Two Ancient Teenage Girls

From Nature dot com:

For more than 12,000 years, the adolescent girl’s bones lay deep in a Mexican cave. Now analysis of her skeleton is revealing details of her harsh existence in the early Americas — which probably included pregnancy and childbirth before death at a young age.

The bones show that the girl, whom researchers nicknamed Naia, is likely to have travelled long distances on foot, but didn’t carry much on her journeys. The skeleton also reveals that Naia experienced severe and repeated nutritional stress that scarred her bones and teeth, according to results presented on 30 March at a meeting of the Society for American Archaeology in Vancouver, Canada.

For that work, divers examined Naia in the water-filled cavern in the Yucatán Peninsula where she was discovered in 2007. But intruders subsequently tampered with her remains. To prevent further meddling, the bones were gently carried out of the cave in 2014 and 2016 — which also gave scientists easier access to the specimens.

From Western Digs:

On a ranch near the Santa Maria River in northern Chihuahua, researchers have unearthed more than 18,000 artifacts, including thousands of stone flakes, cores, and hammers, along with 370 projectile points, and a dozen stone ovens.

But the most surprising find has been the grave of a teenage girl, who was interred among the rocks, alone and unadorned, some 3,200 years ago.

Her remains, researchers say, may help unlock the history of the people who brought agriculture to this arid region, and who were the first known farmers of corn in the Chihuahuan Desert.

Woman Power in Maya World

In Guatemala’s Laguna del Tigre National Park, the dense forest hides many treasures: endangered scarlet macaws flit among the treetops, while rare jaguars hunt on the forest floor. Only recently has the world learned about one of Laguna del Tigre’s greatest treasures, a 2,500-year-old city that once stood at the crossroads of the ancient Maya world. 

One of the most intriguing people who inhabited Waka’ was a woman of uncommon power and status. The discovery and excavation of her tomb in 2004 by team member Jose Ambrosio Diaz drew a lot of attention to the site.

On the floor of the queen’s tomb near her head, researchers found 44 square and rectangular jade plaques they believe were glued onto the wooden part of the ko’haw. The presence of this helmet in her torab has led the researchers to the conclusion that this queen held a position of power not typically afforded women of the time. 

Read More Here @ Lost Worlds

Ancient Cahokia ‘America’s first city’

Ancient remains at ‘America’s first city’ reveal women held high-power positions | Daily Mail Online

Almost 50 years ago, archaeologists excavating an ancient city just outside of St. Louis discovered a mass burial site with an unusual central feature – two bodies arranged atop a bed of beads, with several other bodies encircling them.

It was once thought that the elaborate ‘beaded burial’ structure at Cahokia was built as a monument to male power – but now, researchers suggest this is not the case.

A new analysis of the remains reveals that one of these central bodies is actually female, and researchers say the discovery of similar male-female pairs and the remains of a child indicates that women played an important role in society.

In the new study, published to the journal American Antiquity, researchers with the Illinois State Archaeological Survey at the University of Illinois and colleagues found that there are both male and female remains buried at the site of the Native American city, Cahokia. 

Cahokia is said to be North America's first city, and is the largest pre-Columbian settlement north of Mexico. 

Read More: 

• Daily Mail Online: America's First City
• CBS News: Ancient burial mound reveals role of women
• Ancient Origins: Unraveling the mystery of the beaded burial

Skeleton of woman with jewels in her teeth

Skeleton of 1,600-year-old woman with jewels in her TEETH found in Mexican burial ground | Daily Mail Online

Decorating teeth with jewels may be popular among some groups today, but it seems the idea was around in Mexico more than a thousand years ago.

Archaeologists have discovered the skeleton of an upper-class woman whose skull was intentionally deformed and her teeth encrusted with mineral stones.

The type of jewels found in her teeth show the woman was foreign to the region, and her skeleton was more deformed than any found before. 

The body was discovered near Mexico's ancient ruins of Teotihuacan, at a town called San Juan Evangelista.

The woman, between 35 and 40 years old when she died, was buried with 19 jars that served as offerings, the National Anthropology and History Institute said.

Her cranium was elongated by being compressed in a 'very extreme' manner - a technique commonly used in the southern part of Mesoamerica, not the central region where she was found, the institute said.

Continue reading article at Daily Mail Australia