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Artificial Heart
Importance- An artificial heart will help people with serious heart problems are way far down on the transplant line to live longer
Impact- This will be one of the first steps in medical heart advances and will hopefully expand the lifetimes of people with heart issues

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Man who was first patient in the world to be given an artificial heart dies 75 days after transplant operation

The 76-year-old man died on Sunday - 75 days after having surgery in Paris

Before the transplant he had heart failure and did not have long to live

He was given an artificial heart designed to replace the real one

The battery powered device could have worked for up to five years

It mimicked the natural heart muscle contractions

The artificial heart will now be trialled in three more French patients

The first patient fitted with an artificial heart has died 75 days after his transplant operation in December.

The 76-year-old man died on Sunday, according to doctors at the Georges Pompidou European Hospital in Paris.

The hospital added that the cause of his death could not be known for sure at this stage.

When he was fitted with the device, the man was suffering from terminal heart failure, meaning his heart could no longer pump enough blood to sustain his body.

He was said to have only a few weeks, or even days, to live.

The new heart, made by the French company Carmat, is designed to replace the real heart for as much as five years by mimicking nature's work.

It is implanted into the chest and weighs about three times as much as a real heart - it weighs 2lbs.

The device mimics heart muscle contractions and contains sensors that adapt the blood flow to the patient's moves.

The artificial heart is powered by external, wearable lithium-ion batteries.

Inside the heart, surfaces that come into contact with human blood are made partly from bovine tissue instead of synthetic materials, such as plastic, that can cause blood clots.

It aims to help the thousands of patients who die each year while awaiting a donor.

'Carmat wishes to pay tribute to the courage and the pioneering role of this patient and his family, as well as the medical team's dedication,' a company spokeswoman said after the first patient's death.

She stressed that it was premature to draw any conclusions on Carmat's artificial heart at this stage.

Three more patients in France with terminal heart failure are due to be fitted with the device.

The clinical trial will be considered a success if the patients survive with the implant for at least a month.

If it passes the test, Carmat has said it would fit the device into about 20 patients with less severe heart failure.

'The doctors directly involved in the post-surgical care wish to highlight the value of the lessons learned from this first clinical trial, with regard to the selection of the patient, his surveillance, the prevention and treatment of difficulties encountered,' the hospital said in a statement.

An in-depth analysis of the medical and technical data gathered since the first patient's operation will be needed to establish the cause of his death, the hospital added.

Carmat estimates around 100,000 patients in the U.S. and Europe could benefit from its artificial heart, a market worth more than 16 billion euros (£13 billion).

Among Carmat's competitors for artificial heart implants are privately-held SynCardia Systems and Abiomed, both of the U.S.

SynCardia's artificial heart is the only one approved both in the United States and the European Union and has been implanted in more than 1,200 patients to keep them waiting for a heart from a matching donor. The longest a patient has lived with the device is just under four years prior to a transplant.

Carmat's heart is designed to serve not as a bridge to transplant but as a permanent implant, extending life for terminally ill patients who cannot hope for a real organ, generally because they are too old and donors too scarce.

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First patient to be given an artificial heart dies

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The 76-year-old man died on Sunday - 75 days after having surgery in Paris Before the transplant he had heart failure and did not have long to live He was given an artificial heart designed to replace the real one The battery powered device could have worked for up to five years It mimicked the natural heart muscle contractions The artificial heart will now be trialled in three more French patients The first patient fitted with an artificial heart has died 75 days after his transplant operation in December.

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Automobile
Importance- The first automobile helped with transportation and has evolved a lot of over time
Impact- This was important when people were needing to tranport to somewhere else and wanted to do this fairly fast, it also led to many innovations later in time

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Printing Press
Importance- Printing press was one of the first inventions used to manually print out documents
Impact- This when very hepful when making documents transportable was necessary

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He who first shortened the labor of copyists by device of movable types was disbanding hired armies, and cashiering most kings and senates, and creating a whole new democratic world: he had invented the art of printing.
(Thomas Carlyle, Sartor Resartus, 1833)

The Renaissance spread to Germany, France, England, and Spain in the late fifteenth and the sixteenth centuries. In its migration northward, Renaissance culture adapted itself to conditions unknown in Italy, such as the growth of the monarchical state and the strength of lay piety. In England France, and Spain, Renaissance culture tended to be court-centered and hence anti-republican. In Germany, no monarchical state existed but a vital tradition of lay piety was present in the Low Countries. The Brethren of the Common Life, for example, was a lay movement emphasizing education and practical piety. Intensely Christian and at the same time anticlerical (shades of what was to come!), the people in such movements found in Renaissance culture the tools for sharpening their wits against the clergy -- not to undermine faith, but restore its ancient apostolic purity.

Northern humanists were profoundly devoted to ancient learning but nothing in northern humanism compares to the paganizing trend associated with the Italian Renaissance. The northern humanists were chiefly interested in the problem of the ancient church and the question of what constituted original Christianity.

Two factors operated to accelerate the spread of Renaissance culture after 1450: growing economic prosperity and the printing press. Prosperity -- the result of peace and the decline of famine and the plague -- led to the founding of schools and colleges. In these schools the sons of gentlemen and nobles would receive a humanistic education imported from Italy. The purpose of such an education was to prepare men for a career in the church or civil service.

Sometime in the 13th century, paper money and playing cards from China reached the West. They were "block-printed," that is, characters or pictures were carved into a wooden block, inked, and then transferred to paper. Since each word, phrase or picture was on a separate block, this method of reproduction was expensive and time-consuming.

The extension of literacy among laypeople and the greater reliance of governments and businesses upon written records created a demand for a less-costly method of reproducing the written word. The import of paper from the East as well as "block-books" (see above), were major steps in transforming the printing of books. However, woodcuts were not sufficiently durable as they tended to split in the press after repeated use. Furthermore, a new block had to be carved for each new impression, and the block was discarded as unusable as soon as a slightly different impression was needed.

By the middle of the 15th century several print masters were on the verge of perfecting the techniques of printing with movable metal type. The first man to demonstrate the practicability of movable type was Johannes Gutenberg (c.1398-1468), the son of a noble family of Mainz, Germany. A former stonecutter and goldsmith, Gutenberg devised an alloy of lead, tin and antimony that would melt at low temperature, cast well in the die, and be durable in the press. It was then possible to use and reuse the separate pieces of type, as long as the metal in which they were cast did not wear down, simply by arranging them in the desired order. The mirror image of each letter (rather than entire words or phrases), was carved in relief on a small block. Individual letters, easily movable, were put together to form words; words separated by blank spaces formed lines of type; and lines of type were brought together to make up a page. Since letters could be arranged into any format, an infinite variety of texts could be printed by reusing and resetting the type.

By 1452, with the aid of borrowed money, Gutenberg began his famous Bible project. Two hundred copies of the two-volume Gutenberg Bible were printed, a small number of which were printed on vellum. The expensive and beautiful Bibles were completed and sold at the 1455 Frankfurt Book Fair, and cost the equivalent of three years' pay for the average clerk. Roughly fifty of all Gutenberg Bibles survive today.

In spite of Gutenberg's efforts to keep his technique a secret, the printing press spread rapidly. Before 1500 some 2500 European cities had acquired presses. German masters held an early leadership, but the Italians soon challenged their preeminence. The Venetian printer Aldus Manutius published works, notably editions of the classics.

The immediate effect of the printing press was to multiply the output and cut the costs of books. It thus made information available to a much larger segment of the population who were, of course, eager for information of any variety. Libraries could now store greater quantities of information at much lower cost. Printing also facilitated the dissemination and preservation of knowledge in standardized form -- this was most important in the advance of science, technology and scholarship. The printing press certainly initiated an "information revolution" on par with the Internet today. Printing could and did spread new ideas quickly and with greater impact.

Printing stimulated the literacy of lay people and eventually came to have a deep and lasting impact on their private lives. Although most of the earliest books dealt with religious subjects, students, businessmen, and upper and middle class people bought books on all subjects. Printers responded with moralizing, medical, practical and travel manuals. Printing provided a superior basis for scholarship and prevented the further corruption of texts through hand copying. By giving all scholars the same text to work from, it made progress in critical scholarship and science faster and more reliable.

| Return to the Lecture |

| The History Guide | |
copyright � 2000 Steven Kreis
Last Revised -- May 02, 2016
Conditions of Use

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The immediate effect of the printing press was to multiply the output and cut the costs of books. It thus made information available to a much larger segment of the population who were, of course, eager for information of any variety.

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Mechanical Clocks
Importance- a mechanical clock helped to tell the time of day and the time of year
Impact- This was helpful when regarding to telling the time, date, and how many hours are/were left in a day

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File:The Prague Astronomical Clock in Old Town - 8553.jpg

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ENVIRONMENTS: The Orloj is located in the Old Town Square of Prague.  According to legend, if the clock is neglected and breaks down then Prague will suffer as well. It consists of a calendar dial, an astronomical dial, a mechanical clock, and an hourly mechanical "show" performed by statue representations of the Apostles. Not only does it serve as a huge tourist attraction, but it embodies all depictions of time from ancient history to present time.

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Manuscripts
Importance- Manuscripts were one of the first official writing articles
Impact- This was in the first in a long line of evolutions revoloving aroung writing and reading

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The first time Grigory Kessel held the ancient manuscript, its animal-hide pages more than 1,000 years old, it seemed oddly familiar.

A Syriac scholar at Philipps University in Marburg, Germany, Dr. Kessel was sitting in the library of the manuscript's owner, a wealthy collector of rare scientific material in Baltimore. At that moment, Dr. Kessel realized that just three weeks earlier, in a library at Harvard University, he had seen a single orphaned page that was too similar to these pages to be coincidence.

The manuscript he held contained a hidden translation of an ancient, influential medical text by Galen of Pergamon, a Greco-Roman physician and philosopher who died in 200 A.D. It was missing pages and Dr. Kessel was suddenly convinced one of them was in Boston.

Dr. Kessel's realization in February 2013 marked the beginning of a global hunt for the other lost leaves, a search that culminated in May with the digitization of the final rediscovered page in Paris.

Scholars are just beginning to pore over the text, the oldest known copy of Galen's "On the Mixtures and Powers of Simple Drugs." It may well provide new insights into medicine's roots and into the spread of this new science across the ancient world.

"On so many levels it's important," said Peter Pormann, a Graeco-Arabic expert at the University of Manchester who now leads a study of the text.

The manuscript held by Dr. Kessel that day was a palimpsest: older text covered up by newer writing. It was a common practice centuries ago, a medieval form of recycling. In this case, 11th-century Syrian scribes had scraped away Galen's medical text and had overwritten hymns on the parchment.

The hymn book itself is of interest, but for now it is the original text, all but invisible to the naked eye and known as the undertext, that has captured the imagination of scholars.

For centuries, Galen's "Simple Drugs" was required reading for aspiring physicians, the summation of ancient knowledge about medicine, patient care and pharmaceutical plants. Galen described a root that cures "roughness of the throat" and recommended hemp as an earache remedy that "does not produce flatulence" (though it "dries out the semen").

Much of "Simple Drugs" was eventually translated into Syriac, a form of Aramaic used by Middle Eastern Christian communities. The undertext of the manuscript in Baltimore, most likely from the ninth century A.D., is a copy of the first Syriac translation, itself painstakingly completed in the sixth century A.D. by Sergius of Reshaina, a Syriac physician and priest.

"Today, it doesn't look to be special when somebody translates one language to another, but in those days, it was indeed a great achievement," Dr. Kessel said. "He had to create vocabulary, to find Syriac words to correspond to this Greek medical vocabulary."

By the sixth century, Syriac-speaking Christians were spreading east from Turkey through Syria, Iraq and Iran. They needed translations of Greek scholarly work, partly to support missionary work like running hospitals.

"Simple Drugs" was a large work, an 11-book treatise. Sergius's translations of Galen's text were copied and recopied for centuries, and eventually became a bridge for moving the medical expertise of the ancient Greeks to Islamic societies. Syriac texts were much easier than Greek ones to translate into Arabic.

As Muslim influence grew in the Near and Middle East, Christian populations dwindled, and so did Syriac.

"By the time you have modern scholarship, these ancient Syriac cultures are just a vestige of their former selves - often quite isolated from Western culture, so there's not a lot of awareness."

Revealing Reading

Little is known of the history of the manuscript in Baltimore, formally known as the Syriac Galen Palimpsest, from its recycling in the 11th century until the 1920s, when it was sold to a private collector in Germany. After that, the manuscript fell again from public view until 2002, when it was purchased by a collector in a private sale. He has not been publicly identified.

In 2009, the Galen Palimpsest was lent to the Walters Art Museum for spectral imaging of its leaves by an independent group of specialists, which would reveal the erased Galen undertext. Each page is photographed digitally at extremely high resolution with varying colors and configurations of light, which in various ways illuminate the inks, grooves from writing and parchment itself. Computer algorithms exploit these variations to maximize the visibility of the undertext.

The resulting images went online under a "creative commons" license, meaning that anyone can use the material free for any noncommercial purpose. Once the images were online, William Noel, who was the curator of manuscripts and rare books at the museum, began organizing members of the tiny community of scholars who study Syriac scientific texts to study the new material.

One of them was Dr. Kessel, who was on a fellowship at Harvard's Dumbarton Oaks Research Library in Washington. Eventually, Michael B. Toth, a systems engineer who managed the imaging work arranged for him to see the Galen Palimpsest for himself.

"I couldn't even imagine how it looked," Dr. Kessel said. "Then when I saw the manuscript, I had the kind of déjà vu impression that I had already seen it. And then I recalled the single folio in the Harvard library."

Filling the Gaps

By analyzing the page size, handwriting and other features, as well as the visible text, Dr. Kessel was able to determine that the Harvard leaf did indeed fill one of the gaps in the Galen Palimpsest. But six more were apparently missing. Dr. Kessel set out to find them.

He began with a list of 10 libraries known to have ancient Syriac material, combing through online catalogs when available to look for clues such as the right dimensions or vague references to undertext. Sometimes, he traveled to the libraries himself.

It was not long before Dr. Kessel had good news. He found one missing page in a catalog from the Sacred and Imperial Monastery of the God-Trodden Mount of Sinai. It is known more commonly as St. Catherine's in the Sinai Desert in Egypt, which has the world's oldest continuously operating library.

Another leaf turned up at the National Library of France in Paris. And at the Vatican's vast library in Rome, he was able to identify the other three missing leaves, bringing the total to six.

The seventh missing page is believed to have been blank and was probably discarded.

An Intriguing Link

No one knew how much of "Simple Drugs" might be hidden in the Galen Palimpsest. The only other known Syriac copy resides at the British Library in London and includes only Books 6 to 8. Translations of these later books in the series are the most common, because they contain more specific medicinal information and details about the properties of plants.

But as their preliminary studies progressed, Dr. Kessel and his colleagues spotted words from Books 2 and 4 in one of the loose leaves. The full text of "Simple Drugs" is known to scholars, but only from more recent translations in languages other than Syriac.

"This was something absolutely unexpected," he said.

Siam Bhayro, a specialist in early Jewish studies at the University of Exeter in England, had believed that Sergius must have translated the earlier books, but there had been no proof. When he heard that Dr. Kessel might have found pages from the early translations, "I was almost dancing up and down," he said.

Another of Dr. Kessel's intriguing discoveries was a note in Arabic on the first leaf, indicating that the manuscript - by then a hymn book concealing Galen's text - had been donated to the brothers of the Sinai monastery, a reference to St. Catherine's.

How it left the monastery is unclear: Particularly in the early 20th century, some of the library's holdings were borrowed legitimately, while others were stolen by visitors hoping to make private sales.

The independent imaging team is now finishing the work necessary to add the rediscovered leaves to the digital collection. But translating and studying the Syriac text revealed in the images will take much longer, perhaps five years or more. That work is now underway because of a recent $1.5 million grant from the United Kingdom's Arts and Humanities Research Council.

Scholars are eager to compare the Syriac material to existing copies of "Simple Drugs" written in Greek, all of which appear to be centuries younger than the Galen Palimpsest and much further removed from the original.

As texts went through multiple rounds of copying, they underwent significant changes. A scribe might remove parts that seemed unimportant or add material based on new knowledge. Comparing the Galen Palimpsest and the British Syriac copy, for instance, could offer telling insights into how the ancient Greeks treated the ill and how these remedies spread across the Middle East.

"Some of the stuff is not entirely scientific by our standards," even if it enabled progress, Dr. Petit said. Indeed, little of Galen's advice would stand up to modern scrutiny. Like other ancient physicians, he believed health was controlled by the balance of four "humors" in the body and recommended certain stones for their cleansing powers.

"The Galenic system is completely bonkers," Dr. Bhayro said.

Still, it was the best thinking available in an era in which the very idea of medical science was relatively new.

"It's likely to be a central text once it's fully deciphered," said Dr. Pormann of the University of Manchester. "We might discover things we really can't dream of yet."

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1400 year old medicinal treatise of Galen found hidden in ancient manuscript

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The first time Grigory Kessel held the ancient manuscript, its animal-hide pages more than 1,000 years old, it seemed oddly familiar. A Syriac scholar at Philipps University in Marburg, Germany, Dr. Kessel was sitting in the library of the manuscript's owner, a wealthy collector of rare scientific material in Baltimore.

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Jewelry
Importance- Bronze jewelry was used simply as an accessory to make a woman look good
Impact- This did not have a technical purpose but it did make people happy to recieve it and could possibly have helped with self- confidence

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Sickle
Importance- This tool helped to cut grain
Impact- This helped to cut grain which was a food source that kept people alive

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EXTREMELY RARE BRITISH NEOLITHIC STONE AGE FLAKED SICKLE tool Kent 025789 | eBay

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Find many great new & used options and get the best deals for EXTREMELY RARE BRITISH NEOLITHIC STONE AGE FLAKED SICKLE tool Kent 025789 at the best online prices at eBay! Free delivery for many products!

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Stone Circles
Importance- Some used stone circles to  pay tribute to the dead
Impact- This helped people find closre with the losses of loved ones and it helps them to remember them also

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Hidden on a North Norfolk coastal beach, an early Bronze Age stone circle has been dated to the same year as the famous Seahenge monument which once lay 100 metres west of its ritual burial site.

Never excavated and left exposed to sea and weather erosion, archaeologists have used tree ringing to pinpoint the spring or summer of 2049 BC as the date when the formation, which is thought to have held a coffin and later burial mound, was constructed.

It was made of two oak logs, laid flat and surrounded by an oval of oak posts interwoven with oak branches.

An arc of split oak timbers formed the eastern side of the monument, with an outer palisade of split oak timbers surrounding the other elements. Almost all of the elements have been lost or dislodged since 1999, prompting the project to rescue the vital dating information.

"Seahenge is thought to have been a free-standing timber circle, possibly to mark the death of an individual, acting as a cenotaph, symbolising death rather than a location for burial. If it was part of a burial mound, the second circle would have been the actual burial place," says David Robertson, the Historic Environment Officer for Norfolk County Council who ran the Holme II dating project.

"The reasons why the second circle was built are not clear, but it may have formed part of a burial mound.

"The two central logs may originally have supported a coffin. The oval of posts and woven branches could have hidden the coffin from view before a mound was added, with the outer palisade acting as a revetment for the base of the mound.

"As the timbers used in both timber circles were felled at the same time, the construction of the two monuments must have been directly linked.

Sections of seven timbers were originally recovered from the second circle in 2004 and 2013. Experts measured and compared them to tree ring sequences from Great Britain and northern Europe, drawing direct similarities to Bronze Age timbers, including those from Seahenge.

The excavation of the first circle provoked controversy in 1999, nine years before the timbers were reconstructed at Lynn Museum, where they have been on show ever since.

"I never cease to be amazed at the wealth of archaeology and heritage that we have in Norfolk," admits Toby Coke, the Chairman of the Council's Environment committee.

"This is an intriguing project that has been painstakingly carried out by the County Council's in-house experts.

"It will leave us with a wealth of information and very good records about how our ancestors lived in times long past."

Conservationists are emphasising that the peat beds where the circles were found, on a beach which is part of the coast's Site of Special Scientific Interest, are vital to birds and local wildlife but vulnerable to disturbance.

"The quality of the wildlife habitat at Holme Dunes is reflected in the fact that it holds nearly every national and international statutory protection available," says Kevin Hart, the Head of Nature Reserves at the Norfolk Wildlife Trust, urging visitors to resist prying around the obscured circle at a busy time of year for local bird species.

"This second wooden circle is below the high water mark. It is currently buried under sand and is not visible."

No future excavations are planned, although the project's results are expected to be published soon.
What do you think? Leave a comment below. More from Culture24's Archaeology section: Bronze Age Seahenge Timbers Draw The Crowds At Lynn Museum Seahenge Scanning Completed
Stonehenge Sensation - Scanning Reveals Axe Carvings

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Archaeologists ring date ritual Bronze Age stone circle to same year as Seahenge

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Hidden on a North Norfolk coastal beach, an early Bronze Age stone circle has been dated to the same year as the famous Seahenge monument which once lay 100 metres west of its ritual burial site.

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Bone Needle
Importance- This needle helps to remove tissue from bone marrow, which can be used to test for cancer
Impact- This helps to make major improvements in the medical world and helps to aid people in their health stuggles

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Status: 799 Treffer &bullet; Seite 1 von 80 &bullet; 10 Artikel pro Seite

2024-10-07 09:01:32 * ID: 2387

From the river to the sea? The return of Einsatzgruppen on October 7th 2023

Figure 1 and 2: A late Neolithic battle axe of S/W-Germany origin. Figure 3 and 4: A middle Bronze Age spearhead, found during the 1890ies in S/W-Germany.

During the late Neolithic of Europe (Figure 1 and 2; Beaker cultures), an increasing social individuali-zation is emerging. This becomes apparent, among other things, from the changes in burial customs. Instead of collective graves, individual graves now predominated--See here: 1322 .

In the Interplay of individualization, increasing social stratification, inequality of wealth and the pursuit of prestige, an ideology of the splendid warrior emerged-see here: 1670 . The rise of individuality and the presence of battle-axes in the new burial tradition means they must have been part of some aspect of the individual, whether it be to show status, power, or warrior success.

The Bronze Age testified the global emergence of a warrior society with a culture, chacterized by a variety of new, efficient weapons that remained in use for the millennia to come. Since then, humans have always been very innovative in the destruction of other humans. Indeed, "War is the Father of All Things" (Heraclitus). Since the First World War, the dimension of an industrialized war has become clear to everyone.

At the beginning of August 1945, the Allies established an International Military Tribunal to prosecute war crimes, crimes against humanity and crimes against peace. The Nuremberg trials revolutionized international law and for the first time attempted to adapt it to the conditions of modern military technology and its consequences.

One result of Nuremberg is the outlawing of aggressive war. Anyone who starts a war of aggression commits a crime against humanity.

"Splendid warriors" of Hamas attacked Israel - this unique rescue project of the Jews-on October 7th 2023 and committed massacres of civilians that can only be compared to the crimes of the German Einsatzgruppen during the Second World War.

The comparison is by no means so far-fetched: In one day, Hamas killed the same number of people (around 1200) as the Germans did every single day on the bloodlands of Eastern Europe (sensu: Timothy Snyder) between August 1941 and the end of the Second World War.

However, Hamas was even far more brutal in its methods. You can only imagine what the cry "From the river to the sea" would mean.....

Resources and images in full resolution:

2024-09-25 13:38:21 * ID: 2386

Treasures in the loess - landscapes around Krems an der Donau

Resources and images in full resolution:

2024-05-31 07:33:15 * ID: 2382

Blattspitzen in Central Europe -Sink the Fossille Directeur concept!

Plate 1: Bifacial Foliate from Lake Turkana (MIS 7-3); Figure 1: Bifacial Foliate from Thebes Nord (MIS 5-3); Figure 2: Uni- and Bifacial Points from Namibia (MIS 5-3); Figure 3: flat bifacial Tool ("Faustkeilblatt") from Lichtenberg , Lower Saxony (early MIS 3); Figure 4: "Blattspitze" (Leafpoint) from Lenderscheid probably MIS 3; Figure 5: "Blattspitze (Leafpoint) from Moravany Dlah (late MIS3).

While in Africa the Presence of Bifacial Foliates in the MSA was recognized since the 1930s (Aterian, East and South African MSA), in Central Europe, Blattspitzen were for a long time seen as Ispecific Markers of the Solutrean (Obermaier 1912, Goodwin and van Riet Lowe 1929, Leakey 1936).

For Central Europe, it were Prošek (1953) and Freund (1952) who, in the 1950s, attempted a systematic survey of the „Blattspitzen Culture". They were able to prove that this technocomplex was older than the Solutrean of W-Europe. Subsequently these ensembles were dated to an interstadial of the last glaciation (MIS 3).

The examples in Figures 2 & 3 show, that the „bifacial option" was always present not only during the MSA but also during the European Middle Paleolithic since OIS 9-7.

A variety of influences had an impact on whether this option was used or not. I would really appreciate the introduction of multivariate analyses in the evaluation of good excavated sites in order to quantitatively evaluate how these influences affected individual layers of a site. Prehistory has a lot to learn from medical statistics!

G. de Mortillet in the 1870s, as well as Francois Bordes in the 1960s, assumed that a certain artifact was actually an intentionally produced end product, but these hypotheses have been completely deconstructed in the last 80 years, especially by Harold Dibble.

For example, the series of MSA points in Figure 3 shows that the blanks were produced from rather thick flakes that were first transformed into unifacial points and in some cases subsequently into bifacial points. The series therefore only shows the transformation process at the time of detection.

The phenomenon was described in detail by M. Kot on the basis of findings in Weimar Ehrigsdorf (MIS7) (Kot 2017).

What we call leaf points were functionally very different instruments, that could be used as spear points or as knives, which have some similarities with other tools from the Keilmesser /Middle European Micoquian entity (Rots et al. 2022; Kot and Richter 2012).

All of these stories show that prehistorians believed that a single artifact - in this case the leaf point - was sufficient to define an entire "culture" and a particular period in glacial chronology. Behind all this, explicit or not, was the influential concept of the "Fossille Directeur".

Fossile directeurs (en: Index fossils), are used by geologists to define and identify geological periods (or faunal stages). Index fossils must have a short vertical range, a wide geographical distribution and rapid evolutionary trends.

The principle was introduced by William Smith at the beginning of the 19th century, who described the chronostratigraphic sequence of geological units by their faunal succession for the United Kingdom in 1815 (Harries 2015).

Gabriel de Mortillet during the 1860s developed the idea to define time-periods by their typical stone tools which acted like the fossile directeurs of the geologists and seemingly the idea is still present in the minds of Prehistorians (Nemergut et al. 2019).

However, Mortillet did two important things. Firstly, he standardized the typological approach, a concept that was borrowed from Classical Archaeology, and Secondly, he linked typology with the chronological informations that were available at his time.

In this tradition, researchers assumed a linear and global evolution of artifacts from the simple to the sophisticated and suggested, that one can safely deduce the absolute age of a tool by its appearance, if the geological and relative age of a similar tool in a dateable context had already been established.

Dating methods of course are much further ahead today, and as result of a better chronological control the concept of Fossile Diecteurs, can only be used to a very limited extent although prehistorians sometimes seem to forget this fact.

A positive example of the validity of the concept is, for example, the Noailles Burin, which is rarely found outside the "Gravettian".

However, in the case of handaxes, these iconographic artifacts that were once used to define the early and middle Pleistocene „Acheulean", are now known from the early Pleistocene into the Holocene from a global perspective.

If a Fossile directeur is a tool that can be tracked within defined temporal and spatial boundaries, then bifacial foliates/ Blattspitzen / Leaf points are not an example of proof of such a concept.

In central Europe almost identical tools can be found from OIS 7 (Ehringsdorf), MIS 4 (Hohle Fels), early MIS3 (Sesselfels Grotto, Mauern, Ranis), late MIS 3 (Moravany-Dlhah), MIS2 (upper strata of Szeleta, Trenčianske Bohuslavice).

Leafpoints were part of very different cultural entities like the Middle European Micoquian / KMG-Group, the Lincombian-Ranisian-Jerzmanowician (LRJ), the so called early and late Szeletian, which by the way the may not represent the same cultural tradition and technocompexes of a Gravettian / post- Pavlovian age- mainly in Western Slovakia and Hungary.

A look at South East Europe (for example Muselievo and Samuilitsa MIS4) and Africa shows the same phenomenon but probably with a greater temporal depth.

In this respect, it would be time to finally abandon the concept of the „Blattspitzengruppen" and recognize that this term is rather an artefact of research tradition than a phenomenon of real prehistoric life.

Sugested Readings:

Goodwin, AJH; van Riet Lowe, C (1929): "The Stone Age cultures of South Africa". Ann. S. Afr. Mus. 27: 1-289.

Leakey, LSB (1936): Stone Age Africa - An Outline of Prehistory; Oxford University Press.

Nemergut, A et al. (eds.; 1919) 16th SKAM Lithic Workshop "Fossil directeur" - A phenomenon over time and space 21-23 of October 2019, Nitra, Slovak Republic.

Małgorzata Anna Kot (2013): The Earliest Middle Palaeolithic Bifacial Leafpoints in Central and Southern Europe. Technological Approach, PhD Thesis, Warsaw.

Resources and images in full resolution:

2024-05-26 11:33:58 * ID: 2381

Men the Hunter or Gender Equality?

2024-05-15 11:17:13 * ID: 2379

Vale Comprido Point from Laugerie haute

This is a rare, 5 cm long, broad Vale Comprido point from Laugerie Haute.

It was made on a broad blank and shows lateral retouching together with some careless basal thinning (Figure 1-4).

The Proto -Solutrean with Vale Comprido Points was already described earlier in the Blog- see here: 1607 and seems to be the earliest manifestation of the Protosolutrean across the entire early Solutrean interaction sphere in Iberia and at a limited number of sites in S/W France, especially at Laugerie Haute.

The lithic technology of the Protosolutrean with Vale Comprido Points has been used to support the idea of an autochtoneous evolution of the Solutrean from the preceding late Gravettian in S/W Europe. Therefore it is possible that Solutrean technology is not a „sudden" break in the succession of Technocomplexes in Franco-Iberia, as long suggested but an evolutionary process.

Based on archaeological and experimental evidence, Vale Comprido point production was in detail described first by T. Aubry some years ago.

The lithic production was oriented towards the detachment of naturally pointed flakes and blades, most often from unidirectional cores. Subsequently the blanks were transformed into points.

The points are usually directly uni- or bilateral retouched at their convergent edges (Figure 1),

Although we know points without further basal modifications, Vale Comprido points normally shown some basal thinning- best seen in Figure 4. Sometimes the technique of thinning resembles the fluting of Clovis projectiles, certainly a convergence phenomenon.

Based on observations on macrofractures, at least some Vale Comprido points were indeed used as projectiles. Both TCSA and TCSP of the point show a direct correlation with the width and thickness of the projectile.

TCSA and TCSP do not allow to proof, that a tool was used as projectile, but they allow to suggest what kind of launching system (spear, dart, arrow) fits to the presumed projectile. Regarding the point in this post, a dart or spear are the most probable launching systems, that were used.

Provenance:

Ex Champagne and Espitalié collection

References:

Alcaraz-Castaño, M. (2015) Central Iberia around the Last Glacial Maximum. Journal of Anthropological Research,71, p.565-578.

Almeida, F. (2000) The terminal Gravettian of Portuguese Estremadura. (PhD Southern Methodist University)

Zilhão, J.; Trinkaus, E. (eds) Portrait of the Artist as a child. The Gravettian Human skeleton from the Abrigo do Lagar Velho and its Archaeological Context, Trabalhos de Arqueologia, vol.22, Instituto Português de Arqueologia.

Zilhão, J. & Aubry, T. (1995) -La pointe de Vale Comprido et les origines du Solutrén. L' Anthropologie 99 (1), p.125-142.

Zilhão, J. ; Aubry, T. ; Almeida, F. (1997) - L'utilisation du quartz pendant la transition Gravettien-Solutréen au Portugal. Préhistoire et Anthropologie Méditerranéennes 6, p.289-303.

Zilhão, J. ; Aubry, T. ; Almeida, F. (1999) - Un modèle technologique pour le passage du Gravettien au Solutréen dans le Sud-Ouest de l'Europe. XXIVème Congrès Préhistorique de France. p.165-183.

Resources and images in full resolution:

2024-04-28 14:50:35 * ID: 2378

Homo Ludens

2024-04-16 10:29:55 * ID: 2376

Ideology instead of Science: Researchers that are right but for the wrong reasons

Plate 1: A Lincombian-Ranisian-Jerzmanowician (LRJ) Leaf Point with incomplete dorsal retouch together with an endscraper on blade, made with the same characteristics, from Kleinheppach, Baden-Wurttemberg, Germany, already introduced in the blog- see here: 1603 and 2366 .

Subsequent Figures in this Blog-entry show further Paleolithic Leaf Points / Blattspitzen / Bifacial Foliates from Europe and the Near East. Figure 1: Late Middle Paleolithic from Goldberg and Mauern in Southern Germany (MIS 3 around 50 k.a. BC); Figure 2: Early Middle Paleolithic from Weimar Ehringsdorf (MIS 7 around 220 k.a.BC), Figure 3: Solutrean from Solutré (around 20 k.a.), Figure 4: Fayum A Neolithic around 5,5 k.a.BC.

The LRJ-Technocomplex was first excavated in Germany by Werner Hülle during 1932-1937 at the Ilsenhöhle in Ranis (Thuringia). Until now this site remains the only place in Germany with a stratified LRJ.

At Ranis in Zone 2, an industry with numerous fine, leaf shaped points of different sizes appeared next to and slightly above Zone 1 with a poor Middle Paleolithic and below an typical Aurignacian in Zone 3. However, „Jerzmanowice points" were only found in Zone 2 and were often accompanied by numerous end scrapers on blades.

Like our example in Plate 1, Endscrapers of Zone 2 in Ranis occasionally show flat dorsal retouches (Müller-Beck 1968).

Hülle placed the LRJ into a warmer period, according to him into the EEM- interglacial. This position seemed to be substantiated by some incomplete and biased paleoclimatic data. We will see below that this misclassification fitted perfectly into Hülles "Völkischen" view of Prehistory.

The complete excavation report was only published decades later by the excavator and published in 1977 after his death by Hansjürgen Müller-Beck and Joachim Hahn (Hülle 1977).

As far as political events were concerned, we find Werner Hülle as early as 1932 as a member of the "Kampfbund für deutsche Kultur" founded by Alfred Rosenberg, the Nationals Socialist chief Philosopher, in 1929. Hülle had been a member of the NSDAP since May 1, 1933 and had also been a member of the SA since May 2, 1933. During the "Third Reich" he was the "right hand" of his master Hans Reinerth, an eminent and influential Prehistorian under the Protection of Alfred Rosenberg.

Academic archaeological research during the Third Reich was divided into two rival groups, "Amt Rosenberg" and Himmlers "SS-Ahnenerbe". Although the coexistence of two organisations, who both claimed to be the authentic curators of German prehistory, prevented a complete "Gleichschaltung" of the discipline, especially young and well trained archaeologists could not make their career without being connected with one of these organizations or alternatively preferred to stay under the personal protection of Himmler or Rosenberg.

The examples in Figure 1-4 show that Blattspitzen are neither suitable as fossil directeurs nor are they the specific products selectively made by certain hominins. They were produced for at least 250 k.a. and made both by (Archaic) Homo sapiens and Neanderthals.

In the 1930s, it was already known that Homo sapiens had succeeded Neanderthals in Europe. At that time, most anthropologists suggested that Homo Sapiens had evolved from the Neanderthal clade - and of course, according the their Eurocentric views, this should have happened on the European continent.

The European finds at this time constantly demonstrated an association of Neanderthals with the Middle Palaeolithic (for example at Le Moustier), while Homo sapiens was always associated with the Upper Palaeolithic (for example at Cro-Magnon).

Science is a dynamic process, and only during the last 40 years it became increasingly clear that Neanderthals were essentially an European/Eurasian species. Modern humans migrated to Europe from elsewhere, most likely Africa, and replaced the Neandertals. This hypothesis is strongly supported by genetics and Anthropological findings.

The view of Nationalsocialists like Hülle and Bohmers, an "Ahenerbe" scientist, who at the same time when Hülle worked at Ranis, excavated the late Middle Paleolithic Blattspitzen at Mauern- see here: 1157 and 1528 , was straight forward and completely in line with the wishes of Reichsführer - SS Himmler and the fanatic Antisemite Rosenberg.

1. Allthough the evidence was poor, they dated the strata with Blattspitzen at Ranis and Mauern to the last Interglacial (EEM) and therefore at 120 k.a.

2. The Blattspitzen-horizons at both sites were suggested to be too perfect to have been produced by Neanderthals - according to Hülle and Bohmer's reasoning they must have been produced by Homo sapiens at a time significantly earlier than the first evidence of Homo sapiens in southern/western Europe (120 k.a. vs. 40 k.a.)

3. The hypothetical makers of the Central European Blattspitzen were Arian / Nordic man from Germany.

We notice, that with the help of some minor rhetoric operations, the important scientific impact of the Mauern and Ranis excavations was contaminated by Nazi- ideology. We will never know whether these attempts were an expression of nationalistic conviction, complete opportunism, or only the desire to open up new sources of funding further excavations.

What is clear, however, is that the results fitted both Himmler's and Rosenberg's world view. We do not know for sure whether the young scientists had any doubts about their statements.

Bohmers in 1937 wrote:„Until now almost every German, and without exception every foreign investigator, has assumed that the race migrated to Europe from somewhere in the East. The excavations at Mauern and Ranis have revealed for the first time the key that proves that the Cro-Magnon race must have developed in greater Germany." (Pringle 2014).

Renewed investigations at Ranis took place in recent years,- see attached files, and showed that:

1. the Blattspitzen / „Jerzmanowice points" in Ranis came from a layer with a very cold climate, dating to MIS3 at ca. 45-43 k.a. BP, while the Blattspitzen at Mauern were not connected with any Human remains. Anyhow, because they were found within a complete Middle Paleolithic / KMG Context, they were probably made by Neanderthals.

2. it was indeed Homo Sapiens who made the artifacts in Stratum 2 at Ranis. This was clearly evidenced by multiple Paleogenetic findings

3. and of course Homo Sapiens had by no means its roots in Central Germany...

In contrast to what can still be read, the involved archaeologists during the 1930ies worked at an excellent methodical level. Scientific standards were kept high, and there are only few references in their publications to their underlying racist worldview. Nevertheless the conclusions they drawed were fundamentally biased.

Hülle was right about the authorship by Homo Sapiens for the Leafpoints at Ranis but for the wrong and multiple ideological reasons - an older view was shaped by everyday European racism and a more recent view by the much more radical National Socialist ideology.

References:

HA Pringle: The Master Plan: Himmler's Scholars and the Holocaust, Harper Perennial 2014.

A. Bohmers, "Die Mauerner Höhlen und ihre Bedeutung für die Einteilung der Altsteinzeit," in Ahnenerbe Jahrestagungen. Bericht über die Kieler Tagung 1939, ed. Herbert Jankuhn , 1944.

R. Höhne, Die Ausgrabungen der Schutzstaffeln, possibly 1938

G.Freund: Die Blattspitzen des Paläolithikums in Europa, 1952

G. Freund. Das Paläolithikum der Oberneder-Höhle - Ldkr. Kelheim-Donau; 1987

G. Bosinski: mittelpaläolithischen Funde im westlichen Mitteleuropa, 1967

K. Günter: Alt- und mittelsteinzeitliche Fundplätze in Westfalen, Teil 1 + Teil 2; 1986, 1988

K. Günther: Die altsteinzeitlichen Funde der Balver Höhle. Bodenaltertümer Westfalens 8. Münster; 1964

Baales M et al. : Westfalen in der Alt- und Mittelsteinzeit; 2014

Richter J: Sesselfelsgrotte III. Der G-Schichten-Komplex der Sesselfelsgrotte; 1997

2023-11-29 14:31:58 * ID: 2367

Better too much once than too little once: Redundancy in the Paleolithic

Several Localities especially in East Africa and the Sahara are characterized by large quantities of techno-typologically almost identical artifacts.

Examples of this development are shown in Figures 1-5 (Aterian Points (Figure 1-3 from the Mauretanien Sahara) or LCTs (Figure 4-5 from Olorgesailie / Kenya).

However, we are usually unable to distinguish whether such accumulations are the result of a short-term occupation with intensive lithic production or palimpsests that have been produced over a longer period of time. However, reports on well-studied sites suggests both scenaria may be possible.

If we assume that larger quantities of artifacts were produced in a limited time frame, it could be a case of provisioning specific place in anticipation of future needs (sensu Kuhn). Such behavior implies future planning, which, to the best of our knowledge, can already be assumed even for archaic Homo sp.

While palimpsest formation played a major role in Olorgesaillie, the Aterian artifacts, which by the way have a very specific "style", were found together on a surface location as if ordered and not collected.

"Better too much once than too little once" are common sayings that describe quite well what is hidden behind the term redundancy. Namely, identical or comparable things are available at least twice in parallel.

In the context of living in the Paleolithic, this ensured that the necessary lithics and the knowledge about their production remained available even in the event of loss.

Copies of a tool do not necessarily have to be identical. Deviations in the design can enable a flexible and rapid response to specific problems, when needed. Parallel pathways and variability in lithic production may therfore better described as safety mechanisms that may be used in some circumstances and not others.

However, "redundancy" is sometimes used in everyday language as unnecessary process or tasks that can be removed without affect the output.

Drawing analogies with biological systems is sometimes dangerous, but in this case quite appropriate. In Biology, Redundancy is fundamental for all organisms to cope with environmental stress and harmful mutations. It plays a vital role in all key processes from genetics to development, immunity, nervous systems, musculoskeletal systems and visual processing.

On a deeper level, Genetic redundancy means that two or more genes are performing the same function and that inactivation of one of these genes has little or no effect on the biological phenotype. Such a genetic backup seems to be of major importance, otherwise it would have disappeared during evolution.

In many ways, the survival of organisms is ensured by the presence of large reserve capacities. The back-up / redundancy in lithic production may have been little different in the effects on survival of early hunter-gatherers....

2023-11-21 11:17:54 * ID: 2366

Lincombian-Ranisian-Jerzmanowician (LRJ) in 2023: It was Homo sapiens stupid!

In my limited family collection, I hold only one 6 cm long artifact from the Lincombian-Ranisian-Jerzmanowician (LRJ) industry (Figure 1 and 2), already introduced in the blog- see here: 1603

It has to be stressed, that the definition of the LRJ is unfortunately solely based on one "fossile directeur" -the so called blade point-, manufactured on substantial, triangular cross sectioned blades.

On average, these Blade Points have a length around 9-10 cm, width of 3 cm, and thickness of 1 cm, often struck from opposed platforms cores. However, significantly smaller specimen, similar to the artifact shown here, are also known from several localities (for example at the Jerzmanowice type site and in Moravia).

The secondary retouch on blade points is regularly present on both dorsal (flat / semi-steep retouch) and ventral (flat retouch) surfaces. It was most possibly aimed at straightening and thinning the pieces, presumably for hafting as projectile points. No use-wear study has ever been made on Jerzmanowice points.

All evidence suggests that the Lincombran-Ranisian-Jerzmanovician points were primarily used as hunting weapons. At least there are many indications in a micro-morphological examination such as: "spin-off" detachments and pronounced bending fractures.

Although often referred to as "transitional" in the literature, technologically the LRJ is a purely Upper Paleolithic industry characterized by volumetric cores, cresting, uni- or bipolar technique and the use of soft hammer and and the presence of facetted butts.

Because the majority of the LRJ-sites represent short-term hunting camps or isolated stray findings, we hardly know any other artifact classes. However, at least some Upper Paleolithic burins and end scrapers have been discovered in Beedings near Pulborough in West Sussex / UK, while Middle Paleolithic tools are completely missing. The same observation has been made at Nietoperzowa Cave and Ranis and recently at some larger Moravian sites (See below).

In addition to Jerzmanowice points, LRJ assemblages may also contain bifacial Leafpoints (at Nietoperzowa Cave and Ranis). Until now, it was assumed that such mixing represents the evolution from completely Middle Paleolithic retouched leaf points to partially retouched Upper Paleolithic points, thus underpinning a "transitional" character of the industry. But it was most certainly just the other way round: At some sites, initial incompletely retouched points were transformed into completely retouched ones within a full upper Paleolithic system.

The LRJ is an industry of Middle and Northern Europe (UK, Belgium, Netherlands, Middle and Northern Germany, Moravia and Kraków-Częstochowa Upland).

The LRJ begins just before HE-4 event and can be placed before the Campanian Ignimbrite (CI) super-eruption. New highly precise data come from from layer 6 in Nietoperzowa Cave: 44 -42 k.a. cal BP and the Ilsenhöhle near Ranis: 47,5-45,7 k.a.cal BP, while data from the Jerzmanowician occupation in Koziarnia Cave (39-36 k.a. cal. BP) may indicate a persistent chronological position also after the CI eruption.

The upper limit for the Jerzmanowician is still estimated to c.35 k.a. Cal BP according to earlier dating programs. In my opinion these dates need revision for methodological reasons.

The greatest surprise, however, was reported this year by Hublin et al. (oral presentation 2023). During new excavations in the Ilsenhöhle cave in Thuringia, DNA from Homo sapiens (haplogroup N) was identified in 11 in-situ bone samples from the LRJ layer, thus falsifying older ideas that Neanderthals were the makers of the technocomplex.

Interestingly, Demidenko and Skrdla in 2023 presented the excavation results of various Early Upper Palaeolithic Moravian sites (Líšeň/Podolí I, Želešice III/Želešice- Hoynerhügel, Líšeň I/Líšeň-Čtvrtě, and Tvarožná X/Tvarožná, "Za školou"), suggestive for a LRJ, in a detailed paper.

It seems for me that they have finally discovered several of the long-sought residential LRJ-campsites although I have some doubts about the LRJ- classification of the findings. But who really knows how an the actefactual spectrum of an intact LRJ site might look like...

Consistent with recent results from other regions, C-14 data of the Moravian sites scatter just before the CI eruption. Importantly, the authors argue for an evolution of the LRJ from the local IUP (Bohunician / Emiran; Figure 3 with examples from the Negev from my collection) rather than suggesting the now untenable evolution from a bifacial Micoquian (s.l), made by Neanderthals. The paper seems very innovative to me and opens up completely new avenues for further research. Anyhow we need more data to confirm or reject their Hypotheses.

Demidenko and Skrdla: "We further propose that LRJ assemblages were produced by Homo sapiens, and that its roots are in the Bohunician industry. The LRJ originated as a result of a gradual technological transition, centering on the development of Levallois points into Jerzmanowice-type blade-points. It is also suggested that the LRJ industry first appeared in Moravia, in central Europe, and spread along with its makers (Homo sapiens) across the northern latitudes of central and western Europe. Accordingly, the IUP "Bohunician package" did not disappear in Europe but gave rise to another IUP industry successfully adapted for the then steppe-tundra belts in northern Europe" (Demidenko and Skrdla 2023).

I think that this is a valid hypothesis for further research.

2023-01-29 17:18:35 * ID: 2365

Some random reflections about Prehistoric Research of the last 25 years