Huw Groucutt
@huw_groucutt
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Archaeologist. Lecturer in Mediterranean Prehistory @UMmalta . Research mostly Malta and Arabia.
Joined September 2017
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The 'Temple Period' (Late Neolithic) of the Maltese Islands was a fascinating period in the human past when the inhabitants of a small (316 km2) archipelago started building unique 'temples' (actual function is debated).
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(1) Thread about our paper just out in
@Nature
. All images in thread from paper unless stated otherwise.
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Admiring an amazing stone tool, about 120,000 years old, from the site of Skhul.
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Have shared this before, but no harm in sharing this beauty again.
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No. It didn't
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"An Upper Palaeolithic Proto-writing System and
Phenological Calendar".
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Never going to get tired of finding handaxes in the desert.
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Casts of the bone harpoons from Katanda, Congo. Age estimates of 90 thousand years ago.
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We are excited to announce our discovery of human and animal footprints dating to around 120,000 thousand years ago in the Nefud Desert in northern Saudi Arabia. The article will be published later today in the journal Science Advances.
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If we are in the handaxe game, this fine example from Britain deserves mention. You can see this beauty in the British Museum in London.
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I've shared this before, but I don't care. The world needs to see this beautiful Levallois flake. 85 thousand years old from Mundafan in the Empty Quarter of Arabia. Beautiful.
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Spot the pattern here (pink = hypothetical early Neanderthal area, blue = area occupied by later Neanderthals)...yet the study of Neanderthals remains highly Eurocentric. Understanding the Asian end of Neanderthals is crucial if we want a real understanding of our close relatives
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Personally, if I received reviews like this from my peers, I would withdraw my paper.
The peer reviews for "Evidence for the deliberate burial of the dead by Homo naledi" have been posted.
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Some more beautiful Arabian handaxes, from a cool site to be published soon, with
@DrEleanorScerri
,
@MDPetraglia
and others.
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Great to finally get a physical copy of my book...just the Christmas present you had been looking to buy for your friends and family :D
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Just out, our discovery of the 90,000 year old Al Wutsa human fossil from northern Saudi Arabia, showing that our species spread into Eurasia much earlier than thought, and emphasising the role of climate change in human prehistory.
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Our new publication "Blue Arabia, Green Arabia: Examining Human Colonisation and Dispersal Models".
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Archaeology gradually reveals the story of human evolution and prehistory, far away from the small peninsula off northwest Asia (Europe) which has traditionally dominated our understanding of early humans.
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“This is one of the most important archaeological papers in recent decades,” said archaeologist Huw Groucutt
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So excited to see this paper on the absolutely remarkable Holocene archaeology of Saudi Arabia by
@aaksa_project
out:
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I am advertising a new funded PhD position in my group, focussing on GIS analysis of stone structures in Arabia. Please pass this on to anyone you think might be interested.
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Our new paper on 'desert kites'. More widespread than previously thought, and highly regionalised.
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Archaeology is such a strange profession. Half intense manual labour, half hunched over a computer screen arguing about theories and models. It's a balance I profoundly enjoy!
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Some of the newly published lithics from Morocco believed to date to 1.3 million years ago. ()
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#NonflintFriday
A beautifully weathered handaxe from the Nefud Desert, dating to around 300 thousand years ago
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Someone forgot to tell the makers of most of these beautiful things that they were living before the 'Upper Palaeolithic revolution'.
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Excited that our first paper about this wonderful site in Arabia will be coming out soon.
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Not only do Eurocentric views (like the 'Upper Palaeolithic Revolution') distort the understanding of global human prehistory in general...but the exaggeration of northern Eurasia in spatial terms (such as Mercator) further distorts things.
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Arabia is covered in amazing prehistoric stone structures. Most are very poorly understood and their age unclear. I've enjoyed working on some of them over the last few years.
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Can 2021 be the year we recognise, and celebrate, the gradual accumulation of knowledge on human evolution and prehistory, not more "this changes everything" headlines, often based on sites with dubious chronology/context? Please.
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55 thousand years ago some early humans left a scatter of stone tools in a lake basin in northern Arabia. Today just a tiny remnant of lake sediments is preserved, where we found stone tools on the surface and in an excavation. Who were these people? More soon!
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Some lovely Levallois cores dating to approximately 85,000 years ago from southern Arabia. Probably made by Homo sapiens early in our spread into Eurasia.
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A handaxe and all the flakes involved in its manufacture.
Restos del proceso de fabricación de un bifaz de sílex. Arriba, descartes del núcleo. Abajo, lascas aprovechables y bifaz. De la maravillosa exposición del
@muprevalencia
. ¡Tengo que volver!
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Sad news from Sardinia. Carlo Lugliè, professor of prehistory and protohistory at the University of Cagliari, has died. He drowned saving his partners son in rough sea conditions.
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#MegalithicMyths
. The soil below the the megaliths at Ġgantija has been scientifically dated to 8770 +/- 680 BC. So the temple is less than that. Along with 100s of other dates, this gives a secure and well known chronology to the Maltese temples to those who know/tell the truth.
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Ancient engraving of a lion, carved onto a cliff in Arabia thousands of years ago. And on left you can see dogs and the bow being held by a human. Such a cool place (Shuwaymis), with thousands of engravings. Glad that it is now listed as a UNESCO site.
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(1) Interesting new paper. Slimak et al report on the site of Grotte Mandrin in southern France. The authors claim the site shows Homo sapiens in western Europe thousands of years earlier than previously thought (ca. 57-52,000 years ago). My thoughts...
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If this article by a lizard expert was written by a student, it would receive a very low grade. It is safe to say that almost everything written here is wrong. People may complain about peer review, but it does stop stuff like this!
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Yeah so we found a few bones in Arabia.
@TheFatWombat
@MDPetraglia
@huw_groucutt
Just incase that photo doesn't get across the sheer number of boney bits in the cave, here's another!
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Handaxes are cooll...but Middle Palaeolithic/Middle Stone Age stuff is the best. Such as these beauties from Omo Kibish, Ethiopia.
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For some reason, around seven thousand years ago nomadic pastoralists in northern Arabia began to construct a new kind of ritual stone structure, that we now call the mustatil (rectangle in Arabic). Over 1500 of these were built, sometimes vast (over 600 m long).
For
#MustatilMonday
, here is a stunning example in
#AlUla
. Our project has excavated 5 mustatil so far! Our first paper on the excavations we have conducted is currently under review. As for this beautiful structure, it is on our list for future study. How good is the entrance!
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#FlintFriday
. Couple of lovely Neolithic bifacial points from the Empty Quarter of Arabia.
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I am very happy to announce that I have joined the Institute of Prehistoric Archaeology, University of Cologne, as an affiliated faculty member. This will bring many opportunities for collaboration with my Max Planck group in Jena.
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#FlintFriday
. My favourite Levallois flake. I've shared this before, and i'll share it again. From Mundafan, in the Empty Quarter of Arabia. Made 85 thousand years ago.
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85,000 year old Levallois flake from Mundafan in the Empty Quarter of Arabia, the only dated Pleistocene archaeological site in the Empty Quarter. The largest sand desert in the world. Such an amazing site.
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The Primate Genome Project unlocks hidden secrets of primate evolution.
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A lot of recent research in Arabia has involved ancient lakes. Rivers are also important, but not so well understood so far. Images below are an early qualitative approach (Edgell, 2006) and ours (Breeze et al., 2015, link below) that uses satellite imagery to objectively map.
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This handaxe we found in northern Saudi Arabia is indeed a beauty
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Ancient lake hiding in the dunes, Saudi Arabia. We are trying to work out how old this lake is. It is absolutely covered in stone tools.
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Some classic Middle Palaeolithic stone tools from Arabia. Whoever these people were, they were very good at making stone tools.
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This
#flintfriday
, some 85 thousand year old stone tools from Mundafan, Saudi Arabia. The first dated Pleistocene archaeological site in the Empty Quarter, the largest sand desert in the world.
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130 thousand years ago somebody sat down next to a small lake in the middle of what is now the Nefud Desert in Saudi Arabia. They almost made a very nice example of a kind of stone tool called a Levallois flake, but this is poor quality stone for making stone tools so it broke.
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Different forms of chert used to make these Levallois flakes 85 thousand years ago in the Empty Quarter of Arabia.
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I am recruiting postdoctoral researchers and PhD students to work with me on my project 'Extreme events in biological, societal and earth systems', which will be based at the Max Planck Institute for Chemical Ecology in Jena. Formal advert soon but get in touch if interested!
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Lovely little Levallois cores. 85,000 years old, from from Mundafan in the Empty Quarter of Arabia.
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Another nice Levallois flake, approximately 125 thousand years old, from the Nefud Desert. Looking forward to publishing this stuff.
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Preprint of my new paper on Maltese 'cart ruts' available here:
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Fascinating paper in PNAS on relationships between 15 people showing violent deaths, dating to almost 5,000 years ago in what is now Poland. Genetic analysis showed they were from an extended family, and someone who knew how they related them had arranged the bodies!
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(1/4) Shukbah contains the southernmost known Neanderthal fossils. But it is interesting to highlight how little we really know about the Neanderthal range (map from wikipedia).
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My annotated guide to the latest mythochondrial nonsense published today.
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Article about our research in this week's New Scientist.
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Some of the wonderful 300,000 year old handaxes from Assemblage B, KAM-4, Nefud Desert. Love the banding patterns as the iron weathers out (ferruginous quartzite/ferrocrete sandstone/whatever you want to call it).
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Getting things ready for my first lecture of the term with new students. I love introducing people to the study of human evolution and prehistory :)
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Missing the desert. Here I am pointing at a layer of stone tools and animal bones dating to 130 ka, preserved in a palaeolake in the Nefud.
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Neanderthal is pronounced with a hard t (neanderTal). Not a 'th' sound. It is an archaic German spelling, but we are a pretty advanced species so i'm sure we can get the pronunciation right. You've been warned.
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Excited to see my new article (co-authored with Dr Jeffrey Rose) 'Standardization of Nubian Levallois Technology in Dhofar, Southern Arabia' just published in Lithic Technology (part of the special issue i'm editing along with
@justin_pargeter
).
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1) Homo NOledi? Some thoughts about the new pre-prints (not yet peer reviewed or published…).
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A useful task would be to point out the lack of women and children in scenes like this. And the harmful stereotypes of the few that are shown.
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#FlintFriday
. Recent findings of more 'Nubian' Levallois technology in South Africa by
@ESHallinan
and colleagues. Showing that this technology is not exclusively product of NE African Homo sapiens (i.e. the 'Nubian Complex'). Great example of convergent evolution (link below).
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Interesting big new paper on the emergence of ochre use in the archaeological record. Why ochre was used is still not very clear...but it's saying something interesting. The pattern mirrors the general picture of the biological and cultural evolution of our species.
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The wonderful 'Black Skull' from Ethiopia. Dating to 2.5 million years ago, this is a classic fossil of the Paranthropus genus, cousins to our own genus, Homo.
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On the days I sit at a computer all day, I miss exploring the desert finding cool things. Like this nice arrowhead from the Nefud Desert (Photo
@klintjanulis
)
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Visually pleasing blade core from the site of Khanguet el Mouhaâd (Algeria). From:
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A few points on the famous Maltese megalithic 'Temples'. Were these produced by the Neolithic farmers of Malta...or by some kind of mysterious unknown civilization (possibly alien inspired 😂)??
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Today's stone tools....some beautiful 75 thousand year old finds from Jubbah, Saudi Arabia. Who made them? My guess: Homo sapiens.
#Archaeology
,
#Science
,
#Anthropology
,
#climatechange
. Found by
@MDPetraglia
and myself with our colleagues from the
@scthKSA
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Interesting new paper on how humans got to Australia more than 50,000 years ago...always a fascinating topic!
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Two lovely Middle Palaeolithic cores from southern Arabia (Dhofar).
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Posting this again as I just came across it and these things are so beautiful. Middle Stone Age lithics from Omo Kibish, Ethiopia.
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MSA points from Porc Epic Ethiopia. Some accurate dating of this site really needed as its a key site.
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The evolution of complex culture in Africa. There was no 'human revolution'. Some complex behaviours appeared early, others late. Many show discontinuities. Things were invented...and later re-invented. Different regions show different patterns. (Fig: Will et al. 2019, ref below)
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My daughter has taken to leaving Blombos/Diepkloof type markings all over the city. Presumably this tells us something profound about the human condition. Might submit to PNAS.
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Excited to announce publication of my edited book "Culture History and Convergent Evolution: Can we Detect Populations in Prehistory?". Thanks to all authors and peer-reviewers! While the book poses many more questions than answers, it is a useful start!
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Some nice Levallois cores, just reported from eastern India.
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Rest in peace. Legendary archaeologist Ralph Solecki has sadly died, at the age of 101. He dug many of the famous sites such as Shanidar Cave in Kurdistan.
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Approx. 100 thousand years ago, someone sat next to a small lake in what is now the Nefud Desert of northern Arabia. They shaped a piece of rhyolite to produce a Levallois flake. That flake was taken away, but we were able to refit one of the preparation flakes to the core.
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#FlintFriday
. Points from Porc Epic, Ethiopia. A classic MSA site, but unfortunately not well dated.
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Flint Friday. An Arabian arrowhead. I always thought that bows and arrows are such a great example of human ingenuity.
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