How psychoactive substances formed Andean civilization in South America

Very Recommendable!

The article "High Society" is quite long, I did not read all of it.

"The journey of humans into South America was a strange trip—literally. When people arrived some 15,000 years ago, they encountered an ecologically diverse continent peculiarly rich in psychoactive plants. Botanists estimate more than 100 species there significantly alter human consciousness, accounting for more than two-thirds of the global total.

Perhaps, then, it’s no surprise that psychoactive substances played a starring role in many of the empires that arose there, particularly in the Andes. ..."

"Chavín De Huántar, Peru ... Archaeologists have long believed this 3000-year-old temple complex in a high and remote valley in the central Peruvian Andes was a center of drug rituals ...

Such finds strongly suggested the practice of mind-altering rituals, but in 2016 a team ... began to unearth what he calls “the smoking gun.” They uncovered a new gallery ... including 21 bone tubes,” ... which yielded traces of tobacco and something considerably more potent: seeds from the vilca tree, which contain bufotenine; dimethyltryptamine (DMT); and 5-MEO-DMT, a combination that produces short-lived but extremely intense visions. ...

Drug-based rituals, it is now becoming clear, played a central role in the emergence of Andean civilization. ... believes Chavín’s ritual leaders invited elites from other regions to take part in elaborate ceremonies centered on ingesting powerful substances amid a dramatic sound and light show. In so doing, “they harnessed the process of mental alteration to establish powerful levels of authority.” ...

Chavín’s success spawned imitators throughout the region. In subsequent centuries, the Tiahuanaco and Wari peoples built on these traditions to cement political, social, and religious power as their territories expanded to encompass vast swaths of western South America.

Widespread ritual drug use fell into decline only when the Inca rose after 1200 C.E.; Spanish conquerors suppressed remaining practices after their 1532 invasion. Although psychoactives remained in use for medicinal and small-scale religious purposes—many can still be found for sale in open-air markets—their powerful and pervasive influence on Andean society was relegated to the shadows. ...

Scattered evidence suggests early societies along the Peruvian coast experimented with psychoactives as early as the third millennium B.C.E. More solid evidence is found at Chavín, which emerged 150 kilometers to the north by 1200 B.C.E. The temple complex remained in continuous use until decline set in after an earthquake around 550 B.C.E. Notably, it lacks defenses, palaces, or signs of an organized military. Chavín was not the center of a political state, but a pilgrimage site that for centuries drew visitors from afar. ..."

ScienceAdviser

High culture "How psychoactive substances helped spur Andean civilization"

Snuff trays and tubes, like these found at San Pedro de Atacama in Chile, were used to ingest crushed seeds of the psychoactive vilca plant

No bosses, no problem! Pre-Hispanic farmers built giant water system bottom-up in Colombia. Really!

Amazing stuff! However, the claims about no top-down government etc. are most likely exaggerations or speculative!

When wishful thinking enters the minds of researchers! Dreams/bias of a cooperative collective!

It would be great if it can be confirmed that these fields and water management system were achieved through voluntarily cooperation, but this research is too speculative!

"The pre-Hispanic field systems of La Mojana in the Colombian Caribbean are so vast you can see them from a plane at high altitude. Their canals and raised fields – in use from the first centuries BC until the 11th century AD – cover an astonishing 500,000 hectares, roughly the same size as the Grand Canyon National Park, or three times the size of London. ...

archaeological team argues that the work was most likely locally-led, cooperative, and much faster than previously assumed. ...

Our study is the first to show that these sustainable solutions can be organised locally and collectively. Local people may need resources from the state but not necessarily state intervention.” ..."

From the abstract (emphasis added):

"Pre-Hispanic societies of the Colombian Caribbean lowlands built raised field systems spanning over 500,000 hectares. Their re-adoption may offer a potential solution to modern-day water control in the region. Traditionally interpreted as evidence of large-scale projects requiring centralised planning and coordination, the labour organisation behind their construction is nevertheless not fully understood.

To leverage archaeological knowledge in assessing potential for their re-adoption, we examine the function and labour input requirements of pre-Hispanic canal-ridge systems within a 500-hectare study area.

Conservative estimates indicate the entire system could have been built by local inhabitants in a single dry season.

Maintenance requirements were also modest, with full restoration once a generation requiring a few days annual labour.

We conclude that the sheer scale [???] of these systems cannot be taken as evidence of top-down control, and highlight the potential of low-cost, cooperative, sustainable approaches to water and land management in the Colombian Caribbean."

No bosses, no problem! Pre-Hispanic farmers built giant water system bottom-up, archaeologists reveal | University of Cambridge "Communities living in Colombia thousands of years ago achieved an engineering wonder of the world based on cooperation among family groups without top-down government, a new study shows. Archaeologists argue that policymakers in Colombia should now adopt a similar strategy to solve the country’s current water management crisis."

Collective labour and sustainability of pre-Hispanic field systems in La Mojana (open access)

Fig. 1: Areas of human occupation in La Mojana Region in Colombia.

Fig. 2: Aerial photograph of hydraulic systems in La Mojana, composed of canals and ridges (also known as camellones).

Takshashila & Nalanda: The Story of Ancient India's Great Universities

Very recommendable!

(240) Takshashila & Nalanda: The Story of Ancient India's Great Universities | Vantage on Firstpost | 4K - YouTube

Trade, Trust, and Civilisation: The Hidden Economic Message of Nolan’s 'Odyssey'

Very recommendable! I blogged here about the movie recently.

"That question lies at the heart of Johan Norberg’s recent book Peak Human, which argues that societies rise not simply because of military strength or exceptional rulers, but because they develop the institutions that make cooperation, innovation, and voluntary exchange possible. Historians once explained the fate of civilisations primarily through battles, conquests, and empires. Increasingly, however, scholarship has shifted its attention towards less dramatic but ultimately more decisive forces: secure property rights, political stability, trust between strangers, economic freedom, and the peaceful exchange of goods and ideas. Armies may conquer kingdoms, but commerce is what allows civilisations to endure."

Note: If correctly described in the article below, then it appears Johan Norberg regurgitates what August Friedrich von Hayek has said many times before in his writings. Maybe the author of this article below is not aware of this.

"Nolan’s emphasis on trade is therefore far from accidental. Archaeology has revealed that the eastern Mediterranean during the Late Bronze Age was home to one of the most sophisticated commercial systems the world had yet seen. Rather than a collection of isolated kingdoms, it formed a remarkably integrated economic network linking Egypt, Anatolia, the Levant, Cyprus, mainland Greece, and beyond. Copper, tin, wine, olive oil, timber, textiles, ivory, glass, spices, and precious metals travelled enormous distances through interconnected markets.

The most remarkable evidence for this commercial world emerged almost by accident in 1982, when a diver discovered the wreck of a merchant ship off the southern coast of modern-day Turkey. The Uluburun shipwreck, dating from the fourteenth century BC, contained more than ten tonnes of Cypriot copper, almost a tonne of tin, African ivory, Baltic amber, Mesopotamian glass, Mycenaean pottery, and gold jewellery. No primitive economy could have organised such a logistical operation. Long before the Industrial Revolution, an extensive international trading system already connected societies separated by thousands of kilometres.

Commerce alone, however, was not enough. These networks depended upon institutions of cooperation. The Amarna Letters reveal rulers addressing one another as “brothers,” exchanging gifts, negotiating alliances, and maintaining permanent diplomatic contacts.

Greek society reflected the same logic through xenia—the sacred obligation to offer hospitality to strangers. In a world where long-distance trade depended on trust between people who had never met, such norms were not merely moral ideals; they were essential economic institutions. ..."

Trade, Trust, and Civilisation: The Hidden Economic Message of Nolan’s 'Odyssey' (Unfortunately, no author name is provided as if written anonymously) "A fragile web of trust and voluntary exchange holds societies together"

What's for dinner? Tooth enamel reveals what early Mesopotamians really ate

Amazing stuff! I believe, there were other studies in the past that analyzed enamel to determine e.g. what food was consumed.

"... In particular, the team focused on zinc isotopes (different versions of the same element) in the enamel, as they detail in their study ... "Zinc isotope analysis of dental enamel provides a viable alternative for reconstructing diet in southern Mesopotamia, where collagen preservation is poor," they write.

The zinc in your teeth changes depending on what you are eating. For example, plants absorb zinc from the soil through their roots and carry a distinctive chemical signature. When animals eat plants, the isotope signal shifts slightly in predictable ways as it moves through the food chain. By measuring those shifts in human teeth, scientists can estimate how much plant versus animal food people consumed. In addition to zinc, the team examined carbon and oxygen isotopes and trace elements such as barium and strontium. ..."

From the significance and abstract:

"Significance

Understanding ancient diets is one of the keys to reconstructing lifeways and social structures. In what are now arid regions like southern Mesopotamia, poor collagen preservation has long hindered direct dietary reconstructions. Here, we apply zinc isotope analysis to human and faunal dental enamel from the third-millennium BCE site of Abu Tbeirah (southern Iraq), offering a method to overcome this limitation. Combined with carbon and oxygen isotopes and trace element ratios (Ba/Ca and Sr/Ca), zinc isotopes reveal an omnivorous diet based on C3 cereals, terrestrial animal protein, and possibly freshwater resources, with no evidence of marine fish consumption. These findings offer individual-level insight into subsistence practices, early-life nutrition, and animal management within a nonelite population in early-urbanized southern Mesopotamia.

Abstract

Reconstructing past lifeways and diets is essential to understanding the emergence of urban societies. However, in what are now arid environments like southern Mesopotamia, poor collagen preservation has long hampered direct isotopic analysis of trophic levels. This limitation has left key gaps in our understanding of subsistence in one of the world’s earliest urban heartlands.

Here, we apply zinc isotope analysis to human and faunal dental enamel from the third-millennium BCE site of Abu Tbeirah (Iraq), integrating δ13C, δ18O, and trace element ratios (Ba/Ca and Sr/Ca). This multiproxy approach reveals an omnivorous diet based on C3 cereals, terrestrial animal products (likely including pigs), and limited freshwater resources, with no or little evidence of marine fish consumption, despite the site’s proximity to the ancient shoreline. Dietary patterns do not vary by sex, suggesting broad access to similar food sources within this nonelite population. Moreover, zinc and carbon isotopes proved valuable in identifying animal feeding practices. Our results provide direct dietary evidence from southern Mesopotamia, overcoming long-standing preservation challenges. The results allow us to evaluate specific expectations about diet and animal management in a collagen-poor context, also highlighting early-life feeding behaviors. They demonstrate the power of zinc isotopes to reconstruct trophic level in collagen-poor contexts, opening broad avenues for bioarchaeological research in early complex societies."

What's for dinner? Tooth enamel reveals what early Mesopotamians really ate

When collagen fails: Zinc isotopes unlock Sumerian lifeways in southern Mesopotamia (open access)

Fig. 2 Scatterplots of isotopic values divided in (A) δ66Zn vs. δ18O in humans, grouped by feeding behavior; (B) δ66Zn vs δ18O, with symbols indicating species and color indicating drinking strategy; (C) δ66Zn vs. δ13C in humans, grouped by feeding behavior; (D) δ66Zn vs. δ13C, with symbols indicating species and color indicating feeding behavior; (E) δ18O vs. δ13C in humans, grouped by feeding behavior; (F) δ18O vs. δ13C, with symbols indicating species and color indicating drinking strategy, compared with available data from Ur

Children and adults shaped clay 15,000 years ago, long before pottery or farming, archaeologists find

Amazing stuff!

"Long before pottery, before agriculture, when the first villages took shape, people in the Levant were already molding clay with their hands, carefully, deliberately, and sometimes playfully. Some of those hands belonged to children. ...

An international team of archaeologists ... has uncovered the earliest known clay ornaments in Southwest Asia, revealing a forgotten chapter in the story of how humans began to express identity, belonging, and meaning through material culture. The findings ... push back the symbolic use of clay in the region by thousands of years.

The ornaments, 142 beads and pendants, were made some 15,000 years ago by Natufian hunter-gatherers living in what is now Israel. These communities were the first in the world to settle permanently in one place, millennia before the rise of agriculture. Until now, clay in this period was thought to play little or no ornamental role. In fact, only five clay beads from this era were previously known worldwide. ..."

From the abstract:

"Ornamental practices are essential for understanding socioeconomic structures and technosymbolic dynamics of prehistoric societies. However, our perception of these practices remains limited and biased, due to preservation issues, e.g., perishable materials, which are known only through indirect evidence or rare conservation contexts. Such is the use of unbaked clay for ornamentation, a practice that became widespread across Eurasia in the Neolithic, sporadically documented earlier in Upper Paleolithic Europe.

Focusing on the Levantine “revolution of symbols,” we report the earliest known clay ornamental tradition outside of Europe: 142 personal ornaments from five Natufian (Late Epipaleolithic, 15,000 to 11,650 calibrated years before the present) sites in Israel. Using a multidisciplinary approach, we show that both children and adults participated in crafting these items, which reflect newly emerging symbolic expressions, some inspired by plant forms. These findings offer original insights into the social organization of craft production and the rise of symbolic practices at the dawn of sedentism, which ultimately shaped the Neolithic transition in Southwest Asia."

Children shaped clay 15,000 years ago, long before pottery or farming, archaeologists find

Modeling identities among the first-sedentary communities: Emergence of clay personal ornaments in Epipaleolithic Southwest Asia (open access)

Fig. 1. Typological variability of Natufian personal ornaments in the Southern Levant.

Fig. 2. Map of the distribution of Natufian sites.

Very old loom found on the Iberian peninsula about 3450 years old

Amazing stuff!

"When a fire ripped through a wealthy Iberian village 3450 years ago, it left behind heaps of rubble that trapped tools, pots, and jewelry—and, archaeologists argue in a new Antiquity study, one of the oldest looms ever found. The charred, meter-long pine beams, stone weights, and fiber cords open a window on an ancient economy, and perhaps on Bronze Age fashion.

Beginning around 2000 BCE, written sources from Mesopotamia, Mycenae, Egypt and elsewhere indicate that looms and weaving had become a part of daily life. But because they were made of perishable wood, finding an actual loom from prehistoric Europe is extremely rare. “What we find in archaeology is usually just the loom weights, because everything else decays ,”  ... “To find a loom like this, just as it was standing there 3500 years ago, is really remarkable.”

Archaeologists found the loom’s wooden frame when they excavated a site near modern-day Alicante, Spain, in 2008. Close by lay nearly 50 clay loom weights, along with tough grass fibers probably used to lash the frame together—key clues the structure was used for weaving, rather than being simply debris from the collapsed house, the new paper argues. The weights were unusually light, potentially suggesting the weavers were working with delicate material such as sheep’s wool, which would have been a relatively new material in the region."

From the abstract:

"The deep history of weaving is attested by spindle whorls and loom weights, so the evolution of techniques may be tracked through changes in these durable artefacts; however, wooden looms rarely preserve.

Here, the authors document a series of loom weights and associated charred timbers and fibres that represent the remains of a Bronze Age warp-weighted loom, uncovered at the settlement of Cabezo Redondo in south-eastern Spain. Based on the number, weight and size of the weights, hypothetical reconstructions of loom setup and resultant textile products are proposed, revealing possible diversification of weaving processes in the mid-second millennium BC."

ScienceAdvisor

Evidence of a warp-weighted loom in the Bronze Age settlement of Cabezo Redondo (south-east Spain) (open access)

Figure 1. Location of Cabezo Redondo: a & b) aerial views; c) plan of the site. The red arrow and dot indicate the location of the raised platform on which the loom was documented

Figure 5. Different views of the loom timbers during excavation

Inside One of the Best-Preserved Cities of the Bronze Age, How One of the World’s First Cities Solved Public Health: Mohenjo-daro

Very recommendable!

Who built a mysterious ancient city of Shimao in western China?

Amazing stuff! More questions about the cradle of Chinese civilization!

By the way, the Shaanxi Archaeology Museum appears to contain a lot of interesting stuff!

"Since its discovery in 2012, the ancient city of Shimao in western China has surprised archaeologists with its scale and size. Its stone walls, built around 2200 B.C.E., shelter a city and central palace that spreads over 4 square kilometers, larger than any other settlement in China at the time.

Shimao’s influence on later Chinese civilization can be seen in everything from stone carving and jade ornaments to urban planning and architecture. But who actually built it?

Scientists had long wondered whether people from China’s Yellow River Valley, where later Chinese dynasties had their roots, also founded Shimao and its surrounding settlements. DNA recovered from 169 people buried at and around the site, described today in Nature, suggest its builders were indeed locals, and that some of the innovations adopted by later Chinese cultures began in Shimao’s rugged terrain. ...

The genetic analysis also offers clues to the organization of Shimao’s ruling class. The men in many of the city’s richest tombs were related. Their shared Y chromosomes suggest power and status was passed from father to son, indicating what anthropologists call a patrilineal society. In one group of Shimao tombs, researchers could tell there was a sort of dynasty at play, with four generations of fathers and sons buried close to one another. ..."

From the abstract:

"The discovery of Shimao city (around 2300–1800 bce), a premier state-level Neolithic fortified settlement in Shaanxi, China, played an important role in helping us understand the emergence of socially stratified urban societies. However, key questions remain regarding how ancestry and kinship shaped the hierarchy of this class-based society characterized by human sacrifice. The origin of the founding populations of Shimao and other Loess Plateau settlements, and their interactions within the broader ancestral landscape, have yet to be determined. Here we present, by sequencing 144 ancient genomes from Shimao city and its satellites, pedigrees among tomb owners spanning up to four generations.

These findings reveal a predominantly patrilineal descent structure across Shimao communities, and possibly sex-specific sacrificial rituals. We also characterize the population history, revealing that Shimao culture-related populations originated mostly from a Yangshao culture-related population present at least 1,000 years earlier, and the lasting inflow of Yumin-related populations from Inner Mongolia did not interrupt regional genetic continuity. Broader genetic influence from southern mainland ancestry over Shimao culture-related populations supports evidence of rice farming expanding further north than previously expected. Together, these results uncover fine details of the regional peopling and social structure of early state establishment."

Who built a mysterious ancient city in western China? | Science | AAAS "DNA recovered from people buried at the site reveals surprises"

Ancient DNA from Shimao city records kinship practices in Neolithic China (open access)

At the ancient Chinese city of Shimao, massive stone walls enclosed an area covering 4 square kilometers.

Ancient Tiwanaku temple discovered in Bolivia

Amazing stuff!

"Long before the Inka (commonly known as Inca in English) rose to power, a mysterious civilization bloomed on the edge of Lake Titicaca. Known as Tiwanaku, it began as a humble farming village in the Bolivian highlands and, by around 500 BCE, grew into a sprawling city-state that influenced much of the Andean world. ...

Long before the Inka ruled the Andes, the Tiwanaku civilization carved out one of the region’s earliest and most influential societies. ...

Now, a team of researchers has uncovered a remarkable temple site 215 km (134 miles) from Tiwanaku’s core. This newly found structure, with its sunken courtyard and massive stone layout, mirrors Tiwanaku’s famous ceremonial platforms. ...

Tiwanaku, one of the Andes’ earliest urban societies, flourished with pyramids, sunken temples, and towering monoliths. But around 1000 BCE, it mysteriously collapsed. By the time the Inka arrived centuries later, Tiwanaku was already a shadow of its former glory. ...

Archaeologists uncovered a large ancient temple named Palaspata, spanning the size of a city block approximately 125 meters long by 145 meters wide (410 x 475 ft) with 15 enclosures around a central sunken courtyard. Its design appears aligned with the solar equinox, suggesting a ritual function. ..."

"An ancient society near the southern shores of Lake Titicaca in modern-day Bolivia was once one of the continent’s most powerful civilizations. Known as Tiwanaku, the ancient society is widely considered by archaeologists to be one of the earliest examples of civilization in the Andes and a precursor of the Inca empire, but it mysteriously disappeared about a thousand years ago. ..."

From the abstract:

"The nature and extent of the Tiwanaku state expansion in the Andes during the second half of the first millennium AD continues to be debated.

Here, the authors report on the recent discovery of an archaeological complex 215km south-east of Tiwanaku, where a large, modular building with an integrated, sunken courtyard strongly resembles a Tiwanaku terraced platform temple and demonstrates substantial state investment. Constructed, the authors argue, to directly control inter-regional traffic and trade between the highlands and the eastern valleys of Cochabamba, the complex represents a gateway node that effectively materialised the power and influence of the Tiwanaku state."

Ancient Tiwanaku temple discovered in Bolivia

Ancient temple ruins discovered in Andes shed light on lost society (original news release)

Gateway to the east: the Palaspata temple and the south-eastern expansion of the Tiwanaku state (open access)

This is digital reconstruction of the temple revealing a complex about the size of a city block. Called Palaspata after the native name for the area, the site was strategically perched at the crossroads of several ancient trade routes.

Archaeologists uncover monumental relief of King Ashurbanipal in ancient city of Nineveh

Amazing stuff!

"A team ... excavating in Iraq made a spectacular find: In the throne room of the North Palace of King Ashurbanipal in the ancient city of Nineveh, the archeologists discovered large portions of a monumental relief that depicts the ruler of the Assyrian empire from the seventh century BC along with two important deities and other figures. The relief was carved on a massive stone slab 5.5 meters long and three meters high and weighing approximately 12 tons.

The find is extraordinary for the researchers not only for its size, but also for the scenes depicted. “Among the many relief images of Assyrian palaces we know of, there are no depictions of major deities,” ..."

Archaeologists uncover monumental relief of King Ashurbanipal in ancient city of Nineveh

Spectacular Find in the Ancient City of Nineveh (original news release) "Archeologists From Heidelberg University Discover Major Portions Of A Large-Scale Relief With Depictions Of Assyrian Deities"

Fragment of the discovered relief

3D model of the relief: The finds are marked in dark gray, the light gray part represents a reconstruction based on the finds. King Ashurbanipal is depicted in the center.

More mysteries about the Phoenicians

Amazing stuff!

"Scholars have long assumed the Phoenicians—famed for their maritime prowess and the invention of an alphabet ... descended from the Canaanites mentioned in the Bible. But a study of hundreds of ancient genomes finds that, although Phoenician culture and language may have originated in the land of Canaan, most Phoenician people did not.

Phoenician culture began to spread westward across the Mediterranean beginning around 1000 B.C.E. From Sicily to Spain and across North Africa, new coastal towns were built in the Phoenician style, with Phoenician artifacts and agricultural practices in evidence. ...

To find out more, geneticists worked with archaeologists in Europe and North Africa to analyze more than 200 skeletons excavated from Phoenician-style graves. In a twist, the skeletons’ DNA shows that most of them lacked Levantine ancestry, drawing from a mix of Mediterranean populations instead. The finding supports the idea that whenever small groups of Phoenician settlers founded colonies, locals eagerly joined them and adopted their way of life.

The study also affirms that Phoenicians traveled widely. In every cemetery the researchers looked at, none of the men shared similar Y chromosomes, suggesting that Phoenician men didn’t stay in one place for multiple generations. The team even found two second cousins who lived a sea apart, with one buried in Sicily and the other in North Africa. “This was a culture that was constantly integrating people,” ..."

From the abstract:

"The maritime Phoenician civilization from the Levant transformed the entire Mediterranean during the first millennium bce However, the extent of human movement between the Levantine Phoenician homeland and Phoenician–Punic settlements in the central and western Mediterranean has been unclear in the absence of comprehensive ancient DNA studies.

Here, we generated genome-wide data for 210 individuals, including 196 from 14 sites traditionally identified as Phoenician and Punic in the Levant, North Africa, Iberia, Sicily, Sardinia and Ibiza, and an early Iron Age individual from Algeria. Levantine Phoenicians made little genetic contribution to Punic settlements in the central and western Mediterranean between the sixth and second centuries bce, despite abundant archaeological evidence of cultural, historical, linguistic and religious links.

Instead, these inheritors of Levantine Phoenician culture derived most of their ancestry from a genetic profile similar to that of Sicily and the Aegean. Much of the remaining ancestry originated from North Africa, reflecting the growing influence of Carthage. However, this was a minority contributor of ancestry in all of the sampled sites, including in Carthage itself.

Different Punic sites across the central and western Mediterranean show similar patterns of high genetic diversity. We also detect genetic relationships across the Mediterranean, reflecting shared demographic processes that shaped the Punic world."

ScienceAdviser

Most Phoenicians did not come from the land of Canaan, challenging historical assumptions

Punic people were genetically diverse with almost no Levantine ancestors (no public access)

Excavations uncover evidence for the emergence and rejection of the earliest state institutions in Iraq

Amazing stuff!

"Excavations at a 4th millennium BCE settlement in Iraqi Kurdistan have revealed new clues about the origins of the world's earliest governing institutions, suggesting they emerged partly from their ability to provide large-scale meals, potentially as payment for labor. ...

The excavations at Shakhi Kora uncovered a long sequence of structures spanning several centuries. Over time, the cultural items found at the site shifted from reflecting primarily local traditions to being closely associated with the major ancient city of Uruk in southern Iraq, one of the world's first cities, which featured a large-scale monumental precinct in the later 4th millennium BCE and yielded thousands of clay tablets containing the earliest written texts. ...

However, the eventual abandonment of the final institutional building at Shakhi Kora, without any signs of it being violently destroyed or seemingly facing environmental pressures, points to a deliberate choice by the local community to move away from this centralized system of authority and resource distribution. ..."

From the abstract:

"During the fourth millennium BC, public institutions developed at several large settlements across greater Mesopotamia. These are widely acknowledged as the first cities and states, yet surprisingly little is known about their emergence, functioning and demise. Here, the authors present new evidence of public institutions at the site of Shakhi Kora in the lower Sirwan/upper Diyala river valley of north-east Iraq. A sequence of four Late Chalcolithic institutional households precedes population dispersal and the apparent regional rejection of centralised social forms of organisation that were not then revisited for almost 1500 years."

Excavations uncover evidence for the emergence and rejection of the earliest state institutions in Iraq

There and back again: local institutions, an Uruk expansion and the rejection of centralisation in the Sirwan/Upper Diyala region

Figure 2. Aerial view of the 2023 exposure in Area I at Shakhi Kora

Lost Mayan City: Buried for Millennia, unearthed by scientists in jungle

Amazing stuff! 

"Scientists have recently utilized lidar technology, also known as "lasers from the sky," to locate an ancient Mayan city buried deep in the jungle. This city is situated in the Balmaco Ecological Reserve on the western side of the Yucatan Peninsula. Ground investigation subsequently uncovered a series of complex structures in an area previously unknown to researchers. The discovery of these buildings bolsters the belief that the city played a central role in the region. 

How it was discovered

Despite being over 1,000 years old, this city remained undiscovered by the modern world.  ... The town was found by a research team led by Ivan Špraić, a professor of archeology from Slovenia, who has been working on the Yucatán Peninsula since 1996. The team used information from the aerial scan to successfully locate the ancient Mayan city, which includes intricate buildings, plazas, and even ball courts. ...
The researchers have named this recently discovered city "Ocomtún," which means "Pillar of Stone" in the Mayan language. ..."

Lost Mayan City: Buried for Millennia, unearthed by scientists in jungle - The Jerusalem Post

Ancient, impressive water pipe system in China was made by egalitarian society

Very recommendable! Amazing stuff! This find also raises some serious philosophical and political science questions about the role of government!

"Archaeologists have made a stunning discovery at the Chinese walled site of Pingliangtai. They discovered a pipe that dates back 4,000 years, to a time when Pingliangtai didn't have a centralized authority. So, it's not only that this population built a long, complex water management system — but they did so without a centralized structure. ...

"The square-shaped settlement has a clear layout, with a symmetrical structure of the gates, a north-south road on the central line and row houses on the two sides," ... "It might be an important origin of the central axis pattern, which was followed by many capital cities in later periods. And the town was equipped with a two-tiered drainage system consisting of ditches and ceramic drainpipes, which is the earliest ceramic drainage system in China. And some ruts were found on the road near the southern gate, which are also the earliest ruts in China." ...

When the authors did some digging at the site, they uncovered a two-tiered drainage system that was constructed 4100 years ago and continuously upgraded and repaired for 200 years. The ditches and drains parallel to the houses could have been managed on a household level. However, there are also large drainage pipes in public areas — these would have required careful planning and coordination. ..."

From the abstract:

"The earliest ceramic drainage system unearthed at the Pingliangtai site on the Central Plains of China represents an unprecedented social and environmental manipulation as societies faced surging environmental crises in the Late Holocene East Asian Monsoon region. Here we present results of excavation and a geoarchaeological survey of the water-management infrastructures and environment which reveal the operation and maintenance of a well-planned and regulated two-tiered drainage system. Rather than a ‘centralized hierarchy’, the drainage activities were mainly practised at household and communal levels, through which Pingliangtai society was drawn to more pragmatic aspects of social governance. Through their emphasis on spatial uniformity, cooperation in public affairs, and a series of technological innovations, water management at Pingliangtai gravitated to collective shared interest as the society responded to recurrent environmental contingencies. Such a pragmatic focus on public affairs constituted a previously unrecognized, alternative pathway to the development of power structure and social governance on the Central Plains regimes in late Neolithic and later times."

Ancient, impressive water pipe system in China was made by egalitarian society The dug pipe, the oldest ever discovered in China, controlled water runoff and potentially contained it in a moat.

Earliest ceramic drainage system and the formation of hydro-sociality in monsoonal East Asia (open access)

Fig. 3: Plans at Pingliangtai.

Closeup photo of water pipe segments fitted together in situ at Pingliangtai.

Photo of in situ water pipes leading to a drainage ditch near Pingliangtai's southern gate.

Abrahamic Religions Each Share Their Own Decalogue

I did not have time to read the whole article, but nobody should underestimate the immense and paramount importance of the Ten Commandments in the history of human civilization!

These Ten Commandments plus some other attempts of ancient civilizations at codification and the rule of law (e.g. Code of Hammurabi, Edicts of Ashoka) are some of the central tenets of human civilization! Without them we would still be more like the great apes!

Abrahamic Religions Each Share Their Own Decalogue – OpEd – Eurasia Review

How an advanced civilisation vanished 2,500 years ago from the Iberian Peninsula

Recommendable!

Translating one of the world's oldest languages Akkadian to English with neural machine translation

Good news! This should be a tremendous boost! The Rosetta Stone reinvented!

From the abstract:

"Cuneiform is one of the earliest writing systems in recorded human history (ca. 3,400 BCE–75 CE). Hundreds of thousands of such texts were found over the last two centuries, most of which are written in Sumerian and Akkadian. We show the high potential in assisting scholars and interested laypeople alike, by using natural language processing (NLP) methods such as convolutional neural networks (CNN), to automatically translate Akkadian from cuneiform Unicode glyphs directly to English (C2E) and from transliteration to English (T2E). We show that high-quality translations can be obtained when translating directly from cuneiform to English, as we get 36.52 and 37.47 Best Bilingual Evaluation Understudy 4 (BLEU4) scores for C2E and T2E, respectively. For C2E, our model is better than the translation memory baseline in 9.43, and for T2E, the difference is even higher and stands at 13.96. The model achieves best results in short- and medium-length sentences (c. 118 or less characters). As the number of digitized texts grows, the model can be improved by further training as part of a human-in-the-loop system which corrects the results."

Translating Akkadian to English with neural machine translation | PNAS Nexus | Oxford Academic (open access)

Credits (partial): Last Week in AI

Fig. 1 A schematic overview of the NMT model's pipeline.

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