#kume — Public Fediverse posts
Live and recent posts from across the Fediverse tagged #kume, aggregated by home.social.
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#kume ryukyu deer have a very slow growth, and live long, because for millenias they had no predators, so didn't need to reproduce quickly, that's why they disappeared so quickly whem humans arrived.
and that's the end of the conf, no questions because we're late… -
#kume however, the bones from the same deer are all by the same spot, so it is possible some of the articulations were still existing when they were transported by water. there are 「cut marks」on the bones that were in fact marks of the teeth of rodents 😁
really not lucky…
well, you can't find a sakitari so easily, that's why it is called an 「extraordinary」site.
however the cave is large, i think it's too soon to abandon hope. at least they have a gusuku period site 😁 -
#kume the sedimentation in the cave is apparently complicated (sedimentation in caves is always complicated, oh, i should have said it baffled archaeologists…) there are landslides, fissures, older things end up at the top of the stratigraphy…
they are currently trying to make sense of it.
most of the bones are deer, few bats, rodents, birds…
not all the bones are represented, it is possible the bones were carried there by water and the light ones are more numerous. -
#kume ah, they collected many marine shells and dated them but they were from the gusuku period 😁
they brought back a gusuku hearth for further study at the museum.
the report of the 1980 excavation is apparently very vague and says nothng but 「hey we found a lot of things」
with these surveys, we now know from which layer, what type of fossils or remains are found. (and also that it is possible the burnt shells of the 1980's were from the gusuku period) -
#kume oh, they made a laser scan ♡ my company has one too, i love it. it kills your computer when processing the data though.
at the entrance there are more recent tombs. there are hearths of the gusuku period inside too.
they opened 2 test pits and found a lot of deer bones.
he's showing a flim and the earth is pretty dark aroud the bones but he doesn't say it's an hearth. can't be lucky each time… -
#kume 25000 years ago. a part of the material of the 1980's had been taken to tokyo and never given back (again…) but this time there was apparently no problem to access it, in tsukuba university.
the cave entrance is very narrow but has a large hall inside with all the fossils and a long corridor after that has not been searched. -
#kume and we're back, this time at last in kume, because everyone wants to find another sakitari so you have to dig in different places too.
shimojibaru yielded hundreds of deers, including complete skeletons and a 10 month old human skeleton.
in the 1980's survey material that had not been sorted, they found a large quantity of marine shells that could not be here naturally, some were burnt, there were also fish bones and freshwater shells…
so they went back, found more and dated them : -
#kume 1h20 in the conference and still no news of kume ?
but we have a break. -
#kume now talking about the incredibly great site that is #sakitari and i remember that my server went down last week after the conference and i never told you how great is the discovery they made this year, sorry.
sakitari is a place where remains of ＊the everyday life＊ of palaeolithic humans are conserved. in okinawa we have many bones but until sakitari almost no idea how they lived.
we have tools, beads, remains of what they eat and (since this year), even an hearth. -
#kume there is a theory that humans brought wild boars with them when they came to ryukyu. it's quite sure they're the ones who made the ryukyu deer extinct. the deer fossils found in okinawa are often old deer bones, which is strange because in natural populations young individuals deaths are more numerous, so it is thought that the fossil deer bones found in the cave sites might have been brought there by humans who hunt them and chose the large adults to hunt (no proof)
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#kume the minatogawa people are very different from japanese jomon and yayoi population.
in shiraho also the skeletons are quite well conserved, and the site is a tomb (the minatogawa people just fell in a limestone fissure and died there, poor people…)
the upper teeth are more worn than the lower ones, which baffles archaeologists (so glad i was able to write 「baffles archaeologists」(ノ^^)ノ)
the people of shiraho are close to south-east asian populations too. -
#kume at last we're back in ryukyu…
there are many different palaeolithic human remains in okinawa, not only minatogawa. for instance in shiraho-saonetabaru in ishigaki they found 19 bodies, dated of 28000 years ago.
they also re-sutdied the bones of the minatogawa people, the reconstruction by tokyo university was wrong. it is now thought they were close to the current australians aborigenes.
they also made adn studies. -
#kume the study of freshwater shells also gives indications on temperatures, at least 4 to 5 degrees cooler than now.
in northern japan, they had megafauna, including elephants, but they don't have many fossils so the studies are difficult.
ah, sawaura is from northern japan, that's why he talks so much about it…
(i mean, we haven't heard a word about kume yet…) -
#kume there are slight physical differences with modern us, in the skulls and in the body as well.
it is possible that they had an habit of voluntary taking some of their teeth off, as it is the case in more recent population, but the researchers do not all agree on that.
there are stress marks on the bones, showing the life conditions were not easy.
okinawa not only has human fossils but also animals so that it is good to reconstruct the palaeoenvironment (it was close to current yanbaru) -
#kume palaeolithic studies are developed in #okinawa because we have human fossils, especially the minatogawa people, that are complete skeletons, while the other fossil popultions found in okinawa are known only through very uncomplete skeletons.
we have 9 minatogawa humans, including 4 pretty complete. ah, he talks about the fact the tokyo university took the bones and did not want to give them back. he doesn't say how much the prefecture had to fight to have them back… -
#kume the minatogawa humans were said to be close to the human populations of southern asia. there are several theories for where the palaeolithic human populations of japan came from, north, west or south.
in the palaeolithic taiwan was linked to the continent but the ryukyu island were already islands so people had to cross the sea to come (there are experiments to know how they did, there is a film, it was on youtube and amaprime until at least last year)(i'm a big fan of the team) -
#kume he is now talking about outdated human evolution theories, without saying they're outdated, i'm a little bit afraid he's not used to speak at non-specialists conferences…
modern humans reach the japanese archipelago by 38000 years ago.
he's now talking about the cave paintings found in indonesia and says he's personally looking at all the walls of the caves he surveys in okinawa because, well, you never know. -
#kume shimojibaru really has fossils really well conserved.
apparently the palaeolithic is not taught anymore in japanese school, which makes the anthropologists really sad.
so we start with basic evolution, but the explanations of sawaura are a bit confused and it seems he is saying human are descended from chimpanzees. i hope he will make it clearer or about 100 persons who have not studied palaeolithic at school will have a wrong idea when leaving this conf… -
#kume we're talking about shimojibaru cave on kume island, the conf is part of the future exhibition 「the geology and fossils of the ryukyu archipelago」that will start on the 20th.
the cave was excavated in 1980, they found 18000 years old (human) immature bones and a ton of fossil deer bones. they started a new excavation in 2020. -
took me one hour to reach naha ! one hour ! even the secret streets were full of cars…
what would you not do for science…
well, here we are 「the palaeolithic of kume island」by Ryohei Sawaura, anthropologist at the prefecture museum. the hashtag will be #kume mute it if you don't want your timeline flooded with palaeo-things.
