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SCIENCESaturday 24 March 2018
Skulls show women moved across medieval Europe, not just men
By FRANK JORDANS "This is a sound study with
BERLIN (AP) — The new-
comers who arrived in the quite interesting results,"
little farming villages of
medieval Germany would said Jean-Jacques Hublin
have stood out: They had
dark hair and tawny skin, of the Max Planck Institute
spoke a different language
and had remarkably tall for Evolutionary Anthropol-
heads.
Now scientists who in- ogy in Leipzig, Germany.
vestigated the unusually
shaped skulls say they pro- He had no role in the re-
vide evidence that women
also migrated long dis- search.
tances across medieval
Europe, not just men. A ge- "Usually large-distance
netic analysis showed the
women traveled from what movements involve more
is now Romania, Bulgaria
and northern Greece at a males — explorers, soldiers,
time when the continent
was being reshaped by the political elite, etc. — and
collapse of the Roman Em-
pire. short range movements
In a study published Mon-
day by the Proceedings of are more common for fe-
the National Academy of
Sciences, researchers say males (spouses moving to
the women's elongated
heads — a result of bind- their husband's family),"
ing done after birth — sug-
gest they might have been Hublin said via email.
high-class individuals.
"These women looked ex- While it's unclear why the
tremely different to the lo-
cal women, very exotic if women — apparently with-
you will," said one of the re-
searchers, Joachim Burger, out men — traveled such a
a population geneticist at
the University of Mainz, Ger- long distance, the study's
authors speculate that
they may have represent-
Undated photo provided by the State collection for Anthropology and Palaeoanatomy Munich ed strategic alliances be-
shows strong, intermediate and non-deformed skulls, from left, from the Early Medieval sites Alten-
erding and Straubing in Bavaria, Germany. tween distant populations
across Europe.
many. location population. In- bandage a child's head, "They must have come on
With colleagues from Eu- stead, it looked "very cen- said Burger.
rope and the United States, tral or northern European While the practice is often purpose," said Burger. "It's
Burger compared the ge- — blond and fair-skinned, associated with the Huns
netic profile of almost 40 like modern-day Scandina- who swept into Europe not a single case, there are
human remains unearthed vians," Burger said. from the East during the 5th
from 5th and 6th century The exception was a century, the genetic make- quite a few of them."
burial sites in Bavaria, along group with deformed skulls. up of the women found in
the Isar and Danube rivers. Known from various cul- Bavaria showed little Asian Despite their foreign origins,
They expected to find the tures across the world, artifi- ancestry, suggesting that
telltale signs of centuries cially elongated skulls may either head binding had the women integrated into
of Roman presence in the have been considered a been adopted by people
area — soldiers from the form of beauty or denoted living in southeastern Eu- Bavarian society, accord-
Mediterranean leaving high status because of the rope or emerged there in-
their genetic mark on the time and effort required to dependently. ing to the researchers. They
wore the same clothes as
the locals and were bur-
ied with the same artifacts.
Burger said further research
is needed to see whether
the women intermarried
with the local population.q
NASA's Mars rover Curiosity
marks 2,000th day on red planet
This image provided by NASA, assembled from a series of January 2018 photos made by the Mars 24 hours, 39 minutes and 35 rival in 2012.
Curiosity rover, shows an uphill view of Mount Sharp, which Curiosity has been climbing. seconds. So 2,000 days on The rover Opportunity,
Mars equal 2,055 days here though, has Curiosity beat.
Associated Press on Earth. Last month, NASA's busy
Either way, it's a big mile- Opportunity surpassed its
By MARCIA DUNN — NASA's Mars rover Curi- That's 2,000 days by Martian stone this week for scientists 5,000 day on Mars.
eager for Curiosity to begin It's been exploring Mars
AP Aerospace Writer osity has now marked 2,000 standards. A Martian sol, or drilling again, this time into since 2004. NASA plans
potentially clay-rich rocks to send another robotic
CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. (AP) days on the red planet. solar day, is equivalent to on the slopes of Mount geologist to Mars in May.
Sharp. The six-wheeled rov- Named InSight, the lander
er has traveled 11.6 miles will stay in one place as a
(18.7 kilometers) since its ar- heat-measuring device
burrows deep into the Mar-
tian terrain.
Curiosity's flight controllers,
meanwhile, are testing a
new drilling method. The
rover's drill stopped work-
ing properly in 2016, and so
engineers devised another
way to bore into Martian
rocks and get the pulver-
ized rock samples into the
rover's lab instruments.q
