg, as nobody by the perpetrators know where the rest of the materials extracted went and what they may have included.

The most likely motivation for this excavation is the throughout destruction of archaeological material, which is potential evidence in the languishing judiciary case against the previous archaeological team, based on nothing but made-up accusations. Not a single piece of actual evidence has been put against them, while their right to defense has been infringed once and again, with pitiful, if not crony, actuations on the side of all involved institutions: a powerless judge, police lab that wash their hands, governments that act in the hiding, manipulating evidence while reporting to no one, researchers that produce junk reports, and then this replacement "archaeologist" who took part in the inquisitorial "expert commission".

Dozens of studies support the authenticity of the findings precisely in this spot, now under destruction. Not a single paper other than those created ad hoc (and belatedly) for the inquisitorial commission, most of them linguists' opinions with zero probatory weight, support the hypothesis of falsehood. However an institutional conspiracy seems determined to do their worst, after all who cares about ancient archaeology and historical truth? Not the masses obviously.

Main responsible persons (currently), according to Euskararen Jatorria.
Left: Department of Archaeology (EHU-UPV), middle: Regional Government of Araba, right: top directors of EHU-UPV.

To the list above we must add all those who took part or impelled the inquisitorial commission, notably linguists Joseba Lakarra and Joaquín Gorrochategui and the former Deputy of Culture Lorena López de Lacalle, whose continuous presence (along with her Opus Dei patron R. Larreina and her sister) in the recent electoral lists of supposedly leftist and pro-transparency EH Bildu coalition is most worrisome. 

More details in the blogs linked in-text (Spanish and Basque languages).

Iruña-Veleia documentary (English subtitles)

Found at Ama Ata:

There is another version with Italian subtitles. 

See also:

• Category Iruña-Veleia in this blog
• SOS Iruña-Veleia (dedicated site and association)
• Ama Ata (dedicated blog, usually in Spanish or Basque)

Iberian script of Iruña-Veleia

A new study of the Iberian script findings withing the (partly disputed but most likely very real) ostraka graffiti at Iruña-Veleia (Basque-Roman city of Antiquity on which I have written extensively in the past) is freely available online.

Antonio Arnaiz-Villena & Diego Rey, Iberian-Tartessian scripts/graffiti in Iruna-Veleia (Basque Country, North Spain): findings in both Iberia and Canary Islands-Africa. International Journal of Modern Anthropology 2012. Freely accessible → LINK

Abstract

760 officially recognized scripts on ceramics from Iruña-Veleia excavated by the archaeology firm Lurmen S.L. (approximately between years 2002-2008)have been analyzed. A number of these ceramics contains scripts which may be assimilated to Iberian/Tartessian writings. This number may be underestimated since more studies need to be done in already available and new found ceramics. This is the second time that Iberian writing is found by us in an unexpected location together with the Iberian-Guanche inscriptions of Lanzarote and Fuerteventura (Canary Islands). On the other hand, naviform scripting, usually associated to Iberian rock or stone engraving may have also been found in Veleia. Strict separation, other than in time and space stratification, between Iberian and (South) Tartessian culture and script is doubted.

Source: Ama Ata[es].

Videos of the Iruña-Veleia Congress (I)

As you may recall, the International Congress on Iruña-Veleia took place in Vitoria-Gasteiz (Basque Country) earlier this month. The complete written reports can be found at Euskararen Jatorria.

These videos have been published at Iputztar (YouTube user). Some have already been posted in this blog (so I will only include a link) and we can expect that more will be published in the near future (it seems to me that the list is very much incomplete as of now). Most are in Spanish language, with some Basque also, but at least one is in English.

→ Full playlist of the Congress' videos in sequence (for people with plenty of time).

00 - Sarrera (Introduction) → YouTube link.

01 - Antonio Rodríguez Colmenero (archaeologist, epigraphist) → YouTube link[es], in this blog.

02 - Edward C. Harris (archaeologist) → YouTube link[en], in this blog.

03 - Eliseo Gil (archaeologist, former director of Iruña-Veleia digs, accused of falsification by the most surreal linguists' gang ever, accusations never proven). In Spanish:

04 - Xabier Rentería synthesizes the reports of some of those who claim that the graffiti are false (Julio Núñez, archaeologist, and Joaquín Gorrochategui, linguist), who rejected to go to the congress. In Basque:

;

05 - Idoia Filloy (archaeologist, member of the Iruña-Veleia team, also accused). In Spanish:

06 - Francisco Javier Santos Arévalo (archaeometrist, physicist) on how to date the shards reliably. In Spanish:

07 -Joaquín Baxarias Tibau (archaeologist) on the very revealing bone artifacts of Iruña-Veleia. In Spanish:

The interventions of linguists Luis Silgo Gauche and Antonio Arnaiz Villena are still not available in video. 

Special thanks to Ostraka Euskalduna[eu] for keeping me updated on the matter.

See label Iruña-Veleia for background in (mostly) English.

Rodríguez Colmenero on the Iruña-Veleia graffiti (video in Spanish)

The videos of the International Congress on Iruña-Veleia are being gradually released. I recently shared here the conference by Edward C. Harris, and now is time for Antonio Rodríguez Colmenero (renowned Galician archaeologist, historian and epigraphist). Follows video: 45 mins in Spanish language (good quality):

He discusses in some depth, often by contrasting with other Roman era sites, the alphabet, the Christian inscriptions, the errors being product of children education (most of the findings appear to come from a school), the already ongoing Latin→Romance evolution and often also only attributable to mischievous or ignorant misreadings by modern people with limited knowledge but a big mouth (i.e. not errors but in interpretation).

Source: En el Ángulo Oscuro[es].

Edward Harris conference (video)

Edward C. Harris, Director of the Bermuda Maritime Museum is best known for his inception, back in the 1970s, of the Harris matrix, today the standard method for archaeological digs.

Along with a host of other reputed scholars he participated in the International Congress on Iruña-Veleia, which took place on November 24 in Vitoria-Gasteiz (Basque Country).

Harris' conference, which is essentially an introduction to modern stratigraphy, has been now been made available in video (good quality, 40 mins., English):

The specific mentions to Iruña-Veleia are at the end of the video.

See also:

• Iruña-Veleia Congress: papers and synthesis
• Edward Harris on the Iruña-Veleia affaire
• Category: Iruña-Veleia

Iruña-Veleia congress: papers and synthesis

The linguistic-cultural association Euskararen Jatorria (The Origin of the Basque Language) has published the reports presented for the International Congress on Iruña-Veleia that took place in late November in Vitoria-Gasteiz. 

All papers have trilingual (Basque, English, Spanish) introductory sections and then each one is in the language chosen by the author. They can all be found HERE.

Among them there is a "conclusions" synthesis (PDF) whose headlines I synthesize here:

• The dig [by Gil, Filloy et al.] was performed correctly
• Chain of evidence has been broken - as the judge has not controlled it
• Iconography and most graffiti are coherent
• Controlled local digs were not performed to contrast with the findings
• The archaeometrical datings now being performed in Madrid should have been the first thing to do
• Graffiti on bone are easy to date [but was not done either]
• It is only logical that Iberian signs are found among the rest
• So far 19 reports have declared the graffiti genuine
• The Advisory Commission did not do anything of what they should have done

Paraphrasing the late linguist Gorka Knörr, the paper concludes that 

If Iruña-Veleia would be a house, datings would be the foundations, controlled digs the first floor, auditions the first floor, history the second, philology the third... Therefore when the Advisory Commission "began building the house by the ceiling" and that is why we are now just as the beginning, because the datings required by Eliseo Gil were never performed.

Background:

As you may already know, Iruña-Veleia is a Vasco-Roman city of Antiquity not far from Vitoria-Gasteiz. In 2006 a large number of inscribed graffiti on pottery shards (ostrakas) was found, most of them in ancient Basque and Vulgar Latin. 

The finding had the potential of rewriting linguistic and historical understanding of Basque language and also Romances, what apparently scared to death some popes of linguistics led by Gorrochategui and Lakarra, who, by means of smearing, abuse of power and cronyism, managed to get the archaeologists in charge (Gil, Filloy and their company Lurmen) out and put instead the only archaeologist who was ready to play their game Luis Núñez, whose management of the site has consisted essentially into digging wildly with a caterpillar until popular clamor stopped his misgivings (since then he seems to do nothing at, what is surely good considering what he did when he dared to).

Gil and Filloy have been charged with "falsification" and in this trial is where the hopes of truth being revealed stand now. After many years, a sample of the ostrakas have been sent to researchers in Madrid to perform archeometry tests.

See also: category Iruña-Veleia for further details.

Edward Harris on the Iruña-Veleia affaire

Edward C. Harris, Director of the Bermuda Maritime Museum and world-famous among archaeologists for being the inceptor of the Harris matrix, which soon became standard procedure in all serious digs, wrote yesterday at The Royal Gazette on his recent visit to the Basque Country and the Iruña-Veleia affair. 

On this one he says the following:

In late November 2012, I was invited to the Basque Country to speak at a conference on archaeological works at the Roman town of Iruña-Veleia, a short distance from the city of Vitoria-Gasteiz, being one of the leading experts in matters of stratigraphy in archaeology, the science that controls the excavation and recording of archaeological sites, and the subsequent analyses of portable heritage from such places. While it would have been easy to bask in the honour in which the “Harris Matrix” is held in such matters, at least with the Basques, the purpose of the conference was to review some of the subjects that have made Iruña-Veleia one of the most controversial sites in the world.

The issue revolves around classes of artifacts found at the site by an archaeological team led by Idoia Filloy and Eliseo Gill, objects of pottery, brick and bone that were reused as writing tablets and inscribed with words and pictures in later Roman times. The information contained on the artifacts appears to have conflicted with presently held views of the origins of the Basque language and other subjects, so much so that some experts declared them to be fakes, forged perhaps by the archaeologists who found them. Apparently without proof, academic or otherwise, the archaeologists have been hung out to dry in the media, which unfortunately is often the fate of the falsely accused, as one Lord McAlpine found recently when he was defamed by the BBC, no less, and ‘twittered’, almost to death.

As to motivation, one cannot ‘follow the money’, as there is, and will likely always be, a dearth of it in archaeology. A preliminary audit would suggest that the archaeologists conducted the excavations to modern standards, particularly in recording, but as artifacts can be moved without losing their integrity, it is difficult to comment on the placement of objects after a “dig” has finished. 

Given the complexity of the supposedly forged graffitti, all that one can say at this stage is that if the artifacts are forgeries, that the perpetrators of such a hoax are geniuses of the first order, but who, as archaeologists, would want to claim fame on the basis of such forgeries, when the real thing is usually of a far more abiding interest?

H/t to Iruña blog.

See also for background: category: Iruña-Veleia in this blog and its ancestor.

Virtual visit to Iruña-Veleia

The Town Hall of Iruña-Oka  is the modern heir of the Vasco-Roman town of Veleia, known in medieval times as Iruña: the capital or the city, as happened with other Roman cities: Pompaelo, now Iruñea-Pamplona, Oiasso, now Irun, etc. 

As such, and on light of the continuous mismanagement by higher-level institutions (chartered government of Araba, Western Basque autonomous government), seems to have taken the matter of promoting and explaining the site on their own hands. 

To that effect, along with an already existing webpage with extensive information (in Spanish language mostly), the Town Hall has created a virtual visit site with panoramic views and reenacting illustrations ··> LINK. 

Needless to say that the Town Hall is not just the only institution taking Iruña-Veleia seriously nowadays but also the only one that seems to give official credibility to the finding of the exceptional graffiti (written in Basque, Vulgar Latin and other languages) performed by Eliseo Gil in 2006 and challenged by a powerful mafia of established linguists with enormous influences.

See also:

• Category Iruña-Veleia in this blog.
• Category Iruña-Veleia in my older blog Leherensuge (until Oct 2010).

First International Conference on Iruña-Veleia

The cultural and linguistic organization Euskararen Jatorria (The Future of the Basque Language) has organized the First International Conference on Iruña-Veleia which will have the presence of important international scholars like the "pope" of modern Archeology Edward Harris, among others.

The conference will be on November 24th in Vitoria-Gasteiz, see below for details.

The program so far is just in Basque language, so I will make a synthetic translation here (large sections skipped and some notes and explanations added by me):

Program

Introduction

9:00 Inauguration and introduction

Morning season: archeology, archeometry, paleopathology

09:15 Edward Harris: Iruña-Veleia in the context of the revolution in stratigraphic principles in archaeology

09:55 Antonio Rodriguez Colmenero: Grafitos, textos y diseños de la Veleia romana: la urgencia de una solución (Graffiti, texts and designs from Roman Veleia: urgency of a solution)

10:25 Synthesis of the (2007) report  of Julio Núñez (only archaeologist in the official commission and now most controversial Director of the Iruña-Veleia site)

10:45 Coffee break

11:15 Francisco Javier Santos Arévalo: Métodos de datación por isótopos (Dating methods by isotopes)

12:45 Joaquin Baxarias Tibau: Estudio de las marcas antrópicas sobre hueso halladas en el yacimiento romano de Iruña-Veleia (Study on the anthropic marks on bone found in the Roman site of Iruña-Veleia)

12:15 Round table

14:00 Meal

Afternoon season: linguistics and epigraphy

16:30 Luis Silgo Gauche: Las inscripciones de Iruña-Veleia y la estabilidad de la lengua vasca (The inscriptions of Iruña-Veleia and the stability of Basque language)

17:00 Antonio Arnaiz Villena: Las inscripciones íberas en Iruña-Veleia (The Iberian inscriptions in Iruña-Veleia)

17:30 Synthesis of the (2007) reports of Gorrochategui and Lakarra

17:50 Break

18:20 Verbal communications

19:00 Round table

20:00 Closing

Inscription and information

Inscription: irunaveleiaargitu@gmail.com

Inquiries and complementary information: (+34) 688 887 301

Cost: 45 euros (with meal). Without meal: 33 euros. Pay to the following accounts in advance and then email to the address above with your full name:

Kutxabank: 2101-0092-16-0012334272

Euskadiko Kutxa: 3035 -0038-91-0380081747

It is not convenient to inscribe yourself in the last moment because the hall is in a restricted access zone.

How to arrive

The conference will take place in Vitoria-Gasteiz, specifically in the Europa Jauregia (Europe Palace), site in Gasteiz Av. (avenida, etorbidea) no. 83.

If you arrive by car (from the North or East), you should exit the highway at the Foronda Airport, take the Foronda Gate (atea, portal) then, at the roundabout, the short Honduras street (kale, calle) and then you should be at Gasteiz Av. There are no parking taxes (OTA) in that area.

If you arrive in bus from Billbao, they recommend to get down in the second stop, at Adriano VI st.

If you arrive to the bus station you can walk across the old quarter (which is on a hill and has small irregular streets apt to get lost, although not too much) or go around it. The walk should take some 20 minutes however. There are regular bus services from the other Basque capitals, as well as several Spanish or other European cities like Madrid, Zurich, Barcelona, etc. (see here).

Iruña-Veleia scandal: four years later archeometric analysis will finally be made

The crust clearly indicates that they are anything but recent

It is an order by the tribunal, on request of the defense, who have insisted from the beginning that the exceptional graffiti found in Iruña-Veleia, which include images and short texts in both Vulgar Latin and early Basque (plus some other stuff), are genuine and not any hoax. 

The archeometric analysis will be performed at the Institute of Cultural Patrimony of Spain, a reputed institution with sufficient capability to perform the much needed analysis. Previously the court had asked two different police corps to perform the analysis but both had to admit that they could not do it. Supporters of the truthfulness of the findings had even offered to pay the analysis from their own pockets, proposing several European laboratories for that purpose. 

Meanwhile the influential clique of mostly linguists, led by the infamous Lakarra and Gorrochategui tandem, who claimed that the inscribed shards were false only because they would clash with their own pet theories, have been pretending that no scientific test can prove anything here: only their own self-serving opinions count. 

Sources[es]: Noticias de Álava, Iruina.

For background on this shameful story of cronyism and pseudoscience inside the Basque academic and political establishment, see category Iruña-Veleia:

• in this blog.
• in my old discontinued blog (Leherensuge).

Some of the shards previously posted in these blogs:

Tartessian script in Veleia

NIIV = NEU (I or me in Basque)

NIIVK CORDV MM (?) - click to expand

SIINIICA -
SOCRATIIS
VIRGILIO
MISCART (?)

NIIVRII ATA = neure ata (my father in Basque, modernly father=aita)

Late Basque linguist Txillardegi considered Iruña-Veleia graffiti to be true

Txillardegi

That's the revelation recently released by another linguist and defender of the authenticity of the graffiti, Juan Martin Elexpuru: that Txillardegi believed them to be true.

José Luis Álvarez Emparantza, best known as Txillardegi, who died in January this year, is considered one of the most influential Basque linguists ever.

According to Elexpuru, he wrote to him a letter in December 2009 in which he stated that he had the Iruña-Veleia graffiti as authentic and that he considered Hector Iglesias' paper Les Inscriptions de Veleia-Iruñea to be outstanding (bikaina).

Interestingly he considers the inscription Yaveh zutan izana as an archaic form of hika (roughly equivalent to using the pronoun thou), mentioning that Johannes Leizarraga in the 17th century wrote aiz for (modern) haiz (thou art). Hence for Txillardegi this sentence should be read (in modern Basque) as Yaveh zerutan haizena (Yaveh who art in heaven). 

The issue of zerutan (modernly would be zeruan, sing., or zeruetan, pl.) he thinks it may be related to dialectal variants like surtan (from su: fire). 

In another letter he lamented that he could not, being in his 80s, anymore get involved in this affair, as he would have no doubt have done if he was younger.

Source: Berria[eu].

See also for ample background info: category Iruña-Veleia in this blog and its predecessor.

Echoes from the Past (Jan 18)

Again lots of short news and hopefully interesting links I have been collecting in the last weeks:

Lower and Middle Paleolithic 

Cova del Gegant Neanderthal jaw

Catalonia: Neanderthal mitochondrial DNA sequenced for the first time. The sequence, obtained from a jaw from Cova del Gegant (Giant's Cave), is fully within normal Neanderthal range ··> Pileta de Prehistoria[es], NeanderFollia[cat], relevant paper[cat] (PDF)

Castile: Stature estimates for Sima de los Huesos (Atapuerca) discussed by John Hawks.

Upper Paleolithic and Epipaleolithic

Romania: stratigraphies and dates revised by new study (PPV) ··> Quaternary International.

Andalusia: oldest ornament made of barnacle's shell (right) found in Nerja Cave ··> Pileta de Prehistoria[es], UNED[es], Universia[es].

England: Star Carr dig to shed light on transition from Paleolithic to Epipaleolithic ··> short article and video-documentary (32 mins) at Past Horizons.

Basque Country: archaeologists consider a barbarity that only 65m are protected against the quarry at Praileaitz Cave (Magdalenian) ··> Noticias de Gipuzkoa[es].

Yemen: 200 tombs said to be Paleolithic discovered in Al Mahwit district, west of Sanaa. Tools and weapons were also found. Other thousand or so artifacts from the same period were found in the Bani Saad area  ··> BBC. 

Peruvian rock art

Sarawak: Niah Cave being dug again for further and more precise data on the colonization of the region by Homo sapiens ··> Heritage Daily.

Siberia was a wildlife-rich area in the Ice Age ··> New Scientist.

Peru: 10,000 years old cave paintings (right) discovered in Churcampa province ··> Andina.

Neolithic and Chalcolithic

Iberia and North Africa: Southern Iberian and Mediterranean North African early Neolithic could be the same process according to new paper (PPV) ··> Quaternary International.

Galicia: Neolithic and Metal Ages remains to be studied for DNA ··> Pileta de Prehistoria[es].

Texas: very informative burnt hut reveals clues of the natives of the San Antonio area c. 3500 years ago.

Mexico: 2000-years old paintings found Guanajuato ··> Hispanically Speaking News (notice that the photo appears to be act of shameless journalistic low quality, being a European bison painted with European style, probably from Altamira).

Metal ages and historical period

Croatia: oldest known astrological board unearthed at Nakovana (Roman period). The cave was probably some sort of shrine back in the day, maybe because a striking phallic stalagmite. Besides the ivory astrological device, lots of pottery has been found as well ··> Live Science.

The best preserved fragment depicts the sign of Cancer (full gallery)

Basque Country: Iruña-Veleia affair:  Basque autonomous police does not have means to test the authenticity of the findings. The Commission for the Clarification of Iruña-Veleia asks for the tests to be performed in one of the few European laboratories able to do that ··> Noticias de Álava.

Cornwall: replicating sewn-plank boats of the Bronze Age ··> This is Cornwall.

India: cremation urn from the Megalithic period excavated in Kerala ··> The Hindu.

Human genetics and evolution

The six flavors

Centenarians don't have any special genes ··> The Atlantic.

Fat is a flavor: newly discovered sixth flavor in human tongue identifies fat (and usually likes it) ··> Science Daily.

Hominin tooth found in Bulgaria dates from 7 million years ago ··>  Daily Mail.

Anthropology (senso stricto)

The journey of the Tubu women: fascinating documentary in Spanish language about these trans-Saharan trader women available at Pasado y Futuro[es].

Small capuchin monkey bands fight as well as large ones because members are more motivated and have many less defections, even in peripheral conflicts  ··> Science Daily.

Other

Horse genetics again ··> new paper at PLoS Genetics. 

Fig. 4 - Phylogenetic tree of extant Hippomorpha.

Echoes from the Past (Dec 26)

Before the year is over, here there is a bunch of stuff I wanted to mention:

Lower and Middle Paleolithic

Humans may have originated near rivers - Technology & science - Science - LiveScience - msnbc.com - neither savanna nor jungle, beach (river banks) was the favored ecosystem even for old good Ardi, it seems.

Pileta de Prehistoria: 180 prehistoric sites located around Atapuerca[es] - not just Neanderthal ones: a bit of everything (located just outside Burgos city, Atapuerca is a key pass between the Upper Ebro basin and the Northern Iberian Plateau, which must have played an ecological and socio-political role always, and hence attracted people towards it).

77,000-year-old evidence for 'bedding' and use of medicinal plants uncovered at South African rock shelter

Upper Paleolithic and Epipaleolithic 

ScienceDirect - Journal of Human Evolution : Stratigraphic and technological evidence from the middle palaeolithic-Châtelperronian-Aurignacian record at the Bordes-Fitte rockshelter (Roches d’Abilly site, Central France) - refines the dating for Chatelperronian (PPV paper).

Exceptional discoveries at Mas d’Azil - La Gazette Ariégeoise[fr] - not much info provided however.

The boulders at lake Huron were to trap the reindeer (caribou)

Remains found of the culture which inhabited Northern Chile 11,000 years ago - Terrae Antiqvae[es] - they exploited a quartz deposit for their tools in the middle of Atacama desert, which then was probably quite milder.

Divers retrieve prehistoric wood from Lake Huron - from 8900 years ago. 

Simultaneous ice melt in Antarctic and Arctic at the end of the last Ice Age.

Neolithic and Chalcolithic

Turkey : oldest obsidian bracelet reveals amazing craftsmen's skills in the eighth millennium BC - CNRS Web site - CNRS

'Mother Earth' goddess figurine discovered at the Somme (France) - The Independent

'New' ancient monuments come to light at Knowth (Ireland) -  Meath Chronicle

Pileta de Prehistoria: businessman Victorino Alonso on trial for destroying a Neolithic cave in Aragon[es] - I asked for death penalty back in the day.

El Neolítico en Europa: una simulación del proceso | Neolítico de la Península Ibérica - Iberian Neolithic - exposition and criticism in Spanish language of yet another paper simulating the Neolithic 'colonization' (Lemmen 2011).

Metal Ages and Historical periods

Bronze age man's lunch: a spoonful of nettle stew - The Observer

The Archaeology News Network: More on Bronze Age boats found in Cambridgeshire

Iruina blog: doubts about the ability of the Basque Autonomous Police to  analyze the Iruña-Veleia pieces[es] - the Spanish Guardia Civil police force already declared themselves unable to do the tests. The defense asks to send the remains to one of the few international laboratories able to do the tests and has even offered to pay the cost of it. Also at Diario de Noticias de Alava[es].

Iruina: yet another study supports the autheticity of the Iruña-Veleia pieces, considering 'almost impossible' to falsify them so perfectly[es] - also at Diario de Noticias de Alava

An intimate look at ancient Rome - OregonLive.com - a journey through the hygienic practices of Ancient Rome.

The Archaeology News Network: Ruins of ancient city plundered in SW Iran

Scientists unlock the mystery surrounding a tale of shaggy dogs - Native Americans used dog hair for textiles (among other components).

The Archaeology News Network: Real Mayan apocalypse may have been their own fault -overexploitation of the jungle biome caused desertification.

Genetics

Some of these open access papers surely deserved a deeper look at... I did not have time or energies for that however.

PLoS Genetics: Ancestral Components of Admixed Genomes in a Mexican Cohort

PLoS ONE: Population Structure and Genetic Diversity in a Rice Core Collection (Oryza sativa L.) Investigated with SSR Markers - rice genetics and possible origins.

PLoS ONE: The Local Origin of the Tibetan Pig and Additional Insights into the Origin of Asian Pigs - pig genetics.

  

BBC News - Liking a lie-in in people's genes, researchers say - long sleeping is a genetic need: tell your boss next time you are late. I am among those who need to sleep 9-10 hours per day (normally) though I have also met people who only sleep 4-5 hours.

The Spittoon » Find Your Inner Neanderthal (I retract what I said before: the results are coherent, even if Africans still get too much too often I guess that's part of the margin of error. However there is another "free online" genetic test that is misleading).

Biology and psychology

Of mice and men, a common cortical connection - a nice comparison to better understand brain regions. To the right: F/M: frontal/motor cortex, S1: primary somatosensory cortex, A1: primary audtive cortex and V1: primary visual cortex. Mice have a much more developed somatosensory cortex (surely related to whiskers, smell, etc.) but a much less developed frontal/motor cortex (related to willpower and rationality).

Scientists Discover Some Keys to Human Brain Evolution | Popular Archaeology - exploring the past - and the relevant paper: PLoS Biology: MicroRNA-Driven Developmental Remodeling in the Brain Distinguishes Humans from Other Primates

Maternal care influences brain chemistry into adulthood, animal study shows

Why aren't we smarter already? Evolutionary limits on cognition

Brain Scans Reveal Difference Between Neanderthals and Us | LiveScience - something about the sense of smell, not too clear.

Human skull is highly integrated: Study sheds new light on evolutionary changes

Primates are more resilient than other animals to environmental ups and downs - diversification and flexibility is the key to long-term success.

Echoes from the Past (Nov 30) - The oldest rock art and other stuff

Again, in short notice, a lot of interesting stuff. Most notably the portrait of the largest bird ever but also a lot of new info on Neanderthal (and Erectus!) Europe, the Iruña-Veleia archaeological scandal, etc.

First of all the giant duck:

Australian Aboriginal Rock Art May Depict Giant Bird Extinct for 40,000 Years : Living the Scientific Life (Scientist, Interrupted) - hat tip to David. The giant bird depicted at Niwarla Gabarnmung is not an emu but a Genyornis newtoni, the largest bird that ever existed. Its extinction date, c. 40,000 years ago, is the most recent possible date for the artwork therefore.

Middle Paleolithic

The origins of Neanderthals could be in Atapuerca

Pileta de Prehistoria: Atapuerca hominins could be a sister species to Neanderthals[es]. Actually much more is claimed in fact: that they are more related to Neanderthals than any other fossil known and that, for that reason and because of chronology, they are the best candidate to be the direct ancestors of Homo neanderthalensis.

Academic reference: Aida Gómez Robles et al., A geometric morphometric analysis of hominin upper premolars. Shape variation and morphological integration. Journal of Human Evolution 2011. Pay per view.

A possible issue is that the site of Atapuerca has provided such a huge number of hominin bones that it is very difficult to compare with even the whole collection of all other European sites.

Serbian Homo erectus in the age of Neanderthals

Excavations in Serbia Raising New Questions About Early Humans in Europe | Popular Archaeology.

They have found a Homo ergaster or H. erectus dated to before 110,000 (preliminary dating suggested 130-250,000 years). In this period it was believed that only Neanderthals lived in Europe already. Are these 'erectus' related to the equally mysterious occupation of Crete also before 130,000 years ago?

Update: the reference paper is this one (hat tip to Neanderthalerin):


Mirjana Roksandic et al., A human mandible (BH-1) from the Pleistocene deposits of Mala Balanica cave (Sićevo Gorge, Niš, Serbia). Journal of Human Evolution 2011. Pay per view.

Other MP:

BBC News - Moreton-in-Marsh Stone Age axe find leads to seaside theory - a Mousterian axe in England with a whole theory on the environment it was once used.

Upper Paleolithic

Qurta (Egypt) rock art is at least 15,000 y.o. << Antiquity

Beautifully preserved bulls of Qurta

Franchthi Cave revisited: the age of the Aurignacian in south-eastern Europe << Antiquity. The Aurignacian of Greece overlaps at both sides of the Campanian Ignimbrite Eruption c. 41,000 years ago.

Shell ornaments from Franchthi

New book in English talks about the Paleolithic of Galicia << La Voz de Galicia[es] - the book can be found online here.

Neolithic, Chalcolithic and Bronze Age

NEWS: Pits with celestial alignments discovered at Stonehenge « The Heritage Journal - more extended at the Birmingham Mail and The Independent.

Pileta de Prehistoria: "Guide to Galician Petroglyphs" presented[es] - the book (in Galician language) can be found here. It is notable that the authors emphasize the similitudes with petroglyphs from other areas, be them in the Iberian Plateau or in Ireland. Faro de Vigo[es] titles: 4000 years ago there was a single language that linked the British Islands and Galicia.

Iron Age

Iruña-Veleia scandal

New step in the legal and scholarly controversy on the exceptional findings at the Vasco-Roman site of Iruña-Veleia: state attorney demands physical tests to Basque Autonomous Police. Previously the defense had asked for them to be made by the Guardia Civil (Spanish military police corps, similar to the French gendarmerie or Italian carabinieri).

Various mentions in Spanish:

• Iruina: La juez exige un segundo informe y ordena a la Ertzaintza analizar las piezas de Veleia
• En el ángulo oscuro: La juez exige un segundo informe y ordena a la Ertzaintza analizar las piezas de Veleia
• La juez exige un segundo informe y ordena a la Ertzaintza analizar las piezas de Veleia . Diario de Noticias de Alava

Also  in relation to the Iruña-Veleia scandal Iruina blog tells us[es] (with video reports) that some scientists have exhausted their patience with the local politicians and tribunals and the abuses that they are inflicting on this most important archaeological site (not just for the history of Basques but also for that of the late provincial Roman Empire, including the origins of Romance languages and new religions like Christianity and Isianism) and have decided to bring the matter to the international arena, so the finger of shame would point to those guilty of unforgivable archaeological destruction.  

Human genetics and biology

Maluku people are one genetically regardless of language:

Jason A. Wilder et al., Genetic Continuity across a Deeply Divergent Linguistic Contact Zone in North Maluku, Indonesia. BMC Genetics 2011. Open access.

1-China (Han), 2-Austronesian speakers (Maluku), 3-Papuan speakers (Maluku), 4-Highland New Guinea

Other:

Sandwalk: What William the Conqueror's Companions Teach Us about Effective Population Size - An interesting meditation on key concepts of population genetics, using the well known historical incident of the Norman invasion of England in 1066 that almost turned the Brits into provincial French:

Let's assume that there are 20 well-documented companions [of William the Conqueror]. Only one of these (William Mallet) has possibly passed on his Y chromosome to the present time and even that male line of descent is disputed. This is fully consistent with our understanding of genetics when you consider that most male lines are likely to die out in a few generations. Those that survive ten generations or so are unlikely to become extinct since there will likely be several male lines at that time.

So what were you saying about Genghis Khan?

Jaw size linked to diet: Could too soft a diet cause lower jaw to stay too short and cause orthodontic problems?

 

Babies show that sense of justice is hardwired.

Echoes from the Past (Nov 1)

Happy calaca day to all Mexicans. I have a bunch of interesting news items stored in the "to do" folder and it's time to release them in bulk and, in a sense, get rid of them that way. Hope you find them interesting.

Prehistory and proto-history:

Abalone ochre container from Blombos

I already commented in the previous 'Echoes' edition but the 100,000 years-old paint containers made-out-of-shells found in Blombos (South Africa) have been echoing through various media, each with a  slightly different twist ··> The Heritage Journal, MSNBC, SD.

Nail in the coffin for 'Clovis first' theory: mammoth bone spear point in mammoth leg bone dated precisely to pre-Clovis times: 13,800 years ago (there are older dates out there anyhow) ··> BBC.

Jaw bone found near Kennewick Man's site (and controversy on native insistence on reburial) ··> KPLU.

Cishan-Peligang pottery

Chinese Neolithic may be almost as old as West Asian one. Evidence of millet cultivation in Hebei (North China) dates to c. 10,000-8,700 years ago, within the Cishan culture (notice that Pengtoushan culture in South China overlaps with these dates and could be even quite older) ··> Xinhua. 

Bronze Age take-out windows found in Iran (Godin Tepe) ··> Unreported Heritage News, Live Science.

A new report on Iruña-Veleia Roman era graffiti supports their authenticity ··> Ostraka euskalduna[eu], where you can download the PDF in Spanish language by M. Thomson.

Also mentioned recently but still hitting the news, controversy on the reopening of Altamira cave, dubbed the Magdalenian Sistine Chapel, to the public ··> SD.

Replica of the Altamira ceiling (fragment)

Genetics:

Sardinian genetics point to pre-Neolithic origins according to new research (this I want to discuss in some greater detail but I'm sadly leaving for tomorrow again) ··> Daniela Contu et al. at PLoS ONE (open access). 

Researchers claim that mtDNA age estimates support pre-Neolithic dates for major East Asian population expansion ··> Hong-Xiang Zheng et al. at PLoS ONE (open access).

Fractal analysis of the human genome. You would think that putting together the words fractal and human genetics would appeal to my interest a lot. I must be getting old because it only does somewhat. A reason may be that while the methodology is intriguing and innovative no particular conclusion is proposed ··> Pedro A. Moreno et al. at BMC Genomics (open access).

Extra copies of SRGAP2 gene may be one reason behind human unique intelligence ··> Science News.

Human brains designed by the same fixated genes, regardless of race or individual differences. This is one of a list of novel findings on how the genome expresses in the brain along human life ··> SD.

Epigenetically modified nucleotide ("sixth letter" 5-hydroxymethylcytosine) in neuronal genomes is key to their behavior as such ··> SD.

Propensity for longer life inherited epi-genetically through generations. This so much coveted trait is inherited by lab roundworms even if the initial epigenetic modification has vanished ··> SD.

Other anthropology news:

Human children, but not chimpanzees, prefer to collaborate in order to solve tasks ··> Science Daily.

IQ is not totally fixed by genetics and can indeed change, specially in adolescence ··> BBC.

Other science news:

Comet storm detected in nearby stellar system (may increase chances of life by feeding planets like ours with water) ··> SD.

Nature laws may vary across the universe. At least electromagnetic constants seem to behave that way ··> PhysOrg.

Highly efficient (10x) hydrolysis catalyst found, helping to pave the way for easier production of hydrogen for fuel instead of dirty oil ··> SD.

Global warming is for real (in case you still had any doubt) ··> SD.