New data on non‐human primates from the ancient Near East: The recent discovery of a rhesus macaque burial at Shahr‐i Sokhta (Iran)

Abstract

Shahr‐i Sokhta (Iran) was an important urban settlement in the Near East between the end of the fourth millennium and the beginning of the second millennium BC. It entertained trade and cultural relations with ancient sites and cultures on the Indus Plain, southern shores of the Persian Gulf and of the Oman Sea, Southwest Iran, and Central Asia. The recent discovery of a rhesus macaque (Macaca mulatta) burial in the cemetery of site shed new light on the exploitation of monkeys in antiquity. A young rhesus macaque—around 5 years old at death—was buried in the necropolis according to the same funerary practices used for human infants. The monkey was buried in a simple pit, together with an unpainted pear‐shaped beaker. Both its femurs were pathological, due to a sort of dystrophic calcification of the tendon or muscle insertion, that may suggest the macaque was kept in captivity and died due to physical stress. No non‐human primate species is native of Iran; rhesus macaques inhabit parts of southern and south‐eastern regions of Central Asia. A possible provenance from the Indus valley of the macaque found at Shahr‐i Sokhta can be hypothesized. Although findings of monkey remains are rare, iconographic and written sources widely testify that non‐human primates were imported to the Near East in the fourth‐to‐second millennium BC as luxury animals and symbols of power, often as gifts for the elite. This discovery represents one of the earliest examples of monkeys being kept as pets.

The formation of human populations in South and Central Asia

“…(ii) All 11 outliers had elevated proportions of AHG- related ancestry, and two carried Y chromosome haplogroup H1a1d2 which today is primarily found in southern India. (iii) At both Gonur and Shahr-i-Sokhta there is archaeological evidence of exchange with the IVC (46, 47), and all the outlier individuals we directly dated fall within the time frame of the mature IVC. (iv) Several outliers at Shahr-i-Sokhta were buried with artifacts stylistically linked to Baluchistan in South Asia whereas burials associated with the other ancestries did not have these linkages (13).…”

Archaeoprimatology: TheLongue DuréeInterface Between Humans and Nonhuman Primates

“…Two unusual examples illustrate the previous statement and the fact that macaques survived long travels and successfully coped with dietary constraints. The first example is a Barbary macaque from northern Africa found at the pre-Tartar site of Ryurik Gorodishche in northern Russia (Brisbane et al 2007); the second example is a rhesus macaque from central Asia or the Indus River Valley buried at the Iranian Bronze Age site of Shahr-i Sokhta (Minniti & Sajjadi 2019).…”

Female biased adult sex ratio in the Bronze Age cemetery of Shahr‐i Sokhta (Iran) as an indicator of long distance trade and matrilocality

“…The interaction would have initially involved sporadic trade contacts, marriages and isolated exchanges rather than systematic and specialized forms of long‐distance trade (Cortesi et al, 2008), but afterwards more defined sea routes and trade land are documented in culture material through the whole of Middle Asia (Frenez et al, 2016), suggesting the existence of more articulated relationships that gave rise to a cultural syncretism (Ascalone, 2020). The recent discovery of the grave of a monkey, Macaca mulatta , in the cemetery of Shahr‐i Sokhta (Minniti & Sajjadi, 2019) is a further and indisputable proof of long distance trade since this mammal is not native of Iran and rather inhabits South and South‐East central Asia. The tendency to sexing female individuals as male from robust prehistoric populations cannot be ruled out, since in many older studies skull features were commonly used to reach a sex determination. Bone (1993) observed that male overrepresentation tends to lower when sex is determined using pelvis sexed samples.…”