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MAX PLANCK INSTITUTE FOR THE SCIENCE OF HUMAN HISTORY—Five centuries after Charles I of Spain authorized the transport of the first African slaves to the Viceroyalty of New Spain, the ancestry of the hundreds of thousands of abducted and enslaved people forms an integral part of the genetic and cultural heritage of the Americas. The origins and experiences of those enslaved individuals, however, remains largely unknown.

This study*, published in Current Biology, applies an interdisciplinary approach to explore the backgrounds and living conditions of three African individuals recovered from a mass grave on the grounds of Hospital Real de San José de los Naturales, an early colonial period hospital in Mexico City officially devoted to the indigenous population. Dated to the 16th century, these individuals tell the stories of some of the earliest people forcefully relocated to the Americas in the early years of European colonialism.

Multidisciplinary study reconstructs the lives of early enslaved Africans

The three individuals in the study first caught the attention of the team with their distinct dental modifications, a filing of the upper front teeth consistent with cultural practices recorded for African slaves which can still be observed in some groups living in western Africa today.

“Combining molecular biology, isotopic data and bioinformatic tools with classical historical, anthropological and archaeological evidence allowed us to gain insights into the life history of some of the earliest African slaves in the Americas,” says Johannes Krause, director of the Department of Archaeogenetics at the Max Planck Institute for the Science of Human History (MPI SHH).

Genetic analysis showed that all three individuals shared a Y-chromosome lineage that is highly prevalent in Sub-Saharan Africa, and which is now the most common lineage among African Americans. Combined with isotopic data showing that all three individuals were born outside of Mexico and osteobiographies showing years of physical abuse before premature death, the findings suggest that these individuals may be among the first Africans to reach the Americas after being abducted in their homelands in Sub-Saharan Africa.

“Modern lab techniques allow us to gather incredible amounts of data from very little biological material. The amount of information we can give back to archaeologists, anthropologists and society today using only one tooth from each individual is something we could only dream about just ten years ago,” says Rodrigo Barquera, the study’s lead author.

The spread of pathogens across the Atlantic

Researchers from all three departments and one independent group of the MPI SHH and two laboratories from the ENAH combined their expertise to tell the story of these individuals, examining not only their ancestry and origins, but also their health status and life experiences. The team was able to reconstruct two full pathogen genomes from tooth samples. One individual was infected with a strain of the Hepatitis B virus (HBV) typically found in western Africa today.

“Although we have no indication that the HBV lineage we found established itself in Mexico, this is the first direct evidence of HBV introduction as the result of the transatlantic slave trade,” says Denise Kühnert, leader of the tide research group at MPI SHH. “This provides novel insight into the phylogeographic history of the pathogen.”

Another individual was infected with Treponema pallidum pertenue which causes yaws, a painful infection of the bones similar to syphilis that affects joints and skin. The same strain of yaws has been previously identified in a 17th century colonist of European descent, suggesting the establishment of this disease lineage of African origin in the early colonial population of Mexico.

“This study sheds light into early cases of yaws after the European colonization of the Americas,” says Aditya Kumar Lankapalli of MPI SHH. “Future studies should focus on understanding the transmission and introduction of this pathogen to the Americas. More high-coverage ancient Treponema genomes will allow us to get a better understanding of the coevolution and adaptation of this pathogen to humans.”

“Interdisciplinary studies like this will make the study of the past a much more personal matter in the future,” adds Thiseas C. Lamnidis. The authors hope that future interdisciplinary endeavors will continue to provide insights into the lives, deaths and legacies of historically oppressed groups whose stories have been buried, often in mass graves.

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The skull of one of the individuals studied, in which the dental modifications are apparent, and the tubes used for isotope and genetic tests, both of which were carried out as part of our study. One of the strong points of our paper is the junction of several disciplines in telling a whole story, which we exemplify in this picture combining two different lab approaches together with ethnohistory and anthropology to get a complete picture. Collection of San José de los Naturales, Osteology Laboratory, (ENAH), Mexico City, Mexico. Photo: R. Barquera

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Skulls and dental decoration patterns for the three African individuals from the San José de los Naturales Royal Hospital. A. Skull from individual 150 (SJN001). B. Skull from individual 214 (SJN002). C. Skull from individual 296 (SJN003). D. Close-up of dental modification patterns for individual 150 (SJN001). E. Close-up of dental modification patterns for individual 214 (SJN002). F. Close-up of dental modification patterns for individual 296 (SJN003). Collection of San José de los Naturales, Osteology Laboratory, (ENAH), Mexico City, Mexico. Photo: R. Barquera & N. Bernal.

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Some osteological findings for individual 150 (SJN001). A. Exostosis at the insertion of the coracoclavicular ligament and origin site of the deltoid muscle. B. Thoracic vertebra displaying early signs of a developing of Schmörl’s hernia on the inferior aspect of the vertebral body. C. Green coloration acquired by contact with copper on the cervical vertebrae. D. Green coloration acquired by contact with copper on the costal end of a rib diaphysis. Collection of San José de los Naturales, Osteology Laboratory, (ENAH), Mexico City, Mexico. Photo: R. Barquera & N. Bernal.

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Article Source: MAX PLANCK INSTITUTE FOR THE SCIENCE OF HUMAN HISTORY news release

*”Origin and Health Status of first generation Africans from early Colonial Mexico”, Rodrigo Barquera et al., Current Biology DOI: 10.1016/j.cub.2020.04.002

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PLOS—The ancient cemetery of Mözs-Icsei d?l? in present-day Hungary holds clues to a unique community formation during the beginnings of Europe’s Migration Period, according to a study* published April 29, 2020 in the open-access journal PLOS ONE by Corina Knipper from the Curt-Engelhorn-Center for Archaeometry, Germany, István Koncz, Tivadar Vida from the Eötvös Loránd University, Budapest, Hungary and colleagues.

As the Huns invaded Central Europe during the 5th century, the Romans abandoned their Pannonian provinces in the area of modern-day Western Hungary. Pannonia’s population entered a period of continuous cultural transformation as new foreign groups arrived seeking refuge from the Huns, joining settlements already populated by remaining local Romanized population groups and other original inhabitants. (Later, the Huns themselves would fall to an alliance of Germanic groups.) To better understand this population changing rapidly under chaotic circumstances, Knipper and colleagues turned to the cemetery of Mözs-Icsei d?l? in the Pannonian settlement of Mözs, established around 430 AD.

The authors conducted an archaeological survey of the cemetery and used a combination of isotope analysis and biological anthropology to investigate the site’s previously-excavated burials.

They found that Mözs-Icsei d?l? was a remarkably diverse community and were able to identify three distinct groups across two or three generations (96 burials total) until the abandonment of Mözs cemetery around 470 AD: a small local founder group, with graves built in a brick-lined Roman style; a foreign group of twelve individuals of similar isotopic and cultural background, who appear to have arrived around a decade after the founders and may have helped establish the traditions of grave goods and skull deformation seen in later burials; and a group of later burials featuring mingled Roman and various foreign traditions.

51 individuals total, including adult males, females, and children, had artificially deformed skulls with depressions shaped by bandage wrappings, making Mözs-Icsei d?l? one of the largest concentrations of this cultural phenomenon in the region. The strontium isotope ratios at Mözs-Icsei d?l? were also significantly more variable than those of animal remains and prehistoric burials uncovered in the same geographic region of the Carpathian Basin, and indicate that most of Mözs’ adult population lived elsewhere during their childhood. Moreover, carbon and nitrogen isotope data attest to remarkable contributions of millet to the human diet.

Though further investigation is still needed, Mözs-Icsei d?l? appears to suggest that in at least one community in Pannonia during and after the decline of the Roman Empire, a culture briefly emerged where local Roman and foreign migrant groups shared traditions as well as geographical space.

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Upper part of the body of grave 43 during excavation. The girl had an artificially deformed skull, was place in a grave with a side niche and richly equipped with a necklace, earrings, a comb and glass beads. The girl belonged to a group of people with a non-local origin and similar dietary habits, which appeared to have arrived at the site about 10 years after its establishment. Wosinsky Mór Museum, Szekszárd, Hungary.

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Artificially deformed skull of an adult woman. Permanent binding during childhood caused the elongation of the braincase and the depressions in the bone. Balázs G. Mende. Research Centre for the Humanities, Hungarian Academy of Sciences, Budapest, Hungary

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Article Source: PLOS news release

*Knipper C, Koncz I, Ódor JG, Mende BG, Rácz Z, Kraus S, et al. (2020) Coalescing traditions–Coalescing people: Community formation in Pannonia after the decline of the Roman Empire. PLoS ONE 15(4): e0231760. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0231760

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MAX PLANCK INSTITUTE FOR THE SCIENCE OF HUMAN HISTORY—A new article published in Nature Communications applies stable isotope analysis to a collection of fossil human teeth from the islands of Timor and Alor in Wallacea to study the ecological adaptations of the earliest members of our species to reach this isolated part of the world. Because the Wallacean islands are considered extreme, resource poor settings, archaeologists believed that early seafaring populations would have moved rapidly through this region without establishing permanent communities. Nevertheless, this has so far been difficult to test.

This study, led by scientists from the Department of Archaeology, Max Planck Institute for the Science of Human History (MPI SHH), alongside colleagues from the Australian National University and Universitas Gadjah Mada, used an isotopic methodology that reveals the resources consumed by humans during the period of tooth formation. They demonstrate that the earliest human fossil so far found in the region, dating to around 42,000-39,000 years ago, relied upon coastal resources. Yet, from 20,000 years ago, humans show an increasing reliance on tropical forest environments, away from the island coasts. The results support the idea that one distinguishing characteristic of Homo sapiens is high ecological flexibility, especially when compared to other hominins known from the same region.

Pleistocene hominin adaptations in Southeast Asia

Over the last two decades, archaeological evidence from deserts, high-altitude settings, tropical rainforests, and maritime habitats seem to increasingly suggest that Late Pleistocene humans rapidly adapted to a number of extreme environments. By contrast, our closest hominin relatives, such as Homo erectus and Neanderthals, apparently used various mixtures of forests and grasslands, albeit from as far apart as the Levant, Siberia, and Java. However, this apparent distinction needs testing, especially as finds of another closely related hominin, the Denisovans, have been found on the high-altitude Tibetan Plateau.

As one of the corresponding authors on the new paper, Sue O’Connor of Australian National University says, “The islands beyond Wallace’s Line are ideal places to test the adaptive differences between our species and other hominins. These islands were never connected to mainland Southeast Asia during the Pleistocene, and would have ensured that hominins had to make water crossings to reach it.” Tropical forest settings like those in Wallacea are often considered barriers to human expansion and are a far cry from the sweeping ‘savannahs’ with an abundance of medium to large mammals that hominins are believed to have relied on.

Fossils and stone tools show that hominins made it to Wallacean islands at least one million years ago, including the famous ‘Hobbit,’ or Homo floresiensis, on the island of Flores. When our own species arrived 45,000 years ago (or perhaps earlier), it is thought to have quickly developed the specialized use of marine habitats, as evidenced by one of the world’s earliest fish hooks found in the region. Nevertheless, as co-author Ceri Shipton puts it “the extent of this maritime adaptation has remained hotly debated and difficult to test using snapshots based on, often poorly preserved, animal remains.”

Stable isotope analysis and Late Pleistocene humans

This new paper uses stable carbon isotopes measured from fossil human teeth to directly reconstruct the long-term diets of past populations. Although this method has been used to study the diets and environments of African hominins for nearly half a century, it has thus far been scarcely applied to the earliest members of our own species expanding within and beyond Africa. Using the principle ‘you are what you eat,’ researchers analyzed powdered hominin tooth enamel from 26 individuals dated between 42,000 and 1,000 years ago to explore the types of resources they consumed during tooth formation.

The new paper shows that the earliest human fossil available from the region, excavated from the site of Asitau Kuru on Timor, was indeed reliant on maritime resources, suggesting a well-tuned adaptation to the colonization of coastal areas. “This fits with our existing models of rapid human movement through Wallacea on the way to Australia,” says co-author Shimona Kealy of the Australian National University.

From around 20,000 years ago, however, human diets seem to have switched inland, towards the supposedly impoverished resources of the island forests. Although some individuals maintained the use of coastal habitats, the majority seemingly began to adapt to the populations of small mammals and tropical forest plants in the region. As co-author Mahirta at Universitas Gadjah Mada puts it, “Coastal resources such as shellfish and reef fish are easy to exploit and available year-round, however growing populations likely forced early island occupants to look inland to other resources.”

A species defined by flexibility

This study provides the first direct insights into the adaptations of our own species as it settled in a series of challenging island environments in Wallacea. “Early human populations here, and elsewhere, could not only successfully use the enormous variety of often-extreme Pleistocene environments,” suggests Patrick Roberts, lead author of the study and Group Leader at MPI SHH, “they could also specialize in them over substantial periods of time. As a result, even if some local populations did fail, the species as a whole would go on to become tremendously prolific.”

As dense tropical rainforests replaced mixed grass and woodlands, other hominins in Southeast Asia went extinct. Ecological flexibility, supported by unique technologies and the capacity for social relationships and symbolism, seem to have carried Homo sapiens through the climactic fluctuations of the Late Pleistocene, however. The authors concede that more work is needed to conclusively test the ecological distinction between hominin species. The discovery of Denisovan populations in the tropical environments of Asia or application of this isotopic approach to other hominins in the tropics could yet show Homo sapiens to be less exceptional. Nonetheless, for the time being it seems that it was our species that could best adapt to the variety of environments across the face of the planet, leaving it, by the end of the Pleistocene, the last hominin standing.

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The site of Makpan, Alor. Sue O’Connor

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Shell fish hook recovered from the site of Lene Hara dating to 11,000 years ago. An earlier, less complete example was recovered from Asitau Kuru, indicating an early marine specialization for humans arriving on these islands. Sue O’Connor.

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Maps showing the location of the sites studied within Wallacea. Asitau Kuru, Lene Hara, Matja Kuru 1 and 2 (Timor), Makpan, and Tron Bon Lei (Alor). Roberts, et al., (2020), Australian National University CartoGIS 19-282 KD

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Article Source: MAX PLANCK INSTITUTE FOR THE SCIENCE OF HUMAN HISTORY news release

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A group of scientists from the Institute of Archaeology RAS, NRC “Kurchatov Institute” and other scientific organizations for the first time have conducted a genetic analysis of the remains from cemeteries of the Koban culture, dated between the 9th and 5th centuries AD. The analysis of paleo- DNA of mitochondrial and Y-chromosome haplogroups has confirmed genetic succession of cultures of the ancient Caucasus and its relation both with ancient and with modern ethnic groups that inhabited this region. The results of the research were published in the Journal of Archaeological Science: Reports.

The skeletal remains of fourteen representatives of the Koban archaeological culture were selected for the research. Five were excavated from burials of barrow ‘Klin-Yar 3’ in the vicinity of modern Kislovodsk between 1994-1996, and nine others from a complex of archaeological sites near the village Zayukovo in Kabardino-Balkaria, which has been studied systematically since 2014 by the co-operative expedition of the State Historical Museum and Kabardino-Balkaria State University with participation of the IA RAS.

The samples of paleo DNA were extracted from teeth and bones in the laboratory of NRC “Kurchatov Institute” to identify maternal and paternal haplogroups, the groups that unite men who have common ascendants with similar mutation in the core or mitochondrial genome.

The analysis of the ancient DNA of the individuals from the burials of the Koban archaeological culture revealed the predominance of some mitochondrial and Y-chromosome haplogroups that spread in ancient Europe and Caucasus.

The main haplogroups of Y-chromosomes studied by the researchers are common for Caucasus and Europe in the period of the Iron Age: E1a2a, G2a1a, R1b and R1a.

The haplogroup G2a1a, which now is widely spread among the Ossetians, Balkars and Svans, is usually associated with Middle Eastern and European Neolithic cultures. Of special interest is the haplogroup discovered earlier during the examination of the buried in T-shape catacombs, which are traditionally related to the Alans inhabited Ciscaucasia and the Northern Caucasus in the period from the 1st to the beginning of the 2nd millennium.

The haplogroups R1a and R1b are usually associated with Indo-European migrations, described as the Scythes and Sarmatians. Today, these haplogroups together with the haplogroup E1a2a are identified as modern Northern Caucasian ethnic groups: the Balkars, the Karachi, the Darghins, the Lezghians and the Abkhazians. Therefore, the genetic researches have confirmed the theory about the Scythian influence on the Koban culture, which until the present has been based solely on archaeological material.

The haplogroups of the mitochondrial DNA of the humans who were buried in the cemeteries of Klin-Yar-3 and Zayukovo-3 are related to groups that were discovered earlier both as ancient and modern ethnic groups of the Northern Caucasus.

Among the burials, the male individual from the burial Zayukovo-3 stands out with a rare HV mitochondrial haplogroup that penetrated Europe through the territory of Caucasus after the last Ice Age Maximum (26.5 – 19 thousand years ago) and in the Neolithic period (10 – 3 thousand years ago). Moreover, this man was different with an unusual genetic origin and the paternal line, the haplogroup of the Y-chromosome of this sample D1a2a1, has been widely described in Eastern Asia.

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The places of the burials of the Koban archaeological culture (1 – Klin-Yar 3; 2 – Zayukovo-3). Institute of Archaeology RAS

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Bronze items from the barrow Zayukovo-3. Photo by A. Kadieva (SHM) and S. Demidenko (IA RAS)

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Article Source: Institute of Archaeology RAS news release

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UNIVERSITY OF WARWICK—21st century X-ray technology has allowed University of Warwick scientists to peer back through time at the production of the armor worn by the crew of Henry VIII’s favored warship, the Mary Rose.

Three artifacts believed to be remains of chainmail recovered from the recovered hull have been analyzed by an international team of scientists led by the Universities of Warwick and Ghent using a state-of-the-art X-ray facility called XMaS (X-ray Materials Science) beamline.

They analyzed three brass links as part of continuing scientific investigations into the artifacts recovered during the excavation of the wreck in the Solent. These links have often been found joined to make a sheet or a chain and are most likely to be from a suit of chainmail armor. By using several X-ray techniques available via the XMaS beamline to examine the surface chemistry of the links, the team were able to peer back through time to the armor’s production and reveal that these links were manufactured from an alloy of 73% copper and 27% zinc.

Emeritus Professor Mark Dowsett from the University of Warwick’s Department of Physics said: “The results indicate that in Tudor times, brass production was fairly well controlled and techniques such as wire drawing were well developed. Brass was imported from Ardennes and also manufactured at Isleworth. I was surprised at the consistent zinc content between the wire links and the flat ones. It’s quite a modern alloy composition.”

The exceptionally high sensitivity analysis revealed traces of heavy metals, such as lead and gold, on the surface of the links, hinting at further history to the armor yet to be uncovered.

Professor Dowsett explains: “The heavy metal traces are interesting because they don’t seem to be part of the alloy but embedded in the surface. One possibility is that they were simply picked up during the production process from tools used to work lead and gold as well. Lead, mercury and cadmium, however, arrived in the Solent during WW2 from the heavy bombing of Portsmouth Dockyard. Lead and arsenic also came into the Solent from rivers like the Itchen over extended historical periods.

“In a Tudor battle, there might be quite a lot of lead dust produced by the firing of munitions. Lead balls were used in scatter guns and pistols, although stone was used in canon at that time.”

The Tudor warship the Mary Rose was one of the first warships that Henry VIII ordered not long after he ascended to the throne in 1509. Often considered to be his favorite, on 19 July 1545 it sank in the Solent during a battle with a French invasion fleet. The ship sank to the seabed and over time the silts covered and preserved its remains as a remarkable record of Tudor naval engineering and ship board life.

In 1982 the remaining part of the hull was raised and is now housed in the Mary Rose Museum in Portsmouth alongside many thousands of the 19,000 artifacts that were also recovered, many of which were remarkably well preserved by the Eocene clays.

After recovery, the three artifacts were subjected to different cleaning and conservation treatments to prevent corrosion (distilled water, benzotriazole (BTA) solution, and cleaning followed by coating with BTA and silicone oil). This research also analyzed the surface chemistry of the brass links to assess and compare the levels of corrosion between the different techniques, finding that all had been effective at preventing corrosion since being recovered.

Professor Dowsett added: “The analysis shows that basic measures to remove chlorine followed by storage at reduced temperature and humidity form an effective strategy even over 30 years.”

XMaS is owned by the Universities of Liverpool and Warwick and is located in Grenoble, France, at the European Synchrotron Radiation Facility (ESRF). It works with over 90 active research groups, representing several hundred researchers, in diverse fields ranging across materials science, physics, chemistry, engineering and biomaterials and contributes to societal challenges including energy storage and recovery, tackling climate change, the digital economy and advances in healthcare.

It is a National Research Facility and is currently undergoing a major upgrade thanks to £7.2million funding from the Department of Business, Innovation and Skills through the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC).

Professor Mieke Adriaens, Head of the Electrochemistry and Surface Analysis Group at Ghent University said: “XMaS is extremely versatile and flexible in the analytical strategies which can be devised and implemented. What’s more, the beamline scientists are amongst the best we’ve encountered anywhere. It is fascinating to examine ancient technology using specially developed analytical methods which can then be applied to modern materials too. It was also a real privilege to be allowed access to these unique artifacts and to play a part in unravelling their story.”

Professor Eleanor Schofield, Head of Conservation at the Mary Rose: “This study clearly shows the power of combining sophisticated techniques such as those available at a synchrotron source. We can glean information not only on the original production, but also on how it has reacted to being the marine environment and crucially, how effective the conservation strategies have been.

Co-author Professor Pam Thomas, Pro-Vice-Chancellor for Research at the University of Warwick, said: “We are very pleased that researchers at Warwick are continuing to put our expertise in Analytical Sciences at the forefront of research on important historical artifacts. The long tradition of X-ray scattering and diffraction science within the Department of Physics at Warwick continues to give high-quality data and leads to penetrating insight across a wide range of scientific problems. It is testament both to the expertise at the XMaS beamline of ESRF and in the X-Ray Diffraction Research Technology Platform (RTP) at Warwick.”

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A cleaned and conserved link. Mark Dowsett with permission from the Mary Rose Trust

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The conserved Mary Rose at the Mary Rose Museum in Portsmouth. ©Johnny Black

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Article Source: UNIVERSITY OF WARWICK news release

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AARHUS UNIVERSITY—An international team of researchers has put together a new image of Neanderthals based on the genes Neanderthals left in the DNA of modern humans when they had children with them about 50,000 years ago. The researchers found the new pieces of the puzzle by trawling the genomes of more than 27,000 Icelanders. Among other things, they discovered that Neanderthal women gave birth when they were older than the Homo sapiens women at that time, and Neanderthal men became fathers when they were younger.

It is well-known that a group of our ancestors left Africa and, about 50,000 years ago, met Neanderthals in Europe, and then had children with them.

Now, a new analysis shows that the Neanderthals may have had children with another extinct species of human (Denisovans), before they met Homo Sapiens, and that these children have been fertile and transferred genes from both species further on to modern people.

The analysis also shows that the Neanderthal women living 100,000 – 500,000 years ago on average became mothers at a later age than the contemporary Homo sapiens women living in Africa. On the other hand, Neanderthal men fathered at a younger age than their Homo sapiens cousins in Africa.

How can an analysis show all that?

Neanderthals may well be extinct, but small pieces of their DNA live on in us. All living people outside Africa have up to two per cent Neanderthal genes in their DNA.

However, this two per cent is scattered as small fragments in our genomes, and not all individuals have inherited the same fragments. The fragments are like pieces of a jigsaw puzzle, and if they are put together correctly, they will show a picture of the genome in the Neanderthal population that the modern Homo sapiens had children with.

New method to find the pieces

First, of course, we have to find these pieces. And this is precisely what the group of researchers from Denmark, Iceland and Germany did to produce their results, published today in the scientific journal Nature.

One of them, Laurits Skov, postdoc from the Bioinformatics Research Centre (BiRC) at Aarhus University, has developed a method for tracing Neanderthal fragments in our DNA. Laurits and PhD student Moisès Coll Macià took the method to Iceland, where the genetics firm deCODE has amassed genetic data and health information for more than half of the Icelandic population.

“We spent several months at deCODE in Reykjavik on what can be called field studies for a computational biologist. By combining my method with deCODE’s data and expertise, we have analyzed 27,566 genomes, and this makes our study 10 times larger than previous studies of Neanderthal genes in human DNA,” says Laurits Skov.

Together, the many fragments account for approximately half of a complete Neanderthal genome.

Denisovan genes gone astray?

However, the researchers also found significant fragments of genetic material from another archaic species of human, Denisovans, in the DNA of the Icelanders, and this was something of a surprise. Up to now, Denisovan genes have primarily been found in Australian Aborigines, East Asians and people in Papua New Guinea. So how did these genes end up in Islanders’ DNA? And when?

Based on the distribution of genes and mutations, the researchers came up with two possible explanations.

Neanderthals may have had children with Denisovans before they met the Homo sapiens. This would mean that the Neanderthals with whom Homo sapiens had children were already hybrids, who transferred both Neanderthal and Denisovan genes to the children.

“Up to now, we believed that the Neanderthals modern people have had children with were “pure” Neanderthals. It’s true that researchers have found the remnants of a hybrid between Denisovans and Neanderthals in a cave in East Asia, but we have not known whether there were more of these hybrids and whether, thousands of years later, they had children with modern humans,” explains Professor Mikkel Heide Schierup from BiRC.

Or, Homo sapiens met Denisovans long before they met Neanderthals. So far, it has been thought that modern humans met Neanderthals and had children with them first, and not until tens of thousands of years later did they have children with Denisovans.

“Both explanations are equally likely, and both explanations will be scientific news,” says Mikkel Heide Schierup.

Neanderthal genes of little importance

The study also shows that the Neanderthal DNA has no great importance for modern humans.

“We have previously thought that many of the Neanderthal variants previously been found in modern human DNA were associated with an increased risk of diseases. However, our study shows that the human gene variants located directly beside the Neanderthal genes are better explanations for the risk. We have also found something that can only be explained by Neanderthal genes, but this doesn’t mean that much,” says Mikkel Heide Schierup.

The properties and risks of diseases that can be linked to Neanderthal DNA are: slightly lower risk of prostate cancer, lower levels of hemoglobin, lower body length (one millimeter) and slightly faster blood plasma clotting.

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DNA of Icelanders provides new knowledge about extinct human species. Astrid Reitzel, Aaarhus University

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Article Source: AARHUS UNIVERSITY news release

UNIVERSITY OF CHICAGO PRESS JOURNALS—Sacrificial rituals featuring human heart extraction were a prevalent religious practice throughout ancient Mesoamerican societies. Intended as a means of appeasing and honoring certain deities, sacrifices served as acts of power and intimidation as well as demonstrations of devotion and gratitude. Human sacrifices were highly structured, complex rituals performed by elite members of society, and the ceremonies included a myriad of procedures imbued with symbolic significance.

The specific techniques performed, the instrumentation utilized, and the underlying mythology motivating sacrifices varied across civilizations. Given the diversity of sacrificial rituals throughout Mesoamerica, Vera Tiesler and Guilhem Olivier assert an interdisciplinary approach incorporating scientific and humanistic evidence is needed in order to gain more nuanced insights into the procedural elements and the religious implications of human sacrifice during the Classic and Postclassic periods.

In the study, “Open Chests and Broken Hearts: Ritual Sequences and Meanings of Human Heart Sacrifice in Mesoamerica,” published in Current Anthropology, Tiesler and Olivier conduct an anatomical analysis of skeletal evidence and compare it with systematically checked historical sources and over 200 instances of ceremonial heart extraction in codices. Focusing on the location of openings created in the chest to allow for the removal of a victim’s heart and blood, the authors examine the resulting fractures and marks in articulated skeletons to infer about the nature of the entry wound and the potential instrumentation used.

The breadth of source material and the multitude of disciplinary approaches has led to debate among scholars. While the archaeological record provides evidence of these ceremonies, less tangible elements of the rituals–such as the symbolism of these processes–may be harder to discern. Descriptions of human sacrifice and heart extraction can likewise be found in written witness testimonies and in Mesoamerican iconography. However, witness accounts were often inconsistent, especially concerning the position of the extraction site.

Utilizing forensic data in conjunction with an analysis of ethnohistorical accounts, the authors detail three distinct heart extraction methods: cutting directly under the ribs (subdiaphragmatic thoracotomy); making an incision between two ribs (intercostal thoracotomy); or by horizontally severing the sternum in order to access the heart (transverse bilateral thoracotomy). While previous research indicates subdiaphragmatic thoracotomy was a common practice, Tiesler and Olivier expand upon the existing literature by providing reconstructions of intercostal thoracotomy and transverse bilateral thoracotomy.

In addition to providing a more comprehensive understanding of extraction techniques and devices, the study reveals new interpretations of the relationship between thoracotomy procedures and conceptualizations of the human body as a source of “vitalizing matter,” or food for the gods. Hearts and blood were offered as sustenance to deities representing the sun and the earth in recognition of their sacrifices during the creation of the universe. Data–including linguistic analysis of ancient Mesoamerican terminology–reinforce suggestions that these rites served as acts of obligation, reciprocation, and re-enactment.

The interdisciplinary nature of the study enables future research by offering a framework for analyzing sacrificial rituals in other ancient societies, including ancient civilizations in the Andes and India.

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Human heart sacrifices in Mesoamerica. CINVESTAV Unidad Mérida

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Ritual official holding a dripping heart, pierced with a large curved knife, Atetelco murals, Teotihuacan. Courtesy of the authors, Tiesler and Olivier

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Article Source: UNIVERSITY OF CHICAGO PRESS JOURNALS news release

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UNIVERSITY OF YORK—Hunter-gatherer groups living in the Baltic between seven and a half and six thousand years ago had culturally distinct cuisines, analysis of ancient pottery fragments has revealed.

An international team of researchers analyzed over 500 hunter-gatherer vessels from 61 archaeological sites throughout the Baltic region.

They found striking contrasts in food preferences and culinary practices between different groups – even in areas where there was a similar availability of resources. Pots were used for storing and preparing foods ranging from marine fish, seal and beaver to wild boar, bear, deer, freshwater fish hazelnuts and plants.

The findings suggest that the culinary tastes of ancient people were not solely dictated by the foods available in a particular area, but also influenced by the traditions and habits of cultural groups, the authors of the study say.

A lead author of the study, Dr Harry Robson from the Department of Archaeology at the University of York, said: “People are often surprised to learn that hunter-gatherers used pottery to store, process and cook food, as carrying cumbersome ceramic vessels seems inconsistent with a nomadic life-style.

“Our study looked at how this pottery was used and found evidence of a rich variety of foods and culinary traditions in different hunter-gatherer groups.”

The researchers also identified unexpected evidence of dairy products in some of the pottery vessels, suggesting that some hunter-gatherer groups were interacting with early farmers to obtain this resource.

Dr Robson added: “The presence of dairy fats in several hunter-gatherer vessels was an unexpected example of culinary ‘cultural fusion’. The discovery has implications for our understanding of the transition from hunter-gatherer lifestyles to early farming and demonstrates that this commodity was either exchanged or perhaps even looted from nearby farmers.”

Lead author of the study, Dr Blandine Courel from the British Museum, added: “Despite a common biota that provided lots of marine and terrestrial resources for their livelihoods, hunter-gatherer communities around the Baltic Sea basin did not use pottery for the same purpose.

“Our study suggests that culinary practices were not influenced by environmental constraints but rather were likely embedded in some long-standing culinary traditions and cultural habits.”

The study, led by the Department of Scientific Research at the British Museum, the University of York and the Centre for Baltic and Scandinavian Archaeology (Stiftung Schleswig-Holsteinische Landesmuseen, Germany), used molecular and isotopic techniques to analyze the fragments of pottery.

Senior author, Professor Oliver Craig from the Department of Archaeology at the University of York, said: “Chemical analysis of the remains of foods and natural products prepared in pottery has already revolutionized our understanding of early agricultural societies, we are now seeing these methods being rolled out to study prehistoric hunter-gatherer pottery. The results suggest that they too had complex and culturally distinct cuisines.”

Organic residue analysis shows sub-regional patterns in the use of pottery by Northern European hunter-gatherers is published in Royal Society Open Science. The research was funded by the European Research Council through a grant awarded to the British Museum.

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Pottery fragments found at the Havnø kitchen midden, Northern Denmark. Harry Robson, University of York

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Article Source: UNIVERSITY OF YORK news release

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MAX PLANCK INSTITUTE FOR THE SCIENCE OF HUMAN HISTORY—Genetic research throughout Europe shows evidence of drastic population changes near the end of the Neolithic period, as shown by the arrival of ancestry related to pastoralists from the Pontic-Caspian steppe. But the timing of this change and the arrival and mixture process of these peoples, particularly in Central Europe, is little understood. In a new study published in Nature Communications, researchers analyze 96 ancient genomes, providing new insights into the ancestry of modern Europeans.

Scientists sequence almost one hundred ancient genomes from Switzerland

With Neolithic settlements found everywhere from lake shore and bog environments to inner alpine valleys and high mountain passes, Switzerland’s rich archeological record makes it a prime location for studies of population history in Central Europe. Towards the end of the Neolithic period, the emergence of archaeological finds from Corded Ware Complex cultural groups (CWC) coincides with the arrival of new ancestry components from the Pontic-Caspian steppe, but exactly when these new peoples arrived and how they mixed with indigenous Europeans remains unclear.

To find out, an international team led by researchers from the University of Tübingen, the University of Bern and the Max Planck Institute for the Science of Human History (MPI-SHH) sequenced the genomes of 96 individuals from 13 Neolithic and early Bronze Age sites in Switzerland, southern Germany and the Alsace region of France. They detect the arrival of this new ancestry as early as 2800 BCE, and suggest that genetic dispersal was a complex process, involving the gradual mixture of parallel, highly genetically structured societies. The researchers also identified one of the oldest known Europeans that was lactose tolerant, dating to roughly 2100 BCE.

Slow genetic turnover indicates highly structured societies

“Remarkably, we identified several female individuals without any detectable steppe-related ancestry up to 1000 years after this ancestry arrives in the region,” says lead author Anja Furtwängler of the University of Tübingen’s Institute for Archeological Sciences. Evidence from genetic analysis and stable isotopes suggest a patrilocal society, in which males stayed local to where they were born and females came from distant families that did not carry steppe ancestry.

These results show that CWC was a relatively homogenous population that occupied large parts of Central Europe in the early Bronze Age, but they also show that populations without steppe-related ancestry existed parallel to the CWC cultural groups for hundreds of years.

“Since the parents of the mobile females in our study couldn’t have had steppe-related ancestry either, it remains to be shown where in Central Europe such populations were present, possibly in the Alpine mountain valleys that were less connected to the lower lands” says Johannes Krause, director of the Department of Archaeogenetics at MPI-SHH and senior author of the study. The researchers hope that further studies of this kind will help to illuminate the cultural interactions that precipitated the transition from the Neolithic to the Early Bronze age in Central Europe.

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Top view of the Dolmen of Oberbipp, one of the largest burial sites in the study. In this study, researchers analyze 96 ancient genomes to trace the arrival and demographic structure of peoples with Steppe-related ancestry into late Neolithic, early Bronze Age Switzerland and povide new insights into the ancestry of modern Europeans. Urs Dardel, Archäologischer Dienst des Kanton Bern (Switzerland)

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Article Source: MAX PLANCK INSTITUTE FOR THE SCIENCE OF HUMAN HISTORY news release

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A study* examines Samoans’ evolutionary history. Prior research estimates that the initial settlement of Samoa occurred approximately 2,750–2,880 years ago. However, several studies have found that Samoa’s landscape underwent limited human modification until approximately 1,000–1,500 years ago. To better understand Samoa’s history, Timothy O’Connor and colleagues analyzed 1,197 Samoan genomes that were sequenced through the Trans-Omics for Precision Medicine Project and compared the genomes with a global reference set of 2,324 samples. Samoans were most closely related with other Oceanic populations, followed by East Asians, primarily from the Mekong Peninsula and South China. The majority of European ancestry came from West Europe, consistent with Samoa’s European colonial history. On average, Samoans had almost 25% ancestry from Papuan-speaking groups, which is less than other Polynesian cultures. Samoans from Savai’i Island were genetically different from those on Upolu Island, though there was a large overlap between both populations. The authors detected a significantly reduced population size beginning approximately 300 years ago on both islands, corresponding with the introduction of European diseases. However, an increase in effective population size of more than 10,000 individuals occurred approximately 900–1,050 years ago, coinciding with archaeological evidence of widespread landscape modification. The results suggest that the population structure in Samoa developed approximately 1,500–3,000 years ago, according to the authors.

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The population structure in Samoa developed approximately 1,500–3,000 years ago. Image courtesy Simon Steinberger, Pixabay

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Article Source: PNAS news release

*“Evolutionary history of modern Samoans,” by Daniel N. Harris et al.

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In an unprecedented move, world-renowned palaeoanthropologist Lee Berger of the University of Witwatersrand will, for the first time ever, lead the general public through video access into the university’s  backroom “Vault”, where many of Africa’s fossils bearing on human origins are stored and studied. The Vault is normally reserved for exclusive access by scientists and scholars.

The lectures, which will be roughly 30 minutes long, will be featuring some of the University’s most iconic fossils, including the Taung Child, Homo naledi, Australopithecus sediba and various other fossils from the Sterkfontein, Makapansgat and Swartkrans sites.

“We at the university decided to do something special,” says Berger, who is also an Explorer at Large at National Geographic.

“We decided to give people a behind-the-scenes look at our fossil vault, which holds over 50% of the entire record of human origins known on the continent of Africa.”

Starting with the discovery, history and a demonstration of the original Taung Child fossil (see first video below), discovered in 1924 in South Africa, Berger will use these original fossils and associated artifacts to tell the stories of how these fossils were discovered, studied and how they add to our knowledge of our origins as a species.

“We are extremely fortunate at Wits to have such a valuable collection of strategic assets that we can use, to share our knowledge of what makes us human,” says Berger.

“My vision with these videos is that they can be viewed by the general public to give them a glimpse of the world of palaeoanthropology and human origins, as well as to be used as a teaching tool for teachers and lecturers in their classrooms during these difficult times.”

Hosted on a special section of the Wits University website, and released on Youtube, the lectures will start off with more general stories and descriptions of some of the fossils, and progress into the finer details of the study of palaeoanthropology.

“With today’s online media being so engaging, I hope that with these videos we can create a whole new way of studying and sharing some of our exciting discoveries, and, hopefully stimulate engaging discussions related to human origins.”

Interested individuals can follow Lee Berger for more updates and continuing videos on Facebook at Prof Lee R Berger, or on Twitter @LeeRBerger.

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Article Source: Adapted and edited from the original news release from the University of Witwatersrand, issued by Schalk Mouton, Senior Communications Officer.

Cover image, top left: Courtesy Didier Descouens, Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported license, Wikimedia Commons

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CNRS—Contrary to popular belief, Neanderthals may have been no less technologically advanced than Homo sapiens. An international team, including researchers from the CNRS, have discovered the first evidence of cord making, dating back more than 40,000 years (1), on a flint fragment from the prehistoric site of Abri du Maras in the south of France (2). Microscopic analysis showed that these remains had been intertwined, proof of their modification by humans. Photographs revealed three bundles of twisted fibers, plied together to create one cord. In addition, spectroscopic analysis revealed that these strands were made of cellulose, probably from coniferous trees. This discovery highlights unexpected cognitive abilities on the part of Neanderthals, suggesting they not only had a good understanding of the mathematics involved in winding the fibers, but also a thorough knowledge of tree growth. These results, published on 9 April 2020 in Scientific Reports, represent the oldest known proof of textile and cord technology to date.

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Photograph of the cord fragment taken by digital microscopy (the fragment is approximately 6.2 mm long and 0.5 mm wide). © C2RMF

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Detail of the cord fragment showing twisted fibers, observed by scanning electron microscopy. © MNHN

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Article Source: Edited from the CNRS news release

(1) Neanderthals lived between 350,000 and 28,000 years BC.
(2) Archaeological site in southeastern France (Ardèche). The team led by Marie-Hélène Moncel has previously shown that Neanderthals occupied this shelter.

The following laboratories contributed to this work: Histoire naturelle de l’Homme préhistorique (CNRS/Muséum national d’Histoire naturelle/Université de Perpignan Via Domitia), De la molécule aux nano-objets : réactivité, interactions et spectroscopies (CNRS/Sorbonne Université), along with the Centre de recherche et de restauration des musées de France (ministère de la Culture).

The excavations at the Abri du Maras have in particular benefited from funding from the French Ministry of Culture and the Auvergne-Rhône-Alpes Regional Archaeology Service.

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UNIVERSITY OF BRISTOL—An international team of specialists, led by the University of Bristol, is closer to cracking a 5,000-year-old mystery surrounding the ancient trade and production of decorated ostrich eggs.

Long before Fabergé, ornate ostrich eggs were highly prized by the elites of Mediterranean civilizations during the Bronze and Iron Ages, but to date little has been known about the complex supply chain behind these luxury goods.

Examining ostrich eggs from the British Museum’s collection, the team, led by Bristol’s Dr Tamar Hodos, were able to reveal secrets about their origin and how and where they were made. Using state-of-the-art scanning electron microscopy, Dr Caroline Cartwright, Senior Scientist at the British Museum was able to investigate the eggs’ chemical makeup to pinpoint their origins and study minute marks that reveal how they were made.

In the study, published today in the journal Antiquity, the researchers describe for the first time the surprisingly complex system behind ostrich egg production. This includes evidence about where the ostrich eggs were sourced, if the ostriches were captive or wild, and how the manufacture methods can be related to techniques and materials used by artisans in specific areas.

“The entire system of decorated ostrich egg production was much more complicated than we had imagined! We also found evidence to suggest the ancient world was much more interconnected than previously thought,” said Dr Hodos, Reader in Mediterranean Archaeology in Bristol’s School of Arts.

“Mediterranean ostriches were indigenous to the eastern Mediterranean and North Africa. Using a variety of isotopic indicators, we were able to distinguish eggs laid in different climatic zones (cooler, wetter and hotter, drier). What was most surprising to us was that eggs from both zones were found at sites in the other zone, suggestive of more extensive trade routes.”

Dr Hodos and colleagues believe eggs were taken from wild birds’ nests despite evidence of ostriches being kept in captivity during this period. This was no ordinary egg-hunt – ostriches can be extremely dangerous so there was a tremendous risk involved in taking eggs from wild birds.

“We also found eggs require time to dry before the shell can be carved and therefore require safe storage. This has economic implications, since storage necessitates a long-term investment and this, combined with the risk involved, would add to an egg’s luxury value,” said Dr Hodos.

The study is part of an ongoing research project into ancient luxury goods, Globalizing Luxuries.

Dr Hodos explains: “We are assessing not only how ancient luxuries were produced but also how they were used by different peoples. These questions are incredibly important for our own society today, in which the same object may have different social or symbolic meanings for different groups. Such knowledge and understanding helps foster tolerance and mutual respect in a multi-cultural society. If we can understand these mechanisms in the past, for which we have long-term outcomes in terms of social development, we can use this knowledge to better inform our own society in a number of ways.”

Dr Caroline Cartwright, Senior Scientist, Department of Scientific Research, British Museum, said

“The British Museum is delighted to collaborate with colleagues at the universities of Bristol and Durham on this ongoing research. Using state-of-the-art scanning electron microscope facilities in the British Museum’s Department of Scientific Research, our experts were able to study these beautiful objects and cast new light on their significance in history. We look forward to continuing to work with university partners and furthering the knowledge and understanding of the Museum’s collection.”

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A decorated egg from the Isis Tomb, Vulci, Italy. Tamar Hodos, University of Bristol (with the permission of the Trustees of the British Museum)

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A decorated egg from the Isis Tomb, Vulci, Italy, under examination. Tamar Hodos, University of Bristol (with the permission of the Trustees of the British Museum)

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Areas of study. Tamar Hodos, University of Bristol

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Article Source: UNIVERSITY OF BRISTOL news release

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UNIVERSITY OF EXETER—The earliest human inhabitants of the Amazon created thousands of artificial forest islands as they tamed wild plants to grow food, a new study shows.

The discovery of the mounds is the latest evidence to show the extensive impact people had on the area. From their arrival 10,000 years ago they transformed the landscape when they began cultivating manioc and squash.

This led to the creation of 4,700 of the forest islands in what is now Llanos de Moxos in northern Bolivia, the team has found. This savannah area floods from December to March and is extremely dry from July to October, but the mounds remain above the water level during the rainy season allowing trees to grow on them. The mounds promoted landscape diversity, and show that small-scale communities began to shape the Amazon 8,000 years earlier than previously thought.

The research confirms this part of the Amazon is one of the earliest centers of plant domestication in the world. Using microscopic plant silica bodies, called phytoliths, found well preserved in tropical forests, experts have documented the earliest evidence found in the Amazon of manioc -10,350 years ago, squash – 10,250 years ago, and maize – 6,850 years ago. The plants grown on the forest islands were chosen because they were carbohydrate-rich and easy to cook, and they probably provided a considerable part of the calories consumed by the first inhabitants of the region, supplemented by fish and some meat.

The study, in the journal Nature, was conducted by Umberto Lombardo and Heinz Veit from the University of Bern, Jose Iriarte and Lautaro Hilbert from the University of Exeter, Javier Ruiz-Pérez from Pompeu Fabra University and José Capriles from Pennsylvania State University.

The study involved an unprecedented large scale regional analysis of 61 archaeological sites, identified by remote sensing, now patches of forest surrounded by savannah. Samples were retrieved from 30 forest islands and archaeological excavations carried out in four of them.

Dr Lombardo said: “Archaeologists, geographers, and biologists have argued for many years that southwestern Amazonia was a probable centre of early plant domestication because many important cultivars like manioc, squash, peanuts and some varieties of chili pepper and beans are genetically very close to wild plants living here. However, until this recent study, scientist had neither searched for, nor excavated, old archaeological sites in this region that might document the pre-Columbian domestication of these globally important crops.”

Professor Iriarte said: “Genetic and archaeological evidence suggests there were at least four areas of the world where humans domesticated plants around 11,000 years ago, two in the Old World and two in the New World. This research helps us to prove South West Amazonia is likely the fifth.

“The evidence we have found shows the earliest inhabitants of the area were not just tropical hunter-gatherers, but colonizers who cultivated plants. This opens the door to suggest that they already ate a mixed diet when they arrived in the region.”

Javier Ruiz-Pérez said: “Through an extensive archaeological survey including excavations and after analyzing dozens of radiocarbon dates and phytolith samples, we demonstrated that pre-Columbian peoples adapted to and modified the seasonally flooded savannahs of south-western Amazonia by building thousands of mounds where to settle and by cultivating and even domesticating plants since the beginning of the Holocene.”

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Forest islands seen from above. (photo Umberto Lombardo).

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Forest Island Isla Manechi (left) in the Barba Azul Nature Reserve. Here is where the oldest evidence for cassava and squash was found. Umberto Lombardo

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Article Source: UNIVERSITY OF EXETER news release

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UNIVERSITY OF BRISTOL—A team at the University of Bristol has developed a new method of dating pottery which is allowing archaeologists to date prehistoric finds from across the world with remarkable accuracy.

The exciting new method, reported in detail* today in the journal Nature, is now being used to date pottery from a range of key sites up to 8,000 years old in Britain, Europe and Africa.

Pottery and the dating game

Archaeological pottery has been used to date archaeological sites for more than a century, and from the Roman period onwards can offer quite precise dating. But further back in time, for example at the prehistoric sites of the earliest Neolithic farmers, accurate dating becomes more difficult because the kinds of pottery are often less distinctive and there are no coins or historical records to give context.

This is where radiocarbon dating, also known as 14C-dating, comes to the rescue. Until now, archaeologists had to radiocarbon date bones or other organic materials buried with the pots to understand their age.

But the best and most accurate way to date pots would be to date them directly, which the University of Bristol team has now introduced by dating the fatty acids left behind from food preparation.

Professor Richard Evershed from the University of Bristol’s School of Chemistry led the team. He said: “Being able to directly date archaeological pots is one of the “Holy Grails” of archaeology. This new method is based on an idea I had going back more than 20 years and it is now allowing the community to better understand key archaeological sites across the world.

“We made several earlier attempts to get the method right, but it wasn’t until we established our own radiocarbon facility in Bristol that we cracked it. There’s a particular beauty in the way these new technologies came together to make this important work possible and now archaeological questions that are currently very difficult to resolve could be answered.”

How the method works

The trick was isolating individual fat compounds from food residues, perhaps left by cooking meat or milk, protected within the pores of prehistoric cooking pots. The team brought together the latest high resolution nuclear magnetic resonance spectroscopy and mass spectrometry technologies to design a new way of isolating the fatty acids and checking they were pure enough for accurate dating.

The team then had to show that the new approach gave dates as accurate as those given by materials commonly dated in archaeology, such as bones, seeds and wood. To do this the team looked at fat extracts from ancient pottery at a range of key sites in Britain, Europe and Africa with already precise dating which were up to 8,000 years old.

From the famous Sweet Track site in Somerset and several sites in the Alsace region of France, to the World Heritage site of Çatalhöyük in central Turkey and the famous rock shelter site of Takarkori in Saharan Africa, the new method was proven to date sites incredibly accurately, even to within a human life span.

Professor Alex Bayliss, Head of Scientific Dating at Historic England, who undertook the statistical analyses, added: “It is very difficult to overstate the importance of this advance to the archaeological community. Pottery typology is the most widely used dating technique in the discipline, and so the opportunity to place different kinds of pottery in calendar time much more securely will be of great practical significance.”

Using the pottery calendar to better understand London’s pre-history

In London, England, the new dating method has been used on a remarkable collection of pottery found in Shoreditch, thought to be the most significant group of Early Neolithic pottery ever found in the capital. The extraordinary trove, comprising 436 fragments from at least 24 separate vessels weighing nearly 6.5 kilos in total, was discovered by archaeologists from MOLA (Museum of London Archaeology).

The site appeared to date from the time when the first farmers came to Britain but accurately dating it was difficult until the Bristol team, using their new dating method on traces of milk fats extracted from the pots, showed the pottery was 5,500 years old. The team were able to date the pottery collection to a window of just 138 years, to around 3600BC.

The results indicate that around 5600 years ago the area around what is now Shoreditch High Street was used by established farmers who ate cow, sheep or goat dairy products as a central part of their diet. These people were likely to have been linked to the migrant groups who were the first to introduce farming to Britain from Continental Europe around 4000 BC – just 400 years earlier.

Jon Cotton, a consultant prehistorian working for MOLA, said: “This remarkable collection helps to fill a critical gap in London’s prehistory. Archaeological evidence for the period after farming arrived in Britain rarely survives in the capital, let alone still in-situ. This is the strongest evidence yet that people in the area later occupied by the city and its immediate hinterland were living a less mobile, farming-based lifestyle during the Early Neolithic period.”

The results from this site are a prime example of where pottery survives in circumstances that other organic materials do not, so using this revolutionary new method will unlock important information about our prehistoric past.

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Using radiocarbon dating to date fat compounds within the pores of pottery provides revolutionary, accurate method of dating. Bluebudgie, Pixabay, Public Domain

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*’Accurate compound-specific 14C dating of archaeological pottery vessels’ by R. Evershed, E. Casanova, T. Knowles, A. Bayliss, J. Dunne, M. Baranski et al in Nature

Article Source: UNIVERSITY OF BRISTOL news release

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UNIVERSITY OF SOUTHAMPTON—Research led by scientists at the University of Southampton has found settlers arrived in East Polynesia around 200 years earlier than previously thought.

Colonization of the vast eastern Pacific with its few and far-flung island archipelagos was a remarkable achievement in human history. Yet the timing, character, and drivers of this accomplishment remain poorly understood.

However, this new study has found a major change in the climate of the region, which resulted in a dry period, coinciding with the arrival of people on the tiny island of Atiu, in the southern group of the Cook Islands, around 900AD.

Findings are published in the paper, ‘Human settlement of East Polynesia earlier, incremental and coincident with prolonged South Pacific drought’ in the journal PNAS.

“The ancestors of the Polynesians, the Lapita people, migrated east into the Pacific Ocean as far as Fiji, Tonga and Samoa, reaching them around 2800 years ago. But for almost 1500 years humans failed to migrate any further into the pacific,” explains lead researcher, Professor David Sear of the University of Southampton. “Our research gives us a much more accurate timescale of when people first arrived in the region and helps answer some key questions about why they made their hazardous journey east.”

A team of geographers, archaeologists and geochemists from the UK, New Zealand and the US, worked with the people of Atiu, to collect core samples of lake mud, charting over 6000 years of history. Back in the labs in UK and US, the mud samples were subjected to a range of analyses including new techniques for reconstructing precipitation, and detecting the presence of mammalian faeces.

Apart from fruit bats, the Southern Cook Islands never had mammal populations before humans settled there, so when the researchers found evidence of mammal faeces alongside other evidence for landscape disturbance and burning, it was a clear sign of the arrival of people. Within 100 years the first settlers, most likely from Tonga or Samoa, changed the landscape by burning native forest to make way for crops.

The team, including undergraduate and postgraduate students from the universities of Southampton and Washington, as well as scientists from Newcastle, Liverpool and Auckland universities, also examined lake sediments from Samoa and Vanuatu. Using this data, they found evidence for a major climate change which coincided with the newly established arrival time of the settlers.

The data revealed a major change in the climate of the South Pacific region with the main rainbands that bring water to the archipelagos of Vanuatu, Samoa, Tonga and Fiji migrating north. The result was the driest period in the last 2000 years.

This led the researchers to conclude that, alongside growing populations, water stress drove decisions to make dangerous voyages, aided by changes in winds that enabled easterly sailing. Soon after the arrival of people to Atiu, the climate changed again. Rain returned to the eastern Pacific – supporting a rapid (c. 200 years) settlement of the remaining islands of Polynesia.

Professor Sear adds: “Today, changing climate is again putting pressures on Pacific island communities, only this time the option to migrate is not so simple. Within two centuries of first arrival those first settlers changed the landscape and the ecology, but were able to make a home. Pacific islanders now live with modified ecologies, permanent national boundaries and islands already occupied by people. The ability to migrate in response to changing climate is no longer the option it once was.”

This research was supported by grants from the NERC, Explorers Club and Royal Geographical Society. The team wishes to acknowledge the support of the peoples of the Cook Islands, Samoa and Vanuatu.

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Lake Te Roto on Atiu where evidence was found of the arrival of early humans. University of Southampton

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Two halves of core sample taken from Lake Te Roto on Atiu. University of Southampton

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Article Source: UNIVERSITY OF SOUTHAMPTON news release

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UNIVERSITY OF JOHANNESBURG—An unusual skullcap and thousands of clues have created a southern twist to the story of human ancestors, in research published in Science on 3 April.

The rolling hills northwest of Johannesburg are famous for fossils of human-like creatures called hominins. Because of this, the area is known as the Cradle of Humankind.

“During our field school excavations at Drimolen, a student began uncovering a cluster of fragments. We could see that they were parts of a skull. But they weren’t immediately identifiable,” says Ms Stephanie Baker.

Baker is a researcher and PhD candidate at the Palaeo-Research Institute at the University of Johannesburg. She manages research at the Drimolen fossil site in the Cradle of Humankind where the fragments of DNH 134 were found.

The international team was led by researchers from La Trobe University in Australia and Washington University in St. Louis in the United States.

Fossil forensics

Fossils that are millions of years old often come out of the soil in fragments. The fragments need to be rebuilt before researchers can confidently identify what kind of animal they came from.

“Over the course of the field season more and more fragments were uncovered. We began piecing them together. No one could decide what this skullcap was from, until one night it all came together – and we realised we were looking at a hominin!” she says. They named the skullcap DNH 134.

The next question was – what kind of hominin? The Cradle of Humankind has several different species of human ancestors and the Drimolen site had at least two kinds.

“This find really challenged us. We compared the assembled skullcap to all of the other examples of hominins in the Cradle area. Eventually, its teardrop shape and relatively big brain cavity meant we were looking at Homo erectus,” says Baker.

Homo erectus is one of our direct human ancestors and is best known for migrating out of Africa into the rest of the world.

These hominins walked upright and were a more human-like species than the other hominins found in the Cradle. They had shorter arms and longer legs. They could walk and run for longer distances over the African grasslands than the others.

How old?

Once the question of ‘which species?’ was answered, two other huge questions presented themselves. How long ago was this individual alive? And how old were they when they died?

The researchers knew that no other Homo erectus fossils had ever been found in South Africa before. Even more surprising was the time period suggested by the soil layers the skull fragments were found in. “Before we found DNH 134, we knew that the oldest Homo erectus in the world was from Dmanisi in Georgia dating to 1.8 million years ago,” says Baker.

Building a 3D puzzle over time

Trying to figure out how old fossils are from the caves west of Johannesburg is quite tricky. There were no volcanoes during the time of the hominins, so there are no ash layers to give the researchers quick age estimates, like they use for eastern African sites.

But while they were uncovering the fragments at Drimolen, they kept and recorded every clue they could find. This included fragments of small animals like bats and lizards, but also things like soil samples.

They can also tell exactly where in 3D-space in the Drimolen quarry each little fossil fragment was found.

Then the research team used every possible dating technique available to get the most accurate possible date for the deposit. This included Palaeomagnetic dating, Electron spin resonance, Uranium lead dating, and faunal dating.

Possible shifted, earlier origin

“We collated all of the dates from each of these techniques and together they showed that we had a very precise age. We now know that the Drimolen Main Quarry and all of the fossils in it, are dated from 2.04 to 1.95 million years ago,” says Baker.

That means that DNH 134 is much older than the next oldest Homo erectus in Africa; and from Georgia.

“The age of the DNH 134 fossil shows that Homo erectus existed 150,000 to 200,000 years earlier than previously thought,” says Professor Andy Herries. Herries is the project co-director with Ms Baker and lead researcher. He is Head of the Department of Archaeology and History, at La Trobe University in Australia and an associate in the Palaeo-Research Institute at UJ.

Because Homo erectus is one of our direct ancestors, the discovery has implications for the origins of modern humans.

“Until this find, we always assumed Homo erectus originated from eastern Africa. But DNH 134 shows that Homo erectus, one of our direct ancestors, possibly comes from southern Africa instead. That would mean that they later moved northwards into East Africa. From there they went through North Africa to populate the rest of the world,” says Baker.

The skull is also unusual because it is the skull of a young Homo erectus.

“The Homo erectus skull we found, was likely aged between two and three years old when it died,” says Herries.

Sharing a landscape

The age of the DNH 134 skullcap shows something else – that three species of early human ancestor lived in southern Africa at the same time at the Drimolen fossil site.

“We can now say Homo erectus shared the landscape with two other types of humans in South Africa, Paranthropus and Australopithecus,” says Herries.

This might mean they needed to use different parts of the landscape to avoid competing with one another. For a start, they looked different.

Paranthropus robustus hominins were shorter than Homo erectus and Australopithecus, says Baker.

“Paranthropus robustus ate things like roots and tubers, which is why their teeth are really big. They used their enormous teeth for grinding down what we call fall-back foods – tough hard plants.”

Changing weather

In comparison to the other two species, Homo erectus hominins were tall and slender. They ate things which are easier to digest, like fruits and berries.

“We also know that they were eating meat, but we aren’t exactly sure how they were getting it yet. We can say that at least these early Homo erectus weren’t hunting with any weaponry yet,” says Baker.

“We also know that they were able to cover long distances. Which turned out lucky for them, because during their time, the climate changed in southern Africa.

Paranthropus and Australopithecus evolved in warm and humid climates and were used to that. But then the weather began to shift from warm and humid, to cool and dry,” she says.

Gradually the tree-cover diminished, and grasses took their place. Eventually the forests were replaced with the African savannah grasslands of today. The cooler weather suited the more mobile and social Homo erectus better. But it meant that Paranthropus had to rely on less desirable foods.

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A Homo erectus (DNH 134) fossil find at Drimolen palaeocave system northwest of Johannesburg in South Africa. The skullcap has been identified as the oldest to date for Homo erectus, based on research published in Science. The hominin is a direct ancestor of modern humans, experienced a changing climate, and moved out of Africa into other continents. The discovery of DNH 134 pushes the possible origin of Homo erectus back between 150,000 and 200,000 years. Therese van Wyk, University of Johannesburg.

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The skull of an African Homo erectus woman at the Natural History Museum in London, England. Emőke Dénes, Wikimedia Commons, Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 4.0 International license.

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A model of the face of an adult female Homo erectus, one of the first truly human ancestors of modern humans, on display in the Hall of Human Origins in the Smithsonian Museum of Natural History in Washington, D.C. Reconstruction by John Gurche; photographed by Tim Evanson, Wikimedia Commons, Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 2.0 Generic license.

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Article Source: UNIVERSITY OF JOHANNESBURG news release

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Science—Nearly 2 million years ago, three hominin genera – Australopithecus, Paranthropus and the earliest Homo erectus lineage – lived as contemporaries in the karst landscape of what is now South Africa, according to a new geochronological evaluation of the hominin fossil-rich Drimolen Paleocave complex. Combined with other evidence, authors Andy Herries et al. argue that the site reflects a period of transition in southern Africa driven by climatic variability, one marked by endemic species, like Australopithecus, going extinct, while new migrants – Homo and Paranthropus – moved in. In their study, Herries and colleagues describe the geological context and age of two hominin crania fossils recently recovered from the Drimolen, representing Homo and Paranthropus. Using a combination of electron spin resonance, paleomagnetism and uranium-lead dating, Herries et al. pieced together the chronology of the Drimolen Main Quarry (DMQ). The results show that the Homo and Paranthropus fossils recovered from the region date to 2.04-1.95 million-years-old, which establishes both as the oldest definitive examples of their respective species (H. erectus and P. robustus). “If correct, Herries [et al.’s] results provide the most precisely dated remains in South Africa [and] add more than a hundred thousand years to the first appearance dates of at least H. erectus,” writes Susan Antón in a related Perspective. The crania ages also indicate that early Homo and Paranthropus hominins lived at the same time as their older Australopithecus cousins roughly 2 million years ago, which suggests a period of transition at the site; as endemic species, like Australopithecus, went extinct, new migrants – Homo and Paranthropus – moved in, the authors suggest. What’s more, the relative simplicity of the geological context of DMQ as revealed by the new geochronological techniques challenges the perceived complexity of other similarly aged South African paleocave sites, suggesting that much of what is known about the stratigraphy in these hominin-bearing sites may need to be reevaluated, according to the authors.

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La Trobe University PhD student Angeline Leece in front of fossil bearing brecccia at Drimolen. Jesse Martin

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The drimolen fossil site. Andy Herries

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The Drimolen excavations and excavated fossils. Andy Herries

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DNH 134 (Homo erectus) cranium, excavated from Drimolen, with stylized projection of the outline of the rest of the skull. Andy Herries, Jesse Martin and Renaud Joannes-Boyau

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Article Source: Science news release

This research appears in the 3 April 2020 issue of Science.

Science is published by AAAS, the nonprofit science society.

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UNIVERSITY OF PLYMOUTH—Neolithic populations have long been credited with bringing about a revolution in farming practices across Europe. However, a new study suggests it was not until the Bronze Age several millennia later that human activity led to significant changes to the continent’s landscape.

Scientists from the University of Copenhagen and the University of Plymouth led research tracing how the two major human migrations recorded in Holocene Europe – the northwestward movement of Anatolian farmer populations during the Neolithic and the westward movement of Yamnaya steppe peoples during the Bronze Age – unfolded.

In particular, they analyzed how they were associated with changes in vegetation – which led to Europe’s forests being replaced with the agricultural landscape still much in evidence today.

Their results, published in PNAS, show the two migrations differ markedly in both their spread and environmental implications, with the Yamnaya expansion moving quicker and resulting in greater vegetation changes than the earlier Neolithic farmer expansion.

The study – also involving the University of Gothenburg and the University of Cambridge – used techniques commonly applied in environmental science to model climate and pollution, and applied them to instead analyze human population movements in the last 10 millennia of European history.

It showed that a decline in broad-leaf forest and an increase in pasture and natural grassland vegetation was concurrent with a decline in hunter-gatherer ancestry, and may have been associated with the fast movement of steppe peoples during the Bronze Age.

It also demonstrated that natural variations in climate patterns during this period are associated with these land cover changes.

The research is the first to model the spread of ancestry in ancient genomes through time and space, and provides the first framework for comparing human migrations and land cover changes, while also accounting for changes in climate.

Dr Fernando Racimo, Assistant Professor at the University of Copenhagen and the study’s lead author, said: “The movement of steppe peoples that occurred in the Bronze Age had a particularly strong impact on European vegetation. As these peoples were moving westward, we see increases in the amount of pasture lands and decreases in broad leaf forests throughout the continent. We can now also compare movements of genes to the spread of cultural packages. In the case of the Neolithic farming revolution, for example, the two track each other particularly well, in both space and time.”

The research made use of land cover maps showing vegetation change over the past 11,000 years, which were produced through the University of Plymouth’s Deforesting Europe project.

Scientists working on that project have previously shown more than half of Europe’s forests have disappeared over the past 6,000 years due to increasing demand for agricultural land and the use of wood as a source of fuel.

Dr Jessie Woodbridge, Research Fellow at the University of Plymouth and co-author on the study, added: “European landscapes have been transformed drastically over thousands of years. Knowledge of how people interacted with their environment in the past has implications for understanding the way in which people use and impact upon the world today. Collaboration with palaeo-geneticists has allowed the migration of human populations in the past to be tracked using ancient DNA, and for the first time allowed us to assess the impact of different farming populations on land-cover change, which provides new insights into past human-environment interactions.”

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A graphic depicting the spread of Yamnaya ancestry over time over a period of around 8,000 years. Fernando Racimo

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Article Source: UNIVERSITY OF PLYMOUTH news release

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UNIVERSITY AT BUFFALO—BUFFALO, N.Y.—In recent years, scientists have uncovered evidence that modern humans and Neanderthals share a tangled past. In the course of human history, these two species of hominins interbred not just once, but at multiple times, the thinking goes.

A new study supports this notion, finding that people in Eurasia today have genetic material linked to Neanderthals from the Altai mountains in modern-day Siberia. This is noteworthy because past research has shown that Neanderthals connected to a different, distant location — the Vindija Cave in modern-day Croatia — have also contributed DNA to modern-day Eurasian populations.

The results reinforce the concept that Neanderthal DNA has been woven into the modern human genome on multiple occasions as our ancestors met Neanderthals time and again in different parts of the world.

The study was published on March 31 in the journal Genetics.

“It’s not a single introgression of genetic material from Neanderthals,” says lead researcher Omer Gokcumen, a University at Buffalo biologist. “It’s just this spider web of interactions that happen over and over again, where different ancient hominins are interacting with each other, and our paper is adding to this picture. This project will now add to an emerging chorus — we’ve been looking into this phenomenon for a couple of years, and there are a couple of papers that came out recently that deal with similar concepts.”

“The picture in my mind now is we have all these archaic hominin populations in Europe, in Asia, in Siberia, in Africa. For one reason or another, the ancestors of modern humans in Africa start expanding in population, and as they expand their range, they meet with these other hominins and absorb their DNA, if you will,” Gokcumen says. “We probably met different Neanderthal populations at different times in our expansion into other parts of the globe.”

Gokcumen, associate professor of biological sciences in the UB College of Arts and Sciences, led the study with first author Recep Ozgur Taskent, a recent UB PhD graduate in the department. Co-authors include UB PhD graduate Yen Lung Lin, now a postdoctoral scholar at the University of Chicago; and Ioannis Patramanis and Pavlos Pavlidis, PhD, of the Foundation for Research and Technology in Greece.

The research was funded by the U.S. National Science Foundation.

To complete the project, scientists analyzed the DNA of hundreds of people of Eurasian ancestry. The goal was to hunt for fragments of genetic material that may have been inherited from Neanderthals.

This research found that the Eurasian populations studied could trace some genetic material back to two different Neanderthal lineages: one represented by a Neanderthal whose remains were discovered in the Vindija cave in Croatia, and another represented by a Neanderthal whose remains were discovered in the Altai mountains in Russia.

Scientists also discovered that the modern-day populations they studied also share genetic deletions — areas of DNA that are missing — with both the Vindija and Altai Neanderthal lineages.

The DNA of the Vindija and Altai Neanderthals, along with the modern human populations studied, were previously sequenced by different research teams.

“It seems like the story of human evolution is not so much like at tree with branches that just grow in different directions. It turns out that the branches have all these connections between them,” Gokcumen says. “We are figuring out these connections, which is really exciting. The story is not as neat as it was before. Every single ancient genome that is sequenced seems to create a completely new perspective in our understanding of human evolution, and every new genome that’s sequenced in the future may completely change the story again.”

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Neanderthals and modern humans interbred in multiple locations as modern humans migrated across the landscape. Pixabay Public Domain Image

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Article Source: UNIVERSITY AT BUFFALO news release

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