Engravings on ostrich shells which date back 60,000 years may be examples of a symbolic communication system among African hunter-gatherers.

The unusually large sample of 270 engraved eggshell fragments, mostly excavated over the past several years at Diepkloof Rock Shelter in South Africa, displays two standard design patterns, according to a team led by archaeologist Pierre-Jean Texier of the University of Bordeaux 1 in Talence, France. Each pattern enjoyed its own heyday between approximately 65,000 and 55,000 years ago, the investigators report in a paper to be published this week in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

Researchers already knew that the Howiesons Poort culture, which engraved the eggshells, engaged in other symbolic practices, such as engraving designs into pieces of pigment, that were considered to have been crucial advances in human behavioral evolution. But the Diepkloof finds represent the first archaeological sample large enough to demonstrate that Stone Age people created design traditions, at least in their engravings, Texier says.

Evidence of intentionally produced holes in several Diepkloof eggshells indicates that ancient people made what amounted to canteens out of them, a practice that researchers have documented among modern hunter-gatherers in southern Africa.

The engraved patterns probably identified the eggshells as the property of certain groups or communities, Texier proposes.

“The Diepkloof engravings were clearly made for visual display and recognized as such by a large audience comprising members of a community, and probably members of related communities,” comments University of Bordeaux 1 archaeologist Francesco d’Errico, who was not involved in the new study.

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Millions of years ago digger wasps learned how to harness beneficial bacteria to create a cocktail of drugs that protected its larvae from infection. [Thx Saturn]

The era of antibiotics began in 1928 when Alexander Fleming spotted how penicillin produced by green mold killed bacteria.

But long before, Philanthus wasps were coating their cocoons with antibiotics to fight off harmful microbes.

The insects not only evolved a method of manufacturing antibiotics, they used them in a highly effective way, said the scientists writing in the journal Nature Chemical Biology.

Just as human experts have learned to do, the wasps combine different drugs that work together to destroy many different organisms.

The German researchers found that beewolves teamed up with a type of bacteria called Streptomyces in a symbiotic relationship that benefited both species.

In exchange for having a home, the bugs produced a cocktail of nine different antibiotics effective against a broad range of harmful bacteria and fungi.

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A new study has revealed that ancient  Native Americans tamed turkeys for their feathers.

More than 1,500 years before Christopher Columbus and his crew sailed to the New World, Native Americans had already domesticated turkeys twice: first in south-central Mexico at around 800 B.C. and again in what is now the southwestern U.S. at about 200 B.C., according to a new study.

The two instances of domestication appear to have been separate, based on DNA analysis of ancient turkey remains. However, the different Native American groups could have been in contact with each other, sharing turkey-raising tips.

While turkeys today conjure up thoughts of bountiful roast meat meals and deli sandwiches, Native Americans were not driven by their dinner needs, according to the study, published in the latest Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

“Interestingly, the domestic turkeys were initially raised for their feathers, which were used in rituals and ceremonies, as well as to make feather robes or blankets,” lead author Camilla Speller told Discovery News. “Only later, around 1100 A.D., did the domestic turkeys become an important food source for the Ancestral Puebloans.”

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The ancestors of Madagascar’s ring-tailed lemurs, flying foxes, and other mammals washed upon the island aboard natural rafts.

The model supports a 70-year-old theory that mainland mammals from southeastern Africa “rafted” to the island on large logs or floating carpets of vegetation after being swept out to sea during storms.

The ancient refugees were carried to Madagascar by ocean currents, drifting on the open seas for several weeks before finally coming ashore, the model says.

Based on genetic and ecosystem evidence, this theory makes more sense than the alternative, which holds that Madagascar’s mammals arrived via a land bridge that was later destroyed by shifting continents.

One of the problems with the rafting theory was that ocean currents and prevailing winds around Madagascar today move east to west—away from, not toward, the island.

Now, using computer simulations normally employed to study global warming, scientists think the currents might have been more favorable for drifitng to Madagascar 50 million years ago.

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National Geographic has posted a fascinating article about ancient Egyptian animal mummies.

In 1888 an Egyptian farmer digging in the sand near the village of Istabl Antar uncovered a mass grave. The bodies weren’t human. They were feline—ancient cats that had been mummified and buried in pits in staggering numbers. “Not one or two here and there,” reported the English Illustrated Magazine, “but dozens, hundreds, hundreds of thousands, a layer of them, a stratum thicker than most coal seams, ten to twenty cats deep.” Some of the linen-wrapped cats still looked presentable, and a few even had gilded faces. Village children peddled the best specimens to tourists for change; the rest were sold in bulk as fertilizer. One ship hauled about 180,000, weighing some 38,000 pounds, to Liverpool to be spread on the fields of England.