Archaeologists in Tasmania have found what they believe to be the oldest, most southerly site of human habitation in the world.

Archaeologists and Aboriginal heritage officers have been removing sediment from eight trenches along the Jordan River levee at the Brighton roadworks site, north of Hobart.

Initial findings suggest the sediment is between 28,000 and 40,000 years old, making it the oldest, most southern site of human habitation in the world.

It is believed up to 3,000,000 artefacts could be buried there.

Dozens of protesters have been arrested and 19 people have been charged over protests aimed at trying to stop the roadwork in recent months.

Fiona Newson from the Tasmanian Aboriginal Land and Sea Council says the Tasmanian Goverment needs to take the latest report from archaeologists seriously.

“We’re talking about a worldwide significant site in regards to the scientific values and heritage values,” she said.

“It would be a total waste and not a good look on Tasmania if they were going to destroy it.”

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The earliest evidence of humans in India has been found, dating back more than 74,000 years, about 15,000 years earlier than previously thought.

Newly discovered archaeological sites in southern and northern India have revealed how people lived before and after the colossal Toba volcanic eruption 74,000 years ago, according to Press Trust of India (PTI) on Tuesday.

The international and multidisciplinary research team, led by Oxford University in collaboration with Indian institutions, has uncovered what it calls ‘Pompeii-like excavations’ beneath the Toba ash.

The seven-year project examines the environment that humans lived in, their stone tools, as well as the plants and animal bones of the time.

“This suggests that human populations were present in India prior to 74,000 years ago, or about 15,000 years earlier than expected based on some genetic clocks,” said project director Michael Petraglia, Senior Research Fellow in the School of Archaeology at the University of Oxford.

The team has concluded that many forms of life survived he super-eruption, contrary to other research which has suggested significant animal extinctions and genetic bottlenecks.

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Newsweek has an interesting article about Göbekli Tepe, a temple complex in Turkey that predates the pyramids is rewriting human history.

Standing on the hill at dawn, overseeing a team of 40 Kurdish diggers, the German-born archeologist waves a hand over his discovery here, a revolution in the story of human origins. Schmidt has uncovered a vast and beautiful temple complex, a structure so ancient that it may be the very first thing human beings ever built. The site isn’t just old, it redefines old: the temple was built 11,500 years ago—a staggering 7,000 years before the Great Pyramid, and more than 6,000 years before Stonehenge first took shape. The ruins are so early that they predate villages, pottery, domesticated animals, and even agriculture—the first embers of civilization. In fact, Schmidt thinks the temple itself, built after the end of the last Ice Age by hunter-gatherers, became that ember—the spark that launched mankind toward farming, urban life, and all that followed.

Göbekli Tepe—the name in Turkish for “potbelly hill”—lays art and religion squarely at the start of that journey. After a dozen years of patient work, Schmidt has uncovered what he thinks is definitive proof that a huge ceremonial site flourished here, a “Rome of the Ice Age,” as he puts it, where hunter-gatherers met to build a complex religious community. Across the hill, he has found carved and polished circles of stone, with terrazzo flooring and double benches. All the circles feature massive T-shaped pillars that evoke the monoliths of Easter Island.

Though not as large as Stonehenge—the biggest circle is 30 yards across, the tallest pillars 17 feet high—the ruins are astonishing in number. Last year Schmidt found his third and fourth examples of the temples. Ground-penetrating radar indicates that another 15 to 20 such monumental ruins lie under the surface. Schmidt’s German-Turkish team has also uncovered some 50 of the huge pillars, including two found in his most recent dig season that are not just the biggest yet, but, according to carbon dating, are the oldest monumental artworks in the world.

An analysis of the DNA of ancient human hair has been used to give clues as to what the owner/grower of the hair looked like. [Thx Tron]

A study, published in the journal Nature, says the individual’s genome is the oldest to have been sequenced from a modern human.

The researchers say the man, who lived 4,000 years ago, had brown eyes and thick dark hair, although he would have been prone to baldness.

They say the genome also shows that his ancestors migrated from Siberia.

The man has been named Inuk, which means “human” in the Greenlandic language.

“We wanted to acknowledge that he was from Greenland, even though he is not a direct ancestor of modern Greenlanders,” said Professor Eske Willerslev from the University of Copenhagen, who took part in the study.

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Ancient humans were endurance runners, but how did they do it without air-cushioned soles? [Thx Tron]

The secret might have been to land on the balls of their feet.

Daniel Lieberman at Harvard University and colleagues compared the gait of endurance runners in the US and Kenya and found that more than two-thirds of those who grew up running barefoot or had trained themselves to do so as adults ran on their tiptoes, landing on the balls of the feet first. The trend is unusual: 80 per cent of endurance runners land heel-first.

The result suggests that our ancestors were toe-runners. This may simply reduce pain. In racetrack tests, the team showed that the impact on the foot is seven times as great in heel-first runners. “It’s like someone hitting you on the heel with a hammer three times your body weight,” says Lieberman.

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