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Mesolithic Finds

I thought tapeworm was very common until quite recently - and not considered all that harmful?

They're not exactly symbiotes:

Symptoms may vary depending on the type of tapeworm, and they may include the following:

  • eggs, larvae, or segments from the tapeworm in stools
  • abdominal pain
  • vomiting
  • nausea
  • general weakness
  • inflammation of the intestine
  • diarrhea
  • weight loss
  • altered appetite
  • sleeping difficulties this may be as a result of other symptoms.
  • dizziness
  • convulsions in severe cases.
  • malnutrition
  • vitamin B12 deficiency in very rare cases
Complications
The risk of complications depends on several factors, including the type of tapeworm and whether or not the patient receives treatment:

  • Cysticercosis: If a human ingests pork tapeworm eggs there is a risk of larvae infection. The larvae can exit the intestine and infect tissues and organs elsewhere in the body, resulting in lesions or cysts.
  • Neurocysticercosis: This is a dangerous complication of pork tapeworm infection. The brain and nervous system are affected. The patient may have headaches, vision problems, seizures, meningitis, and confusion. In very severe cases the infection can be fatal.
  • Echinococcosis, or hydatid disease: The echinococcus tapeworm can cause an infection called echinococcosis. The larvae leave the gut and infect organs, most commonly the liver. The infection can result in large cysts, which place pressure on nearby blood vessels and affect circulation. In severe cases, surgery or liver transplantation is required.

https://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/170461.php
 
They're not exactly symbiotes
Well, true, but the problems associated with them largely depends on the species of worm. Our ancestors no doubt benefitted from the fact that they act as a second layer of poison protection, supporting the role of the liver in removing poisons. In the bad old days humans gained a decent level of protection from bad food and dirty water thanks to these parasites.

For the love of trivia, here is the Wikipedia historical timeline of deworming:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timeline_of_deworming
 
Interesting new finds could rewrite a piece of prehistory.

A previously unrecorded collection of thousands of artefacts found around the Waterford Estuary indicate what would be one of the oldest settlements in Ireland, stretching back up to 10,000 years, archaeologists have said.

Surveys were carried out on items found at Creadan Head, near Dunmore East, Co Waterford, earlier this summer. The artefacts, which included flint tools, were originally collected by local man Noel McDonagh over a period of almost four decades.

The archaeologists are confident they stretch back to the Mesolithic Period, also known as the Middle Stone Age.

Dr Peter Woodman, late emeritus professor of archaeology at University College Cork, had worked on the Creadan site before he died last year. The baton has since been taken up by Dr Stanton Green of Monmouth University in the US.

In a statement from Dr Green and Dr Joseph Schuldenrein, a senior geoarcheology researcher in New York, they say some of the artefacts found at Creadan Head are more than 10,000 years old.

“Every indication then was that people did come to Waterford as early, if not earlier than, people came to the north and west of Ireland. This understanding changes Irish prehistory, and this proposed project aims to verify this.”

https://www.irishtimes.com/culture/...-settlement-1.3603628?localLinksEnabled=false
 
New research indicates Mesolithic groups were living at higher elevations more persistently and far earlier than previously suspected. Such groups were inhabiting high mountain environments during the last Ice Age.

This newly discovered evidence for the earliest known such alpine Stone Age habitation was found in Ethiopia, of all places ...
Earliest Evidence of Human Mountaineers Found in Ethiopia

Ancient humans lived off giant mole rats high in the mountains of Ethiopia to survive the last ice age, a new study finds.

Previous research had suggested that high-altitude regions such as Tibet and the Andes were among the last places peopled by humans. The air is low in oxygen, resources are scarce and the weather can get harsh.

However, in increasing numbers, archaeological finds in high places across the globe have recently begun showing that humans might have colonized high altitudes earlier than previously thought. For example, a jawbone unearthed in a holy cave in China reveals that an extinct, mysterious human lineage known as the Denisovans made its way to the high Tibetan Plateau as early as 160,000 years ago. Still, although those findings suggested the presence of humans in these areas, they said little as to whether people actually dwelled there. ...

Now, scientists working in Ethiopia have uncovered what they said is the earliest evidence to date of prehistoric mountaineers, ones who made a home at great heights during the last ice age more than 30,000 years ago.

"The most exciting finding is the fact that prehistoric people repeatedly, over millennia, spent considerable amounts of time in high altitudes at a residential site and actively, deliberately made use of the available Afro-alpine resources," study co-author Götz Ossendorf, an archaeologist at the University of Cologne in Germany, told Live Science. ...

In the new study, researchers trekked on foot and by pack horse up to a rocky outcrop near the settlement of Fincha Habera in the Bale Mountains in southern Ethiopia, which is located about 11,380 feet (3,469 meters) above sea level. ...

Reaching up to nearly 14,400 feet (4,400 m) above sea level, the Bale Mountains are rather inhospitable — the air is thin, temperatures fluctuate sharply and it rains often. As such, it was previously assumed that humans settled in this area only very recently and for brief spans of time, Glaser said.

The scientists unearthed numerous signs — such as stone artifacts, burnt animal bones, clay fragments and a glass bead — that the rocky outcrop was once inhabited. To find out more about the site, they analyzed sediment deposited in the soil there to date its age and glean details about how the people there lived. ...

Surprisingly, carbon dating revealed the earliest artifacts at the site dated sometime between 47,000 and 31,000 years ago. As such, this rock shelter was active during the last glacial period, colloquially often called the last ice age, when vast ice sheets reaching up to miles thick covered large portions of the planet. ...

"At that time, a large part of the Bale Mountains — about 265 square kilometers [100 square miles] was covered by ice," study co-author Alexander Groos, a glaciologist at the University of Bern in Switzerland, told Live Science. "Glaciers were flowing from a central ice cap down into the valleys."

These findings are the earliest evidence of prehistoric humans residing at high altitudes, the researchers said. ...
FULL STORY: https://www.livescience.com/earliest-evidence-human-mountaineers.html
 
New research indicates Mesolithic groups were living at higher elevations more persistently and far earlier than previously suspected. Such groups were inhabiting high mountain environments during the last Ice Age.

This newly discovered evidence for the earliest known such alpine Stone Age habitation was found in Ethiopia, of all places ...

FULL STORY: https://www.livescience.com/earliest-evidence-human-mountaineers.html


That leaves me scratching my head EG.
 
My guess is that the global cooling and glaciation negatively impacted the lowlands' climate and ecology to the point dedicated hunters had to progressively retreat to the highlands / mountains, where they eventually developed a sustainable lifestyle. In addition to cooling temperatures everywhere, major glaciations tended to lock up lots of water in ice. Deteriorating hunting and foraging conditions in the lowlands may have resulted as much from drier conditions as from colder weather.

Maybe their preferred prey migrated elsewhere, and some groups chose to follow the remaining prey into the mountains rather than migrate who-knows-how-far away to chase the emigrating prey at lower elevations.
 
Here's another news item about the Bale Mountains discoveries:

https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2019/08/190808152500.htm

This article offers some suggested explanations for why groups may have taken to the icy mountains ...

... The analyses may also have uncovered the reasons for this: during the last ice age the settlement of Fincha Habera was located beyond the edge of the glaciers. According to Glaser, there was a sufficient amount of water available since the glaciers melted in phases. The researchers are even able to say what people ate: giant mole rats, endemic rodents in the region the researchers investigated. These were easy to hunt and provided enough meat, thereby providing the energy required to survive in the rough terrain. Humans probably also settled in the area because there was deposit of volcanic obsidian rock nearby from which they could mine obsidian and make tools out of it. "The settlement was therefore not only comparatively habitable, but also practical," concludes Glaser.
 
Mesolithic findings in Sweden include evidence of (ritual? funerary?) placement of skulls on "spikes" (stakes) rising from a lakebed.
This Stone Age man's jawless skull was found on a spike. Here's what he looked like.

We may never know why the skull of a Stone Age man ended up on a stake in a mysterious underwater grave 8,000 years ago, but thanks to a new facial reconstruction, we can see what he probably looked like before he died.

Archaeologists discovered the man's skull, as well as the remains of at least 10 other Stone Age adults and an infant, in 2012 at the bottom of what used to be a small lake in what is now Motala, a municipality in eastern-central Sweden. However, only one of the adults had a jaw; the rest were jawless, and two of the skulls had been placed on stakes sticking out from the lake's surface.

Now, a 3D facial reconstruction reveals the likeness of one of those jawless skulls. Oscar Nilsson, a forensic artist based in Sweden, used this skull as well as genetic and anatomical information gleaned from it to create a bust of the man — a blue-eyed, brown-haired and pale-skinned individual in his 50s. ...

FULL STORY:
https://www.livescience.com/stone-age-man-facial-reconstruction.html

For More Details On The Facial Reconstruction See:
https://www.livescience.com/stone-age-man-facial-reconstruction-photos.html
 
Archaeologists have made exciting new finds from the Mesolithic period in the Cairngorms in Scotland.

Exciting' Stone Age discoveries in the Cairngorms

Archaeologists found stone tools and traces of firepits and possible shelters in Deeside in the Cairngorms.

Finds from the Mesolithic period, also known as the Middle Stone Age, are rare and usually made in lowland areas.

https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-scotland-north-east-orkney-shetland-56661834
 
Archaeologists have made exciting new finds from the Mesolithic period in the Cairngorms in Scotland.

Exciting' Stone Age discoveries in the Cairngorms

Archaeologists found stone tools and traces of firepits and possible shelters in Deeside in the Cairngorms.

Finds from the Mesolithic period, also known as the Middle Stone Age, are rare and usually made in lowland areas.

https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-scotland-north-east-orkney-shetland-56661834
.
The search for more sites continues.

A new project has been set up to help uncover ancient hunter-gatherer sites high in the Cairngorm mountains.

Scotland was home to hunter-gatherers from about 10,000 years ago, after the end of the last ice age. Mesolithic sites are rare and have mainly been found on the coast and a few inland areas. Only a handful of upland sites have been discovered in the Cairngorms so far - Chest of Dee, Caochanan Ruadha and Sgòr an Eòin.

Looking Up, a project based at University College Dublin (UCD), has been launched to help pinpoint other possible locations in the vast, and sometimes difficult, terrain. The Cairngorms are the UK's largest area of high ground.

https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-scotland-highlands-islands-60755710
 
As with Lascaux and elsewhere, it's always the body-lines that are so keenly observed. Such a plausible shape and pose with just a hint of exaggeration, as if the artist was carving the Platonic ideal he retained in his mind's eye after observing so many examples.

An ancient amber bear. Carved about 10,000 years ago, this magical find washed up on a beach at Fanø in Denmark from a submerged Mesolithic settlement under the North Sea. National Museum of Denmark. Photo: © Alison Fisk.

FSD-phFXEAAo7zt.jpeg

Modern Grizzly:

lions-bear-header-1200.jpg

Source:
 
As with Lascaux and elsewhere, it's always the body-lines that are so keenly observed. Such a plausible shape and pose with just a hint of exaggeration, as if the artist was carving the Platonic ideal he retained in his mind's eye after observing so many examples.

An ancient amber bear. Carved about 10,000 years ago, this magical find washed up on a beach at Fanø in Denmark from a submerged Mesolithic settlement under the North Sea. National Museum of Denmark. Photo: © Alison Fisk.

View attachment 55058


Source:
Simply stunning.
 
This stuff about the Cairngorms is interesting, as I was told that was always an `empty` land.
 

Mystery Stone Age pits in England have archaeologists baffled

Archaeologists in England have discovered more than two dozen monumental pits dotting the countryside in Bedfordshire, north of London.

Radiocarbon dating of materials retrieved from the prehistoric site revealed that the round, steep-sided holes were created around 7,700 to 8,500 years ago during the Mesolithic, also known as the Middle Stone Age, according to a statement from the Museum of London Archaeology, which made the finding.

mJzWZwBXcWjGf6pRgmDuNY-1920-80.jpg.webp


The finding, dubbed the Linmere pits, includes up to 25 holes that measure up to 16 feet (5 meters) wide and 6 feet (1.9 m) deep and are laid out in straight lines up to 1,640 feet (500 m) long.

Because the holes appear to be strategically placed around what were once stream channels, researchers think the pits may have been spiritually significant and may have played a role in recording important celestial events, such as the solstices, although evidence is still needed to support this idea.

Some of the pits contained animal remains, including bones from aurochs (Bos primigenius), an extinct species of cattle, and could have served as food storage, the researchers hypothesized.

https://www.livescience.com/archaeo...rchaeologists-asking-what-were-these-pits-for

maximus otter
 

Mystery Stone Age pits in England have archaeologists baffled

Archaeologists in England have discovered more than two dozen monumental pits dotting the countryside in Bedfordshire, north of London.

Radiocarbon dating of materials retrieved from the prehistoric site revealed that the round, steep-sided holes were created around 7,700 to 8,500 years ago during the Mesolithic, also known as the Middle Stone Age, according to a statement from the Museum of London Archaeology, which made the finding.

mJzWZwBXcWjGf6pRgmDuNY-1920-80.jpg.webp


The finding, dubbed the Linmere pits, includes up to 25 holes that measure up to 16 feet (5 meters) wide and 6 feet (1.9 m) deep and are laid out in straight lines up to 1,640 feet (500 m) long.

Because the holes appear to be strategically placed around what were once stream channels, researchers think the pits may have been spiritually significant and may have played a role in recording important celestial events, such as the solstices, although evidence is still needed to support this idea.

Some of the pits contained animal remains, including bones from aurochs (Bos primigenius), an extinct species of cattle, and could have served as food storage, the researchers hypothesized.

https://www.livescience.com/archaeo...rchaeologists-asking-what-were-these-pits-for

maximus otter
The excavations followed the old water course...that directs my mind along aquaculture - why so many though, and is farming fish appropriate for the time.

If there was a religious connotation, why not utilise the actual water courses - wouldn't that be more authentic to the religion?

The action of influence/effluence so close to a watercourse tells me that the water in the excavation would be pretty much pristine and at a constant volume.

The climate at the time might give a clue, "dry, mainly cool Boreal period extended from about 6500 to 5200 B.C.,

Wait...I think that I have it...THIS was the ancient and original site of the

Golgafrinchan Ark Fleet Ship B!!!​


(Please excuse my rather flippant mood this morning.)
 
From the Mesolithic to Medieval times seaweed was an important part of the human diet,

Seaweed isn't something that generally features today in European recipe books, even though it is widely eaten in Asia. But our team has discovered molecular evidence that shows this wasn't always the case. People in Europe ate seaweed and freshwater aquatic plants from the Stone Age right up until the Middle Ages before it disappeared from our plates.

Our evidence came from skeletal remains, namely the calculus (hardened dental plaque) that built up around the teeth of these people when they were alive. Many centuries later, this calculus still contains molecules that record the food that people ingested.

We analyzed the calculus from 74 skeletal remains from 28 archaeological sites across Europe. The sites span a period of several thousand years starting in the Mesolithic, when people hunted and gathered their food, through to the earliest farming societies (a stage called the Neolithic) all the way up to the Middle Ages.

Our results suggest that seaweed was a habitual part of the diet for the time periods we studied, and became a marginal food only relatively recently.

Unsurprisingly, most of the sites where we detected the consumption of seaweed are coastal. But we also found evidence from inland sites that people were ingesting freshwater aquatic plants, including lilies and pondweed. We also found an example of people consuming sea kale.

We identified several types of molecules in the dental calculus that collectively are characteristic of seaweed. We refer to these as "biomarkers". They include a set of chemical compounds called alkylpyrroles. When we detect these compounds together in calculus, we can be fairly sure where they came from. The same goes for other compounds characteristic of seaweed and freshwater plants.

To have become embedded in dental calculus, the seaweed and freshwater plants had to have been in the mouth and most probably chewed. Biomarkers do not survive in all our samples, but where they do, they're found consistently across many individuals we analyzed from different places. This suggests seaweed was probably a routine part of the diet.

https://phys.org/news/2023-10-people-europe-ate-seaweed-thousands.html
 
Human DNA extracted from Mesolithic chewing gum provides a rich source of information.

Some 9,700 years ago on an autumn day, a group of people were camping on the west coast of Scandinavia. They were hunter-gatherers that had been fishing, hunting and collecting resources in the area.

Some teenagers, both boys and girls, were chewing resin to produce glue, just after eating trout, deer and hazelnuts. Due to a severe gum infection (periodontitis), one of the teenagers had problems eating the chewy deer-meat, as well as preparing the resin by chewing it.

This snapshot of the Mesolithic period, just before Europeans started farming, comes from analysis of DNA left in the chewed resin that we have conducted, now published in Scientific Reports.

The location is now known as Huseby Klev, situated north of Gothenburg (Göteborg), Sweden. It was excavated by archaeologists in the early 1990s, and yielded some 1,849 flint artifacts and 115 pieces of resin (mastic). The site has been radiocarbon dated to between 10,200 and 9,400 years ago, with one of the pieces of resin dated to 9,700 years ago.

Some of the resin has teeth imprints, indicating that children, actually teenagers, had been chewing them. Masticated lumps, often with imprints of teeth, fingerprints or both, are not uncommon to find in Mesolithic sites.

The pieces of resin we have analyzed were made of birch bark pitch, which is known to have been used as an adhesive substance in stone tool technology from the Middle Paleolithic onward. However, they were also chewed for recreational or medicinal purposes in traditional societies.

A variety of substances with similar properties, such as resins from coniferous trees, natural bitumen, and other plant gums, are known to have been used in analogous ways in many parts of the world.

In some of the resin, half the DNA extracted was of human origin. This is a lot compared to what we often find in ancient bones and teeth. ,,,

https://phys.org/news/2024-01-dna-stone-age-gum-diet.html
 
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