New sensor detects valuable rare earth element terbium from non-traditional sources

Low concentrations could be identified from acid mine drainage and other waste sources

Peer-Reviewed Publication

PENN STATE

 

IMAGE: THE PROTEIN LANMODULIN HAS BEEN DEVELOPED INTO A SENSOR TO IDENTIFY THE RARE EARTH ELEMENT TERBIUM FROM COMPLEX ENVIRONMENTS, SUCH AS ACID MINE DRAINAGE. THE SENSOR, ILLUSTRATED HERE, EMITS GREEN LIGHT WHEN BOUND TO TERBIUM. view more 

CREDIT: EMILY FEATHERSTON, PENN STATE

UNIVERSITY PARK, Pa. — A new luminescent sensor can detect terbium, a valuable rare earth element, from complex environmental samples like acid mine waste. The sensor, developed by researchers at Penn State, takes advantage of a protein that very specifically binds to rare earth elements and could be harnessed to help develop a domestic supply of these metals, which are used in technologies such as smart phones, electric car batteries, and energy efficient lighting. A paper describing the sensor appears Aug. 25 in the Journal of the American Chemical Society.

Terbium, one of the rarest of the rare earth elements, produces the green color in cell phone displays and is also used in high-efficiency lighting and solid-state devices. However, there are a variety of chemical, environmental, and political challenges to obtaining terbium and other rare earth elements from the environment. Developing new sources of these metals also requires robust detection methods, which poses another challenge. For example, the gold standard method of detecting rare earth elements in a sample — a type of mass spectrometry called ICP-MS — is expensive and not portable. Portable methods, however, are not as sensitive and do not perform well in complex environmental samples, where acidic conditions and other metals can interfere with detection.

“There is not currently a domestic supply chain of rare earth elements like terbium, but they are actually quite abundant in non-traditional sources in the U.S., including coal byproducts, acid mine drainage, and electronic waste,” said Joseph Cotruvo, Jr., assistant professor and Louis Martarano Career Development Professor of Chemistry at Penn State, a member of Penn State’s Center for Critical Minerals, and senior author of the study. “In this study, we developed a luminescence-based sensor that can be used to detect and even quantify low concentrations of terbium in complex acidic samples.”

The new sensor relies on lanmodulin, a protein that the researchers previously discovered that is almost a billion times better at binding to rare earth elements than to other metals. The protein’s selectivity to bind rare earth elements is ideal for a sensor, as it is most likely to bind to rare earths instead of other metals that are common in environmental samples. 

To optimize lanmodulin as a sensor for terbium specifically, the researchers altered the protein by adding the amino acid tryptophan to the protein.

“Tryptophan is what is called a ‘sensitizer’ for terbium, which means that light absorbed by tryptophan can be passed to the terbium, which the terbium then emits at a different wavelength,” said Cotruvo. “The green color of this emission is actually one of the main reasons terbium is used in technologies like smart phone displays. For our purposes, when the tryptophan-lanmodulin compound binds to terbium, we can observe the emitted light, or luminescence, to measure the concentration of terbium in the sample.”

The researchers developed many variants of the tryptophan-lanmodulin sensor, optimizing the location of the tryptophan so that it does not interfere with lanmodulin’s ability to bind to rare earth elements. These variants provided important insights into the key features of the protein that enable it to bind rare earths with such high selectivity. Then, they tested the most promising variant to determine the lowest concentration of terbium the sensor could detect in idealized conditions—with no other metals to interfere. Even under highly acidic conditions, like that found in acid mine drainage, the sensor could detect environmentally relevant levels of terbium.
 
“One challenge with extracting rare earth elements is that you have to get them out of the rock,” said Cotruvo. “With acid mine drainage, nature has already done that for us, but looking for the rare earths is like finding a needle in a haystack. We have existing infrastructure to treat acid mine drainage sites at both active and inactive mines to mitigate their environmental impact. If we can identify the sites with the most valuable rare earth elements using sensors, we can better focus extraction efforts to turn waste streams into revenue sources.”

Next, the researchers tested the sensor in actual samples from an acid mine drainage treatment facility in Pennsylvania, an acidic sample with many other metals present and very low levels of terbium – 3 parts per billion. The sensor determined a concentration of terbium in the sample that was comparable what they detected with the “gold standard” method, suggesting that the new sensor is a viable way to detect low concentrations of terbium in complex environmental samples.

“We plan to further optimize the sensor so that it is even more sensitive and can be used more easily,” said Cotruvo. “We also hope to target other specific rare earth elements with this approach.” 

CAPTION

A new sensor could allow researchers to detect the rare earth element terbium from complex environmental samples, such as acid mine drainage—pictured here polluting a Pennsylvania stream.

CREDIT

Rachel Brennan, Penn State

In addition to Cotruvo, the research team at Penn State includes Emily Featherson, a graduate student in chemistry, and Edward Issertell, an undergraduate student at the time of the research. This research is supported by the National Science Foundation and the Penn State Eberly College of Science.

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JOURNAL

Journal of the American Chemical Society

DOI

10.1021/jacs.1c06360 

METHOD OF RESEARCH

Experimental study

SUBJECT OF RESEARCH

Not applicable

ARTICLE TITLE

Probing Lanmodulin’s Lanthanide Recognition via Sensitized Luminescence Yields a Platform for Quantification of Terbium in Acid Mine Drainage

ARTICLE PUBLICATION DATE

25-Aug-2021

 WAIT, WHAT?!

University of Zurich and Airbus to grow Miniature Human Tissue on the International Space Station (ISS)

CLONING SPACE BABIES 

Business Announcement

UNIVERSITY OF ZURICH

 

IMAGE: LAUNCH OF THE RE-SUPPLY MISSION SPACE X CRS-20 FROM CAPE CANAVERAL, USA ON MARCH 6, 2020: THE FIRST UZH-AIRBUS EXPERIMENT "ORGANOIDS IN SPACE" IS TRANSPORTED TO THE ISS. view more 

CREDIT: NASA

The process for the joint 3D Organoids in Space project originated from the University of Zurich (UZH) researchers Oliver Ullrich and Cora Thiel. Together with Airbus, the two pioneers in research on how gravity affects and regulates human cells have developed the process to project maturity. The Airbus Innovations team led by project manager Julian Raatschen has developed the hardware and is providing access to the International Space Station (ISS). It took the project partners only three years from idea to the first production test in space. During this time, they completed various test phases and overcame highly competitive internal selection processes. "We have shown that the path to producing human tissue in space is feasible, not only in theory, but in practice," says Oliver Ullrich.

Improving drug development and reducing animal testing

Oliver Ullrich, professor of anatomy at UZH, biologist Cora Thiel and Airbus are using microgravity in space to grow three-dimensional organ-like tissues – called organoids – from adult human stem cells. "On Earth, three-dimensional organoids are impossible to produce without support and matrix structures due to Earth’s gravity," Thiel explains. Such 3D organoids are attracting great interest from the pharmaceutical industry: They would enable toxicological studies to be carried out directly on human tissues without detouring via animal models. Organoids grown from patient stem cells could also be used as building blocks for tissue replacement to treat damaged organs. The number of donated organs today is far below the worldwide demand for thousands of donor organs.

Differentiated 3D organoids grown in space

The March 2020 ISS mission – in which 250 test tubes spent a month on the ISS – was highly successful. During their month-long stay under microgravity conditions 400 kilometers above ground, adult stem cells developed into differentiated organ-like structures such as liver, bones and cartilage. In contrast, the control samples grown on Earth under normal gravity conditions showed no or only minimal cell differentiation.

Robustness and viability

In the current mission, tissue stem cells from two women and two men of different ages will be sent into orbit. In doing so, the researchers are testing how robust their method is when using cells of different biological variability. They expect the production in microgravity to be easier and more reliable than using auxiliary materials on Earth. Currently, the focus is on production issues and quality control. “In view of future commercialization, we now need to find out how long and in what quality we can keep the organoids in culture after their return to Earth," says Oliver Ullrich.

"If successful, the technology can be developed and brought to operational maturity. Airbus and the UZH Space Hub can thus make a further contribution to improving the quality of life on Earth through space-based solutions," says Airbus project manager Raatschen. The sample material will return to Earth in early October. First results are expected from November.

  

CAPTION

Human adult stem cells previously prepared in the laboratory are implemented into the CubeLab bioreactor.

CREDIT

Julian Raatschen, Airbus Defence and Space

Planned mission launch

Space X CRS-23 with Cargo Dragon from Space X, Falcon-9 launch system. Launch on 28 Aug 2021 at 3:37 EST from Launch Pad LC-39A, Kennedy Space Center, Florida, USA.

3D Organoids in Space project

The joint project started in 2018, when the teams of the UZH Space Hub and Airbus Defence and Space GmbH submitted their proposal in an Airbus-internal innovation and idea competition to get basic funding and start initial research. The project successfully prevailed against roughly 500 other ideas.

UZH Space Hub

The UZH Space Hub is a strategic part of the Innovation Hub of the University of Zurich (UZH) and the National Innovation Park Zurich at the Dübendorf airfield. The UZH Space Hub connects groundbreaking research from the fields of astrophysics, earth observation and space life sciences with applied, commercializable science and with the industry. Founded in 1833, the University of Zurich is the largest university in Switzerland and one of the world's leading universities in life sciences.

About Airbus

Airbus is a pioneer of sustainable aviation and space utilization for a safe and united world. The company is constantly innovating for efficient and technologically advanced solutions in aerospace, defense and connected services. Airbus offers modern and fuel-efficient commercial aircraft and related services. Airbus is also a European leader in defense and security and one of the world's largest space companies. In helicopters, Airbus provides the world's most efficient solutions and services for civil and military helicopters.

CAPTION

The closed CubeLab bioreactor containing adult stem cells is ready for its journey to the ISS.

CREDIT

Julian Raatschen, Airbus Defence and Space

METHOD OF RESEARCH

Experimental study

SUBJECT OF RESEARCH

Lab-produced tissue samples

New cell phone and smart watch models can interfere with pacemakers and defibrillators

Patients with implanted medical devices should keep their smart phones and watches at least six inches away; researchers confirm FDA recommendation in a new report in Heart Rhythm

Peer-Reviewed Publication

ELSEVIER

 

IMAGE: NEW RESEARCH FINDINGS VERIFY FDA RECOMMENDATION FOR PATIENTS WITH IMPLANTED MEDICAL DEVICES TO KEEP THEIR SMART PHONES AND WATCHES AT LEAST SIX INCHES AWAY TO AVOID INTERFERENCE WITH IMPLANTED MEDICAL DEVICES. view more 

CREDIT: US FOOD AND DRUG ADMINISTRATION

Philadelphia, August 26, 2021 -- After reports of smart phone and watch interference with implanted medical devices, investigators affiliated with the Center for Devices and Radiological Health (CDRH) at the US Food and Drug Administration conducted a study that supports the FDA recommendation that patients keep any consumer electronic devices that may create magnetic interference, including cell phones and smart watches, at least six inches away from implanted medical devices, in particular pacemakers and cardiac defibrillators. Their findings appear in Heart Rhythm, the official journal of the Heart Rhythm Society, the Cardiac Electrophysiology Society, and the Pediatric & Congenital Electrophysiology Society, published by Elsevier.

“Ensuring the safety of our nation’s medical devices is a cornerstone of our consumer protection mission, especially as technology continues to advance,” explained lead investigator Seth J. Seidman, MS, Research Electrical Engineer and EMC Program Advisor with the CDRH. “As part of this work, the agency reviewed recently published articles describing the possibility that certain newer cell phones, smart watches, and other consumer electronics with high field strength magnets may temporarily affect the normal operation of implanted electronic medical devices, such as pacemakers and implantable defibrillators. Based on our review, we decided to conduct our own testing to confirm and help inform appropriate recommendations for patients and consumers.”

Cardiac implanted electronic devices are intended to support heart rhythm disorders, such as slow or fast heart rates. Implantable pacemakers and cardioverter defibrillators (ICDs) include a “magnet mode” designed to be used when a patient is undergoing a procedure where electromagnetic interference is possible, or when suspension of the device is necessary for medical treatment. However, this feature can also be triggered accidentally from strong magnetic fields greater than 10G, which can change how the device works and could result in serious harm to the patient.

Historically, magnets strong enough to trigger this magnet mode were very large and identifiable, such as stereo speakers or electronic motors in cordless tools. With the advent of small rare-earth magnets, however, strong magnetic fields can be found in headphones, door locks, or small phone speakers.

The investigators tested the magnetic field output of all iPhone 12 and Apple Watch 6 models at varying distances from the devices. They found that all the devices have static magnetic fields significantly greater than 10G in close proximity, high enough to place implanted cardiac devices into magnet mode. However, when a separation distance of six inches or more is maintained, the phones and watches will not trigger magnet mode.

“Because of these results, we are taking steps to provide information for patients and healthcare providers to ensure they are aware of potential risks and can take simple proactive and preventive measures like keeping consumer electronics, such as certain cell phones and smart watches, six inches away from implanted medical devices and not carrying consumer electronics in a pocket over the medical device,” advised Mr. Seidman.

“We believe the risk to patients is low and the agency is not aware of any adverse events associated with this issue at this time. However, the number of consumer electronics with strong magnets is expected to increase over time. Therefore, we recommend people with implanted medical devices talk with their healthcare providers to ensure they understand this potential risk and the proper techniques for safe use. The FDA will continue to monitor the effects of consumer electronics on the safe operation of medical devices,” noted Mr. Seidman.

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JOURNAL

Heart Rhythm

DOI

10.1016/j.hrthm.2021.06.1203 

METHOD OF RESEARCH

Experimental study

ARTICLE TITLE

Static magnetic field measurements of smart phones and watches and applicability to triggering magnet modes in implantable pacemakers and implantable cardioverter defibrillators

ARTICLE PUBLICATION DATE

26-Aug-2021

Waterloo developing a mobile alert app for missing people with dementia

Peer-Reviewed Publication

UNIVERSITY OF WATERLOO

Researchers are working with community leaders to develop a mobile alert app to help locate missing people with dementia.

Noelannah Neubauer, a postdoctoral fellow at the University of Waterloo’s School of Public Health Sciences, said “Community ASAP” is aimed at addressing a gap in available tools when it comes to alerts for missing older adults and people living with dementia in Canada.

"We have Amber Alerts for missing children, but nothing for this population other than police and civilians circulating information via social media such as Twitter and Facebook,” said Neubauer, who is the first author of a study that tested the efficacy and useability of Community ASAP.

The U.S. already uses a system called Silver Alert, and there have been efforts in some provinces, such as British Columbia, to create a citizen-led alert system. The issue with piggybacking onto the Amber Alert system is that too many people go missing every day, according to Neubauer. Almost 750,000 Canadians live with dementia, and 60 per cent of them wander at least once, and some repeatedly.

“The sheer number of missing people from this population would mean that alerts would go off multiple times a day in certain jurisdictions, running the risk of significant alert fatigue,” Neubauer said. “Community ASAP gets around this by having people sign up to receive the alert on Android and iOS operating systems and choosing the radius from where the missing person was last seen to their current location. Most missing cases take place one kilometre from the place they were last seen.”

"A key concern is that if someone gets lost and is not found within 24 hours, they have a 50 per cent chance of experiencing serious injury or death," said Lili Liu, principal investigator, and dean of the Faculty of Health at Waterloo. "We proposed recommendations for community alert systems specific to Canada, such as Community ASAP, at an online national forum on community alert systems for missing older adults last fall." 

For the study, researchers engaged people living with dementia, their care partners, police services, search and rescue organizations and health and social service providers in Ontario, Alberta and British Columbia to develop the alert system that engages community citizens, as volunteers, to look out for people with dementia reported missing. 

They went through three iterations of the app and consulted with these stakeholder groups along the way to test its accuracy and useability, walking through scenarios to simulate the events that transpire during a missing person event. In these scenarios, participants assumed the key roles in the Community ASAP system, including the missing person with dementia, care partner, coordinator, and volunteers. 

The idea for this app came from Ron Beleno, an entrepreneur with experience caring for his father, who lived with dementia. Beleno is turning Community ASAP into a start-up company, and Liu's research team continues to work with governments and organizations to coordinate a system that works across the country.

The study, "Mobile alert app to engage community volunteers to help locate missing persons with dementia," co-authored by Noelannah Neubauer, Christine Daum, Antonio Miguel-Cruz and Lili Liu, all affiliated with the University of Waterloo, was recently published in Plos One.

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JOURNAL

PLoS ONE

DOI

10.1371/journal.pone.0254952 

Ancient DNA from human skeleton in Southeast Asia gives rare glimpse of past

Aug. 25 (UPI) -- Researchers said Wednesday that the discovery of DNA in a partially preserved human skeleton in Southeast Asia could give science a rare view of human ancestry in a region where such glimpses are often hard to come by.

The discovery, which was made in 2015, was detailed Wednesday in the journal Nature Genetics.

Experts say that ancient DNA is difficult to find in Southeast Asia because tropical conditions quickly degrade remnants that are left behind.

Adam Brumm, a professor of archaeology at Griffith University in Brisbane in Australia, told ABC News that researchers excavated the skeleton from a limestone cave in Leang Panninge on the Indonesian island of Sulawesi.

Researchers determined through DNA that the skeleton belonged to a teenage female hunter-gatherer. She shared similarities, they say, with the present-day Papuan and Indigenous Australian groups. They said the populations split about 37,000 years ago.

"Morphological characters indicate that this Toalean forager was a 17-18-year-old female with a broadly Australo-Melanesianaffinity, although the morphology does not fall outside the range of recent Southeast Asian variation," the researchers said in Nature Genetics.

The female was buried in a shallow grave within a Toalean burial complex around 7,200 years ago, Brumm said. It appeared that several large rocks were placed next to her.

Brumm said the artifacts around her appeared to be "really sophisticated stone tools" such as chipped arrowheads.

Oldest genome from Wallacea shows previously unknown ancient human relations

International research team isolates DNA from modern human buried 7,000 years ago on the Indonesian island of Sulawesi

Peer-Reviewed Publication

MAX PLANCK INSTITUTE FOR EVOLUTIONARY ANTHROPOLOGY

 

IMAGE: THE LEANG PANNINGE CAVE ON THE SOUTHERN PENINSULA OF SULAWESI, INDONESIA view more 

CREDIT: LEANG PANNINGE RESEARCH PROJECT

The international study was accomplished through close collaboration with several researchers and institutions from Indonesia. It was headed by Professor Johannes Krause of the Max Planck Institutes for Evolutionary Anthropology in Leipzig and the Science of Human History in Jena, Professor Cosimo Posth of the Senckenberg Centre for Human Evolution and Palaeoenvironment at the University of Tübingen, and Professor Adam Brumm of Griffith University, Australia. The study has been published in the latest edition of Nature.

Almost completely preserved skeleton

The Wallacean Islands formed stepping stones in the spread of the first modern humans from Eurasia to Oceania, probably more than 50,000 years ago. Archaeological finds show that the ancestors of our species lived in Wallacea as early as 47,000 years ago. Yet few human skeletons have been found. One of the most distinctive archaeological discoveries in this region is the Toalean technology complex, dated to a much more recent period between 8,000 and 1,500 years ago. Among the objects manufactured by the people of the Toalean culture are the characteristic stone arrowheads known as Maros points. The Toalean culture has only been found in a relatively small area on the southern peninsula of Sulawesi. “We were able to assign the burial at Leang Panninge to that culture,” says Adam Brumm. “This is remarkable since it is the first largely complete and well preserved skeleton associated with the Toalean culture.”

Selina Carlhoff, doctoral candidate at the Max Planck Institute for the Science of Human History and lead author of the study, isolated DNA from the petrous bone of the skull. “It was a major challenge, as the remains had been strongly degraded by the tropical climate,” she says. The analysis showed that the Leang Panninge individual was related to the first modern humans to spread to Oceania from Eurasia some 50,000 years ago. Like the genome of the indigenous inhabitants of New Guinea and Australia, the Leang Panninge individual’s genome contained traces of Denisovan DNA. The Denisovans are an extinct group of archaic humans known primarily from finds in Siberia and Tibet. “The fact that their genes are found in the hunter-gatherers of Leang Panninge supports our earlier hypothesis that the Denisovans occupied a far larger geographical area,” says Johannes Krause.

CAPTION

Excavations at the Leang Panninge site: The skeleton as found.

CREDIT

Hasanuddin University, Indonesia

Another piece in the great genetic puzzle

A comparison with genomic data of hunter-gatherers who lived west of Wallacea at about the same time as the Leang Panninge individual provided further clues – that data showed no traces of Denisovan DNA. “The geographic distribution of Denisovans and modern humans may have overlapped in the Wallacea region. It may well be the key place where Denisova people and the ancestors of indigenous Australians and Papuans interbred,” says Cosimo Posth.

However, the Leang Panninge individual also carries a large proportion of its genome from an ancient Asian population. “That came as a surprise, because we do know of the spread of modern humans from eastern Asia into the Wallacea region – but that took place far later, around 3,500 years ago. That was long after this individual was alive,” Johannes Krause reports. Furthermore, the research team has found no evidence that the group Leang Panninge belonged to left descendants among today’s population in Wallacea. It remains unclear what happened to the Toalean culture and its people. “This new piece of the genetic puzzle from Leang Panninge illustrates above all just how little we know about the genetic history of modern humans in southeast Asia,” Posth says.

CAPTION

Stone arrowheads, known as Maros points, are up to 8,000 years old. They are considered typical of the Toalean techno-complex developed by the people living in the south of the island of Sulawesi.

CREDIT

Yinika L Perston

JOURNAL

Nature

DOI

10.1038/s41586-021-03823-6 

ARTICLE TITLE

Genome of a middle Holocene hunter-gatherer from Wallacea

ARTICLE PUBLICATION DATE

24-Aug-2021

Central European prehistory was highly dynamic

Frequent cultural, genetic, and social change epitomises the history of central Europe from the Stone Age to the Early Bronze Age

Peer-Reviewed Publication

MAX PLANCK INSTITUTE FOR EVOLUTIONARY ANTHROPOLOGY

 

IMAGE: RICHLY ENDOWED EARLY BRONZE AGE BURIAL FROM BOHEMIA, CZECH REPUBLIC. view more 

CREDIT: MICHAL ERNÉE

Centrally located along trade routes and tightly nestled around the important waterways such as the Elbe River, Bohemia attracted many different archaeological cultures, rendering it a key region in understanding the prehistory of Europe. In addition to the expansions associated with the spread of agriculture and "steppe"-related ancestry previously discovered, this new study identifies at least another three migratory events which shaped central European prehistory.

The genetic profiles of people associated with Funnelbeaker and Globular Amphora cultures show evidence of being recent migrants to the region. This finding shows that the period between arrival of agriculture and "steppe"-related ancestry, hitherto thought of as an uneventful period, was more dynamic than previously hypothesised.

Drastic changes to the genetic landscape

The large sample size of the study, particularly concentrated on the Late Neolithic and Early Bronze Age (~6,000-3,700 years ago), also allowed novel insights into social processes to be made. Individuals associated with the Corded Ware culture expanded from Eastern Europe and then assimilated preferentially central European women into their culture, giving them the same burial ritual as members of the immigrating group. "We were finally able to fill key temporal gaps, especially in the transition period around 5,000 years ago, when we see the genetic landscape changing drastically", says Max Planck researcher Wolfgang Haak, senior author and principal investigator of the study. "Intriguingly, in this early horizon we find individuals with high amounts of 'steppe' ancestry next to others with little or none, all buried according to the same customs."

Once established, individuals of the Corded Ware culture (4,900-4,400 years ago) changed genetically through time. One important change seems to have been the sharp decline in Y-chromosome lineage diversity. Although initially carrying five different Y-lineages, later Corded Ware males carry almost exclusively only a single lineage, essentially being descended from the same man in the recent past. "This pattern may reflect the emergence of a new social structure or regulation of mating in which only a subset of men fathered the majority of offspring", says first author Luka Papac, a researcher at the Max Planck Institute for the Science of Human History.

This social structure seems to have been even stricter in the following Bell Beaker society (4,500-4,200 years ago) where every single male sampled belonged to a single, newly introduced Y-lineage. Remarkably, this Bell Beaker Y-lineage is never seen before in Bohemia, implying that a new clan arrived in the region and almost immediately replaced all pre-existing Y-lineages with not a single lineage from Corded Ware or previous societies found among Bell Beaker males.

Cultural, biological, and social changes

The Early Bronze Age Unetice culture has traditionally been thought of descending from Bell Beaker individuals, with perhaps limited input from the southeast (Carpathian Basin). However, the new genetic data supports yet another genetic turnover originating from regions northeast of Bohemia. Remarkably, also 80 percent of the early Unetice Y-lineages are new to Bohemia, some of which are previously found in individuals from north-eastern Europe, providing clues to where they originated from. "This finding was very surprising to us archaeologists as we did not expect to see such clear patterns, even though the region has played a critical role, e.g. in the emerging trade of amber from the Baltic and became an important trading hub during the Bronze and Iron Ages", adds co-author and co-PI Michal Ernée from the Czech Academy of Sciences.

The results paint a highly dynamic picture of the prehistory of central Europe, with many and frequent changes in the cultural, biological, and social make-up of societies, highlighting the power and potential of high-resolution studies at regional scale. Challenges remain in understanding the socio-economic, environmental and/or political reasons and mechanisms behind these changes, which provides ample scope for future cross-disciplinary studies of Europe’s prehistory.

CAPTION

Exemplary grave goods of one of the earliest Corded Ware burials in Central Europe.

CREDIT

Miroslav Dobeš

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JOURNAL

Science Advances

DOI

10.1126/sciadv.abi6941 

ARTICLE TITLE

Dynamic changes in genomic and social structures in third millennium BCE central Europe

ARTICLE PUBLICATION DATE

25-Aug-2021

 

Pictograms are first written accounts of earthquakes in pre-Hispanic Mexico

Peer-Reviewed Publication

SEISMOLOGICAL SOCIETY OF AMERICA

 

IMAGE: PICTOGRAM REPRESENTING AN EARTHQUAKE THAT TOOK PLACE ON THE YEAR 2 REEDS OR 1507. THE GLOSS DESCRIBES THAT THE PICTOGRAM RECOUNTS THE DROWNING OF 1,800 WARRIORS IN AN UNIDENTIFIED RIVER, PRESUMABLY IN SOUTHERN MEXICO, THE TERMINATION OF THE TEMPLE OF THE NEW FIRE, WHERE THE CEREMONY OF THE NEW CYCLE OF LIFE WAS CELEBRATED, AND A SOLAR ECLIPSE AS A CIRCLE WITH RAYS EMANATING FROM IT IN THE UPPER RIGHT-HAND SIDE, BELOW THE DATE SIGN. view more 

CREDIT: COURTESY OF GERARDO SUAREZ AND VIRGINIA GARCIA-ACOSTA

The Codex Telleriano Remensis, created in the 16th century in Mexico, depicts earthquakes in pictograms that are the first written evidence of earthquakes in the Americas in pre-Hispanic times, according to a pair of researchers who have systematically studied the country’s historical earthquakes.

Gerardo Suárez of the Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México and Virginia García-Acosta of the Centro de Investigaciones y Estudios Superiores en Antropología Social studied pictograms reporting 12 earthquakes in the Telleriano-Remensis, occurring between 1460 and 1542.

The pictograms offer little information on the location, size or damage caused by the earthquakes, the authors note in the journal Seismological Research Letters. But along with other historical accounts found in annals written after the Spanish conquest, they extend the region’s seismic history back into the 15th century.

“It is not surprising that pre Hispanic records exist describing earthquakes for two reasons,” said Suárez. “Earthquakes are frequent in this country and, secondly, earthquakes had a profound meaning in the cosmological view of the original inhabitants of what is now Mexico.”

Mesoamerican civilizations viewed the universe as cyclical, with successive eras or “suns” destroyed by floods, wind, fire and other phenomena before the appearance of a new sun. The current and fifth “sun, “according to this view, will be destroyed by earthquakes.

Suárez and García-Acosta began studying historical earthquakes in Mexico after the devastating magnitude 8.0 Mexico City earthquake in 1985, eventually publishing their findings in the book Los sismos en la historia de México. “However, we had not tackled the pictographic representation of earthquakes,” said Suárez. “We recently embarked on a more detailed study of this pictographic representation and other texts written immediately after the Spanish conquest.”

Codex writing, a pre-Hispanic system of symbols and colors, was done by trained specialists called tlacuilos (in the original Nahuatl language, “those who write painting”). While many codices were burned as pagan objects after the Spanish conquest, some survived and the pictographic style was used in new codices up into the 18th century.

The Codex Telleriano-Remensis is written on European paper, with explanations or “glosses” written in Latin, Spanish and sometimes Italian by later commentators alongside the symbols.

Earthquakes, called tlalollin in the Nahuatl language, are represented by two signs: ollin (movement) and tlalli (earth). Ollin is a glyph consisting of four helices and a central eye or circle. Tlalli is a glyph consisting of one or several layers filled with dots and different colors.

In the Telleriano-Remensis, there are other modifications of the earthquake glyphs, but their meanings are not clear to scholars. “However, the consensus is that the various representations probably do have a meaning,” Suárez said. “Drawing codices was a strict discipline not open to artistic whims of the people trained to do it, the tlacuilos. We are hopeful that in the future an unknown codex or document may appear that may enlighten us in this respect.”

Suárez and García-Acosta note that other annals offer information that complements the codex earthquake drawings, perhaps filling in more details about the impacts and locations of specific earthquakes. For example, a historical account by the Franciscan friar Juan de Torquemada describes a 1496 earthquake that shook three mountains in “Xochitepec province, along the coast” and caused landslides in an area inhabited by the Yope people.

The site is within the Guerrero seismic gap, a region of relative seismic quiet along the subduction zone in southern Mexico. The historical descriptions suggest that the 1496 earthquake might have been a very large earthquake of magnitude 8.0 or larger within the gap. There have been no recorded earthquakes of that magnitude in the gap since 1845.

The historical evidence “really does not change our view of the seismic potential of that region in southern Mexico,” Suárez explained. “It simply adds additional evidence that great earthquakes have occurred in this segment of the subduction zone before, and the absence of these major earthquakes for several years should not be considered as though this region is aseismic.”

The researchers plan to study other codices that are not as well-known as the Telleriano-Remensis, but have so far been unable to access the libraries that hold them due to COVID-19 restrictions.

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JOURNAL

Seismological Research Letters

DOI

10.1785/0220210161 

METHOD OF RESEARCH

Observational study

SUBJECT OF RESEARCH

Not applicable

ARTICLE TITLE

The First Written Accounts of Pre‐Hispanic Earthquakes in the Americas

ARTICLE PUBLICATION DATE

25-Aug-2021