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FIELD MUSEUM—We often think of the Amazon rainforest as a vast expanse of nature untouched by humans. But a new study in Science suggests that’s not true—in fact, today’s rainforest is shaped by trees that were cultivated by indigenous peoples thousands of years ago.

“Some of the tree species that are abundant in Amazonian forests today, like cacao, açaí, and Brazil nut, are probably common because they were planted by people who lived there long before the arrival of European colonists,” says Nigel Pitman, the Mellon Senior Conservation Ecologist at Chicago’s Field Museum and a co-author of the study.

The team made the discovery by overlaying data from more than 1,000 forest surveys on a map of more than 3,000 archaeological sites across the Amazon. By comparing forest composition at varying distances from archaeological sites, the analysis generated the first Amazon-wide picture of how pre-Columbian peoples influenced Amazonian biodiversity. The study focused on 85 tree species known to have been domesticated by Amazonian peoples for food, shelter, or other uses over the last several thousand years. The researchers found that throughout the Amazon basin, these species were five times more likely to be common in mature upland forests than non-domesticated species. In some parts of the basin, domesticated species were found to be both more common and more diverse in forests closer to archaeological sites.

“That’s even the case for some really remote, mature forests that we’d typically assumed to be pristine and undisturbed,” says Pitman.

The finding promises to heat up a long-simmering debate among scientists about how thousands of years of human settlement in the Amazon basin have influenced modern-day patterns of Amazonian biodiversity. The immense size of Amazonian forests has historically hampered archaeological research and given the impression of an untouched landscape, but a large number of new archaeological sites have been discovered in recent years.

The team, made up by hundreds of ecologists and social scientists worldwide, was led by Carolina Levis, a PhD student at Brazil’s National Institute for Amazonian Research and Wagenigen University and Research in the Netherlands. “For many years, ecological studies ignored the influence of pre-Columbian peoples on the forests we see today. We found that a quarter of these domesticated tree species are widely distributed in the basin and dominate large expanses of forest. These species are vital for the livelihood and economy of Amazonian peoples and indicate that the Amazonian flora is in part a surviving heritage of its former inhabitants,” says Levis.

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 Carolina Levis in a forest dominated by domesticated species (Bertholletia excelsa and Euterpe precatoria) very close to an archaeological site. Credit: Bernardo Flores

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 Fruits of peach palm (Bactris gasipaes), an Amazonian domesticated species. Credit: Diogo Lagroteria

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 Hatahara Site with Manacapuru phase urns and anthropogenic dark soils, ca 600 AD. Credit: Val Moraes- Central Amazon Project

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The study also pinpointed regions of the Amazon that today concentrate especially high diversities and large populations of domesticated species. Southwestern Amazonia, where large stands of Brazil nut trees remain a foundation of local residents’ livelihoods, is one such example. Other regions showed fewer domesticated species, or a weaker relationship between domesticated species and archeological sites, highlighting the need for more research on the history of Amazonian settlement. The degree to which the recent history of Amazonian settlement has affected the distribution and abundance of domesticated species in the Amazon also remains to be studied.

While the small number of domesticated species used in the study was sufficient to reveal a strong human signal in modern forests, the authors point out that the signal may be even stronger than they documented, since hundreds of other Amazonian tree species were used by pre-Colombian peoples and also deserve study. Untangling the complex interplay of historical, environmental, and ecological factors structuring the 16,000-species Amazonian tree flora remains a focus of the team’s work.

“The questions are pressing,” says Pitman, “since both types of pre-Columbian heritage–archeological sites and the forests that surround them–are at risk from road-building, mining, and other threats to the Amazon.”

Article Source: A Field Museum news release.

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UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA – SAN DIEGO—To say that UC San Diego archaeologist Geoffrey Braswell was surprised to discover a precious jewel in Nim Li Punit in southern Belize is something of an understatement.

“It was like finding the Hope Diamond in Peoria instead of New York,” said Braswell, who led the dig that uncovered a large piece of carved jade once belonging to an ancient Maya king. “We would expect something like it in one of the big cities of the Maya world. Instead, here it was, far from the center,” he said.

The jewel—a jade pendant worn on a king’s chest during key religious ceremonies —was first unearthed in 2015. It is now housed at the Central Bank of Belize, along with other national treasures. Braswell recently published a paper in the Cambridge University journal Ancient Mesoamerica detailing the jewel’s significance. A second paper, in the Journal of Field Archaeology, describes the excavations.

The pendant is remarkable for being the second largest Maya jade found in Belize to date, said Braswell, a professor in the Department of Anthropology at UC San Diego. The pendant measures 7.4 inches wide, 4.1 inches high and just 0.3 inches thick. Sawing it into this thin, flat form with string, fat and jade dust would have been a technical feat. But what makes the pendant even more remarkable, Braswell said, is that it’s the only one known to be inscribed with a historical text. Carved into the pendant’s back are 30 hieroglyphs about its first owner.

“It literally speaks to us,” Braswell said. “The story it tells is a short but important one.” He believes it may even change what we know about the Maya.

Also important: The pendant was “not torn out of history by looters,” said Braswell. “To find it on a legal expedition, in context, gives us information about the site and the jewel that we couldn’t have otherwise had or maybe even imagined.”

Where the jewel was found

Nim Li Punit is a small site in the Toledo District of Belize. It sits on a ridge in the Maya Mountains, near the contemporary village of Indian Creek. Eight different types of parrot fly overhead. It rains nine months of the year.

On the southeastern edge of the ancient Maya zone (more than 250 miles south of Chichen Itza in Mexico, where similar but smaller breast pieces have been found), Nim Li Punit is estimated to have been inhabited between A.D. 150 and 850. The site’s name means “big hat.” It was dubbed that, after its rediscovery in 1976, for the elaborate headdress sported by one of its stone figures. Its ancient name might be Wakam or Kawam, but this is not certain.

Braswell, UC San Diego graduate students Maya Azarova and Mario Borrero, along with a crew of local people, were excavating a palace built around the year 400 when they found a collapsed, but intact, tomb. Inside the tomb, which dates to about A.D. 800, were 25 pottery vessels, a large stone that had been flaked into the shape of a deity and the precious jade pectoral. Except for a couple of teeth, there were no human remains.

What was it doing there?

The pendant is in the shape of a T. Its front is carved with a T also. This is the Mayan glyph “ik’,” which stands for “wind and breath.” It was buried, Braswell said, in a curious, T-shaped platform. And one of the pots discovered with it, a vessel with a beaked face, probably depicts a Maya god of wind.

Wind was seen as vital by the Maya. It brought annual monsoon rains that made the crops grow. And Maya kings—as divine rulers responsible for the weather—performed rituals according to their sacred calendar, burning and scattering incense to bring on the wind and life-giving rains. According to the inscription on its back, Braswell said, the pendant was first used in A.D. 672 in just such a ritual.

Two relief sculptures on large rock slabs at Nim Li Punit also corroborate that use. In both sculptures, a king is shown wearing the T-shaped pendant while scattering incense, in A.D. 721 and 731, some 50 and 60 years after the pendant was first worn.

By the year 800, the pendant was buried, not with its human owner, it seems, but just with other objects. Why? The pendant wasn’t a bauble, Braswell said, “it had immense power and magic.” Could it have been buried as a dedication to the wind god? That’s Braswell’s educated hunch.

Maya kingdoms were collapsing throughout Belize and Guatemala around A.D. 800, Braswell said. Population levels plummeted. Within a generation of the construction of the tomb, Nim Li Punit itself was abandoned.

“A recent theory is that climate change caused droughts that led to the widespread failure of agriculture and the collapse of Maya civilization,” Braswell said. “The dedication of this tomb at that time of crisis to the wind god who brings the annual rains lends support to this theory, and should remind us all about the danger of climate change.”

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 The jade once belonging to an ancient Maya king is inscribed with 30 hieroglyphs. It was used during important religious ceremonies. Courtesy G. Braswell/UC San Diego

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 The jade pendant was buried around A.D. 800 with other objects, including pottery and a large stone that had been flaked into the shape of a deity. Courtesy G. Braswell/UC San Diego

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Still and again: What was it doing there?

The inscription on the back of the pendant is perhaps the most intriguing thing about it, Braswell said. The text is still being analyzed by Braswell’s coauthor on the Ancient Mesoamerica paper, Christian Prager of the University of Bonn. And Mayan script itself is not yet fully deciphered or agreed upon.

But Prager and Braswell’s interpretation of the text so far is this: The jewel was made for the king Janaab’ Ohl K’inich. In addition to noting the pendant’s first use in A.D. 672 for an incense-scattering ceremony, the hieroglyphs describe the king’s parentage. His mother, the text implies, was from Cahal Pech, a distant site in western Belize. The king’s father died before aged 20 and may have come from somewhere in Guatemala.

It also describes the accession rites of the king in A.D. 647, Braswell said, and ends with a passage that possibly links the king to the powerful and immense Maya city of Caracol, located in modern-day Belize.

“It tells a political story far from Nim Li Punit,” Braswell said. He notes that Cahal Pech, the mother’s birthplace, for example, is 60 miles away. That’s a five-hour bus ride today, and back then would have been many days’ walk — through rainforest and across mountains. How did the pendant come to this outpost?

While it’s possible it had been stolen from an important place and whisked away to the provinces, Braswell doesn’t think so. He believes the pendant is telling us about the arrival of royalty at Nim Li Punit, the founding of a new dynasty. The writing on the pendant is not particularly old by Maya standards, but it’s the oldest found at Nim Li Punit so far, Braswell said. It’s also only after the pendant’s arrival that other hieroglyphs and images of royalty begin to show up on the site’s stelae, or sculptured stone slabs.

It could be that king Janaab’ Ohl K’inich himself moved to Nim Li Punit, Braswell said. Or it could be that a great Maya state was trying to ally with the provinces, expand its power or curry favor by presenting a local king with the jewel. Either way, Braswell believes, the writing on the pendant indicates ties that had been previously unknown.

“We didn’t think we’d find royal, political connections to the north and the west of Nim Li Punit,” said Braswell, who has been excavating in Belize since 2001 and at Nim Li Punit since 2010. “We thought if there were any at all that they’d be to the south and east.”

Even if you ignore the writing and its apparent royal provenance, the jade stone itself is from the mountains of Guatemala, southwest of Belize. There are few earlier indications of trade in that direction either, Braswell said.

We may never know exactly why the pendant came to Nim Li Punit or why it was buried as it was, but Braswell’s project to understand the site continues. He plans to return in the spring of 2017. This time, he also wants to see if he might discover a tie to the Caribbean Sea. After all, that’s a mere 12 miles downriver, a four-hour trip by canoe.

Article Source: Univeristy of California – San Diego

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 This richly illustrated issue includes the following stories: Recent findings shedding new light on the whereabouts of the remains of Philip of Macedon, father of Alexander the Great; how an archaeologist-sculptor is bringing bones of the dead back to life; archaeologists uncovering town life at the dawn of civilization; an exclusive interview with internationally acclaimed archaeologist James M. Adovasio about what makes the Meadowcroft Rockshelter prominent in the ongoing search for the first Americans; what archaeologists are finding at the site of the ancient city of Gath, the home town of the biblical Philistine giant, Goliath; and how scientists are redrawing the picture of human evolution in Europe.  Find it on Amazon.com.

NEW YORK UNIVERSITY—A newly discovered trove of 16 engraved and otherwise modified limestone blocks, created 38,000 years ago, confirms the ancient origins of the pointillist techniques later adopted by 19th and 20th century artists such as Georges Seurat, Vincent Van Gogh, Camille Pissarro, and Roy Lichtenstein.

“We’re quite familiar with the techniques of these modern artists,” observes New York University anthropologist Randall White, who led the excavation in France’s Vézère Valley. “But now we can confirm this form of image-making was already being practiced by Europe’s earliest human culture, the Aurignacian.”

Pointillism, a painting technique in which small dots are used to create the illusion of a larger image, was developed in the 1880s. However, archaeologists have now found evidence of this technique thousands of years earlier—dating back more than 35,000 years.

The findings appear in the journal Quaternary International.

Major discoveries by White and his colleagues—which include images of mammoths and horses—confirm that a form of pointillism was used by the Aurignacian, the earliest modern human culture in Europe. These add weight to previous isolated discoveries, such as a rhinoceros, from the Grotte Chauvet in France, formed by the application of dozens of dots, first painted on the palm of the hand, and then transferred to the cave wall.

Earlier this year, White’s team reported the uncovering of a 38,000-year-old pointillist image of an aurochs or wild cow—a finding that marks some of the earliest known graphic imagery found in Western Eurasia and offers insights into the nature of modern humans during this period. Now, in short order they have found another pointillist image—this time of a woolly mammoth—in a rock shelter of the same period known as Abri Cellier located near the previous find-site of Abri Blanchard.

Abri Cellier has long been on archeologists’ short-list of major art-bearing sites attributed to the European Aurignacian. Excavations in 1927 yielded 15 engraved and/or pierced limestone blocks that have served as a key point of reference for the study of Aurignacian art in the region.

In 2014, White and his colleagues returned to Cellier, seeking intact deposits that would allow a better understanding of the archaeological sequence at the site and its relationship to other Aurignacian sites. They had their fingers crossed that the new excavation might yield new engraved images in context, but nothing prepared them for the discovery of the 16 stone blocks detailed in the Quaternary International article. One of these, broken in half prehistorically, was found in place with a radiocarbon date of 38,000 years ago.

Remarkably, the remaining 15 blocks, including the pointillist mammoth, one of three mammoth figures recognized during the new work at Cellier, had been left on-site by the 1927 excavators. As many of the engraved traces are rudimentary and thus difficult to interpret, the original excavators set them aside just in case they might have something inscribed on them. The new article presents evidence that the 38,000 year date for the newly excavated engraving also applies to the new trove and to the other blocks found in 1927 and now housed in the French National Prehistory Museum.

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 The 2014 excavations at Abri Cellier (Photo by M. Azéma).

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 Pointillist rhinoceros from Grotte Chauvet (Photo C. Fritz).

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Newly discovered limestone slab from Abri Cellier with pointillist mammoth in profile view formed my dozens of individual punctuations and re-shaping of the natural edge of the block to conform to the animals head and back line (Photo and drawing by R. Bourrillon).

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 Graphic rendering of the recently published Blanchard aurochs illustrating the arrangement of punctuations in relation to the animal (Photo and drawing by R. Bourrillon).

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Over the past decade, with these and other discoveries, White and his team have increased our known sample of the earliest graphic arts in southwestern France by 40 percent. The team includes researchers from the University of Arizona, the University of Toronto, the University of Toulouse, Paris’ Museum of Natural History, and the University of Oxford.

Article Source: New York University news release.

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 This richly illustrated issue includes the following stories: Recent findings shedding new light on the whereabouts of the remains of Philip of Macedon, father of Alexander the Great; how an archaeologist-sculptor is bringing bones of the dead back to life; archaeologists uncovering town life at the dawn of civilization; an exclusive interview with internationally acclaimed archaeologist James M. Adovasio about what makes the Meadowcroft Rockshelter prominent in the ongoing search for the first Americans; what archaeologists are finding at the site of the ancient city of Gath, the home town of the biblical Philistine giant, Goliath; and how scientists are redrawing the picture of human evolution in Europe.  Find it on Amazon.com.

CELL PRESS—The last Neanderthal died 40,000 years ago, but much of their genome lives on, in bits and pieces, through modern humans. The impact of Neanderthals’ genetic contribution has been uncertain: Do these snippets affect our genome’s function, or are they just silent passengers along for the ride? In Cell on February 23, researchers report evidence that Neanderthal DNA sequences still influence how genes are turned on or off in modern humans. Neanderthal genes’ effects on gene expression likely contribute to traits such as height and susceptibility to schizophrenia or lupus, the researchers found.

“Even 50,000 years after the last human-Neanderthal mating, we can still see measurable impacts on gene expression,” says geneticist and study co-author Joshua Akey of the University of Washington School of Medicine. “And those variations in gene expression contribute to human phenotypic variation and disease susceptibility.”

Previous studies have found correlations between Neanderthal genes and traits such as fat metabolism, depression, and lupus risk. However, figuring out the mechanism behind the correlations has proved difficult. DNA can be extracted from fossils and sequenced, but RNA cannot. Without this source of information, scientists can’t be sure exactly if Neanderthal genes functioned differently than their modern human counterparts. They can, however, look to gene expression in modern humans who possess Neanderthal ancestry.

In this study, researchers analyzed RNA sequences in a dataset called the Genotype-Tissue Expression (GTEx) Project, looking for people who carried both Neanderthal and modern human versions of any given gene–one version from each parent. For each such gene, the investigators then compared expression of the two alleles head-to-head in 52 different tissues.

“We find that for about 25% of all those sites that we tested, we can detect a difference in expression between the Neanderthal allele and the modern human allele,” says the study’s first author, UW postdoctoral researcher Rajiv McCoy.

Expression of Neanderthal alleles tended to be especially low in the brain and the testes, suggesting that those tissues may have experienced more rapid evolution since we diverged from Neanderthals approximately 700,000 years ago. “We can infer that maybe the greatest differences in gene regulation exist in the brain and testes between modern humans and Neanderthals,” says Akey.

One example uncovered by this study is a Neanderthal allele of a gene called ADAMTSL3 that decreases risk of schizophrenia, while also influencing height. “Previous work by others had already suggested that this allele affects alternative splicing. Our results support this molecular model, while also revealing that the causal mutation was inherited from Neanderthals,” says McCoy. Alternative splicing refers to a process in which mRNAs are modified before they leave the cell’s nucleus. When the Neanderthal mutation is present, the cell’s machinery removes a segment of the mRNA that is expressed in the modern human version. The cell ends up making a modified protein because of a single mutation from a Neanderthal ancestor.

The connection between that modified protein, height, and schizophrenia still requires more investigation, but it’s an example of how small differences between modern humans and Neanderthals can contribute to variation in people.

“Hybridization between modern humans and Neanderthals increased genomic complexity,” explains Akey. “Hybridization wasn’t just something that happened 50,000 years ago that we don’t have to worry about anymore. Those little bits and pieces, our Neanderthal relics, are influencing gene expression in pervasive and important ways.”

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This visual abstract depicts the findings of McCoy et al., who show genome-wide interrogation of the functional differences between modern human and Neanderthal alleles reveals that Neanderthal-inherited sequences are not silent remnants of ancient interbreeding but have a measurable impact on gene expression that may contribute to phenotypic variation in modern humans. Credit: McCoy et al./Cell 2017

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Next steps may include investigating whether Denisovans–another species of hominins that crossbred with modern humans–are contributing to gene expression, as well as applying the side-by-side method of expression analysis more broadly. For this study, McCoy and his colleagues had to develop a new statistical approach to sift through the immense amount of RNA data, but the same technique could be used to compare gene expression differences between modern human alleles.

Article Source: Cell Press news release. Cell (@CellCellPress), the flagship journal of Cell Press, is a bimonthly journal that publishes findings of unusual significance in any area of experimental biology, including but not limited to cell biology, molecular biology, neuroscience, immunology, virology and microbiology, cancer, human genetics, systems biology, signaling, and disease mechanisms and therapeutics. Visit: http://www.cell.com/cell. To receive Cell Press media alerts, contact [email protected].

Cell, McCoy et al.: “Impacts of Neanderthal-introgressed sequences on the landscape of human gene expression” http://www.cell.com/cell/fulltext/S0092-8674(17)30128-9

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 This richly illustrated issue includes the following stories: Recent findings shedding new light on the whereabouts of the remains of Philip of Macedon, father of Alexander the Great; how an archaeologist-sculptor is bringing bones of the dead back to life; archaeologists uncovering town life at the dawn of civilization; an exclusive interview with internationally acclaimed archaeologist James M. Adovasio about what makes the Meadowcroft Rockshelter prominent in the ongoing search for the first Americans; what archaeologists are finding at the site of the ancient city of Gath, the home town of the biblical Philistine giant, Goliath; and how scientists are redrawing the picture of human evolution in Europe.  Find it on Amazon.com.

PENN STATE—Discovering who was a leader, or even if leaders existed, from the ruins of archaeological sites is difficult, but now a team of archaeologists and biological anthropologists, using a powerful combination of radiocarbon dating and ancient DNA, have shown that a matrilineal dynasty likely ruled Pueblo Bonito in New Mexico for more than 300 years.

“We are not saying that this was a state-level society,” said Douglas J. Kennett, head and professor of anthropology, Penn State. “But we don’t think it was egalitarian either.”

Archaeologists have described the Chaco Phenomenon as anything from an egalitarian society without any rulers at all, to a full-fledged state-level society or kingdom. The researchers now think that Chaco Canyon was much more than a leaderless conglomeration of people, but a hierarchically organized society with leadership inherited through the maternal line.

Typically, the only things found in prehistoric archaeological ruins to indicate elevated status are grave goods—the artifacts found with burials. Throughout the Southwest it is unusual to find formal burials within structures, because most people were buried with limited grave goods outside housing compounds, but in excavations sponsored by the American Museum of Natural History and carried out in the 1890s at Chaco Canyon, archaeologists found room 33 in Pueblo Bonito—a burial crypt within a 650-room pueblo dating between 800 and 1130—that contained 14 burials.

“It has been clear for some time that these were venerated individuals, based on the exceptional treatment they received in the afterlife—most Chacoans were buried outside of the settlement and never with such high quantities of exotic goods,” said Adam Watson, postdoctoral fellow in the American Museum of Natural History Division of Anthropology. “But previously one could only speculate about the exact nature of their relationship to one another.”

The researchers note in today’s (Feb. 21) issue of Nature Communications, that this 6.5 by 6.5 foot room “was purposely constructed as a crypt for a high-status member of this nascent community and ultimately his lineal descendants.” The initial burial was of a male in his 40s who died from a lethal blow to the head. He was buried with more than 11,000 turquoise beads, 3,300 shell beads and other artifacts including abalone shells and a conch shell trumpet originating from the Pacific Ocean and Gulf of California far from central New Mexico. This burial is the richest ever found in the American Southwest.

Another individual was buried above this initial interment and a split plank floor placed above them. In the space above, another 12 burials took place over the span of 300 years.

“We originally worked with Steve Plog (David A. Harrison Professor of Archaeology, University of Virginia) to radiocarbon date these burials,” said Kennett. “The results of this work had all the individuals dating to a 300 year period. Then the question came up, are they related?”

Kennett and Plog teamed up with George Perry, assistant professor of anthropology and biology, Penn State and Richard George, a graduate student in anthropology, to first examine the mitochondrial genomes of these individuals.”

When the results came back, the researchers found that all the individuals shared the same mitochondrial genome sequence. Mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA) is inherited only from an individual’s mother, so matching mtDNA indicates that not only where all the individuals from the same family, but the inheritance was matrilineal—through the mother.

“First we thought this could be some kind of contamination problem,” said Kennett. “We checked for contamination, but found no evidence for it and David Reich’s laboratory at Harvard Medical School corroborated our results.”

Working with Reich, professor of genetics, the researchers then wondered if they could determine specific relationships among these individuals.

“Using DNA sequences from the nuclear genome combined with the radiocarbon dates, we identified a mother-daughter pair and a grandmother-grandson relationship,” said Kennett.

“For the first time, we’re saying that one kinship group controlled Pueblo Bonito for more than 300 years,” said Plog. “This is the best evidence of a social hierarchy in the ancient Southwest.”

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 Pottery and wooden flute found in Room 33 of Pueblo Bonito. Credit: Roderick Mickens ©American Museum of Natural History

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Article Source: Penn State University

Other Penn State researchers on this project are Brendon J. Culleton, research associate, anthropology; and Logan Kistler, recent Ph.D. graduate and postdoc and now curator at the Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History.

Also working on the project are David Reich, professor of genetics; Pontus Skoglund, postdoctoral fellow in genetics; Swapan Mallick, bioinformatics director, medical and population genetics; Nadin Rohland, lab director, medical and population genetics; and Kristin Stewardson, ancient DNA technician, all at Harvard University Medical School; Steven A. LeBlanc, Peabody Museum of Archaeology and Ethnology; and Peter N. Whiteley, American Museum of Natural History.

The National Science Foundation, the University of Virginia and Penn State supported this work.

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 This richly illustrated issue includes the following stories: Recent findings shedding new light on the whereabouts of the remains of Philip of Macedon, father of Alexander the Great; how an archaeologist-sculptor is bringing bones of the dead back to life; archaeologists uncovering town life at the dawn of civilization; an exclusive interview with internationally acclaimed archaeologist James M. Adovasio about what makes the Meadowcroft Rockshelter prominent in the ongoing search for the first Americans; what archaeologists are finding at the site of the ancient city of Gath, the home town of the biblical Philistine giant, Goliath; and how scientists are redrawing the picture of human evolution in Europe.  Find it on Amazon.com.

Some South Americans, a new report finds, share a last common ancestor with modern populations in Asia – a result that suggests multiple waves of migration into the Americas. The flow of early humans into South America, the last continent to be populated by modern humans, is a subject of intense debate, with some studies supporting one migration from Asia and others suggesting up to four separate waves. South Americans’ crania, or skulls, are highly diverse, but it is unclear whether the differences indicate multiple migrations or local diversification processes. Here, to differentiate between the possibilities of population divergence and gene flow between neighboring populations, Noreen von Cramon-Taubadel et al., studied three-dimensional digital representations of cranial data from Paleoamerican specimens from the Lagoa Santa region of Brazil. The results of the novel approach, which focused on three cranial regions (the vault, face and basicranium), suggested that Lagoa Santa Paleoamericans share a most recent common ancestor with a contemporary population in northeast Asia. The results also agree with some genomic studies, including those suggesting a link between Amazonian populations and Australasians. Additionally, the results support the use of cranial shape data to draw inferences regarding past population history, especially as genomic data may not be available to answer some questions about human prehistory.

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 Drone view of the Lapa do Santo site, Brazil. Credit: Artur Magalhaes

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 Burial 34 from the Lapa do Santo site, Brazil. Credit: Andre Strauss

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 Paleoamerican skull from Burial 1, Lapa do Santo site, Brazil. Credit: Mauricio de Paiva

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Article Source: Science Advances. Science Advances is published by the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS), the nonprofit science society.

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 This richly illustrated issue includes the following stories: Recent findings shedding new light on the whereabouts of the remains of Philip of Macedon, father of Alexander the Great; how an archaeologist-sculptor is bringing bones of the dead back to life; archaeologists uncovering town life at the dawn of civilization; an exclusive interview with internationally acclaimed archaeologist James M. Adovasio about what makes the Meadowcroft Rockshelter prominent in the ongoing search for the first Americans; what archaeologists are finding at the site of the ancient city of Gath, the home town of the biblical Philistine giant, Goliath; and how scientists are redrawing the picture of human evolution in Europe.  Find it on Amazon.com.

UPPSALA UNIVERSITY—A new study, looking at the sex-specifically inherited X chromosome of prehistoric human remains, shows that hardly any women took part in the extensive migration from the Pontic-Caspian Steppe approximately 5,000 years ago. The great migration that brought farming practices to Europe 4,000 years earlier, on the other hand, consisted of both women and men. The difference in sex bias suggests that different social and cultural processes drove the two migrations.

Genetic data suggest that modern European ancestry represents a mosaic of ancestral contributions from multiple waves of prehistoric migration events. Recent studies of genomic variation in prehistoric human remains have demonstrated that two mass migration events are particularly important to understanding European prehistory: the Neolithic spread of agriculture from Anatolia starting around 9,000 years ago, and migration from the Pontic-Caspian Steppe around 5,000 years ago. These migrations are coincident with large social, cultural, and linguistic changes, and each has been inferred to have replaced more than half of the contemporaneous gene pool of resident Central Europeans.

Dramatic events in human prehistory can be investigated using patterns of genetic variation among the people that lived in those times. In particular, studies of differing female and male demographic histories on the basis of ancient genomes can provide information about complexities of social structures and cultural interactions in prehistoric populations.

Researchers from Uppsala and Stanford University investigated the genetic ancestry on the sex-specifically inherited X chromosome and the autosomes in 20 early Neolithic and 16 Late Neolithic/Bronze Age human remains. Contrary to previous hypotheses suggesting patrilocality (social system in which a family resides near the man’s parents) of many agricultural populations, they found no evidence of sex-biased admixture during the migration that spread farming across Europe during the early Neolithic.

For later migrations from the Pontic steppe during the early Bronze Age, however, we find a dramatic male bias. There are simply too few X-chromosomes from the migrants, which points to around ten migrating males for every migrating female, says Mattias Jakobsson, professor of Genetics at the Department of Organismal Biology, Uppsala University.

The research group found evidence of ongoing, primarily male, migration from the steppe to central Europe over a period of multiple generations, with a level of sex bias that excludes a pulse migration during a single generation.

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 Map shows the Pontic-Caspian Steppe region. Dbachmann, Wikimedia Commons

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The contrasting patterns of sex-specific migration during these two migrations suggest a view of differing cultural histories in which the Neolithic transition was driven by mass migration of both males and females in roughly equal numbers—perhaps whole families—whereas the later Bronze Age migration and cultural shift were instead driven by male migration.

Article Source: Uppsala University news release.

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See much more about this in a related in-depth major feature article, The Battle Axe Culture, in the upcoming Spring 2017 issue of Popular Archaeology Magazine.

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UNIVERSITY OF VIRGINIA—University of Virginia linguistic anthropologist Mark A. Sicoli and colleagues are applying the latest technology to an ancient mystery: how and when early humans inhabited the New World. Their new research analyzing more than 100 linguistic features suggest more complex patterns of contact and migration among the early peoples who first settled the Americas.

The diversity of languages in the Americas is like no other continent of the world, with eight times more “isolates” than any other continent. Isolates are “languages that have no demonstrable connection to any other language with which it can be classified into a family,” Sicoli said. There are 26 isolates in North America and 55 in South America, mostly strung across the western edge of the continents, compared to just one in Europe, eight in Africa[?] and nine in Asia.

“Scientists in the past few decades have rethought the settlement of the Americas,” Sicoli said, “replacing the idea that the land which connected Asia and North America during the last ice age was merely a ‘bridge’ with the hypothesis that during the last ice age humans lived in this refuge known as ‘Beringia’ for up to 15,000 years and then seeded migrations not only into North America, but also back into Asia.”

In a Feb. 17 presentation to the annual meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science in Boston, Sicoli will join other scientists discussing “Beringia and the Dispersal of Modern Humans to the Americas.” Since much of Beringia, theorized to have been located generally between northwest North America and northeastern Asia, has been under water for more than 10,000 years, it has been challenging to find archaeological and ecological evidence for this “deep history,” as Sicoli calls it.

Recent ecological, genetic and archaeological data support the notion of human habitation in Beringia during the latest ice age. The new linguistic research methods, which use “big data” to compare similarities and differences between languages, suggest that such a population would have been linguistically diverse, Sicoli said.

In “Linguistic Perspectives on Early Population Migrations and Language Contact in the Americas,” Sicoli shows how big data analyses point to the existence of at least three now-extinct languages of earlier migrations that influenced existing Dene and Aleut languages as they moved to the Alaska coast. The data comparing dozens of indigenous languages support phases of migration for the Dene languages and multilingual language contact systems along the Alaska coast, which potentially involved languages related to current linguistic isolates. Traces of such language contacts support that the mixing populations also mixed their languages as part of human adaptation strategies for this region and its precarious environment.

“The computational methods give us traction on questions that have been unanswered,” said Sicoli, who has been working in collaboration with Anna Berge of the University of Alaska and Gary Holton of the University of Hawaii. “They help us understand how people migrated and languages diversified not simply through isolation, but through multilingual contact.”

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 Graphic illustration of Beringia, showing light blue areas of Beringia that are now underwater with the rise of sea level during modern times. Wikimedia Commons

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Analyzing languages of the Dene-Yeniseian macro-family, Sicoli and Holton previously found support for Dene migrations from Beringia into North America and Yeniseian migration into Siberia. The linguists’ continuing research is following up on this earlier study that posited a back-migration for the Yeniseian language family.

“In new work, Holton and I also are considering typological linguistic evidence for the subgrouping of the Dene languages suggestive of multiple routes and phases for Dene migrations in North America,” Sicoli said. “We find additional support for coastal and interior distributions with two interior migration chains from Alaska into Canada and a later phase of migration involving connections between Tsuut’ina Athabaskan in western Canada and the Apache and Navajo languages of the U.S. Southwest. We also find support for a series of migrations from the Alaska and Canadian interior to the Alaska coast, which raises the question of language contact with prior languages that we are exploring with Aleut specialist Anna Berge.”

In his presentation, Sicoli describes several comparisons from computational work with multiple languages from the Dene family and the more recently arriving Eskimo-Aleut family of languages. He combines geographical maps with language networks from the database that show shared features. For example, they “coded Aleut and Eskimo languages, adding them to the typological database that already included Dene languages and Haida [an isolate], and have been integrating results of phylogenetic and network analysis with prior studies of vocabulary and grammatical patterns,” Sicoli writes.

“Based on linguistic analysis including computational phylogenetics,” Sicoli writes, “we suggest the prehistory of South Alaska, the Aleutian Islands, and the Pacific Northwest Coast involved intensive language contacts, including language shifts from now extinct languages that we can infer through typological features, grammar and vocabulary found in languages documented in historic periods.”

Article Source: University of Virginia

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MOLECULAR BIOLOGY AND EVOLUTION (OXFORD UNIVERSITY PRESS)—Sardinia sits at a crossroads in the Mediterranean Sea, the second largest island next to Sicily. Surrounded by sparkling turquoise waters, this Mediterranean jewel lies northwest of the toe of the Italian peninsula boot, about 350 kilometers due west of Rome.

For evolutionary biologists, islands are often intriguing, geographically isolated pockets with unique populations that can be ripe for exploration.

Now, in a new study appearing in the advanced online edition of Molecular Biology and Evolution an international team led by geneticist Anna Olivieri from the University of Pavia tackles a highly interesting question: what were the origins of the Sardinian population in the context of European prehistory and ancient human migrations?

The authors analyzed 3,491 modern, whole mitochondrial DNA genomes from Sardinia (which are only passed down maternally). These were compared with 21 samples of ancient mitogenomes from the island, a large panel of non-Sardinian mitogenomes—and even Ötzi (the nickname of Europe’s oldest natural mummy, the 3,300 BCE-year old “Tyrolean Iceman”)—to better understand their origins.

Their findings show Sardinia as an outlier in the general European genetic landscape. Almost 80 percent of modern Sardinian mitogenomes belong to branches that cannot be found anywhere else outside the island. Thus, they were defined as Sardinian-Specific Haplogroups (SSHs) that most likely arose in the island after its initial occupation. Almost all SSHs coalesce in the post-Nuragic, Nuragic and Neolithic-Copper Age periods. However, some rare SSHs display age estimates older than 7,800 years ago, the postulated archeologically-based starting time of the Neolithic in Sardinia.

“Our analyses raise the possibility that several SSHs may have already been present on the island prior to the Neolithic,” said prof. Francesco Cucca, from the Institute of Genetic and Biomedical Research (IRGB), at the CNR in Cagliari (Sardinia).

The most plausible candidates would include haplogroups K1a2d and U5b1i1, which together comprise almost 3 percent of modern Sardinians, and possibly others. Such a scenario would not only support archaeological evidence of a Mesolithic occupation of Sardinia, but could also suggest a dual ancestral origin of its first inhabitants. K1a2d is of Late Paleolithic Near Eastern ancestry, whereas U5b1i1 harbours deep ancestral roots in Paleolithic Western Europe.

This work provides evidence that contemporary Sardinians harbour a unique genetic heritage, as a result of their distinct history and relative isolation from the demographic upheavals of continental Europe. Anna Olivieri stresses: “It now seems plausible that human mobility, inter-communication and gene flow around the Mediterranean from Late Glacial times onwards may well have left signatures that survive to this day. Some of these signals are still retained in modern Sardinians.”

“Although in the past the stress has often been on the spread of the Neolithic, genetic studies too are beginning to emphasize the complexity and mosaic nature of human ancestry in the Mediterranean, and indeed in Europe more widely,” concludes prof. Antonio Torroni, from the University of Pavia. “Future work on ancient DNA should be able to test directly to what extent this more complex model is supported by genetic evidence, and whether our predictions of Mesolithic ancestry in contemporary Sardinians can be sustained.”

Article Source: Molecular Biology and Evolution

Image: Satellite view of Sardinia

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AMERICAN FRIENDS OF TEL AVIV UNIVERSITY—Albert Einstein considered the origin of the Earth’s magnetic field one of the five most important unsolved problems in physics. The weakening of the geomagnetic field, which extends from the planet’s core into outer space and was first recorded 180 years ago, has raised concern by some for the welfare of the biosphere.

But a new study published in PNAS from Tel Aviv University, Hebrew University of Jerusalem, and University of California San Diego researchers finds there is no reason for alarm: The Earth’s geomagnetic field has been undulating for thousands of years. Data obtained from the analysis of well-dated Judean jar handles provide information on changes in the strength of the geomagnetic field between the 8th and 2nd centuries BCE, indicating a fluctuating field that peaked during the 8th century BCE.

“The field strength of the 8th century BCE corroborates previous observations of our group, first published in 2009, of an unusually strong field in the early Iron Age. We call it the ‘Iron Age Spike,’ and it is the strongest field recorded in the last 100,000 years,” says Dr. Erez Ben-Yosef of TAU’s Institute of Archaeology, the study’s lead investigator. “This new finding puts the recent decline in the field’s strength into context. Apparently, this is not a unique phenomenon — the field has often weakened and recovered over the last millennia.”

Additional researchers included Prof. Oded Lipschits and Michael Millman of TAU, Dr. Ron Shaar of Hebrew University, and Prof. Lisa Tauxe of UC San Diego.

Delving into the inner structure of the planet

“We can gain a clearer picture of the planet and its inner structure by better understanding proxies like the magnetic field, which reaches more than 1,800 miles deep into the liquid part of the Earth’s outer core,” Dr. Ben-Yosef observes.

The new research is based on a set of 67 ancient, heat-impacted Judean ceramic storage jar handles, which bear royal stamp impressions from the 8th to 2nd century BCE, providing accurate age estimates.

“The period spanned by the jars allowed us to procure data on the Earth’s magnetic field during that time — the Iron Age through the Hellenistic Period in Judea,” says Dr. Ben-Yosef. “The typology of the stamp impressions, which correspond to changes in the political entities ruling this area, provides excellent age estimates for the firing of these artifacts.”

To accurately measure the geomagnetic intensity, the researchers conducted experiments at the Paleomagnetic Laboratory of Scripps Institution of Oceanography (SIO), University of California San Diego, using laboratory-built paleomagnetic ovens and a superconducting magnetometer.

“Ceramics, baked clay, burned mud bricks, copper slag — almost anything that was heated and then cooled can become a recorder of the components of the magnetic field at the time of the event,” said Dr. Ben-Yosef. “Ceramics have tiny minerals—magnetic ‘recorders’—that save information about the magnetic field of the time the clay was in the kiln. The behavior of the magnetic field in the past can be studied by examining archaeological artifacts or geological material that were heated then cooled, such as lava.”

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 ‘Snapshot’ of the main magnetic field at Earth’s surface as of June 2014 based on Swarm data. Wikimedia Commons

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Advanced dating method

Observed changes in the geomagnetic field can, in turn, be used as an advanced dating method complementary to the radiocarbon dating, according to Dr. Ben-Yosef. “The improved Levantine archaeomagnetic record can be used to date pottery and other heat-impacted archaeological materials whose date is unknown.

“Both archaeologists and Earth scientists benefit from this. The new data can improve geophysical models—core-mantle interactions, cosmogenic processes and more—as well as provide an excellent, accurate dating reference for archaeological artefacts,” says Dr. Ben-Yosef.

The researchers are currently working on enhancing the archaeomagnetic database for the Levant, one of the most archaeologically-rich regions on the planet, to better understand the geomagnetic field and establish a robust dating reference.

Article Source: American Friends of Tel Aviv University

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UNIVERSITY OF MONTREAL—Humans may have ritualistically “killed” objects to remove their symbolic power, some 5,000 years earlier than previously thought, a new international study of marine pebble tools from an Upper Paleolithic burial site in Italy suggests.

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 This richly illustrated issue includes the following stories: Recent findings shedding new light on the whereabouts of the remains of Philip of Macedon, father of Alexander the Great; how an archaeologist-sculptor is bringing bones of the dead back to life; archaeologists uncovering town life at the dawn of civilization; an exclusive interview with internationally acclaimed archaeologist James M. Adovasio about what makes the Meadowcroft Rockshelter prominent in the ongoing search for the first Americans; what archaeologists are finding at the site of the ancient city of Gath, the home town of the biblical Philistine giant, Goliath; and how scientists are redrawing the picture of human evolution in Europe.  Find it on Amazon.com.

A new study* published by the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences suggests that the Amazonian forests in the Acre state of Brazil were managed by human inhabitants for thousands of years, further supporting the theory that much of the Amazon rainforest was already to some extent a product of human design by the time Europeans arrived in the region more than 450 years ago.

Amazonian rainforests once thought to be pristine wildernesses are now known to have been inhabited by large populations before European contact. But how and to what extent these societies impacted their landscape is still controversial. However, in Brazil, scientists and explorers have discovered hundreds of geometric earthworks — over 450 pre-Columbian (pre-AD 1492) geometric ditched enclosures (“geoglyphs”) occupying about 13,000 km2 of the Acre state in Brazil. These huge earthworks were concealed for centuries within the upland interfluvial rainforest, directly challenging the “pristine” status of this ecosystem and its perceived vulnerability to human impacts — suggesting that this region was also deforested to a large extent in the past, challenging the apparent vulnerability of Amazonian forests to human land use. In a study co-authored by Jennifer Watling of the University of Sao Paulo and University of Exeter and colleagues, researchers show that bamboo forest dominated the region for at least 6,000 years and that small, temporary clearings were made to build the geoglyphs; however, construction occurred within an anthropogenic forest, meaning that the forest had already been actively managed by its human inhabitants for millennia. In the absence of widespread deforestation, exploitation of forest products shaped a largely forested landscape that survived intact until the late 20th century. In contrast, the authors suggest, long-term, regional-scale deforestation is primarily a modern phenomenon.

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 Geoglyphs in the Acre state of Brazil. Sanna Saunaluoma, Wikimeda Commons 

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Article Source: Edited and adapted from the PNAS article summary for “Impact of pre-Columbian “geoglyph” builders on Amazonian forests”* 

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*Jennifer Watling, et al., Impact of pre-Columbian “geoglyph” builders on Amazonian forests, www.pnas.org/cgi/doi/10.1073/pnas.1614359114 

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TRINITY COLLEGE DUBLIN—New research indicates that Baltic hunter-gatherers were not swamped by migrations of early agriculturalists from the Middle East, as was the case for the rest of central and western Europe. Instead, these people probably acquired knowledge of farming and ceramics by sharing cultures and ideas—rather than genes—with outside communities.

Scientists extracted ancient DNA from a number of archaeological remains discovered in Latvia and the Ukraine, which were between 5,000 and 8,000 years old. These samples spanned the Neolithic period, which was the dawn of agriculture in Europe, when people moved from a mobile hunter-gatherer lifestyle to a settled way of life based on food production.

We know through previous research that large numbers of early farmers from the Levant (the Near East) – driven by the success of their technological innovations such as crops and pottery – had expanded to the peripheral parts of Europe by the end of the Neolithic and largely replaced hunter-gatherer populations.

However, the new study, published today in the journal Current Biology, shows that the Levantine farmers did not contribute to hunter-gatherers in the Baltic as they did in Central and Western Europe.

The research team, which includes scientists from Trinity College Dublin, the University of Cambridge, and University College Dublin, says their findings instead suggest that the Baltic hunter-gatherers learned these skills through communication and cultural exchange with outsiders.

The findings feed into debates around the ‘Neolithic package,’—the cluster of technologies such as domesticated livestock, cultivated cereals and ceramics, which revolutionised human existence across Europe during the late Stone Age.

Advances in ancient DNA work have revealed that this ‘package’ was spread through Central and Western Europe by migration and interbreeding: the Levant and later Anatolian farmers mixing with and essentially replacing the hunter-gatherers.

But the new work suggests migration was not a ‘universal driver’ across Europe for this way of life. In the Baltic region, archaeology shows that the technologies of the ‘package’ did develop—albeit less rapidly—even though the analyses show that the genetics of these populations remained the same as those of the hunter-gatherers throughout the Neolithic.

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 The Neolithic peoples of the Baltics acquired agriculture and other elements of permanent settlement culture through diffusion, not through large migratory movements from Anatolia and the Middle East, according to genetic study. Gromko, Wikimedia Commons

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Andrea Manica, one of the study’s senior authors from the University of Cambridge, said: “Almost all ancient DNA research up to now has suggested that technologies such as agriculture spread through people migrating and settling in new areas.”

“However, in the Baltic, we find a very different picture, as there are no genetic traces of the farmers from the Levant and Anatolia who transmitted agriculture across the rest of Europe.”

“The findings suggest that indigenous hunter-gatherers adopted Neolithic ways of life through trade and contact, rather than being settled by external communities. Migrations are not the only model for technology acquisition in European prehistory.”

While the sequenced genomes showed no trace of the Levant farmer influence, one of the Latvian samples did reveal genetic influence from a different external source—one that the scientists say could be a migration from the Pontic Steppe in the east. The timing (5-7,000 years ago) fits with previous research estimating the earliest Slavic languages.

Researcher Eppie Jones, from Trinity College Dublin and the University of Cambridge, was the lead author of the study. She said: “There are two major theories on the spread of Indo-European languages, the most widely spoken language family in the world. One is that they came from the Anatolia with the agriculturalists; another that they developed in the Steppes and spread at the start of the Bronze Age.”

“That we see no farmer-related genetic input, yet we do find this Steppe-related component, suggests that at least the Balto-Slavic branch of the Indo-European language family originated in the Steppe grasslands of the East, which would bring later migrations of Bronze Age horse riders.”

The researchers point out that the time scales seen in Baltic archaeology are also very distinct to the rest of Europe, with a much more drawn-out and piecemeal uptake of Neolithic technologies, rather than the complete ‘package’ that arrives with migrations to take most of Europe by storm.

Andrea Manica added: “Our evidence of genetic continuity in the Baltic, coupled with the archaeological record showing a prolonged adoption of Neolithic technologies, would suggest the existence of trade networks with farming communities largely independent of interbreeding.”

“It seems the hunter-gatherers of the Baltic likely acquired bits of the Neolithic package slowly over time through a ‘cultural diffusion’ of communication and trade, as there is no sign of the migratory wave that brought farming to the rest of Europe during this time.

“The Baltic hunter-gatherer genome remains remarkably untouched until the great migrations of the Bronze Age sweep in from the East.”

About the study

The researchers analysed eight ancient genomes – six from Latvia and two from Ukraine – that spanned a timeframe of three and a half thousand years (between 8,300 and 4,800 years ago). This enabled them to start plotting the genetic history of Baltic inhabitants during the Neolithic.

DNA was extracted from the petrous area of skulls that had been recovered by archaeologists from some of the region’s richest Stone Age cemeteries. The petrous, at the base of the skull, is one of the densest bones in the body, and a prime location for DNA that has suffered the least contamination over millennia.

Article Source: Trinity College Dublin

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UNIVERSITY OF CAMBRIDGE—Researchers working on ancient DNA extracted from human remains interred almost 8,000 years ago in a cave in the Russian Far East have found that the genetic makeup of certain modern East Asian populations closely resemble that of their hunter-gatherer ancestors.

The study, published today in the journal Science Advances, is the first to obtain nuclear genome data from ancient mainland East Asia and compare the results to modern populations.

The findings indicate that there was no major migratory interruption, or “population turnover”, for well over seven millennia. Consequently, some contemporary ethnic groups share a remarkable genetic similarity to Stone Age hunters that once roamed the same region.

The high “genetic continuity” in East Asia is in stark contrast to most of Western Europe, where sustained migrations of early farmers from the Levant overwhelmed hunter-gatherer populations. This was followed by a wave of horse riders from Central Asia during the Bronze Age. These events were likely driven by the success of emerging technologies such as agriculture and metallurgy

The new research shows that, at least for part of East Asia, the story differs – with little genetic disruption in populations since the early Neolithic period.

Despite being separated by a vast expanse of history, this has allowed an exceptional genetic proximity between the Ulchi people of the Amur Basin, near where Russia borders China and North Korea, and the ancient hunter-gatherers laid to rest in a cave close to the Ulchi’s native land.

The researchers suggest that the sheer scale of East Asia and dramatic variations in its climate may have prevented the sweeping influence of Neolithic agriculture and the accompanying migrations that replaced hunter-gatherers across much of Europe. They note that the Ulchi retained their hunter-fisher-gatherer lifestyle until recent times.

“Genetically speaking, the populations across northern East Asia have changed very little for around eight millennia,” said senior author Andrea Manica from the University of Cambridge, who conducted the work with an international team, including colleagues from Ulsan National Institute of Science and Technology in Korea, and Trinity College Dublin and University College Dublin in Ireland.

“Once we accounted for some local intermingling, the Ulchi and the ancient hunter-gatherers appeared to be almost the same population from a genetic point of view, even though there are thousands of years between them.”

The new study also provides further support for the ‘dual origin’ theory of modern Japanese populations: that they descend from a combination of hunter-gatherers and agriculturalists that eventually brought wet rice farming from southern China. A similar pattern is also found in neighbouring Koreans, who are genetically very close to Japanese.

However, Manica says that much more DNA data from Neolithic China is required to pinpoint the origin of the agriculturalists involved in this mixture.

The team from Trinity College Dublin were responsible for extracting DNA from the remains, which were found in a cave known as Devil’s Gate. Situated in a mountainous area close to the far eastern coast of Russia that faces northern Japan, the cave was first excavated by a soviet team in 1973.

Along with hundreds of stone and bone tools, the carbonised wood of a former dwelling, and woven wild grass that is one of the earliest examples of a textile, were the incomplete bodies of five humans.

If ancient DNA can be found in sufficiently preserved remains, sequencing it involves sifting through the contamination of millennia. The best samples for analysis from Devil’s Gate were obtained from the skulls of two females: one in her early twenties, the other close to fifty. The site itself dates back over 9,000 years, but the two women are estimated to have died around 7,700 years ago.

Researchers were able to glean the most from the middle-aged woman. Her DNA revealed she likely had brown eyes and thick, straight hair. She almost certainly lacked the ability to tolerate lactose, but was unlikely to have suffered from ‘alcohol flush’: the skin reaction to alcohol now common across East Asia.

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View from the interior of Devil’s Gate: the cave in the Primorye region, about 30km from the far eastern coast of Russia, where the human remains were found from which the ancient DNA used in the study was extracted. Credit: Yuriy Chernyavskiy

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 Exterior of Devil’s Gate: the cave in the Primorye region, about 30km from the far eastern coast of Russia, where the human remains were found from which the ancient DNA used in the study was extracted. Credit: Yuriy Chernyavskiy

 One of the skulls found in the Devil’s Gate cave from which ancient DNA used in the study was extracted. Credit: Elizaveta Veselovskaya

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While the Devil’s Gate samples show high genetic affinity to the Ulchi, fishermen from the same area who speak the Tungusic language, they are also close to other Tungusic-speaking populations in present day China, such as the Oroqen and Hezhen.

“These are ethnic groups with traditional societies and deep roots across eastern Russia and China, whose culture, language and populations are rapidly dwindling,” added lead author Veronika Siska, also from Cambridge.

“Our work suggests that these groups form a strong genetic lineage descending directly from the early Neolithic hunter-gatherers who inhabited the same region thousands of years previously.”

Article Source: University of Cambridge

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 This richly illustrated issue includes the following stories: Recent findings shedding new light on the whereabouts of the remains of Philip of Macedon, father of Alexander the Great; how an archaeologist-sculptor is bringing bones of the dead back to life; archaeologists uncovering town life at the dawn of civilization; an exclusive interview with internationally acclaimed archaeologist James M. Adovasio about what makes the Meadowcroft Rockshelter prominent in the ongoing search for the first Americans; what archaeologists are finding at the site of the ancient city of Gath, the home town of the biblical Philistine giant, Goliath; and how scientists are redrawing the picture of human evolution in Europe.  Find it on Amazon.com.

INDIANAPOLIS—What caused the rapid disappearance of a vibrant Native American agrarian culture that lived in urban settlements from the Ohio River Valley to the Mississippi River Valley in the two centuries preceding the European settlement of North America? In a new study, researchers from Indiana University-Purdue University Indianapolis reconstructed and analyzed 2,100 years of temperature and precipitation data—and point the finger at climate change.

Employing proxies of prehistoric temperature and precipitation preserved in finely layered lake sediments, somewhat analogous to tree-ring records used to reconstruct drought and temperature, the IUPUI scientists have reported on the dramatic environmental changes that occurred as the Native Americans—known as Mississippians—flourished and then vanished from the Midwestern United States. The researchers theorize that the catastrophic climate change they observed, which doomed food production, was a primary cause of the disappearance.

“Abrupt climate change can impose conditions like drought. If these conditions are severe and sustained, as we have determined that they became for the Mississippians, it is virtually impossible for societies, especially those based on agriculture, to survive,” said paleoclimatologist Broxton Bird, corresponding author of the new study. “From the lake records, we saw that the abundant rainfall and consistent good weather—which supported Mississippian society as it grew—changed, making agriculture unsustainable.” Bird is an assistant professor of earth sciences in the School of Science at IUPUI.

This failure of their principal food source likely destabilized the sociopolitical system that supported Mississippian society, according to archeologist Jeremy Wilson, a study co-author. He is an associate professor of anthropology in the School of Liberal Arts at IUPUI.

“Archeologists have recognized that from 1300 onward, Mississippian villages started disappearing—one after the other—almost like lightbulbs in a string, but the question has always been ‘why?,'” said Wilson. “Dr. Bird and his students have shown from the lake-sediment evidence that during the period known as the Little Ice Age, from 1300 to 1800, there was a profound change in climate to colder and drier conditions, which would have negatively impacted the growing of maize in and around Mississippian villages.

“It’s important for us to understand how past civilizations coped with climate change as we encounter things like changing precipitation patterns and temperatures that appear to be rising around the world today.”

As the Mississippians’ culture waned, the IUPUI researchers found, there were lower temperatures and significantly less summer rainfall than during its rise. They attribute these changes to more El Niño-like conditions in the Pacific Ocean and cooling during the Little Ice Age, which altered atmospheric circulation such that moisture delivered to the Midwest was derived from the northwestern U.S. (Pacific and Arctic) instead of the Gulf of Mexico, as was the case during the Mississippians’ rise. The longer transport distance of Pacific air masses during the Little Ice Age left less moisture available for rainfall in the Midwest, resulting in drought conditions that undermined agricultural production.

“Climate change had been previously postulated as one of the factors responsible for the disappearance of the Mississippians,” Bird said. “What our research did was develop the highest-resolution record yet produced of rainfall in the midcontinental U.S. for the last 2,100 years, including the time frame from the beginning of the Mississippian period—about 1,000 years ago—to 500 years ago, when much of the lower Midwest was totally abandoned by these people. Our results strongly support climate change—drought, specifically—as a significant cause of the disappearance of Mississippians from the midcontinent through its impact on their ability to farm and produce food surpluses.

“Mississippians did not have irrigation and relied on rainfall to grow their crops. Modern agriculture in the Midwest corn belt likewise relies on rainfall with very little irrigation infrastructure, making us similarly vulnerable to drought,” Bird said.

“Midcontinental Native American Population Dynamics and Late Holocene Hydroclimate Extremes” is published in Scientific Reports, an open access, peer-reviewed Nature research journal.

The sediment studied was from Martin Lake in northeast Indiana. Bird and Wilson are continuing their research at additional lakes, especially those adjacent to archeological sites, throughout the midcontinent.

Article Source: INDIANA UNIVERSITY-PURDUE UNIVERSITY INDIANAPOLIS SCHOOL OF SCIENCE

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Image: Studying finely layered sediments from Martin Lake in LaGrange county, Indiana, IUPUI scientists have reported on dramatic environmental changes that occurred in the New World before the Europeans arrived. Credit: Broxton Bird, PhD, School of Science, Indiana University-Purdue University Indianapolis

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Travel and learn with Far Horizons.

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 This richly illustrated issue includes the following stories: Recent findings shedding new light on the whereabouts of the remains of Philip of Macedon, father of Alexander the Great; how an archaeologist-sculptor is bringing bones of the dead back to life; archaeologists uncovering town life at the dawn of civilization; an exclusive interview with internationally acclaimed archaeologist James M. Adovasio about what makes the Meadowcroft Rockshelter prominent in the ongoing search for the first Americans; what archaeologists are finding at the site of the ancient city of Gath, the home town of the biblical Philistine giant, Goliath; and how scientists are redrawing the picture of human evolution in Europe.  Find it on Amazon.com.

NEW YORK UNIVERSITY—An international team of anthropologists has uncovered a 38,000-year-old engraved image in a southwestern French rockshelter—a finding that marks some of the earliest known graphic imagery found in Western Eurasia and offers insights into the nature of modern humans during this period.

“The discovery sheds new light on regional patterning of art and ornamentation across Europe at a time when the first modern humans to enter Europe dispersed westward and northward across the continent,” explains NYU anthropologist Randall White, who led the excavation in France’s Vézère Valley.

The findings, which appear in the journal Quaternary International, center on the early modern humans’ Aurignacian culture, which existed from approximately 43,000 to 33,000 years ago.

Abri Blanchard, the French site of the recently uncovered engraving, a slab bearing a complex image of an aurochs, or wild cow, surrounded by rows of dots, was previously excavated in the early 20th century. White and his team members began their methodical exploration of remaining deposits at the site in 2011, with the discovery occurring in 2012.

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An international team of anthropologists has uncovered a 38,000-year-old engraved image, above, in a southwestern French rockshelter—a finding that marks some of the earliest known graphic imagery found in Western Eurasia and offers insights into the nature of modern humans during this period. The limestone slab engraved with the image of an aurochs, or extinct wild cow, was discovered at Abri Blanchard in 2012. Credit: Musée national de Préhistoire collections – photo MNP – Ph. Jugie

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White contends that Aurignacian art offers a window into the lives and minds of its makers—and into the societies they created.

“Following their arrival from Africa, groups of modern humans settled into western and Central Europe, showing a broad commonality in graphic expression against which more regionalized characteristics stand out,” he explains. “This pattern fits well with social geography models that see art and personal ornamentation as markers of social identity at regional, group, and individual levels.”

Abri Blanchard and its sister site, Abri Castanet, previously excavated by White’s team, have long been recognized as being among the oldest sites in Eurasia bearing artifacts of human symbolism. Over time, hundreds of personal ornaments have been discovered, including pierced animal teeth, pierced shells, ivory and soapstone beads, engravings, and paintings on limestone slabs.

Article Source: New York University

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Subscribe to Popular Archaeology Premium. Available on all laptops and mobile devices, and still the industry’s best value at only $9.00 annually.

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Travel and learn with Far Horizons.

____________________________________________

 This richly illustrated issue includes the following stories: Recent findings shedding new light on the whereabouts of the remains of Philip of Macedon, father of Alexander the Great; how an archaeologist-sculptor is bringing bones of the dead back to life; archaeologists uncovering town life at the dawn of civilization; an exclusive interview with internationally acclaimed archaeologist James M. Adovasio about what makes the Meadowcroft Rockshelter prominent in the ongoing search for the first Americans; what archaeologists are finding at the site of the ancient city of Gath, the home town of the biblical Philistine giant, Goliath; and how scientists are redrawing the picture of human evolution in Europe.  Find it on Amazon.com.