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Neandertals taken out by volcanoes
By Bruce Bower
Neandertals didn’t get dumped
on prehistory’s ash heap — it
got dumped on them. At least
three volcanic eruptions
about 40,000 years ago devastated Neandertals’ western
Asian and European homelands, spurring a rapid demise
of these humanlike hominids,
says a team led by archaeologist Liubov
Golovanova of the ANO Laboratory of
Prehistory in St. Petersburg, Russia.
Modern humans survived because they
lived in Africa and on the tip of southwestern Asia at that time, safely outside
the range of volcanic ash clouds, the
researchers propose in the October
Current Anthropology. If that scenario pans
out, then geographic good luck allowed
Homo sapiens to move into Neandertals’
Animal-tooth pendants made by modern humans
were found in a cave where Neandertals once lived.
former haunts after a couple thousand
years without having to compete for food
and other resources, as many researchers
have assumed.
“For the first time, we have identified
evidence that the disappearance of Nean-
dertals in the Caucasus coincides with a
volcanic eruption approximately 40,000
years ago,” Golovanova says. Signs of
Neandertal activity at Mezmaiskaya Cave
in southwestern Russia declined sharply
after the first eruption and disappeared
after a second, the team says. By 40,000
years ago, cave sediment contains no
bones of hunted animals or Neandertal-
made stone tools. Advances in stone tool-
making and other cultural innovations by
modern humans shortly after that time
supported their survival in harsh post-
volcanic habitats, the team hypothesizes.
Remains of child
sacrifices found
Buried bodies and artifacts
offer glimpse of Inca practice
By Bruce Bower
The ancient remains of seven children
apparently killed in a ritual have given
scientists new views of the sketchily
understood Inca practice of sacrificing
select children in elaborate ceremonies.
The children were buried together
beneath a 500- to 600-year-old building in Peru’s Cuzco Valley, apparently
after they were killed in a sacrificial rite
honoring Inca deities and promoting
political unity across the far-flung empire,
say anthropologist Valerie Andrushko of
Southern Connecticut State University in
New Haven and her colleagues.
Analyses of strontium levels in bones
at the site indicate that at least two of the
children came from distant parts of the
Inca realm, Andrushko’s group reports
online September 15 in the Journal of
Archaeological Science.
Accounts of Inca life written by
Spanish conquerors describe a ritual
in which children from throughout the kingdom were selected for
sacrifice based on their physical
perfection. They were brought to
the capital city of Cuzco for special
ceremonies and then sacrificed,
sometimes in distant locations.
Most other archaeological evidence of Inca child sacrifices has
come from youngsters’ naturally
mummified bodies found frozen on
A male figurine made of silver was
found among precious objects buried
with children killed in an Inca ritual.
several Andean peaks. “It was surprising
that figurines and other artifacts found
with children buried at this low-altitude
site are nearly identical to finds at high-altitude child sacrifices,” Andrushko
says. Items surrounding the remains in
the Inca structure included fancy
pottery and clothing covered in
gilded metal discs as well as figurines of people and llamas made
of gold, silver and red shell.
Based on their tooth development, the children ranged in age
from 3 to 12. Not enough skeletal
material survived to make sex
determinations.
h
Such investigations are rare,
says anthropologist Tamara Bray
of Wayne State University in
Detroit. “We have so little scien-
tific information about who these
children were or where they may
have come from,” she says.
children were or where they may
