Anthropology

A Triceratops at CU—A Piece of Colorado's Past

Anonymous — Mon, 04 Mar 2024 07:00:00 +0000

A Triceratops at CU—A Piece of Colorado's Past Anonymous (not verified) Mon, 03/04/2024 - 00:00

On Jan. 16, the day students returned from winter break, the CU Museum of Natural History unveiled a full-scale Triceratops skeleton in the lobby of the Sustainability, Energy and Environment Community (SEEC) building on ��ƷSM��ӰƬ’s East Campus. The dinosaur is a skeletal reconstruction cast from the bones of several Triceratops that once roamed the West. The free exhibit is open to the public.

The Smithsonian Museum delivered the disassembled skeleton via truck to Boulder in 2022. A crew put it back together off-site before bringing it to its current SEEC location.

“Everybody knows about Triceratops,” said Karen Chin, geological sciences professor and the museum’s paleontology curator. “But it’s not common in museums to see the whole animal. To see the scale of this dinosaur, and such a weird dinosaur, is very exciting.”

CU's Triceratops

The first complete dinosaur skeleton displayed by the CU Museum of Natural History

High-resolution cast made of plaster, fiberglass and foam

22 feet long and 9 feet tall

Cast from the bones of several partial Triceratops specimens found in the late 1800s

More about the Triceratops

12,000

pounds

Roamed the West from Colorado to Canada during the Cretaceous Period

Feet long

Had birdlike beaks to clip vegetation

Had teeth for grinding plants and trees

1887

The year a Colorado school teacher unearthed the first documented Triceratops fossils near Denver

Horns were most likely used for fighting among male Triceratops

100s

of teeth

The climate was warmer and more humid than today. Palms, flowering plants and ferns flourished.

66-68 million years ago

When the triceratops roamed the earth

Turtles, crocodiles and small nocturnal animals thrived in the environment.

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Photo by Casey A. Cass, illustrations by iStock

In January, the CU Museum of Natural History unveiled a full-scale Triceratops in the lobby of the SEEC building on the ��ƷSM��ӰƬ’s East Campus.

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The Mahaffy Cache

Anonymous — Mon, 04 Mar 2024 07:00:00 +0000

The Mahaffy Cache Anonymous (not verified) Mon, 03/04/2024 - 00:00

Christie Sounart

In 2008, landscapers dug two feet into the ground of Patrick Mahaffy’s backyard, located near Chautauqua Park in Boulder. They unearthed 83 stone tools from a packed hole the size of a shoebox. The cache was about 13,000 years old.

The tools — now called the “Mahaffy Cache” — were most likely left by nomadic hunter-gatherers known as Clovis, who lived in North America toward the end of the last ice age. The most distant tools likely originated in the Uinta Mountains in northeast Utah and traveled with groups of people to Boulder, said anthropology professor Douglas Bamforth, who Mahaffy originally invited to inspect the cache. Others were made from stone found between the Uintas and Boulder.

“One of the things that we have not emphasized as much as other aspects of the cache is how distinct it is,” Bamforth said. “It is like many Clovis-age caches in that the stone the tools are made from is from far away, but the diversity of different kinds of tools and artifacts in it is very unusual.”

The cache is one of two Clovis collections to undergo a blood protein analysis on the tools, which determined that hunters used them to butcher Ice Age horses, camels, sheep and bears. The tools include knives, blades and flint scraps.

“My favorite is the large biface made from Tiger chert that looks like a double-bitted ax,” said Bamforth. “I have never, ever seen another artifact like that.”

See the Mahaffy Cache in the CU Museum of Natural History.

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Photo by Glenn Asakawa

In 2008, landscapers dug into the ground of Patrick Mahaffy’s backyard in Boulder. They unearthed 83 stone tools that were about 13,000 years old.

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Bison, the Sustainer of Early Life

Anonymous — Mon, 06 Nov 2023 07:00:00 +0000

Bison, the Sustainer of Early Life Anonymous (not verified) Mon, 11/06/2023 - 00:00

Christie Sounart

In the summers of 1958 and 1960, ��ƷSM��ӰƬ’s first curator of

Facts about the bison:

This skull was found near Kit Carson.
The remains from about 200 bison were found in a dry arroyo bed.
These bison lived about 10,000 years ago.
More than a dozen well-preserved skulls were found at the site.
3D scanning helps reconstruct broken specimens.

anthropology, Joe Ben Wheat, excavated the Olsen-Chubbuck site, an area near Kit Carson, Colorado, that contained remains of bison dating to 8200 B.C.

The site gave insight into techniques Native hunters used to kill the approximately 200 bison more than 10,000 years ago, which would have provided them with about 60,000 pounds of meat.

“Wheat’s detailed analysis of the bison remains helped researchers under-stand the sophistication of ancient bison hunting tactics; reconstruct how and why they were processed, butchered and prepared; and demonstrated the importance of the bison and buffalo in the lives of the earliest people of Colorado and the Front Range,” said William Taylor, assistant professor and archaeology curator at the CU Museum of Natural History.

Now, with the help of a grant from the History Colorado’s State Historical Fund, Taylor’s team is working to preserve these bison artifacts for the

future, including making 3D scans of the fossils, such as the one pictured here. The team is also rethinking the ways they care for the animal remains in the museum collections, said Taylor, who also teaches and conducts research in archaeozoology, the study of ancient animal remains.

“We are working with tribal partners to develop culturally informed practices and policies that will restore respect, transparency and care of these resources to the communities they belong to,” he said.

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Photo © University of Colorado Museum of Natural History

In the summers of 1958 and 1960, ��ƷSM��ӰƬ’s first curator of anthropology, Joe Ben Wheat, excavated the Olsen-Chubbuck site, an area near Kit Carson, Colorado, that contained remains of bison dating to 8200 B.C.

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Campus News Briefs Summer 2023

Anonymous — Mon, 10 Jul 2023 06:00:00 +0000

Campus News Briefs Summer 2023 Anonymous (not verified) Mon, 07/10/2023 - 00:00

CU Promise Program Expansion

This spring, ��ƷSM��ӰƬ announced an expansion of its CU Promise program, which covers tuition and fees for Colorado resident students with significant financial need. The expansion doubles the number of students eligible for the program, increasing funding for incoming, transfer and continuing students. The move was made possible in part by the passage of Colorado Senate Bill 96, which increases the university's ability to support institutionally funded merit scholarships and need-based grants for resident students.

Everest Germs Can Last Decades

��ƷSM��ӰƬ-led research determined that human microbes found in the soil of Mount Everest — left by sneezes, coughs, nose-blowing and more — were resilient enough to survive in a dormant state for decades (or even centuries) in harsh conditions at high elevations. The study was the first to use next-generation gene sequencing technology to analyze soil from above 26,000 feet on Everest. The findings suggest ways to better understand environmental limitations to life on Earth and where life could exist on other planets or cold moons.

Eggshells Reveal New Elephant Bird Lineage

Eggshell remnants from eggs larger than footballs reveal information about a now-extinct new lineage of elephant bird that roamed northeastern Madagascar more than 1,200 years ago. This study, published in Nature Communications, marks the first time a new elephant bird lineage has been found without any skeletal remains. The research will help scientists learn more about birds that once lived — and why so many have gone extinct.

Heard Around Campus

“It feels to me like the very early days of widespread adoption of the internet in terms of how impactful this could, eventually, be for everyday life.”

— Casey Fiesler, associate professor in ��ƷSM��ӰƬ’s Department of Information Science, on the swift rise of artificial intelligence platforms like ChatGPT.

Summer at ��ƷSM��ӰƬ

83°

Average temperature (June–September)

Average inches of rain (June–September)

Summer sessions offered by ��ƷSM��ӰƬ

8,181

Students enrolled in summer classes in 2022

90%

Summer students who are undergraduates

62%

Summer students who are Arts and Sciences majors

36%

Classes that meet completely or partially in-person

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Photo credit: Eric Daft, National Geographic

Mount Everest, elephant birds and the CU Promise Program

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News Tidbits From ��ƷSM��ӰƬ Fall 2021

Anonymous — Fri, 05 Nov 2021 06:00:00 +0000

News Tidbits From ��ƷSM��ӰƬ Fall 2021 Anonymous (not verified) Fri, 11/05/2021 - 00:00

JILA physicist Jun Ye wins Breakthrough Prize

Theatre program receives record-breaking gift from alum Roe Green

Ancient Elephant Bone Tools

CU researchers surveyed the highest number of flanked bone tools made by pre-modern hominids ever discovered.

400,000

Years ago humans produced sophisticated tools from bones near Rome, Italy

13 ft.

Height of the straight-tusked elephants whose bones made the tools

Tools identified

Smoothing tool found that wouldn’t become common until 100,000 years later

1979–1991

Years the site, Castel di Guido, was excavated

2021

The team’s findings were published in the journal Plos One

Alum Wins Breakthrough Prize

JILA physicist Jun Ye (PhDPhys’97) was awarded the 2022 Breakthrough Prize in Fundamental Physics for his groundbreaking atomic clock research. The optical lattice clock he designed enables precision tests of the laws of nature. His clocks are so precise, they would not gain or lose a second in about 15 billion years. Ye has worked at JILA, a joint institute of the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) and ��ƷSM��ӰƬ, for more than two decades.

Theatre Program Receives Record-Breaking Gift

Roe Green (Comm, Thtr’70) gave $5 million to ��ƷSM��ӰƬ’s theatre program, the largest ever for the Department of Theatre & Dance. The gift will fund an acoustic upgrade for the University Theatre, establish endowed funds for student scholarships and fund events designed to further students’ careers. In recognition of the donation, CU will change the name of University Theatre to the Roe Green Theatre, which is expected to reopen after renovations in fall 2023.

Fish Fins Inspire New Designs

The long, thin bones in fish fins contain segmented hinges that enable the fins to be flexible and strong. ��ƷSM��ӰƬ mechanical engineering professor Francois Barthelat and his team are studying the little-researched mechanical benefits of this segmented structure, with the hope that similarly modeled designs could aid in better underwater propulsion systems, new robotic materials and aircraft design.

Heard Around Campus

When people ask you, ‘Why do you like horror?’…they phrase that really carefully. … What they really mean is, ‘Why are you such a weirdo?’”

— ��ƷSM��ӰƬ English professor of distinction Steven Graham Jones in a ��ƷSM��ӰƬ Today interview talking about his new horror novel My Heart is a Chainsaw, published by Simon & Schuster.

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Photos courtesy ��ƷSM��ӰƬ

Alum wins Breakthrough Prize in Fundamental Physics, ancient elephant bone tool discoveries, fish fin inspired designs and more.

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The Curious Cats of Madagascar

Anonymous — Mon, 01 Jun 2020 17:59:00 +0000

The Curious Cats of Madagascar Anonymous (not verified) Mon, 06/01/2020 - 11:59

In the midst of 30 years of primate research in Madagascar, ��ƷSM��ӰƬ anthropology professor Michelle Sauther and her colleagues had continual encounters with another animal: Cats.

She wondered how these cats, which have tabby-like coloration, could wind up in Madagascar, an island with no native felines.

“When I first started working in Madagascar, I noticed that these cats all seemed to look the same,” said Sauther, who has researched primates in the area for 30 years. “They were big, and they were always the same color.”

The results of the team’s DNA test on 30 of the animals — published in the journal Conservation Genetics — revealed they were

Felis catus, the same species as the beloved house pets we own today.

“The real worry is: What are these cats doing?” said Sauther, who is particularly concerned for the highly endangered lemurs unique to Madagascar. “Are they posing a threat to animals in Madagascar?

Maybe they’re just part of the local ecology.”

The team traced their origins to the Arabian Sea trade routes originating in places like modern-day Dubai, Oman and Kuwait that have existed for as long as 1,000 years. The cats most likely traveled with the people on the ships, Sauther said.

“Cats have essentially gone with us everywhere we’ve gone,” Sauther said. “We can see that journey of humans and their pets going back pretty deep in time.”

More must be known about the cats’ origins and biology to know their true threat to native species. But for now, the reason for the cats’ puzzling appearances are answered.

Said Sauther: “We now know that these mysterious cats are domestic cats with a really interesting backstory.”

Read more about this story at ��ƷSM��ӰƬ Today.

Photo courtesy Michelle Sauther

CU professor determines the path of non-native feline

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Then and Now: Hale Science Building

Anonymous — Sun, 05 Jan 2020 16:00:38 +0000

Then and Now: Hale Science Building Anonymous (not verified) Sun, 01/05/2020 - 09:00

Name: Hale Science Building

Year Built: 1893

Architect: Varian & Sterner; east and west wings built in 1910 by Gove & Walsh

Formerly Housed: Hale was the first science building on campus and at one point housed all the sciences, a small museum and the School of Law. The building was named after the second university president, Horace Hale.

Today: The Department of Anthropology

Once Upon a Time: When the building was being designed, the university’s regents wished to make Hale the most thoroughly equipped scientific building in the country. Rather than the typical construction with iron nails, brackets and hinges, all the metal in the building consisted of brass so that magnetic interference would not distort radio signals or transmission experiments.

Did You Know: The university’s first Natural History Museum was originally housed on the third floor of the Hale Building until it moved into its current home in the Henderson Building in 1937.

Have a Memory to Share? Email editor@colorado.edu.

Check out our other building posts here.

Information and historic photos courtesy of CU Heritage Center; Colored photos by Glenn Asakawa/University of Colorado and Julia Tortoisehugger

Hale was the first science building on campus and at one point housed all the sciences, a small museum and the School of Law. The building was named after the second university president, Horace Hale.

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Letters — Summer 2018

Anonymous — Fri, 01 Jun 2018 20:09:00 +0000

Letters — Summer 2018 Anonymous (not verified) Fri, 06/01/2018 - 14:09

CU’s Indiana Jones

I was very pleased to see the article on Earl Morris in the spring 2018 edition of the Coloradan [pp. 13-14]. He was a superb scholar and superb human being. I attended the same schools at the same time as did his daughters Sarah and Elizabeth. Their mother, Ann Axtell Morris, wrote another very interesting and well-received book called Digging in Yucatan. After she died, Earl married Lucille Bowman — the principal of Highland School, my first-grade teacher and life-long friend. They continued to live and entertain in his charming artifact-filled home in Boulder’s Geneva Park until his death from a stroke in 1956. Many thanks for the article!

Orin Dale Seright (Engl’55)
Spring Valley, CA

Earl Morris (Psych1914; MA1916) was a great American archaeologist who inspired a generation and more of Southwesterners to get out there to see the remains of prehistory, breathe it in, and then study, research and pass it on [“Our Own Indiana Jones,” pp. 13-14]. I was one of them, and especially lucky to be set in motion by an experience at CU with Earl Morris himself.

In 1952 I was an untraveled sophomore with a science scholarship, but not a clue as to what field to use it in. My boyfriend, however, had already visited Mesa Verde and Canyon de Chelly, and was excited to discover that their excavator, Morris, was teaching a rare class. He jumped to take it.

At a time when professors were generally more formal and detached, Morris invited his class to come to his home on The Hill for a look at his tools and collections (which later formed important holdings at the CU Museum of Natural History). I went, too, and listened and looked as the great man showed us ancient woven sandals, pots containing small desiccated corncobs and field notebooks. With evident enjoyment, he told stories and discussed meanings of each piece and answered our questions. In that two hours I became truly caught in the spell and the content of Southwestern archaeology!

I majored in anthropology, published on Mesa Verde archaeology, specialized in material culture and for 30 years curated American Indian collections at the Denver Museum of Nature & Science. My long-ago “boyfriend” became my husband, Laurance Herold (MGeog’56), a University of Denver professor who made discoveries about prehistoric people’s adaptations to environment.

Thank you — profoundly — Earl Morris!

Joyce Herold (Anth’55; MA’59)
Denver

Riot on The Hill

Love the Coloradan and its articles, but this one [“Riot of ’71,” p. 8] by Paul Danish needs a little more info. My boyfriend then/husband now was on The Hill the first night of the riots. The reason for the large crowds on the street to begin with was that bomb threats were called into The Sink and Tulagi’s, so they made everyone leave those busy hangouts. A lot of people milling on the street were not sure what was going on. It was a scary time for sure!

Linda Bowes (Ger’70)
Longmont, Colo.

Balloons

I received my alum mag this week and I was disappointed to read about the space minor balloon release experiment [“CU Around,” pp. 45-46]. I know it is not always easy to avoid generating trash and litter, but I wonder if (and hope that) another activity could be persued to engage students? That would be my challenge to the program, especially since part of the goal is to “find pathways to address the significant issues our planet faces.” Thanks for listening!

Dakota-Rae Westveer (Comm’13)
Boulder

CWA’s 70th

My wife, Alice Higman Reich, and I were glad to see that the Conference on World Affairs and its 70th anniversary were acknowledged [“Infographic,” pp. 23-24], but I was disappointed not to see at least a mention of Alice’s father, the conference founder and director for 45 years, Howard Higman. Among many others, he and long-time CWA participant Roger Ebert were the best of friends. Granted, Howard could be controversial at times, but, suffice it to say, if it had not been for him, there would be no CWA. This was his most important legacy to CU, the institution he loved, and I would hate to see it forgotten.

Lee Shannon (MEdu’72)
Denver

Getting Social

Spring issue comments spotted on Facebook.

Of past speakers at the annual Conference on World Affairs [“Infographic”], Sarah Russell wrote: “Eleanor Roosevelt?? Oh, wow, that ’55 audience was so lucky.”

The Coloradan’s story and photo with CU’s Earl Morris (Psych1914; MA1916) prompted Myron Rosenberg to write: “When I moved to Boulder with my parents in 1949, my father drove a 1941 Buick. It had running boards, upon which I would ride home from Lincoln Elementary School at lunch. Note the water can next to the driver. And those are bed rolls on the running board. We, too, slept in parks, or in fields along the way. On the front of our car dad hung a two-gallon canvas water bag. The wetted fabric, exposed to the air current, caused evaporative cooling, maybe my first recollection of physics...followed by a pickup tailgate hitting me in the mouth as it fell into my tiptoed face. (Dad told me I was minding someone else’s business...a trait I’ve only enhanced, I fear.) I remember we had a whole bunch of crap tied on to the roof. This cross-country trip, prior to the Pennsylvania Turnpike, was slow, two-lane and memorably scenic. This type of travel was fun, and a veritable thrill I have never forgotten.”

Regarding ��ƷSM��ӰƬ’s new marijuana research methods, described in “Research on the Road,” several readers weighed in. Mindy Grinold Bicknell (Rec’84) wrote: “Proud of my alma mater’s creative approach to much needed research.”

Photos courtesy the CWA

Thoughts and reactions to the Coloradan's Spring issue.

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Our Own Indiana Jones

Anonymous — Thu, 01 Mar 2018 21:08:49 +0000

Our Own Indiana Jones Anonymous (not verified) Thu, 03/01/2018 - 14:08

Eric Gershon

If Earl Morris (Psych1914; MA1916) wasn’t the inspiration for Indiana Jones, you could be forgiven for thinking so: He looked the part.

A preeminent archaeologist of the American Southwest’s Four Corners area and a seminal figure in the study of pre-European human societies in the broader region, Morris traveled to far-flung dusty digs in a truck called “Old Joe,” a fedora shadowing his face.

“There are very few places I’ve worked where Morris wasn’t there before me,” said Stephen Lekson, curator of archaeology at the University of Colorado Museum of Natural History and a professor of anthropology.

Understanding the early Southwest seems to have been destiny for Morris, who was born in New Mexico in 1889 and reported finding his first artifact, a dipper bowl, at age three.

During a four-decade-plus career, he excavated thousands of artifacts and many ruins, supported by museums, scientific organizations and universities, including CU, leading to a scrupulous portrait of the region before European settlement.

The museum today contains thousands of items Morris unearthed, among them flutes, sandals, baskets, bags, pottery and weapons, Lekson said.

Morris studied various native societies throughout the Southwest and Central America, and was especially influential in revealing the story of the ancestral Pueblo Indians, once called Anasazi. He’s also well known for his discovery and reconstruction of the Great Kiva, or great room, at what today is Aztec Ruins National Monument in New Mexico. (His dwelling there is now the visitor’s center).

Morris worked closely with his first wife, archaeologist Ann Axtell Morris, who in 1933 wrote a general interest book called Digging in the Southwest.

Since the 1981 debut of Steven Spielberg’s Raiders of the Lost Ark, the first Indiana Jones film, various sleuths have argued that Hiram Bingham III, who rediscovered Machu Picchu, seems to match the character most closely. But George Lucas, who wrote the film’s story, has said the character was based on a type — “a soldier of fortune in a leather jacket and that kind of hat” common in 1930s serial films — not on a specific person.

So, Earl Morris, who died in Boulder in 1956, wasn’t a pop culture archaeologist. He was a real one, and among the best.

If Earl Morris wasn’t the inspiration for Indiana Jones, you could be forgiven for thinking so: He looked the part.

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Smarter Than You Think

Anonymous — Thu, 01 Dec 2016 23:24:00 +0000

Smarter Than You Think Anonymous (not verified) Thu, 12/01/2016 - 16:24

Jim Scott

Neanderthals get a bad rap. CU archaeologist Paola Villa is helping set the record straight.

Last May, two stone circles found deep in a French cave set off a ripple of awe around the globe. Built with chunks of stalagmites snapped from the cave floor, the circles dated to 176,000 years ago — more than 100,000 years before modern humans pushed out of Africa.

The international news media called the discoveries “extraordinary,” “remarkable” and “shocking.” Researchers said there was no doubt the circle structures in Bruniquel cave — the largest of them roughly 20 feet across and both set nearly a quarter of a mile past the entrance in total darkness — had been created by Neanderthals, close human relatives long stereotyped as knuckle-dragging dimwits.

In the days before the findings became public in the journal Nature, ��ƷSM��ӰƬ archaeologist Paola Villa’s phone was ringing and her email dinging. An internationally known Neanderthal expert not involved in the study, she was in hot demand for an advance, independent take.

“A plausible explanation,” she told The Atlantic, “is that this was a meeting place for some type of ritual behavior.”

The interpretation reflected Villa’s own view, increasingly popular, that Neanderthals were far more nimble intellectually than they get credit for.

Neanderthals and modern humans are both thought to be descendants of Homo heidelbergensis, an extinct species that roamed Africa and Europe beginning some 600,000 years ago. A bit shorter and stockier than modern humans, with a large brow and no chin and likely built for survival in colder environments, Neanderthals overlapped with humans, then disappeared some 40,000 years ago. For students of human evolution, they remain a source of deep fascination.

The Neanderthal

Humans’ closest extinct relative
Emerged about 400,000 years ago
Went extinct about 40,000 years ago
Overlapped and interbred with humans
Contributed about 2.5 percent of modern humans’ DNA, on average
Controlled fire, made tools, hunted, buried their dead, collected and wore ornaments; possibly had spoken language

Sources: Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History; Paola Villa, CU Museum of Natural History

Villa, a curator adjunct at the University of Colorado Museum of Natural History, has been building a case for Neanderthals as an advanced species for a decade. And Bruniquel cave, where the stalagmite circles were found, offers compelling evidence of sophisticated Neanderthal activity, she said.

It contains plenty of evidence of ancient fire, for instance. More than 100 fragments of stalagmites and animal bones bear red and black streaks made by deliberately applied heat strong enough to break rocks. In 2011, Villa and Dutch colleague Wil Roebroeks of Leiden University published a paper detailing evidence of the continuous control of fire by Neanderthals dating back a breathtaking 400,000 years, about the time they first appeared on the landscape.

“These people must have had torches,” she said of the Bruniquel Neanderthals.

The were not brutes — and we are now seeing how adaptable and exceptional they were."

One of the most extraordinary ways Neanderthals used fire was to make pitch, a sticky black liquid they invented more than 200,000 years ago to set stone tools into wooden shafts. Since the only way to create pitch from trees was to burn bark peels at high temperatures (more than 700 degrees F) in the absence of air, Villa and Roebroeks surmised that Neanderthals dug small holes in the ground, inserted birch bark peels, lit them and capped them with stones.

“For those who say Neanderthals did not have elevated mental capacities,” she said, “I think this is good evidence to the contrary.”

Born in Rome, Villa became interested in science at an early age. After reading a book on archaeology when she was 16, she decided it was her calling. She graduated from the University of Rome with a doctorate in Etruscan archaeology.

“Since then,” she said, “archaeology has never disappointed me.”

After coming to the United States in the 1970s, she earned a second doctorate in archaeology at the University of California, Berkeley, specializing in the Lower Paleolithic period of southern France, roughly 1 million to 300,000 years ago. She settled in at ��ƷSM��ӰƬ in 1982.

As evidence piled up that Neanderthals were a creative, successful bunch, Villa and Roebroeks threw down the gauntlet in 2014, publishing a paper bluntly refuting the idea that Neanderthals were ape-like dunces inferior to humans.

The pair, who read and speak a combined six languages, reviewed more than 140 scientific papers citing evidence of various Neanderthal activities documented over the prior 15 years. Their study advanced the case for the Neanderthal as a complex, intentional creature.

“Both Wil and I believe that progress in science depends on precision,” she said. “There are many incorrect and imprecise ideas about Neanderthals in the scientific literature.”

Neanderthals were not limited to small ranges or valleys, for instance, as some claimed — their presence has been documented from Portugal to Siberia at more than 180 sites, suggesting adaptability.

As for their supposed lack of sophisticated hunting skills, they organized big game hunts in which they drove herds of steppe bison and horses over cliffs. They were successful in catching small, fast game-like birds and rabbits. And microfossils found in Neanderthal teeth and in ancient hearths indicate they downed wild peas, olives, date palms and pistachios.

We're all part Neanderthal."

They also used weapons, including wooden spears similar to modern javelins. Villa has shown that small, sharp spear points Neanderthals created from stone flakes and cores were similar to those produced about the same time by modern humans using different techniques.

Villa can also rattle off examples of symbolism in Neanderthal culture: They buried their dead; used red ochre pigment, likely for body painting; collected feathers and talons from birds as ornaments (four Neanderthal sites in France contained deliberately cut eagle claws); and seem to have used perforated animal teeth, seashells and ivory for pendants.

In all likelihood, Neanderthals had speech, too.

“If Neanderthals had symbols, that means they had social values,” Villa said. “I don’t think they could have organized communal hunts, or transmitted their culture from parents to children over many generations, without language.”

The reasons for Neanderthals’ demise remain murky. Some scholars have proposed that modern humans wiped them out, though Villa said there’s no evidence of mass violence. Anatomically modern humans and Neanderthals were neighbors and even lovers in some parts of Europe, at least for a few thousand years. About 2.5 percent of human DNA comes from Neanderthals.

Rather than genocide, said Villa, it’s more likely that inbreeding and assimilation between Neanderthals and modern humans did them in — an inherent mating incompatibility that led to miscarriages and perhaps infertility.

“Neanderthals lived for 350,000 years under various climate conditions, longer than modern humans have been around,” she said. “They were not brutes, and we are now seeing how adaptable and exceptional they were.”

Illustration by Tim O'Brien

Neanderthals get a bad rap. CU archaeologist Paola Villa is helping set the record straight.

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Anthropology

A Triceratops at CU—A Piece of Colorado's Past

CU's Triceratops

The first complete dinosaur skeleton displayed by the CU Museum of Natural History

High-resolution cast made of plaster, fiberglass and foam

22 feet long and 9 feet tall

Cast from the bones of several partial Triceratops specimens found in the late 1800s

More about the Triceratops

Related Articles

The Mahaffy Cache

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Bison, the Sustainer of Early Life

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Campus News Briefs Summer 2023

CU Promise Program Expansion

Everest Germs Can Last Decades

Eggshells Reveal New Elephant Bird Lineage

Heard Around Campus

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News Tidbits From ��ƷSM��ӰƬ Fall 2021

Alum Wins Breakthrough Prize

Theatre Program Receives Record-Breaking Gift

Fish Fins Inspire New Designs

Heard Around Campus

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The Curious Cats of Madagascar

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Then and Now: Hale Science Building

Related Articles

Letters — Summer 2018

CU’s Indiana Jones

Riot on The Hill

Balloons

CWA’s 70th

Getting Social

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Our Own Indiana Jones

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Smarter Than You Think

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Anthropology

A Triceratops at CU—A Piece of Colorado's Past

CU's Triceratops

The first complete dinosaur skeleton displayed by the CU Museum of Natural History

High-resolution cast made of plaster, fiberglass and foam

22 feet long and 9 feet tall

Cast from the bones of several partial Triceratops specimens found in the late 1800s

More about the Triceratops

Related Articles

The Mahaffy Cache

Related Articles

Bison, the Sustainer of Early Life

Related Articles

Campus News Briefs Summer 2023

CU Promise Program Expansion

Everest Germs Can Last Decades

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