Lords of the Flies: New Clues to Ancient Cultures from Very Old Bugs

November 5, 2010

In Science this week, I write about some very ingenious research that a new breed of archaeologists–archaeoentomologists, as they like to be known–are carrying out on insect remains recovered from ancient sites. By poring over fly puparia preserved in an 1800-year-old grave at the Moche site of Huaca de la Luna in Peru, French archaeoentomologist Jean-Bernard Huchet has completed a CSI-style study of Moche burial practices. And by studying small weevil-shaped holes in Jomon pots dating to at least 9000 years ago, Japanese archaeologist Hiroki Obata and his team raise the possibility of very early agriculture in Japan.

The article lies behind a paywall, unfortunately, but you can read the short summary here.

Photo: Painted facade of the Huaca de la Luna, Trujillo, Peru. Source: Martin St-Amant

Heart Attacks, Strokes and the Ancient Egyptians

March 1, 2010

On the weekend, British researchers published an intriguing article in Lancet on a group of people whose cravings for fat-saturated junk food led to arteries packed with plaque. The individuals in question weren’t 21st century Brits fatally fond of crisps, chips and deep-fried Mars bars, however. They were ancient Egyptian priests who had regularly scarfed up left-over cakes and other offerings given by supplicants.

Rosalie David, an Egyptologist at the University of Manchester and one of the world’s great experts on Egyptian mummies, headed the team. She and her colleagues examined mummies of Egyptian priests and their family members and discovered to their surprise signs of serious heart disease, including badly clogged and damaged arteries.

Intrigued by this, David studied inscriptions on Egyptian temples describing the rituals that priests performed and the offerings that supplicants left. High on the list of the offerings were cooked geese, whose meat contained up to 60 percent fat, beef, and an assortment of calorie-laden cakes made of animal fat and oil.

Moreover, the inscriptions and other texts revealed how priestly foodies at these temples refused to let all this fat-rich fare go to waste. After performing rituals with their offerings three times daily, they gathered up the leftovers and took them home to their families–hardly a heart-smart diet.

David and her colleagues now suggest that this fat-saturated diet and the arterial diseases that resulted could have cut short the lives of these priests. Studies of the mummies and other human remains suggest that this group did not often live past the age of 50.

It’s not surprising then that Egyptian physicians were well aware of heart disease, as attested to in the section on cardiovascular disorders in the Ebers papyrus. Indeed Bruno Halioua and Bernard Ziskind, the authors of Medicine in the Days of the Pharoahs, marvel at what they call the Egyptians’ “impressive grasp of cardiovascular function.” As the two authors point out, the Ebers papyrus even includes a description of what might well be a heart attack. An individual, notes the papyrus, “who suffers at the entrance to the inside (ib), when he has pains in his arm, his breast, and the side of his stomach (ro-ib)” is in dire straits. “Death is approaching.”

We never think of ancient Egyptians keeling over from heart attacks or strokes. Those are supposed to be modern diseases, but it would appear that there really is nothing new under the sun.

Exhuming Ancient Celebrities

February 17, 2010

I wasn’t planning to post today on Tutankhamun. Over the past twenty-four hours, journalists have spilled a cargo tanker’s worth of ink on news that the famous young king suffered from a host of serious ailments. I thought I would leave the story to the newspapers until I began browsing the coverage. Some reporters derided the Egyptian king as “malarial and inbred,” while others took lower aim. One online rag, for example, informed readers that “King Tut was a wreck, but his penis was ‘well-developed’.”

If you ask me, these exhumations and studies of ancient kings and other celebrities are becoming media circuses. All the high-tech poking and prodding quickly strips away the dignity and grandeur of great men and women, baring their physical frailties and secrets for all to see. In recent years, we’ve been subjected to several of these tawdry sideshows and I suspect there are more to come. I posted recently on the proposal to exhume Leonardo da Vinci. And two weeks ago, I spotted an article on a Danish team who will soon exhume a famous 17th century astronomer, Tycho Brahe.

None of the subjects, I might add, has given consent for such scientific study. And I sometimes wonder about the motives of the researchers. The scientists who propose to exhume Tycho Brahe, for example, want to determine whether the famous astonomer was murdered or whether he died of natural cause. This hardly seems reason enough to rifle through a tomb and disturb the sleep of the astonomer.

In future, I’d like to see researchers and reporters alike treat the ancient dead in the same way we treat the recently deceased–with respect and decorum. Few of us would consider prying open a recent grave and poring over newly buried remains just to satisfy a point of idle curiosity. So why is it ok to do that to a 17th century astronomer?

When I was writing my book, The Mummy Congress, I was really struck by the highly professional way that serious mummy researchers treated the ancient dead. They never made jokes at the expense of the dead or talked lightly or unfeelingly about their ailments. Indeed, during the examinations of the bodies, they often spoke as if the mummies themselves could hear exactly what was said.

Poor Tutankhamun. I’m glad he couldn’t hear what people were saying today.

Wanted: Archaeologists for CSI

January 18, 2010

A community newspaper in London, England, carried an important article last week with an unusual request. According to the London Daily Advertiser, a Romanian institute dedicated to the investigation of Communist crimes in that country has put out a call for archaeologists to volunteer for the excavation of a mass grave in the Apuseni Mountains. According to the institute’s director, historian Marius Oprea, the mass grave in question contains the bodies of five anti-communist resistance fighters, including a pregnant woman, who were all killed by the Romanian secret service during the 1960s.

This sounds like a very worthy project, and it reminds me of something I often hear from archaeologists–namely that they struggle daily to find a way to make their discipline relevant to students who are not particularly interested in what happened five years ago, much less five centuries or five millennia ago. And yet the techniques of archaeological mapping, excavation and analysis are directly pertinent to crime scene investigation.

One year ago, I published an article entitled “Witness to Genocide” in Archaeology Magazine, about a team of archaeologists and physical anthropologists who excavated several mass graves in Iraq, at the height of the insurgency. The team members risked their lives to dig and document the remains of more than 100 Kurdish women and children who were secretly massacred by Iraqi forces in 1988 and buried at a site known as Muthanna in a remote desert near the Saudi Arabian border.

Michael Trimble, a civilian archaeologist in the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, led the archaeological team. And on November 30, 2006, he took the stand as an expert witness in the trial of Saddam Hussein and several of his key supporters, who were charged with crimes against humanity and genocide of the Kurds. During four hours of grueling testimony, Trimble presented the key results of the archaeological and anthropological investigation. Here’s what happened on the stand (and please forgive me for quoting myself):

“As he spoke, he tried to maintain as much eye contact as he could with the judges. Partway through his presentation, however, he noticed one judge dabbing his eye. Two others soon followed suit. At first Trimble was puzzled, thinking something was wrong. Then he realized what was happening. “My God,” he thought, “they are all crying.”

The team’s meticulous excavation furnished a host of horrific and very telling details that brought the victims of the Muthanna massacre back to life. And with the benefit of a geographical information system expert, they reconstructed the crime in detail. The security forces had literally mowed down the victims–some of whom were infants and very young children–as they stood in a prepared mass grave. It doesn’t get much more chilling than that.

If this kind of forensic investigation is not a way to make archaeology relevant today, I really don’t know what is. Romanian historian Marius Oprea has put out a call for help. I sure hope some archaeologists will answer.