A research team co-led by Griffith University archaeologists has discovered DNA in the remains of a hunter-gatherer woman who died 7200 years ago on the Indonesian island of Sulawesi. Nicknamed Bessé’, she is the first known skeleton from an early foraging culture called the Toaleans.
Genomic analysis shows that this ancient individual was a distant relative of Aboriginal Australians and Papuans. But it also revealed that Bessé’ is a rare ‘genetic fossil’, in the sense that she belonged to a group with an ancestral history that was unlike that of any previously known human population.
Excavations at Leang Panninge cave. Credit: Leang Panninge Research Project.
This surprising find, published in the journal Nature, is the first time ancient human DNA has been reported from ‘Wallacea’, the vast group of islands between Borneo and New Guinea and the gateway to the continent of Australia.
The Sulawesi remains were excavated in 2015 from a cave called Leang Panninge (‘Bat Cave’). They belong to a young female hunter-gatherer who was about 17-18 years old at time of death. She was buried in a foetal position and partially covered by rocks. Stone tools and red ochre (iron-rich rock used to make pigment) were found in her grave, along with bones of hunted wild animals.
The University of Hasanuddin archaeologists who discovered the woman affectionately dubbed her Bessé’, following a custom among Bugis royal families of bestowing this nickname on newly born princesses before they were formally named.
“The Toaleans were early hunter-gatherers who lived a secluded existence in the forests of South Sulawesi from around 8,000 years ago until 1,500 years ago, hunting wild pigs and collecting edible shellfish from rivers,” Professor Brumm said.
Professor Brumm’s team re-excavated Leang Panninge in 2019 to clarify the context of the burial and collect more samples for dating. Through radiocarbon dating the team was able to constrain the age of Bessé’ to between about 7300 to 7200 years old.
Toalean artefacts have only been found in one small part of Sulawesi, encompassing about 6% of the total land area of the island, the world’s eleventh largest.
“This suggests that this past culture had limited contact with other early Sulawesi communities or people in nearby islands, existing for thousands of years in isolation,” said study co-author Adhi Agus Oktaviana, a researcher in Indonesia’s national archaeological research institute (Pusat Penelitian Arkeologi Nasional) and a doctoral candidate in the Griffith Centre for Social and Cultural Research.
Archaeologists have long debated the origins of the Toaleans. But now analyses of ancient DNA from the inner ear bone of Bessé’ partly confirm existing assertions that Toalean foragers were related to the first modern humans to enter Wallacea some 65,000 years ago, the ancestors of Aboriginal Australians and Papuans.
“These seafaring hunter-gatherers were the earliest inhabitants of Sahul, the supercontinent that emerged during the Pleistocene (Ice Age) when global sea levels fell, exposing a land bridge between Australia and New Guinea,” Professor Brumm said.
Professor Adam Brumm.
“To reach Sahul, these pioneering humans made ocean crossings through Wallacea, but little about their journeys is known.”
The genomic analyses were led by Selina Carlhoff from the Max Planck Institute for the Science of Human History at Jena, Germany, under the supervision of Professor Cosimo Posth (University of Tübingen) and Professor Johannes Krause (Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology, Leipzig).
The results show that Bessé’ shares about half of her genetic makeup with present-day Indigenous Australians and people in New Guinea and the Western Pacific islands. This includes DNA inherited from the now-extinct Denisovans, distant cousins of Neanderthals whose fossils have only been found in Siberia and Tibet.
“In fact, the proportion of Denisovan DNA in Bessé’ relative to other ancient as well as present-day groups in the region may indicate that the crucial meeting point between our species and Denisovans was in Sulawesi or another Wallacean island,” Professor Posth said.
The research could suggest that ancestors of Bessé’ were among the first modern humans to reach Wallacea, but instead of island hopping eastward to Sahul they remained in Sulawesi.
If so, it may have been the forebears of Bessé’ who created the very old cave paintings found in South Sulawesi. As recently shown by Griffith University researchers, this rock art dates to at least 45,500 years ago and includes what may be the earliest known human representations of animals.
But analyses also revealed something unexpected in the genome of Bessé’: a deep ancestral signature from an early modern human population of Asian origin. This group did not intermix with the predecessors of Aboriginal Australians and Papuans, suggesting it may have entered the region after the initial peopling of Sahul.
“It is unlikely we will know much about the identity of these early ancestors of the Toaleans until more ancient human DNA samples are available from Wallacea,” said Indonesian senior author Professor Akin Duli from the University of Hasanuddin.
“But it would now appear that the population history and genetic diversity of early humans in the region were more complex than previously supposed.”
The researchers could detect no ancestry resembling that of Bessé’ in the DNA of people who live in Sulawesi today, who seem to largely descend from Neolithic farmers (‘Austronesians’) who arrived in the region from Taiwan some 3,500 years ago.
This is not unexpected, given that the last traces of Toalean culture vanished from the archaeological record by the fifth century AD. The scientists do note, however, that more extensive genomic sampling of Sulawesi’s diverse population could reveal evidence for the genetic legacy of Toaleans.
“The discovery of Bessé’ and the implications of her genetic ancestry show just how little we understand about the early human story in our region, and how much more there is left to uncover,” Professor Brumm said.
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NAIROBI, Kenya (AP) — The body of Ugandan Olympic athlete Rebecca Cheptegei — who died after being set on fire by her partner in Kenya — was received Friday by family and anti-femicide crusaders, ahead of her burial a day later.
Cheptegei’s family met with dozens of activists Friday who had marched to the Moi Teaching and Referral Hospital’s morgue in the western city of Eldoret while chanting anti-femicide slogans.
She is the fourth female athlete to have been killed by her partner in Kenya in yet another case of gender-based violence in recent years.
Viola Cheptoo, the founder of Tirop Angels – an organization that was formed in honor of athlete Agnes Tirop, who was stabbed to death in 2021, said stakeholders need to ensure this is the last death of an athlete due to gender-based violence.
“We are here to say that enough is enough, we are tired of burying our sisters due to GBV,” she said.
It was a somber mood at the morgue as athletes and family members viewed Cheptegei’s body which sustained 80% of burns after she was doused with gasoline by her partner Dickson Ndiema. Ndiema sustained 30% burns on his body and later succumbed.
Ndiema and Cheptegei were said to have quarreled over a piece of land that the athlete bought in Kenya, according to a report filed by the local chief.
Cheptegei competed in the women’s marathon at the Paris Olympics less than a month before the attack. She finished in 44th place.
Cheptegei’s father, Joseph, said that the body will make a brief stop at their home in the Endebess area before proceeding to Bukwo in eastern Uganda for a night vigil and burial on Saturday.
“We are in the final part of giving my daughter the last respect,” a visibly distraught Joseph said.
He told reporters last week that Ndiema was stalking and threatening Cheptegei and the family had informed police.
Four in 10 women or an estimated 41% of dating or married Kenyan women have experienced physical or sexual violence perpetrated by their current or most recent partner, according to the Kenya Demographic and Health Survey 2022.
TEL AVIV, Israel (AP) — A rare Bronze-Era jar accidentally smashed by a 4-year-old visiting a museum was back on display Wednesday after restoration experts were able to carefully piece the artifact back together.
Last month, a family from northern Israel was visiting the museum when their youngest son tipped over the jar, which smashed into pieces.
Alex Geller, the boy’s father, said his son — the youngest of three — is exceptionally curious, and that the moment he heard the crash, “please let that not be my child” was the first thought that raced through his head.
The jar has been on display at the Hecht Museum in Haifa for 35 years. It was one of the only containers of its size and from that period still complete when it was discovered.
The Bronze Age jar is one of many artifacts exhibited out in the open, part of the Hecht Museum’s vision of letting visitors explore history without glass barriers, said Inbal Rivlin, the director of the museum, which is associated with Haifa University in northern Israel.
It was likely used to hold wine or oil, and dates back to between 2200 and 1500 B.C.
Rivlin and the museum decided to turn the moment, which captured international attention, into a teaching moment, inviting the Geller family back for a special visit and hands-on activity to illustrate the restoration process.
Rivlin added that the incident provided a welcome distraction from the ongoing war in Gaza. “Well, he’s just a kid. So I think that somehow it touches the heart of the people in Israel and around the world,“ said Rivlin.
Roee Shafir, a restoration expert at the museum, said the repairs would be fairly simple, as the pieces were from a single, complete jar. Archaeologists often face the more daunting task of sifting through piles of shards from multiple objects and trying to piece them together.
Experts used 3D technology, hi-resolution videos, and special glue to painstakingly reconstruct the large jar.
Less than two weeks after it broke, the jar went back on display at the museum. The gluing process left small hairline cracks, and a few pieces are missing, but the jar’s impressive size remains.
The only noticeable difference in the exhibit was a new sign reading “please don’t touch.”
VICTORIA – The British Columbia government is partnering with a bear welfare group to reduce the number of bears being euthanized in the province.
Nicholas Scapillati, executive director of Grizzly Bear Foundation, said Monday that it comes after months-long discussions with the province on how to protect bears, with the goal to give the animals a “better and second chance at life in the wild.”
Scapillati said what’s exciting about the project is that the government is open to working with outside experts and the public.
“So, they’ll be working through Indigenous knowledge and scientific understanding, bringing in the latest techniques and training expertise from leading experts,” he said in an interview.
B.C. government data show conservation officers destroyed 603 black bears and 23 grizzly bears in 2023, while 154 black bears were killed by officers in the first six months of this year.
Scapillati said the group will publish a report with recommendations by next spring, while an independent oversight committee will be set up to review all bear encounters with conservation officers to provide advice to the government.
Environment Minister George Heyman said in a statement that they are looking for new ways to ensure conservation officers “have the trust of the communities they serve,” and the panel will make recommendations to enhance officer training and improve policies.
Lesley Fox, with the wildlife protection group The Fur-Bearers, said they’ve been calling for such a committee for decades.
“This move demonstrates the government is listening,” said Fox. “I suspect, because of the impending election, their listening skills are potentially a little sharper than they normally are.”
Fox said the partnership came from “a place of long frustration” as provincial conservation officers kill more than 500 black bears every year on average, and the public is “no longer tolerating this kind of approach.”
“I think that the conservation officer service and the B.C. government are aware they need to change, and certainly the public has been asking for it,” said Fox.
Fox said there’s a lot of optimism about the new partnership, but, as with any government, there will likely be a lot of red tape to get through.
“I think speed is going to be important, whether or not the committee has the ability to make change and make change relatively quickly without having to study an issue to death, ” said Fox.
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Sept. 9, 2024.
