This news from National Geographic dated June 2020, almost passed me by. It is the reconstruction of 'Motala Man', a neolithic character who appears to have lived 7,000 years ago, making him an early returnee after the Last Glacial Maximum (about 10K - 8K years ago). You will have to click on the link to see what historians in this field think he looked like, due to copyright reasons. They have given him the (rather silly) name 'Ludwig'. He had been known as 'Motala Man' as his skull, and those of several others were excavated nearby the town of Motala in Sweden (see map) in a place called Kanaljorden, 2009 -2014.
The skulls were skewered together like a shish kofta kebab, interspersed with animal bones.
How they looked. This is interesting as it fits in with the theory of two separate sets of arrivals into Scandinavia after the Ice Age.
Take a look at the following map from wikipedia, which shows the migration of different groups of people. There is the Western Hunter Gatherers (WHG) who journied via the South through Asia Minor in green and the Eastern Hunter Gatherers (EHG) a Yamani culture thought to have come via the east and central Europe. We can see from this map, Motala Man was two-thirds WHG and one-third EHG.
It is believed by some that the LGM lasted apx 110,000 years, being an extremely thick ice sheet over the Scandinavian mountains, but he North West shelf may have been relatively ice free and to the north of it. It is thought by some that perhaps one group of early European peoples lived to the north of this and to the north west in isolation for 100,000 apart from the the other Homo sapiens who sought retreat in more southerly climes. Outnumbering the newcomers, the pale colouring became dominant over the dark-skinned southern newcomers, who strangely, also had the trait for blue eyes. I am a bit sceptical about the theory of people living so far north throughout the Ice Age but the idea seems to have some traction in some quarters. The pale blue part of the map is where the Ice Sheet was focussed.
https://journals.plos.org/plosbiolog...l.pbio.2003703
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eastern_Hunter-Gatherer
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Western_Hunter-Gatherer
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This is the first facial reconstruction from human remains excavated about a decade ago in south-central Sweden at Kanaljorden, a curious archaeological site where, sometime around 6,000 B.C., animal and human bones had been deliberately arranged on a submerged stone platform in the center of a small lake. Kanaljorden made international headlines in 2018 when researchers published a report on the excavation, noting that wood preserved inside two of the skulls indicated that at least some of the skulls had been mounted on stakes. It was like nothing the scientists had seen before. |
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The remains at Kanaljorden are unlike most other Scandinavian Mesolithic burials, which tend to be burials in the ground. Here, around 6,000 B.C., the crania of nine men and women were deliberately placed in the lake—perhaps all mounted on stakes—and interspersed with the jawbones (but not crania) of several local animal species, including wild boar, bear, deer, and badger. |
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Researchers were able to obtain DNA data from six of the nine skulls, enabling them to determine the skin, hair, and eye color of individuals. Some Mesolithic Europeans likely had a darker skin tone than modern inhabitants, a fact reflected in the recent recreations of two women who lived in Scandinavia around the time of Ludvig or later. While Ludvig is light-skinned and light-eyed, DNA from a female skull that will be reconstructed next year indicates that she was blonde but darker skinned, attesting to the genetic complexity of Scandinavia at that time. |
It is believed by some that the LGM lasted apx 110,000 years, being an extremely thick ice sheet over the Scandinavian mountains, but he North West shelf may have been relatively ice free and to the north of it. It is thought by some that perhaps one group of early European peoples lived to the north of this and to the north west in isolation for 100,000 apart from the the other Homo sapiens who sought retreat in more southerly climes. Outnumbering the newcomers, the pale colouring became dominant over the dark-skinned southern newcomers, who strangely, also had the trait for blue eyes. I am a bit sceptical about the theory of people living so far north throughout the Ice Age but the idea seems to have some traction in some quarters. The pale blue part of the map is where the Ice Sheet was focussed.
https://journals.plos.org/plosbiolog...l.pbio.2003703
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eastern_Hunter-Gatherer
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Western_Hunter-Gatherer
via International Skeptics Forum https://ift.tt/3m8w577
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