anthropology

study:-scribes-in-ancient-egypt-had-really-poor-posture-during-work

Study: Scribes in ancient Egypt had really poor posture during work

ancient egypt, anthropology, Archaeology, bio archaeology, forensic archaeology, repetitive stress, Science / /

a scribe’s life —

There were degenerative joint changes in the spines, shoulders, knees, hips, and ankles.

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Statues depicting the high dignitary Nefer and his wife (Abusir, Egypt).

Enlarge / Statues depicting the high dignitary Nefer and his wife (Abusir, Egypt).

Martin Frouz/Czech Institute of Egyptology/Charles University.

Repetitive stress injuries are a common feature of modern life, especially for office workers who spend a good chunk of their working days at a desk typing on a computer. Apparently, scribes in ancient Egypt suffered from their own distinctive repetitive stress injuries, according to a new paper published in the journal Scientific Reports that provides fresh insights into how these scribes lived and worked during the third millennium BCE.

Egyptian kings, royal family members, and other elite people from this Fifth Dynasty era were buried in tombs in the acropolis at Abusir rather than at neighboring Giza, which by then had largely filled up thanks to all the activity during the Fourth Dynasty. The Czech Institute of Egyptology at Charles University in Prague has been conducting research at the site since 1960, leading to the discovery of nearly 200 tombs dating back to the Old Kingdom (between 2700 and 2180 BCE). The first human skeletons were excavated in 1976, and there are currently 221 Old Kingdom skeletons in the collection, 102 of which are male.

Scientists started looking into the health status and markers for specific activities in 2009, but it wasn’t until quite recently that there were enough skeletons to conduct a comprehensive study. That’s what Petra Brukner Havelková of Charles University and the National Museum in Prague, Czech Republic, and colleagues set out to do, analyzing the remains of 69 adult males of different social status and different ages at which they died.

The results show the scribes and the reference group differed in just under 4 percent of the various evaluated skeletal traits, which the authors attribute to the overall similarities in the sample (male, same age distribution, no physically demanding activities). However, the individuals identified as scribes had more degenerative joint issues clustered in several well-defined regions compared to males from other occupations, including the joint connecting the lower jaw to the skull, the right collarbone, where the right humerus meets the shoulder, the right thumb’s first metacarpal bone, where the thigh meets the knee, and all along the spine (but especially at the top). These bone changes can be indicators of repetitive stress.

Bad ergonomics?

  • Working positions of scribes. (A) cross-legged (sartorial) position, (B) kneeling-squatting position, (C) standing position. (D) Different position of the legs when sitting.

    Martin Frouz/Jolana Malátková

  • Osteoarthritis of the temporomandibular joint of a supposed family member of Khemetnu, the presumed owner of family tomb AS 79.

    Šárka Bejdová

  • Drawing indicating the most affected regions of the skeletons of scribes with higher prevalence of changes compared to reference group.

    olana Malátková

For instance, the osteoarthritis in the jaw joints may have been caused by the rush stems the scribes used to write hieroglyphics. The scribes would chew on the ends to make a brush, and whenever a pen started getting ragged or too clogged with ink, they would cut off the end and chew the next section to make a new brush.

Most scribes likely wrote with their right hands and used their left to roll papyrus into cylindrical scrolls. Writing with a rush pen required considerable dexterity, and as anyone with carpal tunnel syndrome could tell you, these sorts of repetitive motions can cause excessive stress in the hands and wrists. There were only minor wrist differences between scribes and the control group, but the significant right thumb degeneration in scribes likely corresponds to specific frequently used thumb motions and positions—probably the act of repeatedly pinching their pens, although the authors say more research is needed to make a definitive determination.

The degenerative signs noted in the cervical spines are likely due to the scribes’ typical working position. “The head had to be forward and the spine flexed, changing the center of gravity of the head and putting stress on the spine,” the authors wrote—a posture common to many modern occupations. Prolonged stretches of sitting cross-legged could also have contributed to the observed damage to the cervical spines. There were signs of stresses to the right rotator cuffs, which usually occurs when the arm is in an extended elevated position and is common among painters, for example. It’s also common in people prone to sitting for a long time and typing with unsupported arms.

As for the degenerative changes noted in the knees, hips, and ankles, the authors suggest this indicates that scribes may have sat with the left leg in a kneeling or cross-legged position and the right leg pointed upward—more of a squat or a crouch. Iconography and statues from that era frequently depict scribes in such positions, as well as standing. The authors concluded that scribes probably alternated their arm and leg positions, but the head and cervical spine were always in that stress-inducing forward position.

Where’s a good ergonomic office chair when you need one?

DOI: Scientific Reports, 2024. 10.1038/s41598-024-63549-z  (About DOIs).

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We now have even more evidence against the “ecocide” theory of Easter Island

anthropology, easter island, ecocide, Ecology, rapa nui, Science / /

counting rock gardens —

AI analysis of satellite imagery data is a new method for estimating population size.

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statues on easter island arranged in a horizontal row

Enlarge / New research lends further credence to the “population crash” theory about Easter Island being just a myth.

Arian Zwegers/CC BY 2.0

For centuries, Western scholars have touted the fate of the native population on Easter Island (Rapa Nui) as a case study in the devastating cost of environmentally unsustainable living. The story goes that the people on the remote island chopped down all the trees to build massive stone statues, triggering a population collapse. Their numbers were further depleted when Europeans discovered the island and brought foreign diseases, among other factors. But an alternative narrative began to emerge in the 21st century that the earliest inhabitants actually lived quite sustainably until that point. A new paper published in the journal Science Advances offers another key piece of evidence in support of that alternative hypothesis.

As previously reported, Easter Island is famous for its giant monumental statues, called moai, built some 800 years ago and typically mounted on platforms called ahu. Scholars have puzzled over the moai on Easter Island for decades, pondering their cultural significance, as well as how a Stone Age culture managed to carve and transport statues weighing as much as 92 tons. The first Europeans arrived in the 17th century and found only a few thousand inhabitants on a tiny island (just 14 by 7 miles across) thousands of miles away from any other land. Since then, in order to explain the presence of so many moai, the assumption has been that the island was once home to tens of thousands of people.

But perhaps they didn’t need tens of thousands of people to accomplish that feat. Back in 2012, Carl Lipo of Binghamton University and Terry Hunt of the University of Arizona showed that you could transport a 10-foot, 5-ton moai a few hundred yards with just 18 people and three strong ropes by employing a rocking motion. In 2018, Lipo proposed an intriguing hypothesis for how the islanders placed red hats on top of some moai; those can weigh up to 13 tons. He suggested the inhabitants used ropes to roll the hats up a ramp. Lipo and his team later concluded (based on quantitative spatial modeling) that the islanders likely chose the statues’ locations based on the availability of fresh water sources, per a 2019 paper in PLOS One.

In 2020, Lipo and his team turned their attention to establishing a better chronology of human occupation of Rapa Nui. While it’s generally agreed that people arrived in Eastern Polynesia and on Rapa Nui sometime in the late 12th century or early 13th century, we don’t really know very much about the timing and tempo of events related to ahu construction and moai transport in particular. In his bestselling 2005 book Collapse, Jared Diamond offered the societal collapse of Easter Island (aka Rapa Nui), around 1600, as a cautionary tale. Diamond controversially argued that the destruction of the island’s ecological environment triggered a downward spiral of internal warfare, population decline, and cannibalism, resulting in an eventual breakdown of social and political structures.

Challenging a narrative

Lipo has long challenged that narrative, arguing as far back as 2007 against the “ecocide” theory. He and Hunt published a paper that year noting the lack of evidence of any warfare on Easter Island compared to other Polynesian islands. There are no known fortifications, and the obsidian tools found were clearly used for agriculture. Nor is there much evidence of violence among skeletal remains. He and Hunt concluded that the people of Rapa Nui continued to thrive well after 1600, which would warrant a rethinking of the popular narrative that the island was destitute when Europeans arrived in 1722.

For their 2020 study, the team applied a Bayesian model-based method to existing radiocarbon dates collected from prior excavations at 11 different sites with ahu. That work met with some mixed opinions from Lipo’s fellow archaeologists, with some suggesting that his team cherry-picked its radiocarbon dating—an allegation he dismissed at the time as “simply baloney and misinformed thinking.” They filtered their radiocarbon samples to just those they were confident related to human occupation and human-related events, meaning they analyzed a smaller subset of all the available ages—not an unusual strategy to eliminate bias due to issues with old carbon—and the results for colonization estimates were about the same as before.

Binghamton University's Robert J. DiNapoli stands next to a rock garden on Rapa Nui, or Easter Island.

Enlarge / Binghamton University’s Robert J. DiNapoli stands next to a rock garden on Rapa Nui, or Easter Island.

Robert J. DiNapoli

The model also integrated the order and position of the island’s distinctive architecture, as well as ethnohistoric accounts, thereby quantifying the onset of monument construction, the rate at which it occurred, and when it likely ended. This allowed the researchers to test Diamond’s “collapse” hypothesis by building a more precise timeline of when construction took place at each of the sites. The results demonstrated a lack of evidence for a pre-contact collapse and instead offered strong support for a new emerging model of resilient communities that continued their long-term traditions despite the impacts of European arrival.

Fresh evidence

Now Lipo is back with fresh findings in support of his alternative theory, having analyzed the landscape to identify all the agricultural areas on the island. “We really wanted to look at the evidence for whether the island could in fact support such a large number of people,” he said during a media briefing. “What we know about the pre-contact people living on the island is that they survived on a combination of marine resources—fishing accounted for about 50 percent of their diet—and growing crops,” particularly the sweet potato, as well as taro and yams.

He and his co-authors set out to determine how much food could be produced agriculturally, extrapolating from that the size of a sustainable population. The volcanic soil on Easter Island is highly weathered and thus poor in nutrients essential for plant growth: nitrogen, phosphorus and potassium primarily, but also calcium, magnesium, and sulfur. To increase yields, the natives initially cut down the island’s trees to get nutrients back into the soil.

When there were no more trees, they engaged in a practice called “lithic mulching,” a form of rock gardening in which broken rocks were added to the first 20 to 25 centimeters (about 8 to 10 inches) of soil. This added essential nutrients back into the soil. “We do it ourselves with non-organic fertilizer,” said Lipo. “Essentially we use machines to crush rock into tiny pieces, which is effective because it exposes a lot of surface area. The people in Rapa Nui are doing it by hand, literally breaking up rocks and sticking them in dirt.”

There had been only one 2013 study aimed at determining the island’s rock-garden capacity, which relied on near-infrared bands from satellite images. The authors of that study estimated that between 4.9 and 21.2 km2 of the island’s total area comprised rock gardens, although they acknowledged this was likely an inaccurate estimation.

A map of results from the analysis of rock gardens on Easter Island.

Enlarge / A map of results from the analysis of rock gardens on Easter Island.

Carl Lipo

Lipo et al. examined satellite imagery data collected over the last five years, not just in the near-infrared, but also short-wave infrared (SWIR) and other visible spectra. SWIR is particularly sensitive to detecting water and nitrogen levels, making it easier to pinpoint areas where lithic mulching occurred. They trained machine-learning models on archaeological field identifications of rock garden features to analyze the SWIR data for a new estimation of capacity.

The result: Lipo et al. determined that the prevalence of rock gardening was about one-fifth of even the most conservative previous estimates of population size on Easter Island. They estimate that the island could support about 3,000 people—roughly the same number of inhabitants European explorers encountered when they arrived. “Previous studies had estimated that the island was fairly covered with mulch gardening, which led to estimates of up to 16,000 people,” said Lipo. “We’re saying that the island could never have supported 16,000 people; it didn’t have the productivity to do so. This pre-European collapse narrative simply has no basis in the archaeological record.”

“We don’t see demographic change decline in populations prior to Europeans’ arrival,” Lipo said. “All the [cumulative] evidence to date shows a continuous growth until some plateau is reached. It certainly was never an easy place to live, but people were able to figure out a means of doing so and lived within the boundaries of the capacity of the island up until European arrival.” So rather than being a cautionary tale, “Easter Island is a great case of how populations adapt to limited resources on a finite place, and do so sustainably.”

DOI: Science Advances, 2024. 10.1126/sciadv.ado1459  (About DOIs).

Binghamton University archaeologist Carl Lipo has shed light on some of the ancient mysteries of Easter Island (Rapa Nui) through his ongoing research. Credit: Binghamton University, State University of New York

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Bodies found in Neolithic pit were likely victims of ritualistic murder

anthropology, Archaeology, cultural evolution, forensic archaeology, neolithic, ritual sacrifice, Science, Uncategorized / /

murder most foul —

One victim may have been hogtied alive in pit, à la Mafia-style ligature strangulation.

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View taken from the upper part of the 255 storage pit showing the three skeletons, with one individual in a central position

Enlarge / Three female skeletons found in a Neolithic storage pit in France show signs of ritualistic human sacrifice.

. Beeching/Ludes et al., 2024

Archaeologists have discovered the remains of two women in a Neolithic tomb in France, with the positioning of the bodies suggesting they may have been ritualistically murdered by asphyxia or self-strangulation, according to a recent paper published in the journal Science Advances.

(WARNING: graphic descriptions below.)

France’s Rhône Valley is home to several archaeological sites dating to the end of the Middle Neolithic period (between 4250 and 3600/3500 BCE in the region); the sites include various storage silos, broken grindstones, imported ceramics, animal remains (both from communal meals and sacrifices), and human remains deposited in sepulchral pits. Saint-Paul-Trois-Châteaux is one such site.

According to Bertrand Ludes of the Université Paris Cité and his co-authors, the remains of the three women were found in Pit 69, a structure aligned with the summer and winter solstices, as was often the case in ancient agrarian societies. But the body positioning was decidedly atypical. One woman (No. 1), around age 50, was in the center of the pit, reclining on her side with a vase near her head. The other two bodies were just beneath an overhang. Woman No. 2 was on her back, legs bent, with a piece of grindstone placed on her skull. Woman No. 3 was in a prone position, knees bent, with her neck on the thorax of Woman No. 2 and two chunks of grindstone placed on her back.

The unusual positions imply a forceful, deliberate placement, according to the authors, suggesting they died in the pit rather than being tossed in after death. As for the cause of death, the archaeological evidence combined with recent forensic studies suggests “homicidal ligature strangulation” and “forced positional asphyxia”—at least for two of the three women. Woman No. 2, for example, would have struggled to breathe on her back, especially with the weight of Woman No. 3 pressing down on her neck (positional asphyxia), further exacerbated by the placement of the grindstone fragment.

Saint-Paul-Trois-Châteaux and the area surrounding pits 69 and 70.

Enlarge / Saint-Paul-Trois-Châteaux and the area surrounding pits 69 and 70.

Ludes et al., Sci. Adv. 10, eadl3374 (2024)

Woman No. 3’s prone position would mean she also would have struggled to breathe, and the volume of blood pumped by the heart would have sharply decreased, leading to cardiac arrest, a form of positional asphyxia now known as “prone restraint cardiac arrest.” All these clinical terms don’t quite capture the horrifically cruel nature of the manner of death. Given the placement of the woman’s knees—bent at more than a 90-degree angle, making the legs almost vertical—it’s possible she was tied up lying on her stomach, with the ligature connecting her ankles to her neck (similar to being hog-tied). In this position, “self-strangulation becomes inevitable,” the authors wrote, particularly if the mouth and nose are obstructed or there is cervical compression—say, from the strategic placement of grindstone fragments.

This form of torture, known as incaprettamento, has been used by the Italian Mafia, per Ludes et al., often to punish traitors, and dates as far back as the Italian Mesolithic era, “suggesting a highly ancient origin within ceremonial sites.” Sometimes, the victim would be strangled and the body tied up postmortem before the remains were disposed of. Ludes et al. believe Woman No. 3 would probably have been placed in the burial pit and tied up while still alive before self-strangling to death.

  • Reconstruction of the remains, blocked under the overhang of the wall of the storage pit lined with straw.

    Ludes et al., Sci. Adv. 10, eadl3374 (2024)

  • Reconstruction of skeletal remains for Woman No. 2 positioned on her back with bent knees.

    Ludes et al., Sci. Adv. 10, eadl3374 (2024)

  • Reconstruction of skeletal remains for Woman No. 3 in a prone position on her stomach with bent knees. The feet are behind the pelvis/toward the lower back, and the hands are tied behind the back.

    Ludes et al., Sci. Adv. 10, eadl3374 (2024)

  • Mesolithic rock art scene from the Addaura Cave is believed to depict ritual sacrifice by ligature strangulation (bolded figure).

    B. Ludes et al., 2024

In fact, one scene from Mesolithic rock art found in the Addaura Cave in Sicily, Italy, seems to depict a ritual sacrifice by ligature strangulation. There are 11 human figures and the figure of a slain deer. Nine of the human figures form a circle, within which are the other two human figures (male, judging by the erect genitalia). Those figures are shown lying on their stomachs in a prone position, legs folded beneath them, with a rope stretched between their ankles and necks. The erect male genitalia, and one figure drawn with his tongue hanging out, are both signs of strangulation or hanging, per the authors.

It is notoriously difficult to distinguish between a merely violent death and one with ritualistic overtones when it comes to prehistoric remains. So Ludes et al. combed through existing literature for reports of similar cases. They found 20 cases of probable ligature strangulation or positional asphyxia in total across 14 different archaeological sites in Eastern Europe and Catalonia, spanning nearly 2,000 years. The individuals were found lying on their backs or sides, lower limbs flexed until the feet aligned with the pelvis, indicating hip extension. The oldest remains were found at sites in the Czech Republic and date back to between 5400 and 4800 BCE; the three women found at Saint-Paul-Trois-Châteaux are the most recent.

The latter site in particular has elements that “suggest a profound interconnection between religious systems and power structure in an agricultural society,” the authors concluded—namely, various structures aligned with summer and winter solstices indicative of an agricultural cycle and the placement of two women facing the central woman. It’s unclear why the women were sacrificed, the authors added, but such ritualistic sacrifice likely developed across central and southern Europe sometime in the Mesolithic and evolved over the course of two millennia before culminating in the late Middle Neolithic.

Science Advances, 2024. DOI: 10.1126/sciadv.adl3374  (About DOIs).

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Brutally bludgeoned “Vittrup Man” went from forager to farmer before his death

anthropology, Archaeology, Biology, bog bodies, forensic archaeology, Science, Vitrup man / /

From forager to farmer —

The skull was shattered by at least eight blows before the body was tossed into a peat bog.

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reconstructed skull showing fractures

Enlarge / The cranial remains of Vittrup Man, who was bludgeoned to death and tossed in a peat bog between 3300-3100 BCE.

Stephen Freiheit via Fischer A., et al./PLoS ONE

In 1915, peat diggers recovered the fragmented skeletal remains of a man with a severely fractured skull in a peat bog near the village of Vittrup in Denmark. The remains were kept in a museum for the next century, but scientists have now conducted an in-depth analysis of the remains using various techniques to learn more about the so-called Vittrup Man’s life and violent death. They described their findings in a recent paper published in the journal PLoS ONE—including the surprising fact that Vittrup Man grew up in a coastal foraging community along the Scandinavian coast before his murder as an adult in a farming culture in Neolithic Denmark.

Vittrup Man is one of numerous “bog bodies” unearthed from peat bogs in northwestern Europe. These are human cadavers that have been naturally preserved and frequently mummified by the unique chemistry of the bogs. As peat ages, it releases humic acid, which has a pH level similar to vinegar. The bog bodies are basically pickled, and decomposition is dramatically slowed because of the anaerobic conditions of the bog. The best-preserved bog bodies are those that were put there during the winter or early spring when the water is very cold—less than 4° Celsius (39° F), i.e., too cold for bacteria to thrive—because the bog acids were able to saturate the tissues before decay could begin.

Peat has been a common fuel source since the Iron Age, and there are records of peat diggers coming across bog bodies dating back to 1640 in Germany. Bog bodies became of interest to antiquarians in the 19th century and archaeologists in the 20th century. One of the most famous examples is Tollund Man, a bog body found in the 1950s and dating back to the 5th century BCE. Tollund Man was so exquisitely mummified that he was originally mistaken for a recent murder victim, although only the head was preserved for posterity; the rest of the body was allowed to desiccate, given the less advanced state of preservation techniques in the 1950s.

But many bog bodies are only partially preserved, or only the skeletons (or parts thereof) survive. Vittrup Man falls into the latter category, consisting of a right ankle bone, the left tibia, the fractured skull, and a jawbone. He was discovered along with a wooden club, which archaeologists believe may have been the weapon used to bludgeon him to death. Various radiocarbon dating and isotope analyses confirmed that the bones all belonged to the same individual, while genetic analysis confirmed the remains were those of a male. He was likely deposited in the peat bog sometime between 3300–3100 BCE.

  • Left lower leg bone and right ankle bone of Vittrup Man.

    Marie Louise Jorkov/Fischer A., et al./PLoS ONE

  • The jawbone of Vittrup Man showing several worn teeth.

    Arnold Mikkelsen/Fischer A., et al./PLoS ONE

  • Drawing of Vittrup Man’s cranium showing front and back views of impact lesions and radiating fracture lines.

    Fischer A., et al./PLoS ONE

  • Drawing of Vittrup Man’s cranium showing right and left side views of impact lesions and radiating fracture lines.

    Fischer A., et al./PLoS ONE

Vittrup Man was included in a sweeping 2014 genomic project to learn more about Eurasia’s Mesolithic and Neolithic gene pools, but the resulting genetic profile was markedly different from other remains from the same region and time period. This intrigued University of Gothenburg (Sweden) archaeologist Karl-Göran Sjögren and his co-authors, and they decided to take a closer look, integrating data collected with various genetic, isotopic, physical, anthropological, and archaeological techniques. “To our knowledge, this is the first time that research has been able to map a north European inhabitant’s life history in such a high degree of detail and in such a high distance of time,” the authors wrote.

The size and distinctive characteristics of the skull, lower leg bones, and teeth indicate that at the time of his death, Vittrup Man was an adult male in his 30s. The cranium was shattered by at least eight blows delivered by a blunt object (like the wooden club), and the injuries were fatal, with no signs of healing post-trauma. There are no marks on the surviving bones indicating dismemberment, so the authors believe the body may have come apart while decomposing in the bog. It’s possible more Vittrup Man fragments have yet to be recovered.

But the clues gleaned from two of Vittrup Man’s teeth (sacrificed to science) are what provided the most interesting insights. Sjögren et al. found isotopes of strontium, carbon, and oxygen and concluded that the man had grown up along the coast of the Scandinavian Peninsula. Genetic analysis showed commonalities with Mesolithic people of Norway and Sweden; Vittrup Man had blue eyes and darker skin than the usual Neolithic farmer. The teeth and bones also had proteins and isotopes indicating a shift in diet from marine mammals and fish as a child, to sheep, goat, cereals, and dairy as an adult—the latter more typical of a farming community as opposed to a coastal foraging community.

Why Vittrup Man left the Scandinavian coast and ended up in Denmark remains a mystery. He may have been captured and enslaved or immigrated, or he may have been a foreign merchant selling goods like flint axes between foraging and farming communities. Either way, he eventually integrated into the farming community—at least until they killed him.

As for why he was killed, “At that time, it was commonplace in present-day Denmark to sacrifice humans in bogs, and these acts were often conducted in violent ways,” the authors concluded. “Evidently, such dubious honor was also given to persons of nonlocal provenance.”

PLoS ONE, 2024. DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0297032  (About DOIs).

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Ancient desert mega-structures were planned using carved maps to scale

12 days of Christmas, anthropology, Archaeology, desert kites, Science, social anthropology / /

On the ninth day of Christmas —

“This calls for the representation of space in a way not seen at this time.”

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Oblique aerial photograph of a desert kite in Jordan

There’s rarely time to write about every cool science-y story that comes our way. So this year, we’re once again running a special Twelve Days of Christmas series of posts, highlighting one science story that fell through the cracks in 2020, each day from December 25 through January 5. Today: Archaeologists found two stone engravings in Jordan and Saudi Arabia that may represent the oldest architectural plans for desert kites.

During the 1920s, aerial photographs revealed the presence of large kite-shaped stone wall mega-structures in deserts in Asia and the Middle East that most archaeologists believe were used to herd and trap wild animals. More than 6,000 of these “desert kites” have been identified as of 2018, although very few have been excavated. Archaeologists found two stone engravings—one in Jordan, the other in Saudi Arabia—that they believe represent the oldest architectural plans for these desert kites, according to a May paper published in the journal PLoS ONE.

“The discovery of these very ancient representations highlights the question of the methods used by kite builders,” the authors wrote. “Kites are large material structures that could not be designed without what we call today planning. The ability to transpose large spaces into a small two-dimensional surface represents a milestone in intelligent behavior. Such structures are visible as a whole only from the air, yet this calls for the representation of space in a way not seen at this time.”

The eight kites at Jibal al-Khashabiyeh in Jordan were discovered in 2013, and archaeologists began excavations in 2015 and 2016. Looters had targeted one such site, so archaeologists conducted a rescue excavation, noting numerous carved cigar-shaped limestones scattered around the surface. One such stone had a very well-preserved engraving. The engraving’s shape is characteristic of the two desert kites at Jibal al-Khashabiyeh that are nearest to where the engraved rock was found, and the authors estimate the age of the engraving to be about 7,000 years old.

The engraving was likely carved with a lithic tool, employing a combination of fine incisions to mark out the contours of the kite and pecking. The kite-shaped engraving comprises two primary converging curved lines, which the researchers interpreted as representing driving lines. These lead to a carved star-shaped enclosure with eight circular cup marks at the circumference representing pit traps. The characteristics are typical of desert kite structures in southeastern Jordanian kites. The archaeologists remain puzzled by a zigzagging chevron pattern running perpendicular to the corridor, but hypothesize that it might represent a slope break feature.

The kites at Jebel az-Zilliyat in Saudi Arabia were discovered in 2014 and excavated the following year. The engraved sandstone boulder in this case—found during rock art surveys—was studied in situ and dated to around 8,000 years ago. The carving was likely made by pecking the contours using a lithic tool or a handpick. While the eastern engraving on the boulder was very readable, the western one had been badly damaged by erosion. Both feature the same two short, widely spaced driving lines that gradually converge into a star-shaped enclosed surface surrounded by six cup marks (pit traps). Once again, the authors noted clear similarities between the engraved representations of kites on the boulder and actual desert kite shapes nearby.

There have been other maps, plans, or representations in human history, per the authors, such as Upper Paleolithic engravings in Europe that seem to be maps of hunting strategies, or a mural in Turkey from about 6600 BCE that seems to depict a village. There is even a reed-bundle boat found in Kuwait, dated 5000 BCE, that is considered to be the oldest three-dimensional model of a large-scale object. However, the two engravings found in Jordan and Saudi Arabia are unique because they were done to scale: approximately 1: 425 and 1: 175, respectively.

As for why the engravings were made, the authors considered three hypotheses: it was a detailed kite construction plan; it was a plan for preparing hunting activities; or it could be more symbolic—a means of passing on knowledge of the pace and/or its function. Of those, the authors consider the second to be the most credible, given the careful graphical representation of the functional elements of the trap, but cannot rule out the other two possibilities.

“A map would most probably be used here as a means of communication (almost like an ancestral way of writing) and would enable the collective interaction required for the smooth running of hunting operations,” the authors concluded. “These two major innovations, i.e., building what would become the largest structures in human history at that time and making cartographic representations to scale, are closely linked by a common point: mastering the three-dimensional perception of a space, and translating it into an inscribed form of communication.”

PLoS ONE, 2023. DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0277927  (About DOIs).

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