Ancient Cave Research Articles

The Saint John's Bible by Donald Jackson

Donald Jackson, born in 1938 in Lancashire, England, is known as the Queen's calligrapher.1http://donald-jackson-calligrapher.co.tv/Google Scholar At the age of 13 years, Jackson began art studies at the Bolton School of Art, continued at the Central School of Arts and Crafts, and completed postgraduate study at Goldsmiths' College, after which he became an art instructor at the Camberwell College of Art, all in London, England.2http://vads.ahds.ac.uk/learning/learndex.php?theme_id=cscu1&theme_record_id=cscu1jackson&mtri=cscu1caligGoogle Scholar Since 1964, Jackson has been a scribe in the Crown Office at the House of Lords, and he served as chairman of the Society of Scribes and Illuminators from 1972 to 1974. Heading a team of 14 calligraphers, Jackson was commissioned by Saint John's Abbey, Collegeville, MN, and the Hill Monastic Library to produce the first hand-illuminated Bible since the 15th century. With use of the style and tradition of ancient calligraphers, the project was inspired and undertaken as a wondrous and amazing commemoration of the second millennium of the birth of Christ. Using gold leaf, brilliant pigments, quills, and vellum, the team began this monumental task in 1998, and the Bible is scheduled to be completed in late 2011. Calligraphy literally translates as beautiful writing, and its origins are paired with ancient cave paintings. Calligraphy as art is celebrated in many cultures in Africa, Europe, and Asia. The strategy used in the Saint John's Bible project included creating the vellum pages from stretched and dried animal skins (usually calf skin); making the quills with which to do the calligraphy, which is a labor-intensive process; mixing the brilliant pigments; and processing the gilding using gold powder and gold leaf. The design of the Saint John's Bible was aided by using computer technology in combination with these ancient arts. These pictures represent a sample from the Heritage Edition (a full-sized, fine-art reproduction of the original) No. 34, a gift from Mr and Mrs Stephen and Barbara Slaggie. It is located under the stairs in the Hage Atrium in the Siebens Building in Rochester, MN. Volumes from this edition are also displayed at the Mayo Clinic sites in Jacksonville, FL, and Scottsdale and Phoenix, AZ. 1.http://donald-jackson-calligrapher.co.tv/. Accessed April 19, 2011.2.http://vads.ahds.ac.uk/learning/learndex.php?theme_id=cscu1&theme_record_id=cscu1jackson&mtri=cscu1calig. Accessed April 19, 2011.

The origin and future of modern humans

Earlier this year, we published an article describing an exciting hypothesis that explains how two important observations, that on the surface appear incompatible, come together to provide insight into the evolution of modern man. Recent evidence demonstrates that modern humans share some genomic DNA with Neanderthals, yet decade-old analyses clearly demonstrate that modern human and the ancient hominid share zero mitochondrial DNA. To reconcile these apparently paradoxical discoveries, Australian anthropologist duo Paul H. Mason and Roger V. Short describe the type of mating patterns and offspring success rates that might have occurred between Neanderthal and premodern humans tens of thousands of years ago. Their article captured the attention of the popular science media and garnered the most views of any article in Volume 9. We consulted Tatjana Schmidt-Derstroff to gain an independent perspective on their theory. As a veteran archaeologist who spent 27 years living amongst the Australian aboriginals, Schmidt-Derstroff has collected some of the world’s finest photographs of ancient human cave engravings and petroglyphs and has deep insight into their modern and ancient way of life.

Remains in ancient cave get younger

Remains in ancient cave get younger

The karst site of Las Palomas (Guadalteba County, Málaga, Spain): A preliminary study of its Middle–Late Pleistocene archaeopaleontological record

Cleaning works in the cave of Las Palomas in Teba (Málaga, Spain), developed by the Guadalteba Consortium, have provided a number of lithic tools and knapping products that may be ascribed to the Mode III technotypological tradition as well as remains of a number of large mammal species typical of Middle–Late Pleistocene times. Topographic measurements help to place this ancient cave within a karst landform. This discovery opens up new perspectives in the research on the Neanderthal groups that inhabited the valleys of Guadalteba and Turón rivers in the middle basin of the Guadalhorce River, and thus in the southern region of the Iberian Peninsula.

Forest contraction in north equatorial Southeast Asia during the Last Glacial Period.

Today, insular Southeast Asia is important for both its remarkably rich biodiversity and globally significant roles in atmospheric and oceanic circulation. Despite the fundamental importance of environmental history for diversity and conservation, there is little primary evidence concerning the nature of vegetation in north equatorial Southeast Asia during the Last Glacial Period (LGP). As a result, even the general distribution of vegetation during the Last Glacial Maximum is debated. Here we show, using the stable carbon isotope composition of ancient cave guano profiles, that there was a substantial forest contraction during the LGP on both peninsular Malaysia and Palawan, while rainforest was maintained in northern Borneo. These results directly support rainforest "refugia" hypotheses and provide evidence that environmental barriers likely reduced genetic mixing between Borneo and Sumatra flora and fauna. Moreover, it sheds light on possible early human dispersal events.

Recorded in stone: The secret of the ice ages

Stalagmites from ancient caves may finally have solved the mystery of why monstrous ice sheets came and went when they did

On the Antiquity of Shamanism and its Role in Human Religiosity

AbstractDrawing upon ethnographic data on the thriving and dynamic shamanistic tradition in Nepal (gathered between 1999 and 2008), this paper addresses the problematic nature of many of the central assumptions concerning shamanism and its place in the development of human religiosity. These include beliefs that shamanism was the universal religion of Paleolithic hunter-gatherers and that it represents a neurotheology, the expressions of which have been preserved in ancient cave art and in the magico-religious beliefs and practices of extant or recently extant hunting-gathering cultures on the peripheries of the “civilized world.” The paucity of any concrete testable and falsifiable evidence for any of these assumptions raises the compelling question of why so many anthropologists, archaeologists, and scholars in other fields subscribe to these views. The answer does not lead to some ancient grotto or an undisputable assemblage of Paleolithic shamanic paraphernalia, but to the imagination of Mircea Eliade, whose vision of shamanism is rooted in the musings of nineteenth century anthropologists.

Pennsylvanian paleokarst and cave fills from northern Illinois, USA: A window into late Carboniferous environments and landscapes

A new fault-associated paleokarst and cave fill has been discovered in north-central Illinois, emplaced in Ordovician limestones. The paleokarst preserves many original solution features, such as oriented grooves, pendants, and half tubes. Many of the ancient cave passages have rounded bottoms and flat roofs. Together these suggest that the original elliptical, phreatic cave passages grew upward by paragenesis, in which the floor of the cave is protected from dissolution by the presence of sediment, while the ceiling of the cave grows upward by dissolution. The fill is dated as Moscovian (Middle Pennsylvanian) based on palynological data and can be correlated with the Tradewater Formation. The fills are composed of a fining-upward sequence of relatively unindurated clastic sediments that contain well-preserved plant fossils, most notably voltzialean conifer and cordaite remains, representative of vegetation living in well-drained areas. Many of the macrofossils are fragmentary but charcoalified and, along with the megaspores, are uncompressed and preserve exceptional morphological and anatomical data. The presence of abundant charcoal in the fills, as well as diagnostic polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons, indicates significant wildfire activity in this area during this interval.

A shaman's burial from an Early Classic cave in the Maya Mountains of Belize, Central America

For the ancient Maya caves were fundamentally important locations in a sacred landscape linked to ancestors, creation myths and forces that animate the universe. Investigations in the Maya Mountains in southern Belize recovered data from a burial cave that contained the decapitated remains of a male sealed behind a masonry wall in a remote region away from any known pre-Columbian settlements. The deceased had been treated reverentially and was accompanied by a range of grave goods appropriate for the underworld setting. Data are presented that suggest the interred may have been a religious specialist or shaman in life.

Speleothems from the earliest Quaternary: Snapshots of paleoclimate and landscape evolution at the northern rim of the Alps

Ancient cave systems in the Northern Calcareous Alps, today located well above the timberline at altitudes of 2400–2500 m, host U-rich speleothems that preserved growth layers on the microscopic scale of presumably annual origin. Two flowstone samples were dated to 2.019 + 0.037/−0.069 Ma and 1.730 + 0.032/−0.068 Ma, respectively, using U–Pb isochron techniques. These ages are corroborated by the Late Pliocene to Early Pleistocene pollen spectrum extracted from one of the samples. We use a multiproxy approach and exploit laminated speleothem sequences to tie high-resolution stable isotope data to a floating lamina-counted chronology. O isotope values of growth intervals when calcite deposition was close to isotopic equilibrium are low compared to modern and Holocene speleothems from other alpine caves and are inconsistent with the current altitudinal setting of the caves. A vegetated but geomorphologically stable alpine catchment (i.e. ∼2000 m asl., no (peri)glacial processes) combined with a deep-seated cave (the thickness of the vadose zone might have exceeded 1000 m) is required in order to reconcile the isotopic data with the pollen record and the petrographic evidence. Furthermore, the data can be used to constrain the rate for Quaternary rock-uplift to ≤0.8 mm/annum for this frontal part of the European Alps. Collectively, the data suggest that these speleothems formed both during interglacials (MIS 59 or 61) and interglacial–glacial transitions (MIS 75/74 or 77/76), but the seasonal precipitation pattern was arguably markedly different from today's. Provided that the highly regular microscopic laminae are indeed annual, lamina counts suggest a minimum length of ca 6 ka for interglacials during the earliest Pleistocene.

Khru Liam’s Nang Neramid

Published for the one and only time in 1916, the little-known Thai novel Nang Neramid [Divine Nymphs] is the recently rediscovered work of Khru Liam (pseudonym Nai Samran). Author of Siam's first example of a full-length novel, Khwam Mai Phayabat [The Non-Vendetta], Khru Liam's fiction bears a close relationship to translated Victorian works popular among Thai readers of the time, such as Marie Corelli's Vendetta and Sir Henry Rider Haggard's She. This article explores the Siamese adoption and adaptation of Western literary sources to produce a Thai novel in close imitation of the Western form. Nang Neramid, penned shortly after the reprinting of Khru Liam's own translation of She (under the title Sao song phan pi), is an adventure story set in Egypt featuring English, Egyptian, Ethiopian, Negro and Arab characters. Masquerading as the translation of a Western novel, Nang Neramid's tale of adventure, intrigue, magic, warfare, romance, occult and the erotic is revealed only in its closing pages to be without English prototype. It follows explorations by a young English scholar, James Billford, of ancient ruins and caves that harbour the well preserved mummies of young women, brought to life by the interventions of a grand wizard. The nymphs become sexually irresistible to any male who touches them, and the novel includes descriptions of the erotic trysts that ensue. Khru Liam combines his portrayal of male sexual drives and female responsiveness in this novel with a study of Buddhist religious concepts and the occult, examining how sexuality can be conditioned by the objective and the subjective self.

A Reappraisal of Ancient Maya Cave Mining

Throughout the world caves are often important sacred landmarks whose dark zones tend to be restricted spaces reserved for religious rituals. The function and meaning of activities conducted within these spaces are categorically different than physically similar activities conducted at the surface. Archaeology has been slow to integrate this fact into the analysis of cave features. Recently discovered evidence of extractive activities within Maya caves allows us to reevaluate previous work on cave mines. We suggest that the extraction was always small in scale and that the material extracted was most likely used in ritual. We then examine several surface mines where tunnel mining was used to extract a relatively undifferentiated matrix. Evidence suggests that a prime concern in the excavation was the creation of an artificial cave.

Cervimycin A–D: A Polyketide Glycoside Complex from a Cave Bacterium Can Defeat Vancomycin Resistance

Cervimycins A-D are novel polyketide glycosides with significant activity against multi-drug-resistant staphylococci and vancomycin-resistant enterococci. They are produced by a strain of Streptomyces tendae, isolated from an ancient cave. The structures of the cervimycins were determined by performing extensive NMR and chemical degradation studies. All cervimycins have a common tetracyclic polyketide core that is substituted with unusual di- and tetrasaccharide chains, composed exclusively of trideoxysugars; however, they differ in the acetyl and carbamoyl ring substituent and in the highly unusual terminal methylmalonyl and dimethylmalonyl residues.

Cover Picture: Cervimycin A–D: A Polyketide Glycoside Complex from a Cave Bacterium Can Defeat Vancomycin Resistance (Chem. Eur. J. 19/2005)

A novel antibiotic complex was purified from a strain of Streptomyces tendae, isolated from the wall of an ancient cave in southern Italy, shown in the cover picture. These polyketide glycosides, cervimycins A–D, demonstrated potent activity against multi‐drug‐resistant staphylococci and vancomycin‐resistant enterococci. Results of NMR and chemical degredation studies revealed the cervimycins to have a common tetracyclic polyketide core substituted with unusual di‐ and tetrasaccharide chains (see picture), but with differences in their acetyl and carbamoyl ring substituents, and in the terminal methylmalonyl and dimethylmalonyl residues. For more details, see the Full Paper by C. Hertweck and co‐workers on page 5523 ff.

Much more than stones and bones: Australian archaeology in the late twentieth century

There is much more to stones and bones than most people think. In this book, Hilary du Cros shows archaeologists at work in surprising and interesting ways, such as: engaging in national politics to save ancient caves from being flooded by the proposed Franklin Dam in Tasmania; negotiating with developers and planners over the preservation of the site of First Government House in Sydney's central business district; investigating relics of Melbourne's nineteenth-century brothels in Little Lonsdale Street; and consulting with indigenous groups over the reburial of human remains. The case studies raise important ethical issues such as conservation versus commercialism, science versus Indigenous self-determination, and popular access versus technical elitism. Much More Than Stones and Bones is a study of the context and development of Australian archaeology over the past 25 years. Drawing on a range of sources-including mass media reports, film and radio documentaries, and the observations of participants-it provides insights into how we view our past, how information about the past is used, and how archaeology has contributed to an Australian cultural identity. This lively and provocative book challenges some popular conceptions about Australia's cultural history and explodes many of the stereotypes about archaeology.

Mortars, pigments and saline efflorescence from Canarian pre-Hispanic constructions (Galdar, Grand Canary Island)

Construction elements of the ancient caves of Galdar (Grand Canary Island) give details of the life of isolated, prehistoric island inhabitants (pre-Hispanic Canarians) and their adaptation to a dry volcanic environment. Mineralogical study samples of host rocks, mortars, pigments and saline efflorescence by X-ray diffraction and electron microscopy allow us to explain their local origin, development grade and environmental factors of degradation. Regional tephra pyroclasts are composed of volcanic glass and euhedral phenocrysts of pyroxene and olivine, with traces of biotite and apatite. Cream mortars are calcite, apatite and feldspars; white are calcite-halloysite; grey calcite with iron oxides and the argillaceous plasters are mixtures of illite, montmorillonite, kaolinite and chlorites. Red-ochre pigments are oxo-hydroxides of iron-manganese, whites are halloysite, and blacks are silica mixtures of Mg, Fe, Mn, Ti, K and Ca, collected from the host-tephra (pyroxene, biotite, spinel, pyrolusite and iron oxides). The main saline efflorescences consist of thenardite and trona (sodium salts) from the watering of modern crops fields and gypsum from the restoration works (concrete) of the archaeological park in 1997. The ancient population used numerous combinations of local minerals to prepare beautiful paintings, which were protected underground below pyroclastic deposits until modern times, when they were dug out and flooded with saline waters, which produced serious alterations. Additional care must be taken to protect these prehistoric constructions.

The Intelligence Divide: A Contemplative Survey of Human History

The author rejects a recent African origin for Homo sapiens sapiens and argues that the sub-species' explosive development in intelligence was a Darwinian response by a migratory population domiciled in the challenging climatic conditions of Northwestern Eurasia. The history of Homo s. s. intelligence, and especially of Caucasoid intelligence, is traced, and the spread of Homo s. s. genes into other world populations is charted, with particular attention to the flows of genes into predominantly Mongoloid populations. In conclusion, the article contrasts the success increasingly enjoyed by the Northeast Asiatic intellect against the question mark that hangs over the survival of Western Caucasoid intelligence. Key Words: Intelligence, Cro-Magnon, Homo sapiens sapiens, Caucasoid, Mongoloid, Negroid, Capoid, Amerind, Australid, evolution, migration, Africa, Eurasia. A Revolutionary Intelligence Several millions of visitors have visited the ancient Paleolithic caves of France and Spain, where they have gazed in awe at the artistic achievements of the ancient Cro-Magnon hunters some 25,000 years ago. They have observed in Lascaux and Altamira artistic renderings which in terms of skill and esthetic realization are equal to anything that has since been created, albeit in a rough and ready world where hunter, artist, and citizen were probably encompassed by the same persons. At Cap Blanc they experienced a sculptured frieze of animals that could have been placed on the Parthenon without apologies. Indeed, within the Vatican, the dark confines of the Sistine Chapel realized the same conditions of mysterious sanctity that were evoked in the ancient caves, the flickering wicks that charged the undulating stone canvas. Without doubt the same mentation that characterized the artistic work of a Phidias in Athens or a Michelangelo in Rome inspired these Cro-Magnon artists so many thousands of years earlier. The abstract brain which created these evocations so many thousands of years apart was well in place in Eurasia at a remote period. But it was then unique on our planet, for there were many other people living on our earth, and in the same time frame, who lived much simpler and basic subsistence lives. This brain was a unique creation of evolutionary time. Perhaps it was a fluke that the explosion in size and structure occurred in the north. Their art and technology of a uniquely advanced form was characteristic of these people from the Urals to the Atlantic, from the southern boundaries of the glaciers to southern Europe and into the mid-East and western Asia. These high cognitive Homo sapiens sapiens genes gradually made their way into other geographies and other humans over time, perhaps from c. 150,000 years ago when the brain revolution that revealed itself in the physical morphology and the culture CroMagnons first appeared. In this way the human genus became one species as it was gradually lifted over the brain Rubicon from H. erectus to sapiency. We ought not scoff at this presumptive intelligence, given the simple if beautiful tools, borers, scrapers, hand axes, spear and arrow heads, needles, combs, now made of bone, ivory, flint, precious stones, fabricated with excruciatingly careful and diligent care and perception. Primitive stuff, perhaps, compared to computers and atomic bombs. But remember, we do not judge the achievements of a people by what they have inherited. Rather, the test of any progress in civilization is made by the advances a people make over the previous generation. And these Cro-Magnons even compared to their indigenous competitors in Eur-Asia, the Neanderthals, they too having Caucasoid racial characteristics, but primitive in brow and bone, were way beyond the existing norms of human achievements, both material and cultural. The mind numbing repetitive models of tool production of the Neanderthals and other transitional humans throughout the world was reflective of a brain heavily encased in bone. …

Dry cave deposits and their palaeoenvironmental significance during the last 115 ka, Sodmein Cave, Red Sea Mountains, Egypt

The Sodmein cliff foot cave is the present-day remnant of an ancient cavity, probably of karstic origin. Physical breakdown of the limestone bedrock, rather than solution, has governed its subsequent evolution. Long before 115 ka BP an estimated 8000 m 3 of debris came off the weathered roof and mixed with contemporaneous cliff rockfall. Over 4 m of sediments have since accumulated. Wet conditions outside the cave during isotopic stage 5e are documented by sedimentary properties of the J-complex and by its detailed botanical and faunal content. These wet conditions were of regional significance. Shortly after 115 ka BP further subsidence of the roof of the ancient cave led to the present-day cave form. The cave interior has remained dry up to the present, but the deposits indicate an increase of animal passage and plant growth around 25 ka BP and during the Holocene interglacial. The latter period was rather arid in absolute terms, receiving less precipitation under a less regular pluvial regime, compared with the interglacial during isotopic stage 5e.

Post-Carboniferous pre-Quaternary karstification in Ireland

Almost a half of the island of Ireland is underlain by limestones of which a high proportion are karstifiable. Karstic processes must have been significant over extensive areas of Ireland and for considerable periods of geological time, hence karst landforms would presumably have been widespread. Karst features that appear to be of considerable antiquity (isolated limestone hills, apparently ancient caves and infilled enclosed depressions) are located and briefly described. Available literature on such features suggests that mid to late Tertiary time was probably associated with significant karstification, but only a minority of features can be assigned a minimum date with any confidence.

The potential of perennial cave ice in isotope palaeoclimatology

Perennial ice from caves on and to the east of the Canadian Great Divide yield δ18O and δD values, which are unusually high measurements when compared with the average precipitation for the region. Furthermore, these ice data fall below and along lines of lower slope than the Global Meteoric Water Line. To explain the observed relationships, we propose the following process. A vapour‐ice isotopic fractionation mechanism operates on warm‐season vapour when it precipitates as hoar ice on entering the caves. The subsequent fall of hoar to the cave floor through mechanical overloading, along with ice derived from ground‐water seepage (with a mean annual isotopic composition), results in massive ice formation of a mixed composition. This mixed composition is what is observed in the characteristic relationships found here. Such findings suggest that a warm versus cold climate interpretation for ancient cave ice may be the opposite of that found in the more familiar polar and glacial ice cores.