The Great London:
Africa

The remains of 16 pyramids with tombs underneath have been discovered in a cemetery near the ancient town of Gematon in Sudan.

They date back around 2,000 years, to a time when a kingdom called "Kush" flourished in Sudan. Pyramid building was popular among the Kushites. They built them until their kingdom collapsed in the fourth century AD.

Derek Welsby, a curator at the British Museum in London, and his team have been excavating at Gematon since 1998, uncovering the 16 pyramids, among many other finds, in that time. "So far, we've excavated six made out of stone and 10 made out of mud brick," Welsby said.

The largest pyramid found at Gematon was 10.6 meters (about 35 feet) long on each side and would have risen around 13 m (43 feet) off the ground.

Wealthy and powerful individuals built some of the pyramids, while people of more modest means built the others, Welsby said. "They're not just the upper-elite burials," he said.

In fact, not all the tombs in the cemetery have pyramids: Some are buried beneath simple rectangular structures called "mastaba," whereas others are topped with piles of rocks called "tumuli." Meanwhile, other tombs have no surviving burial markers at all.

In one tomb, archaeologists discovered an offering table made of tin-bronze. Carved into the tableis a scene showing a prince or priest offering incense and libations to the god Osiris, the ruler of the underworld. Behind Osiris is the goddess Isis, who is also shown pouring libations to Osiris.

Though Osiris and Isis originated in Egypt, they were also venerated in Kush as well as other parts of the ancient world. The offering table "is a royal object," Welsby said. The person buried with this table "must have been someone very senior in the royal family."

Most of the tombs had been robbed, to some degree, in ancient or modern times. The only tomb with a pyramid that survived intact held 100 faience beads (faience is a type of ceramic) and the remains of three infants. The fact that the infants were buried without gold treasures may have dissuaded thieves from robbing the tomb, Welsby said.

The Kushite kingdom controlled a vast amount of territory in Sudan between 800 B.C. and the fourth century A.D. There are a number of reasons why the Kushite kingdom collapsed, Welsby said.

One important reason is that the Kushite rulers lost several sources of revenue. A number of trade routes that had kept the Kushite rulers wealthy bypassed the Nile Valley, and instead went through areas that were not part of Kush. As a result, Kush lost out on the economic benefits, and the Kush rulers lost out on revenue opportunities. Additionally, as the economy of the Roman Empire deteriorated, trade between the Kushites and Romans declined, further draining the Kushite rulers of income.

As the Kushite leaders lost wealth, their ability to rule faded. Gematon was abandoned, and pyramid building throughout Sudan ceased.

Wind-blown sands, which had always been a problem for those living at Gematon, covered both the town and its nearby pyramids.

Author: Owen Jarus | Source: LiveScience [September 17, 2015]

When members of the BaYaka Pygmies living in the northern Republic of Congo get sick, they don't just go to the doctor for a prescription. Instead, they rely on their shared knowledge of medicinal plants to help them get well. Now, researchers reporting in the Cell Press >journal Current Biology on September 8 have examined shared uses of those plants to understand how Pygmies have passed their extensive plant knowledge along from one person to the next.

The findings show the important role of marital bonds in passing information to otherwise distant families. There were some surprises, too.

"I wasn't expecting that plant uses would be so diverse," says Gul Deniz Salali (@DenizSalali) of University College London. She hadn't expected to find that plants would play an important role in executing social norms, either. "But many Pygmies told me that they used particular plants to detect and punish cheaters."

Salali was interested in exploring how hunter-gatherers accumulated the vast repertoire of plant uses that have helped them to survive in tropical rainforests. To find out, she and her colleagues examined the reported co-occurrence of plant uses between pairs of BaYaka Pygmy individuals based on extensively conducted interviews. Their study included reported uses of 33 different plants by 219 individuals living in four camps.

"We found that long-term pair bonds between men and women allowed otherwise distant families to combine information on medicinal uses of plants," Salali says. "Living in multi-family camps, on the other hand, enabled Pygmies to exchange and accumulate plant knowledge related to cooperative foraging and social beliefs."

The most commonly reported medicinal uses of plants were for treating digestive and respiratory disorders. The BaYaka also use some plants for collecting caterpillars or honey and as a poison for killing monkeys or fish. Other plants were used to regulate social life, including matters concerning lying or sexual taboos.

As an example, Salali says, some Pygmies use the juice extracted from a particular type of tree bark to detect and punish cheaters. "If someone cheated their partner, camp members would squeeze the poisonous juice into the person's eyes which could affect his or her vision. If his or her vision was affected, then people thought the person was guilty. I found that the knowledge on this type of plant use was widely shared among the campmates."

Knowledge of medicinal plants is mainly shared between spouses and other relatives, they found. But plant uses associated with foraging and social norms were often shared more widely among campmates, regardless of relatedness, playing an important role in camp-wide activities that require cooperation.

The researchers also found that BaYaka mothers who used more plants for treating certain diseases had healthier children.

Salali says her next step is to compare plant knowledge and use in hunter-gatherers living in varying proximity to market towns in Congo. "I have lived in some Pygmy camps that were located in the forest, and some larger ones that were located in a logging town," she says. "I am interested in exploring the biological and cultural adaptations of groups in transition from a nomadic hunter-gatherer lifestyle to a more sedentary farming way of life."

Source: Cell Press [September 08, 2016]