Craterostigma plantagineum, able to recover quickly from dehydration.
If they are to survive in an environment subject to prolonged periods of dry
weather, plants need to be able to survive without water for long periods and
then spring back to life again when the rains come.
Ho they do this was the subject of a recent study by researchers from the
universities of Bonn and Düsseldorf, Germany, and Michigan, USA, and, not
surprisingly to anyone who understands biology, they found that the genes giving
the so-called resurrection plant, Craterostigma plantagineum, this
ability evolved out of genes also present in other plants.
In doing so, they exposed the Creationist claim that no new information can
arise in a species genome without magic, otherwise it violates a fundamental law
of physics, the Second Law of Thermodynamics [sic], forgetting for a moment that
even with magic, that Law would still be violated, assuming for the sake
of argument that it has anything to do with the amount of information in a
species genome. It doesn't, of course, but the frauds who feed their cult with
that sort of scientific gobbledygook know they love to think they sound all
sciency and knowledgeable, but, like parrots, won't understand the noises they
are making.
The resurrection plant Craterostigma plantagineum - in irrigated
condition (left), desiccated (center), and then "resurrected" (right).
So, what the scientists at Bonn found was that C. plantagineum not only
has the genes that other plants have so their seeds can be dehydrated but still
germinate, but that not only do they then not switch these genes off, but they
are present in multiple copies.
C. plantagineum is an octoploid species, meaning that unlike most plants
and all mammals which have just two copies of each gene,
C. plantagineum has eight. At some point during its evolution,
C. plantagineum doubled its genome, then doubled it again.
This gives the plant the ability to rapidly makes lots of the enzymes needed to
kick-start growth after dehydration.
But that's not all. The plants have multiple copies of other genes involved in
the kick-start process - the “early light inducible proteins” (ELIPs); in some
cases about 200 copies, in several small clusters in their genome. These are
rapidly activated by light and protect the cells from oxidative stress.
As the News release from Bonn University explains:
It's almost an article of faith in the Creationist Cult that flight can't have
evolved because the wing only works when fully formed, so must have been
intelligently designed in a single act of magic creation.
That's nonsense, of course, as gliding mammals and feathered dinosaurs have
shown.
Now a team of scientists, led by Dr. Charles Feigin, then of Princeton.
University, now of the University of Melbourne, have shown that the genes
controlling the development of mammalian powered flight and gliding are common
to all mammals, including marsupial gliders and humans, so must have been
present in an early common ancestor.
Because no known early mammals had flight, these genes must originally have had
some other function and have since been exapted for a different function.
The team's findings were
published yesterday, open access, in Science Advances.
The finding is the subject of an article in The Conversation by lead
author, Charles Feigin, Postdoctoral Fellow in Genomics and Evolution, The
University of Melbourne. His article is reprinted here under a Creative Commons
licence, reformatted for stylistic consistency. The original can be read
here.
Marsupials and other mammals separately evolved flight many times, and we
are finally learning how
Shoot for the moon. Even if you miss, you’ll land on the next tree. Many groups of mammals seem
to have taken this evolutionary advice to heart. According to our
newly published paper in Science Advances, unrelated animals may even have used the same blueprints for building their
“wings”.
These evolutionary experiments happened in animals scattered all across the
mammalian family tree – including flying squirrels, marsupial possums and the
colugo (cousin of the primates). But they all have something in common. It’s a
special skin structure between their limbs called a patagium, or flight
membrane.
The fact these similar structures have arisen so many times (a process called
convergent evolution)
hints that the genetic underpinnings of patagia might predate flight. Indeed,
they could be shared by all mammals, even those living on the ground.
If this is true, studying patagia can help us to better understand the
incredible adaptability of mammals. We might also discover previously unknown
aspects of human genetics.
Sugar gliders are one of several mammals that have independently evolved
the ability to fly through the air.
apiguide/Shutterstock
A deceptively simple membrane
Despite being seemingly simple skin structures, patagia contain several
tissues, including hair, a rich array of
touch-sensitive neurons,
connective tissue and even thin sheets of muscle. But in the earliest stages of formation, these membranes are dominated by
the two main layers of the skin: the inner dermis and outer epidermis.
The patagium in sugar gliders (red arrow) forms after birth when the
newborn, or joey, is in its marsupial mother’s pouch.
Charles Feigin, Author provided
At first, they hardly differ from neighbouring skin. But at some point, the
skin on the animal’s sides starts to rapidly change, or differentiate. The
dermis undergoes a process called condensation, where cells bunch up and the
tissue becomes very dense. Meanwhile, the epidermis thickens in a process
called hyperplasia.
In some mammals, this differentiation happens when they are still an embryo in
the uterus. Incredibly though, in our main model species – the marsupial sugar
glider (Petaurus breviceps) – this process begins after birth, while they are in the mother’s pouch.
This provides us with an incredible window into patagium formation.
Starting with the sugar glider, we examined the behaviours of thousands of
genes active during the early development of the patagium, to try and div out
how this chain of events is kicked off.
We discovered that levels of a gene called Wnt5a are strongly correlated with
the onset of those early skin changes – condensation and hyperplasia. Through
a series of experiments involving cultured skin tissues and genetically
engineered laboratory mice, we showed that adding extra Wnt5a was all it took
to drive both of these early hallmarks of patagium formation.
Interestingly, when we extended our work to bats, we found extremely similar
patterns of Wnt5a activity in their developing lateral patagia to that in
sugar gliders. This was surprising, since bats (placental mammals) last shared
a common ancestor with the marsupial sugar glider around 160 million years
ago.
Perhaps even more remarkably, we found a nearly identical pattern in the outer
ear (or pinna) of lab mice. The pinna is a nearly universal trait among
mammals, including innumerable species with no flying ancestry.
Seba’s short-tailed bat has a lateral patagium (connected to the flank of
the body) activated by Wnt5a.
Together, these results suggest something profound. Wnt5a’s role in ushering
in the skin changes needed for a patagium likely evolved long before the first
mammal ever took to the air.
Originally, the gene had nothing to do with flight, instead contributing to
the development of seemingly unrelated traits. But because of shared ancestry,
most living mammals today inherited this Wnt5a-driven program. When species
like gliders and bats started on their separate journeys into the air, they
did so with a common “molecular toolkit”.
Not only that, but this same toolkit is likely present in humans and working
in ways we don’t fully understand yet.
There are definite limits to our recent work. First, we haven’t made a flying
mouse. This may sound like a joke, but demonstrates we still don’t fully
understand how a region of dense, thick skin becomes a thin and wide flight
membrane. Many more genes with unknown roles are bound to be involved.
Second, while we’ve shown a cause-and-effect relationship between Wnt5a and
patagium skin differentiation, we don’t know precisely how Wnt5a does it.
Moving forward, we hope to fill in these gaps by broadening the horizons of
our cross-species comparisons and by conducting more in-depth molecular
studies on patagium formation in sugar gliders.
For now though, our study presents an exciting new view of flight in mammals.
We may not be the strongest fliers, but trying is in our DNA.
Lateral flight membranes, or patagia, have evolved repeatedly in diverse mammalian lineages. While little is known about patagium development, its recurrent evolution may suggest a shared molecular basis. By combining transcriptomics, developmental experiments, and mouse transgenics, we demonstrate that lateral Wnt5a expression in the marsupial sugar glider (Petaurus breviceps) promotes the differentiation of its patagium primordium. We further show that this function of Wnt5a reprises ancestral roles in skin morphogenesis predating mammalian flight and has been convergently used during patagium evolution in eutherian bats. Moreover, we find that many genes involved in limb development have been redeployed during patagium outgrowth in both the sugar glider and bat. Together, our findings reveal that deeply conserved genetic toolkits contribute to the evolutionary transition to flight in mammals.
And another unintelligently designed argument for intelligent design creationism
lies in ruins, having failed to fly, leaving Creationists to explain why all
mammals. including humans, have the genes that are used to develop the mechanism
for flight in several different orders of mammals.
There has always been little doubt in scientific circles that the SARS-CoV-2 virus that causes COVID-19 is a zoonotic virus that evolved in another mammal and then transferred to humans.
The problem this causes for Creationism is that their dogma insists that evolution doesn't happen, and everything is created by their supposedly omniscient, omnipotent god, making this god look like a pestilential malevolence.
Some have tried to rationalise this belief by invoking a process, (or a substance) called 'sin' which also has the powers of sentient creation which their supposedly omnipotent god is powerless to control, apparently. This usually leaves the apologist for creationism floundering to explain how exactly this 'sin' thing creates living organisms which their dogma says can only be intelligently designed.
So, the brighter ones have been hoping to get away with the claim that the virus was invented by Chinese scientists in a laboratory in Wuhan. The problem with that notion is that it clashes with their assertion that science can't create life.
Ah well! You can't have everything!
And that claim, echoing former president Donald Trump's panicky response, calling it a 'Chinese Virus', as though viruses have nationality, and calling them names makes them go away, was given some credence recently when a review by the US Department of Energy [sic] concluded 'with low confidence' (in other words, with a high probability of being wrong, but we'll say it anyway!) that the virus did leak out of the Wuhan laboratory.
Being fully signed-up members of the Trumpanzee cult, most Creationists would love their idol, the serial adulterer, liar and crook, Donald Trump, America's worst ever president, to have been right.
But that 'conclusion' has now been debunked and we are back to the most probable explanation being zoonosis in a Chinese wet market where wild animals are sold for human consumption.
That is the conclusion of Dominic Dwyer, Director of Public Health Pathology, New South Wales Health Pathology, Westmead Hospital and University of Sydney, Australia, who was involved in the initial investigation of the origins of the virus early in the pandemic, writing in The Conversation.
His article is reprinted here under a Creative Commons Licence, reformatted for stylistic consistency. The original me be read here.
China’s only now revealed crucial COVID‑19 origins data. Earlier disclosure may have saved us 3 years of political argy‑bargy
First the US Department of Energy’s review gave more emphasis to the laboratory leak hypothesis than previously, although the confidence for this conclusion was low.
Second, and more importantly, is the release and analysis this week of viral and animal genetic material collected from the Huanan wet market in Wuhan, the place forever associated with the beginning of the pandemic.
It’s a subject close to me. I was the Australian representative on the international World Health Organization (WHO) investigation into the origins of SARS-CoV-2. I went to Wuhan on a fact-finding mission in early 2021. I visited the now-closed market.
Now we have stronger evidence that places raccoon dogs at the market as a possible animal reservoir of SARS-CoV-2, potentially infecting humans.
The debate about the origin of the COVID-19 virus has been fierce. A report released today gives the strongest evidence so far supporting the animal origin, pointing to a specific animal - a racoon dog and even a specific location in the live animal market. @normanswan#abc730pic.twitter.com/oiXII4SWTK
If we’d had this evidence three years ago, we need to ask ourselves how different recent history would have been. We would have reduced the enormous energy, media frenzy and political argy-bargy about less likely hypotheses of the pandemic’s origins. We might have better focused our research attention.
Samples were taken from various places in the market, in January 2020, within weeks of the early COVID-19 cases in Wuhan. SARS-CoV-2 RNA and human DNA were identified in these environmental samples, although no animal swabs were positive for the virus.
This was presented to the WHO team investigating the origins of the pandemic in January 2021, of which I was part.
The work was published as a preprint (posted online, before being independently verified) in February 2022.
The underlying “metagenomic” data to support the conclusions in the preprint – that SARS-CoV-2 and human (but not animal) sequences were present – needed to be provided to allow further analyses. This is something that is generally required by journals and regarded as appropriate in the spirit of scientific openness and collaboration.
However, it wasn’t until early March 2023 that the international community had access to the data.
That’s when there was a “drop” of these environmental metagenomic sequences into the GISAID database, the international open access repository of viral sequences.
This allowed an independent team of international experts to analyse them. In a startling revelation, they identified large amounts of raccoon dog and other animal DNA in conjunction with SARS-CoV-2. Raccoon dogs can be readily infected with SARS-CoV-2 and can transmit it. The international team published their observations as a preprint earlier this week.
Raccoon dogs can be readily infected with SARS-CoV-2 and can transmit it.
Of note was the physical co-location of these virus and animal sequences in the corner of what is a very large market, the corner associated with early human cases. It is now known (but initially rejected by Chinese authorities) that wild and farmed animals were sold in this area of the market.
After the sequences were analysed by the international team, the Chinese scientists who had performed the market testing were contacted for comment and discussion – especially around the important observation that mixed in among the SARS-CoV-2 sequences were a large proportion of raccoon dog and other animal DNA.
The sequences were then withdrawn from the GISAID database within a few hours of the study authors being approached. This is perhaps unusual for an open database such as GISAID, and clarity could be sought why this occurred.
This latest work does not prove raccoon dogs were definitely the source of SARS-CoV-2. Presumably, they are likely to have been an intermediate host between bats and humans. Bats harbour many coronaviruses, including ones related to SARS-CoV-2.
However, the data fits the narrative of the animal/human connections of SARS-CoV-2.
This, along with other examination of animal links to SARS-CoV-2, should be taken in the context of the lack of robust data to support the other SARS-CoV-2 origins hypotheses, such as a laboratory leak, contaminated frozen food, and acquisition outside China. Bit by bit, the evidence supports animal origins of the outbreak, centred on the Huanan market in Wuhan.
The length of time taken for this early work to surface and the difficulty in accessing the raw data are unfortunate, points made recently by the WHO.
Sympathetically, one might say, the wrong analysis of the original data collected in early 2020 was undertaken and the researchers missed the animal links.
Cynically, (and without evidence) one might say that the significance of the data was recognised, but not made readily available. This is a question for the Chinese researchers at the Chinese Center for Disease Control to answer.
The data from the Chinese Center for Disease Control and Prevention is no longer available on the GISAID database where it was found by scientists. https://t.co/fXT6zt02dm
If this had been identified in early 2020 then further studies to understand the viral origins in animals could have been undertaken.
Three years on, it is very difficult to do such studies, tracking backwards from the now closed market to the animal sources and the people who handled these animals.
Clearer answers would have taken some of the heat out of the debate around the possible viral origins. Of course, all hypotheses should remain on the table, but some of these could have been much better explored with earlier data.
Would it have changed the course of the pandemic? Probably not. The virus had already spread worldwide and adapted very well to human-to-human transmission by the time this work was available. However, it would have driven research in better directions and improved future pandemic planning.
Lessons for the future are obvious. Open disclosure of sequence data is the best way to undertake scientific investigation, especially for something of such international significance.
Making data unavailable, or not reaching out for assistance in complicated analyses, only slows the process.
The resulting political to and fro by all countries, particularly the US and China, has meant that suspicion has deepened, and progress slowed even further.
Although WHO has been criticised for errors in how it managed the pandemic, and in collating data to understand the origins and progress future research, it remains the best international agency to foster open sharing of data.
Scientists, for the most part, want to do the right thing and find the answers to important questions. Facilitating this is crucial.
Published by The Conversation. Open access. (CC BY 4.0)
That just leaves Creationists with two possibilities: either their putative designer god malevolently designed the SARS-CoV-2 virus in the full, omniscient knowledge of what it would do, or the virus is a zoonotic species which probably evolved out of a bat virus, maybe via another mammal, albeit an evolutionary process facilitated unwittingly by the Chinese cultural practice of consuming a diverse range of wild mammals.
About 8000 years ago, i.e. around about the time Creationists believe the Universe was created, humans had already diversified in Eurasia into several major cultural groups, each with its distinct genome, having adapted to the local environment including local pathogens like viruses and bacteria.
Evidence from archaeology shows that farmers, complete with their domesticated livestock, were migrating into Western Europe and mixing with the indigenous hunter-gatherers.
Until now, it had been assumed that close proximity to their domestic livestock would have meant that the incoming farmers would have a more developed immune system, having evolved immunity to the pathogens carried by their livestock. The genes associated with this immune system would be expected to be favoured by natural selection so should account for the largest part of the genes of modern Europeans.
However, that view fails to take into account that the farmers were migrating into a new environment with new environmental selectors.
So, the evidence produced by researchers at the Francis Crick Institute's Ancient Genomics Laboratory have shown that in fact, modern Europeans have inherited only about half their immunity genes from the incoming farmers and the other half from the hunter-gatherers, showing that the hunter-gatherers' genes for immunity were selected equally by natural selection. This evidence comes from comparing the genomes of 677 individuals spanning Mesolithic and Neolithic Europe.br>
The conclusion then is that hunter-gatherers had evolved immunity genes in response to local conditions and that those local conditions then influenced which of their genes the incoming farmers retained and which indigenous genes were retained. In fact, it was increased diversity which was favoured by natural selection, not specific immunity to specific pathogens.
By contrast, the genes for (lack of) skin pigmentation that the farmers brought with them from Central Asia were retained differentially to give modern Europeans their pale skin, probably as an adaptation to lower vitamin D in the diet, since vitamin D is produced by the action of sunlight on skin.
A team of researchers at Virginia Tech has produced evidence of something that would, if they understood its implications, spread despondency throughout the Creationist cults. They have shown that there was a sharp increase by about 50% in the level of biologically available nitrogen in Earth's oceans, 800 million years ago, coincident with the rise of the eukaryotes.
So strongly is this increase associated with the rise of the eukaryotes that the clear implication is that this is what either triggered or at least facilitated this major evolutionary step and that it was the limited availability of biological nitrogen that delayed this change.
The eukaryotes went on to evolve into the multicellular organisms which are the dominant life forms on Earth today.
So, not only is this evidence that there were simple living organisms on Earth 799,990,000 years before Creationists believe the Universe was created, but that the evolution of modern life forms was dependent on environmental change.
The thing about an omniscience, omnipotent designer is that everything it designs should be perfect for the purpose for which it was designed. That means it should be maximally efficient, minimally complex and incapable of improvement.
This wouldn’t be true of something 'designed' by a natural, utilitarian process operating without a plan, of course, because even a suboptimal solution could be more successful than its predecessor, and that's the only test applied by the natural selection process.
The upshot is that, if the 'design' can be improved in any way, it can't have been designed by an omniscient, omnipotent designer.
So, if they understand it and can't dismiss it, Creationists should be acutely embarrassed by news that an international team of physicists, chemists and biologists, led by the University of Cambridge, UK, are close to doing just that with one of the fundamental processes necessary for almost all life on Earth - photosynthesis.
A whitespotted char caught by angling during the survey
In a fascinating experiment in Japan, two scientists from Hokkaido University
have shown a complex evolutionary relationship between parasitism and the
likelihood of a fish being caught by an angler. And, as always with scientific
evidence, it's not good news for Creationists.
No doubt though, they'll resort to their fall-back strategy of using their own
definition of 'evolution' (one 'kind' turning into another, unrelated 'kind', in
a single event), rather than the one science uses (change in allele frequency in
a population over time).
But this is no so much about the sheer malevolence of any designer that could
come up with parasites like this parasitic species of copepod which infects the
mouth and gills of fish. Instead, it is about how parasitism, prey and predators
are in a complex, dynamic evolutionary relationship which can only be understood
and explained by reference to the basics of the Theory of Evolution by Natural
Selection.
Fishing has been practiced by humans for about 40,000 years, usually for food
but latterly for sport. The functional difference being that fish caught for
food are removed from the population as form of predation, whereas fish caught
for sport are quickly released back into the wild.
The scientists conducted an elegant experiment consisting of two surveys:
Figure 1. A new orchid species Spiranthes hachijoensis with
beautiful glasswork-like flowers found in a private garden.
(A) Inflorescence. (B) Close up of inflorescence. (C) Flower. Scale bars: 10
mm (A & B) and 5 mm (C) in the Tokyo Prefecture..
Photographs: Masayuki Ishibashi (A & C) and Kenji Suetsugu (B).
Science is always open to new information but it's not often to be found hiding
in plain sight, like this newly-discovered species of orchid. It was discovered
by scientists from Kobe University, Japan, growing in private gardens, parks and
even lawns and on balconies, on the Japanese island of Hachijo in the Tokyo
Prefecture. It has since been named Spiranthes hachijoensis.
The search suggests there may be other undiscovered, related species growing in
familiar places but overlooked because of the way they have speciates from a
common ancestor. In the case of S. hachijoensis speciation probably
occurred due to reproductive isolation because it flowers a month earlier than
the related taxon it grows alongside. As the Kobe University news release
explains, the genus Spiranthes on the Japanese mainland was once
considered to be a single species, S. australis, but closer examination
has revealed that there are several distinct species within the genus and there
may well be more:
P.T. Barnum, the 'Greatest Showman' and half-owner of Barnum & Bailey Circus reputedly said, "There's a sucker born every minute".
Sometimes though, especially reading the comments of Creationists and religious fundamentalist in the social media, that would seem to be on the conservative side, with tens, or even hundreds, of millions apparently believing in magic and evil demons; that evidence is forged; that scientists are all evil, mad and part of a vast conspiracy; that reality is an illusion, but not to them, and that inerrant knowledge just pops itself into their brain if they have an open mind, so the best expertise comes from pristine ignorance. I've even had a Creationist tell me that Jesus tells him what to believe, curiously, it always coincides with what Ken Ham tells him to believe.
So what is the psychology behind these wackadoodle fantasy beliefs, other than the acute manifestations of clinical psychosis?
Long before a clan of camel herders and traders along the western edge of Arabia were forced by tribal loyalty to follow a new, charismatic 'Prophet of Allah", and long before a tribe of Canaanite hill farmers in the hill of southern Syria adopted the god Yahweh from the local pantheon as their own, and created a mythical history to give them a unique identity and justify their land-theft, genocide and territorial expansion, scattered bands of early pastoralists had banded together to build hundreds of massive monuments for religious rituals in the Al-Nafūd Desert in the north of Arabia, close to the Western end of the 'fertile crescent'.
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Detail of north-west (preserved) interlocking cells of associated feature IDIHA-F-0011149.
The main (central) chamber of mustatil IDIHA-F-0011081 with three up-right stones (A-C). Flat stones in centre of image acted as support for primary up-right stone in the rear. The blocked doorway is visible in the left of the photo.
Horns found on a collapsed “bench” in Phase 4B. Left to right, large cattle horns/sheaths (#0043) and (#0033), goat horn sheath (#0047), goat (#0041), and cattle horn (#0040).
These structures were only discovered in 2016 by satellite imagery. Now known by the local people as Mustatil ('rectangles")., they were constructed some 7000 years ago, before the Pyramids of Egypt or Stonehenge in southern England and are probably the oldest man-made stone structures on Earth. The organisation and manpower required to build these structures suggests some unifying idea across a large area to give a commonality of purpose to scattered tribes, pointing to a single religion with maybe an accepted central religious authority associated with the site in northern Arabia where these structures were created.
They are also associated with elaborate rock-carvings of strange geometric shapes and patters, which were probably originally painted.
As with the Pyramids and the Bronze Age structures of Stonehenge and Silbury Hill, in Wiltshire, UK, they suggest an organised state with an economy strong enough to provide a surplus wealth and food production sufficient to finance these constructions and feed the workers.
And yet, because they left no records, like the religion that inspired the building of Knossos in Minoan Create, we have no idea what that religion was or why it was able to inspire the creation of these structures for the rituals that were performed there, and why the people living there considered it necessary and worth all the effort!
Clearly, the god(s) (and it was probably a pantheon of gods, like the neighbouring Mesopotamians had later) had massive imaginary powers, giving the priesthood enormous powers of command and control, and elaborate rituals were considered necessary to appease or thank them. Yet we have no idea what those imaginary powers were, and whatever they were believed to have done, or not done in response to the rituals continued to be done or not done when the rituals ceased, their last believer died, and the monuments crumbled.
The First Law of Theodynamics:
Gods can be created out of nothing and will disappear without trace.
This is a phenomenon that has been repeated time and again throughout human history as religions have come and gone together with their imaginary gods. No one now mourns at the graveside of these old dead gods.
No-one believes in Mars, Ra, Wodan, Thor or Saturn, and no-one says the rituals that were once essential to keep the seasons coming and going, the crops growing or the Nile flooding, and yet the seasons continue to come and go, the crops grow and the Nile still floods at the right time.
The prayers and rituals that once influenced these old gods are no longer needed, and the natural occurrences that were once 'obviously' caused or created by them are now just as 'obviously' caused or created by different gods in response to different prayers and rituals. And they will still occur when the current batch of gods have been consigned to the graveyard of the gods along with all the others.
What started me thinking in that line, was a recent article concerning the Arabian monuments in The Conversation by Melissa Kennedy, and
Hugh Thomas, Lecturers in Archaeology at the University of Sydney. Their article is reprinted here under a Creative Commons licence, reformatted for stylistic consistency. The original can be read here
Enigmatic ruins across Arabia hosted ancient ritual sacrifices
A group of three mustatil and later Bronze Age funerary pendants on a rocky outcrop, southeast of AlUla County.
Source: AAKSA / The Royal Commission for AlUla, Author provided
Over the past five years, archaeologists have identified more than 1,600 monumental stone structures dotted across a swathe of Saudi Arabia larger than Italy. The purpose of these ancient stone buildings, dating back more than 7,000 years, has been a puzzle for researchers.
Our excavations and surveys reveal these were ritual structures, constructed by ancient herders and hunters who gathered to sacrifice animals to an unknown deity – perhaps in response to ancient climate change. The study is published in PLOS ONE today.
Desert discoveries
In the 1970s, the first archaeological surveys of northwest Saudi Arabia identified an ancient and mysterious rectangular structure. The sandstone walls of the structure were 95m long, and although it was determined to be unique, no further study of this unusual site was undertaken.
Over the following decades, airline passengers would see similar large “rectangles” dotted across the country. However, it was not until 2018 that one was excavated.
The main architectural features of a mustatil.
Credit: AAKSA / The Royal Commission for AlUla, Author provided
These structures are now known as mustatils (Arabic for rectangle). We have been studying them for the past five years as part of a larger archaeological study sponsored by the Saudi Royal Commission for AlUla.
The smallest mustatils are around 20m long, while the largest are over 600m. Previous work by our team determined that all mustatils follow a similar architectural plan. Two thick ends were connected by between two to five long walls, creating up to four courtyards.
Access to the mustatil was through a narrow entrance in the base. There would then have been a long walk, perhaps in the form of a procession, to the “head”, where the main ritual activity took place.
Previous studies determined that the mustatils are at least 7,000 years old, dating to the end of the Neolithic period.
Cattle remains
In 2019–2020, we undertook excavations at a mustatil site called IDIHA-0008222. The structure, made from unworked sandstone, measures 140m in length and 20m in width.
Excavations in the head of the mustatil revealed a semi-subterranean chamber. Within this chamber were three large, vertical stones. We have interpreted these as “betyls”, or sacred standing stones which represented unknown ancient deities.
The excavated mustatil at IDIHA-0008222.
Credit: AAKSA / The Royal Commission for AlUla, Author provided
Surrounding these stones were well-preserved cattle, goat, and gazelle horns. The horns are so well preserved that much of what we find is the horn sheath, made of keratin – the same substance as hair and nails. We found only the upper cranial elements of these animals: the teeth, skulls, and horns. This suggests a clear and specific choice of offerings.
Further analysis suggests the bulk of these remains belonged to male animals and the cattle were aged between 2 and 12 years. Their slaughter would have formed a significant proportion of a community’s wealth, indicating these were high-value offerings.
Human remains
Current evidence suggests that the mustatils were in use between 5300 and 4900 BCE, a time when Arabia was green and humid. However, within a few generations, the ancient inhabitants of Saudi Arabia began to reuse these structures, this time to bury human body parts.
At IDIHA-0008222, a small structure had been built next to the mustatil. Inside were a partial foot, five vertebrae and several long bones.
Their placement suggests soft tissue was still present when they were buried. Forensic anthropologists were able to determine that the remains likely belonged to an individual aged between 30 and 40 years.
Our work at other mustatils has revealed similar deposits of human remains. Were these remains buried in attempt to claim ownership of the structure or some form of later ritual? These questions remain to be answered.
Pointing to water
The mustatils are changing how we view the Neolithic period not just in Arabia but across the Middle East. The sheer size of these structures and the amount of work involved in their construction suggests that multiple communities came together to create them, most probably as a form of group bonding.
Moreover, their widespread distribution across Saudi Arabia suggests the existence of a shared religious belief, one held over a vast and un-paralleled geographic distance. Currently, fewer than ten mustatils have been excavated, so our understanding of these structures is still in its infancy.
Mustatil locations in Saudi Arabia, with the location of site IDIHA-0008222 marked in red.
Credit: Esri, Maxar, Earthstar Geographics, the GIS User Community, USGS, NOAA / AAKSA / The Royal Commission for AlUla, Author provided
The key question to be answered is “why were they built?” A survey trip by our team may have, in part, solved this mystery.
While recording these structures after rain, we noted that almost all mustatils pointed towards areas that held water. Perhaps the mustatils were constructed and the animals offered to the god or gods to ensure the continuation of the rains and the fertility of the land.
The possibility remains that the mustatils were built in response to a changing climate, as the region became increasingly arid like it is today.
Two mustatil in Khaybar County pointing to standing water after rain.
Credit: AAKSA / The Royal Commission for AlUla, Author provided
Our study of the mustatils is ongoing. Our new project at the University of Sydney is focused on understanding why these monumental structures and others were built and what brought about their end.
We hope future excavations and analyses will reveal further insights into the life and death of the mustatils and the people who built them.
Melissa Kennedy, Lecturer in Archaeology, University of Sydney and Hugh Thomas, Lecturer in Archaeology, University of Sydney
Since the 1970s, monumental stone structures now called mustatil have been documented across Saudi Arabia. However, it was not until 2017 that the first intensive and systematic study of this structure type was undertaken, although this study could not determine the precise function of these features. Recent excavations in AlUla have now determined that these structures fulfilled a ritual purpose, with specifically selected elements of both wild and domestic taxa deposited around a betyl. This paper outlines the results of the University of Western Australia’s work at site IDIHA-0008222, a 140 m long mustatil (IDIHA-F-0011081), located 55 km east of AlUla. Work at this site sheds new and important light on the cult, herding and ‘pilgrimage’ in the Late Neolithic of north-west Arabia, with the site revealing one of the earliest chronometrically dated betyls in the Arabian Peninsula and some of the earliest evidence for domestic cattle in northern Arabia.
Where is the graveyard of dead gods? What lingering mourner waters their mounds? There was a day when Jupiter was the king of the gods, and any man who doubted his puissance was ipso facto a barbarian and an ignoramus. But where in all the world is there a man who worships Jupiter today? And what of Huitzilopochtli? In one year—and it is no more than five hundred years ago—fifty thousand youths and maidens were slain in sacrifice to him. Today, if he is remembered at all, it is only by some vagrant savage in the depths of the Mexican forest. Huitzilopochtli, like many other gods, had no human father; his mother was a virtuous widow; he was born of an apparently innocent flirtation that she carried on with the sun. When he frowned, his father, the sun, stood still. When he roared with rage, earthquakes engulfed whole cities. When he thirsted he was watered with ten thousand gallons of human blood. But today Huitzilopochtli is as magnificently forgotten as Alien G. Thurman. Once the peer of Allah, Buddha and Wotan, he is now the peer of General Coxey, Richmond P. Hobson, Nan Patterson, Alton B. Parker, Adelina Patti, General Weyler, and Tom Sharkey…
But they have company in oblivion: the hell of dead gods is as crowded as the Presbyterian hell for babies. Damona is there, and Esus, and Drunemeton, and Silvana, and Dervones, and Adsalluta, and Deva, and Belisama, and Axona, and Vintios, and Taranuous, and Sulis, and Cocidius, and Adsmerius, and Dumiatis, and Caletos, and Moccus, and Ollovidius, and Albiorix, and Leucitius, and Vitucadrus, and Ogmios, and Uxellimus, and Borvo, and Grannos, and Mogons. All mighty gods in their day, worshiped by millions, full of demands and impositions, able to bind and loose—all gods of the first class, not dilettanti. Men labored for generations to build vast temples to them—temples with stones as large as hay-wagons. The business of interpreting their whims occupied thousands of priests, wizards, archdeacons, evangelists, haruspices, bishops, archbishops. To doubt them was to die, usually at the stake. Armies took to the field to defend them against infidels: villages were burned, women and children were butchered, cattle were driven off. Yet in the end they all withered and died, and today there is none so poor to do them reverence. Worse, the very tombs in which they lie are lost, and so even a respectful stranger is debarred from paying them the slightest and politest homage.
