Pig domestication and human-mediated dispersal in western Eurasia revealed through ancient DNA and geometric morphometrics

Zooarcheological evidence suggests that pigs were domesticated in Southwest Asia ∼8,500 BC. They then spread across the Middle and Near East and westward into Europe alongside early agriculturalists. European pigs were either domesticated independently or appeared so as a result of admixture between introduced pigs and European wild boar. These pigs not only replaced those with Near Eastern signatures in Europe, they subsequently also replaced indigenous domestic pigs in the Near East. The specific details of these processes, however, remain unknown. To address questions related to early pig domestication, dispersal, and turnover in the Near East, we analyzed ancient mitochondrial DNA and dental geometric morphometric variation in 393 ancient pig specimens representing 48 archeological sites (from the Pre-Pottery Neolithic to the Medieval period) from Armenia, Cyprus, Georgia, Iran, Syria and Turkey. Our results firstly reveal the genetic signature of early domestic pigs in Eastern Turkey. We also demonstrate that these early pigs differed genetically from those in western Anatolia that were introduced to Europe during the Neolithic expansion. In addition, we present a significantly more refined chronology for the introduction of European domestic pigs into Asia Minor that took place during the Bronze Age, nearly 1,000 years earlier than previously detected. By the 5th century AD, European signatures completely replaced the endemic lineages possibly coinciding with the demographic and societal changes during the Anatolian Bronze and Iron Ages. 

Link

Pre-Neolithic Mediterranean Island settlement

Modern science has held that islands such as Cyprus and Crete were first inhabited by seafaring humans approximately 9,000 years ago by agriculturists from the late Neolithic period. Simmons writes that research over the past 20 years has cast doubt on that assumption however and suggests that it might be time to rewrite the history books. He cites evidence such as pieces of obsidian found in a cave in mainland Greece that were found to have come from Melos, an island in the Aegean Sea and were dated at 11,000 years ago as well as artifacts from recent digs on Cyprus that are believed to be from approximately 12,000 years ago. He adds that some researchers have also found evidence that something, or someone caused the extinction of pygmy hippos on Cyprus around the same time.  

Simmons also suggests that the first inhabitants of many of the Mediterranean islands may not have been modern humans at all. Instead, he says evidence has been found that shows that they might have been Neanderthals, or Homo Erectus. Recent excavations on Crete have turned up artifacts that are thought to be 110,000 years old, for example, and a stone axe was found that is believed to have been made on the same island as far back as 170,000 years ago. Since modern humans are believed to have come into being roughly 100,000 to 200,000 years ago, the possibility exists that such artifacts were left behind by an early ancestor or cousin.

Science 16 November 2012: Vol. 338 no. 6109 pp. 895-897 DOI: 10.1126/science.1228880

Mediterranean Island Voyages 

Alan Simmons 

Some of the classical world's most innovative cultures developed on Mediterranean islands, but their earlier human use is poorly known. The islands, particularly those further from the mainland such as Crete and Cyprus, were thought to have been first colonized about 9000 years ago by late Neolithic agriculturalists with domesticated resources. Until about 20 years ago, claims of earlier, pre-Neolithic occupations on any of the islands did not stand up to critical scrutiny (1), but current investigations are challenging these perceptions. Discoveries on Cyprus, Crete, and some Ionian islands suggest seafaring abilities by pre-Neolithic peoples, perhaps extending back to Neanderthals or even earlier hominins. In Cyprus, Neolithic sites have been documented that are nearly as early as those on the mainland.

Link

Göbekli Tepe: emergence of the Neolithic

From the paper:

The sediments used to backfill the monumental enclosures at the end of their use consist of limestone rubble from the quarries nearby, flint artefacts and surprisingly large amounts of animal bones smashed to get to the marrow, clearly the remains of meals. Their amount exceeds everything known from contemporary settlements, and can be taken as a strong indication of large-scale feasting. The species represented most frequently are gazelle, aurochs and Asian wild ass, a range of animals typical for hunters at that date in the region. 

...  

In concordance with Hayden’s thoughts, it seems obvious that repetitive feasts of the amplitude implied at G¨obekli Tepe must have placed stress on the economic production of hunter-gatherer groups.Maybe in response to the demand, new food sources and processing techniques were explored. In this scenario, religious beliefs and practices may have been a key factor in the adoption of intensive cultivation and the transition to agriculture. Archaeological and chemical evidence further suggests that this innovation may have been fuelled by alcoholic beverages,giving a new response to Braidwood’s question ‘Did man once live by beer alone?’ Probably not, but beer—and wine—may have played an important role in one of the most significant turning points in the history of mankind. 

Personally, I am undecided whether the shift to agriculture was primarily ideological or utilitarian. Is Cauvin right about agriculture following the "birth of gods", being a dictate of some primordial religious-symbolic ideology, or did agriculture appear as a consequence of some ecological crisis that led Near Eastern hunter-gatherers to seek new reliable sources of sustenance? Or, was it more like a side product of an unrelated event, not dictated by a New Religion, but serving it indirectly by making possible the large-scale feasting exhbited in Göbekli Tepe?

Antiquity Volume: 86 Number: 333 Page: 674–695 

The role of cult and feasting in the emergence of Neolithic communities. New evidence from Göbekli Tepe, south-eastern Turkey 

Oliver Dietrich1, Manfred Heun2, Jens Notroff1*, Klaus Schmidt1 and Martin Zarnkow3 

Göbekli Tepe is one of the most important archaeological discoveries of modern times, pushing back the origins of monumentality beyond the emergence of agriculture. We are pleased to present a summary of work in progress by the excavators of this remarkable site and their latest thoughts about its role and meaning. At the dawn of the Neolithic, hunter-gatherers congregating at Göbekli Tepe created social and ideological cohesion through the carving of decorated pillars, dancing, feasting—and, almost certainly, the drinking of beer made from fermented wild crops. 

Link

Mediterranean ornaments in the Hungarian Neolithic

The use of Spondylus ornaments by European Neolithic cultures is well known, and is one of the characteristics tracking the spread of the Neolithic into Europe. A new study has looked at late Neolithic Hungary, to track the origin of these ornaments, confirming that they did indeed come from the Mediterranean (Adriatic or Aegean), and not the Black Sea or fossil shells from the Carpathian Basin.

Given the evidence that late Neolithic European farmers, even as far north as Sweden were indeed of Mediterranean origin, their continued use of these ornaments possibly reflects a tradition going back to their origins in the Aegean, rather than simply a fashion that spread simply for its decorative properties.

Journal of Archaeological Science, doi:10.1016/j.jas.2012.09.022

Tracing the source of Late Neolithic Spondylus shell ornaments by stable isotope geochemistry and cathodoluminescence microscopy

Bernadett Bajnoczi et al.

Determination of the source of Spondylus objects is essential for the interpretation of Late Neolithic exchange systems and the social role of shell ornaments. We performed stable isotope analysis combined with cathodoluminescence microscopy study on ornaments (beads, bracelets) made of Spondylus shells excavated at the Aszod-Papi foldek archaeological site in Hungary, to define their origin. For comparison Spondylus finds from Neolithic sites of Greece, modern Spondylus shells from the Aegean and the Adriatic, as well as fossil Spondylus and Ostrea shells from the Carpathian Basin were also examined. Oxygen isotope composition of Spondylus finds from Aszod ranges between -1.9 and 2.1 ‰ and overlaps with the oxygen isotope range of shell objects from other Neolithic sites. Modern Spondylus shells from the Aegean and the Adriatic show overlapping δ18O values with one another and with the Neolithic objects; while recent shells of the Black Sea clearly are separate isotopically from the Mediterranean ones and most of archaeological artefacts. Spondylus shells from the Aszod site have Mediterranean origin; their source can be the Aegean or the Adriatic. Based on a former strontium isotope study the use of fossil Spondylus shells is excluded as raw material used for ornaments, however, in recent years the use of fossil shells was reintroduced. The shell ornaments from Aszod-Papi foldek and the fossil oyster shells collected from the Carpathian Basin exhibit some overlapping oxygen isotope values; however, cathodoluminescence microscopy indicates that the Spondylus objects retained their original aragonite material. Diagenetic calcite, which occurs typically in the fossil shells, was not detected in the ornaments suggesting that the studied objects were made of recent shells. Calcitic parts observed in some Spondylus objects are not related to fossilisation.

Link

Dietary variability of early farmers from Southeastern Italy

Stable isotope analysis of human remains has been used to address long-standing debates regarding the speed and degree to which the introduction of farming transformed diet. In Europe, this debate has centered on northern and Atlantic regions with much less attention devoted to the arrival of farming across the Mediterranean. This study presents carbon and nitrogen stable isotope analyses of collagen from 19 human and 37 faunal remains from eight sites in the Apulia and Marche regions of south-eastern and central Italy, dating to the early phases of agricultural adoption during the first half of the 6th Millennium BC. Where collagen preservation permitted, sulfur stable isotope analysis was also performed. Overall, there was significant isotopic variation between the different geographic regions, although there was also considerable uncertainty in interpreting these data, especially given heterogeneous isotope values for fauna from site to site. By considering isotope data from each region separately, it was noticeable that the degree of carbon isotope enrichment in humans compared to fauna was higher for individuals buried near the coast, consistent with increased marine consumption. Coastal individuals also had higher sulfur isotope values. Nitrogen isotope values were very variable between individuals and regions and, in some cases, were consistent with very high plant food consumption. Overall, early “farmers” in south-east and central Italy consumed a wide range of foods, including marine, and had much more variable stable isotope values than those observed in central and northern Europe during this period, perhaps indicating a different mode for agricultural adoption. 

Link

Indo-European language trees fit with an agricultural expansion from Anatolia

A new paper in Science uses Bayesian phylogeographic methods to model the spatial expansion of Indo-European languages from their Anatolian homeland. 

"We found decisive support for an Anatolian origin over a steppe origin. Both the inferred timing and root location of the Indo-European language trees fit with an agricultural expansion from Anatolia beginning 8000 to 9500 years ago"


An informative video shows how the authors estimate the process took place across space and time:

LINK 


MORE INFO: #1
                   
                     #2

From the earliest modern humans to the onset of farming (45,000-4,500 BP) January 2011-December 2014

LINK

Stone Age skull-smashers spark a cultural mystery

AN UNUSUAL cluster of Stone Age skulls with smashed-in faces has been found carefully separated from the rest of their skeletons. They appear to have been dug up several years after being buried with their bodies, separated, then reburied.

Collections of detached skulls have been dug up at many Stone Age sites in Europe and the Near East - but the face-smashing is a new twist that adds further mystery to how these societies related to their dead.

Juan José Ibañez at the Spanish National Research Council in Barcelonasays the find may suggest that Stone Age cultures believed dead young men were a threat to the world of the living.

No one knows why Neolithic societies buried clusters of skulls - often near or underneath settlements. Some think it was a sign of ancestral veneration. "When people started living together [during the Neolithic period], they needed a social cement," says Ibañez. Venerating ancestors might have been a way of doing this. But the violence demonstrated towards the skulls in the latest cluster suggests a different story.

The 10,000-year-old skulls were found in Syria. Like those found in other caches, they have been cleanly separated from their spines, suggesting they were collected from dead bodies that had already begun to decompose. Patterns on the bone indicate that some had been decomposing for longer than others, making it likely that they were all gathered together for a specific purpose.

Most of the skulls belonged to adult males between 18 and 30 years old. One - belonging to a child - was left intact; one was smashed to pieces; the remaining nine lacked facial bones. "There was a pattern," says Ibañez. "The top of the skull and the jaw were there, but they were missing all of the bones in between." His team believes the facial bones were smashed out with a stone and brute force. "There were no traces of cutting," he says (American Journal of Physical Anthropology, DOI: 10.1002/ajpa.22111).

Ibañez reckons Stone Age people believed they would receive some benefit - perhaps the strength of the young men the skulls once belonged to - by burying them near or beneath their settlements. Why the faces were smashed in invites speculation.

It may have been an act of spite or revenge, says Ibañez. Or the skulls may have been brought together to create a "community of the dead", perhaps in order to spiritually interact with the living.

"The post-mortem violence suggests young men were seen as carrying a particular threat," says Stuart Campbell at the University of Manchester, UK. Destroying their facial structures may have been a way of destroying the individuals' identities, he says.

Liv Nilsson Stutz at Emory University in Atlanta, Georgia, says the act could have helped deal with grief. "Taking away facial identity could be a way of separating the dead from the living," she says.

The genetic history of Europeans (Pinhasi et al. 2012)

This is a nice paper with extensive references on the topic of European origins. Two of its co-authors, Joachim Burger, and Ron Pinhasi are leading a couple of exciting new ancient DNA projects that will probably flood us with interesting new data in the years to come.

From the paper:

Human evolutionary history includes all the complex demographic, natural selection, and stochastic processes that have shaped our species. Despite the limitations of genetic and archaeological data to inform on all the details of human evolution, they constitute an irreplaceable source of information to appraise the key episodes that are likely to have had major impacts on patterns of genetic, morphological, and cultural variation. When considering AMH in Europe, three such critical periods are apparent: (i) the expansion of AMH out of Africa and their colonization of Europe approximately 45 000 years ago (45 ka), (ii) the last glacial maximum (LGM) and the formation of uninhabitable areas in Europe between 27 and 16 ka, and (iii) the arrival of Neolithic culture in southeast Europe and its spread throughout the rest of the continent between 9 and 5 ka. Here we review genetic evidence describing these major demographic episodes in the context of archaeological and chronological data. 

I have postulated that there was at least one important post-5ka event affecting Europe. But, in order to understand how events played out before 5ka and the present, we must first understand the background of what was taking place in Europe before 5ka.

On the earliest settlement of Europe:

Until recently, the earliest date for the first appearance of AMH in Europe had been set to around 42 to 43 ka solely based on their proposed association with Aurignacian artifacts (Table 1) [5,6]. New direct radiocarbon dates of fossils support this view and indicate that AMH appeared in Europe by 44.2– 41.5 calibrated (cal.) ka BP at Kent’s Cavern in southern England [6] and by 45–43 cal. ka BP in Grotta del Cavallo, Italy [7], whereas Neanderthals did not survive in most of Europe and the Caucasus after 39 cal. ka BP [8,9].

These dates are so close to the MP/UP transition in the Levant (49-46 cal ky BP), with the Aurignacian appearing shortly thereafter in both Central Europe and Italy. It would appear that modern humans swiftly colonized Europe after they made the crucial UP leap. Of course, in my opinion, this population was ultimately descended from inhabitants of Arabia, escaping post-70ka climatic deterioration and pre-100ka with the archaeologically attestedNubian Complex. But, in any case, it is probably the last crucial step, when humans went into warp drive post-50ka that led to the first modern human colonization of Europe and ultimately the extinction (or absorption?) of the Neandertals.

But, the early colonizers were in for a rough patch of climate that last for several millennia, making whole parts of Europe uninhabitable, and allowing few ones to survive in the south of the continent:

After the disappearance of the Neanderthals and particularly during the LGM, the northern parts of Europe were covered by ice sheets, leaving humans to survive in poorly resourced environments [10,11]. Parts of northern Europe were either completely abandoned [12] or sparsely populated [13]. The archaeological record of this period catalogs a complex series of interrelated material cultures that vary in their geographic ranges and temporal durations (Table 1). Spatial patterns of material culture change have been interpreted as indicating colonization of regions up to 52 degrees N latitude during the Gravettian, followed by partial or complete retreat of most northern populations by 24 ka, and recolonization of these regions by 20–16 ka, with some continuity of occupation in more southern latitudes [14]. However, the extent to which material cultures correspond to distinct human populations, and to which their distribu- tion changes through time correspond to demographic pro- cesses, remains unclear. 

The following table presents a very useful summary of archaeological developments in west Eurasia:

So far, we have substantial autosomal data of modern humans only from the Mesolithic onwards (Iberia), but also mtDNA from much older specimens of the Gravettian in Italy and Russia.

Apparently, other people are looking to extract ancient genomic DNA from older remains as well:

A group led by evolutionary geneticist Johannes Krause of the University of Tubingen, Germany, is trying to remove and reassemble nuclear DNA from the bones of roughly 20,000-year-old people in Europe. If successful, that effort will provide the first look at whether Stone Age humans carried more Neandertal genes than people today do. “It’s a completely open question whether more interbreeding occurred in the past than what we’ve found so far,” Krause says.

But, let's see where things stand now.

Ancient mtDNA sequences recovered from three Upper Paleolithic and 14 Mesolithic and Neolithic hunter-gatherers all belong to the mtDNA haplogroup U [48], currently found at frequencies between 1 and 7% in most modern European populations, but at up to 20% in Baltic populations and around 40% in Saami. Interestingly, almost all pre-Neolithic hunter-gatherers from Central and Northeastern Europe sequenced to date, and the majority of European post-Neolithic hunter-gatherers, carry U-type mtDNA [48,49] (Figure 1a,c). There are three exceptions: two Italian individuals with N* and pre-HV types [50], and one from Sweden [46]; the latter dating to the late Neolithic and possibly being the result of an admix- ture event with incoming farmers. In all other hunter- gatherer samples, the now common mtDNA lineages H, T, K, and J are absent, suggesting that these mtDNA lineages were introduced during the Neolithic period. 

The mtDNA evidence is indeed the strongest argument for large-scale population replacement during the Neolithic, a scenario which has found support by the sequencing of Neolithic hunter-gatherers from Gotland Sweden and Mesolithic ones from Iberia.

The authors note that while early farming groups largely lacked mtDNA haplogroup U, the later ones possessed it to some extent:

Maps showing Europe in times slices and depicting the locations from which ancient mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA) sequences were retrieved. Squares represent hunter-gatherer individuals and circles represent farming individuals. Lineages belonging to the U-clade are shown in red. Other lineages are shown in yellow. (a) Paleolithic and Mesolithic hunter-gatherers 13 500–8300 BP (plotted on a map ofEurope during the last glacial maximum ca 22 000 BP).All Pleistocene hunter-gatherers analyzed to date carry mitochondrial lineages that belong to one of the U-clades: U2, U4, or U5. (b) Early farmers 7600–6500 BP. The map illustrates the approximate arrival times and duration of the earliest Neolithic cultures (in years BP). Very few of the early farmers belong to one of the U-clade mtDNA haplotypes, indicating discontinuity between Paleolithic/Mesolithic hunter-gatherers and early farmers [48,64]. (c) Later hunter-gatherers 6500–4500 BP. Whereas early hunter-gatherers carry exclusively mitochondrial U-lineages,later hunter-gatherers show additional lineages that are also present in early farming groups(b), pointing to a possible admixture between the groups or a change in lifestyle of former farmers back to hunting-gathering in Northern Europe. (d) Later farmers 6500–4500 BP. Compared to the period of the first appearance of farmers, late farmers have a significantly higher frequency of U-lineages. This can be explained by increasing rates of admixture between farmer and hunter gatherer groups during this period and by the adoption of a farming lifestyle by hunter-gatherers. The maps are adapted from [69] and show datapoints from [46,48,51, 54–56,61,62,64,70,71]. Abbreviation: BP, before present. 

And, of course, we have the ubiquitous Y-haplogroup G2a as the lineage par excellence of the first European farmers:

In contrast to mtDNA, ancient Y-chromosome data has until recently been less informative, but a single Y-chro-mosome haplotype (G2a) in 20 of 22 male individuals from the Late Neolithic cave site at Treilles [62] led to the hypothesis that a small male founding population arrived in Southern France, probably by a maritime route from the eastern Mediterranean, in the early Neolithic. The same haplotype was also found in five of six individuals from the Avellaner Cave [61] and in one out of three Central Euro-pean LBK individuals [63]. If authentic, the presence of the Y-chromosome haplogroup G2a in 26 of 31 Neolithic individuals from Germany, France, and Spain is both surprising and intriguing, but this requires further examination. 

The only high coverage genome sequence of a prehistoric European individual is that of the Tyrolean Iceman, Oetzi, a 5300 year-old individual from South Tyrol, which was recently reported at 7-fold coverage [45]. Comparison with 1300 contemporary Europeans indicated closest genetic affinities with southern Europeans, particularly inhabi-tants of the Tyrrhenian Islands. Intriguingly, this is also the region where the Y-chromosome haplotype of the Ice-man is found at highest frequency, and this haplotype belongs to the same G2a haplogroup described above.

And of course:

Future research should also reveal the effects of post-Neolithic demographic processes, including migration events, which preliminary data suggest had a major impact upon the distribution of genetic variation. These include events associated with Bronze Age civilizations, Iron Age cultures, and later migrations, including those triggered by the rise and fall of Empires.

The recovery of the European past has only just begun.

Trends in Genetics doi:10.1016/j.tig.2012.06.006

The genetic history of Europeans 

Ron Pinhasi, Mark G. Thomas, Michael Hofreiter, Mathias Currat, Joachim Burger

The evolutionary history of modern humans is characterized by numerous migrations driven by environmental change, population pressures, and cultural innovations. In Europe, the events most widely considered to have had a major impact on patterns of genetic diversity are the initial colonization of the continent by anatomically modern humans (AMH), the last glacial maximum, and the Neolithic transition. For some decades it was assumed that the geographical structuring of genetic diversity within Europe was mainly the result of gene flow during and soon after the Neolithic transition, but recent advances in next-generation sequencing (NGS) technologies, computer simulation modeling, and ancient DNA (aDNA) analyses are challenging this simplistic view. Here we review the current knowledge on the evolutionary history of humans in Europe based on archaeological and genetic data.

Link

From the earliest modern humans to the onset of farming (45,000-4,500 BP) January 2011-December 2014

LINK

Assessing Neolithic Europeans with 'weac2'

READ @ http://dienekes.blogspot.com/2012/06/assessing-neolithic-europeans-with.html

Saharan dairying 7,000 years ago

Pottery shards put a date on Africa’s dairying

Yoghurt may have made it on to the menu for North Africans around 7,000 years ago, according to an analysis of pottery shards published today in Nature1.

The fermented dairy product left tell-tale traces of fat on the ceramic fragments, suggesting a way that the region’s inhabitants may have evolved to tolerate milk as adults.

The same team had previously identified the earliest evidence for dairying in potsherds nearly 9,000 years old from Anatolia2. But the findings from 7,000 years ago still predate the emergence and spread of the gene variants needed for the adult population to digest the lactose found in milk, says biomolecular archaeologist Richard Evershed of the University of Bristol, UK, who led the study with archaeological scientist Julie Dunne. He suggests that making yoghurt may have made dairy products more digestible.

Related: Earliest evidence for milk in the Near East and Southeastern Europe

Nature 486, 390–394 (21 June 2012) doi:10.1038/nature11186

First dairying in green Saharan Africa in the fifth millennium bc 

Julie Dunne et al.

In the prehistoric green Sahara of Holocene North Africa—in contrast to the Neolithic of Europe and Eurasia—a reliance on cattle, sheep and goats emerged as a stable and widespread way of life, long before the first evidence for domesticated plants or settled village farming communities1, 2, 3. The remarkable rock art found widely across the region depicts cattle herding among early Saharan pastoral groups, and includes rare scenes of milking; however, these images can rarely be reliably dated4. Although the faunal evidence provides further confirmation of the importance of cattle and other domesticates5, the scarcity of cattle bones makes it impossible to ascertain herd structures via kill-off patterns, thereby precluding interpretations of whether dairying was practiced. Because pottery production begins early in northern Africa6 the potential exists to investigate diet and subsistence practices using molecular and isotopic analyses of absorbed food residues7. This approach has been successful in determining the chronology of dairying beginning in the ‘Fertile Crescent’ of the Near East and its spread across Europe8, 9, 10, 11. Here we report the first unequivocal chemical evidence, based on the δ13C and Δ13C values of the major alkanoic acids of milk fat, for the adoption of dairying practices by prehistoric Saharan African people in the fifth millennium BC. Interpretations are supported by a new database of modern ruminant animal fats collected from Africa. These findings confirm the importance of ‘lifetime products’, such as milk, in early Saharan pastoralism, and provide an evolutionary context for the emergence of lactase persistence in Africa.

Link

BEAN – Bridging the European and Anatolian Neolithic

The BEAN project has been on my radar for a while now, and it's great that it seems to be alive and well. Hopefully it won't be too long until it starts producing results.

The origins of human settlement: Mainz University coordinates a new EU project for young researchers

Junior researcher Zuzana Fajkošová passes international selection procedure and begins her doctorate in the Palaeogenetics Group at the JGU Institute of Anthropology

27.06.2012

"BEAN – Bridging the European and Anatolian Neolithic" is the name of a new multinational educational network which has received funding from the European Commission for the next four years. It is classified as a so-called Initial Training Network (ITN) in the EU Marie Curie Actions program, which allows young scientists early access to research activity at top international institutions. A basic requirement for funding is that the researchers involved leave their home country and conduct their research in another European country.

The BEAN Network consists of several European partners in England, Switzerland, France, Germany, Serbia, and Turkey, and has set itself the goal of enhancing the skills of a new generation of researchers in the subjects of anthropology, pre-history, population genetics, computer modeling, and demography. Many different disciplines are participating in the initiative. An important associate partner on the German side is the German Federal Statistical Office in Wiesbaden. The common focus of the project partners centers around questions associated with the origin of first farmer settlements, which were established some 8,000 years ago in West Anatolia and the Balkans. Where did they come from? Were they migrants from the Middle East? Are they our ancestors? 

Anthropologists at Johannes Gutenberg University Mainz (JGU) have been meticulous in their preparation of the project over the last years and have entered into various cooperations to underpin it. Seven research institutions and two commercial companies are now working together on the BEAN project. Two leading researchers serve the network in an advisory capacity. These are archaeologist Ian Hodder from Stanford, who established his reputation with his excavations in Catal Höyük, and Hermann Parzinger, President of the Prussian Cultural History Foundation, who spent many years excavating and researching in European Turkey.

As of July 2012, doctoral candidate Zuzana Fajkošová, who completed her undergraduate studies at Masaryk University in Brno and at Charles University in Prague in the Czech Republic, will be the first of two BEAN researchers to start work at JGU's Institute of Anthropology and in the new palaeogenetic laboratory, which is currently in the final stages of construction on the edges of the university's Botanic Garden. She will analyze DNA from the bones of the last hunter-gatherers and the first settled farmers in the region between West Anatolia and the Balkans using the new cutting-edge technology of Next Generation Sequencing (NGS). Together with her colleagues in Dublin, London, and Geneva, she will use the genomic data to compile a model for the settlement of Europe.

"It is both a great honor and a huge opportunity for me that I can work together with such renowned researchers. I'm looking forward to Mainz, the university and the institute's new building," comments Fajkošová, who turned down a number of other offers in order to work at JGU. "A major factor leading to her appointment was the fact that besides mastering biomolecular techniques she also has good programming skills,” explains Professor Dr. Joachim Burger, the Network Coordinator. "A few years ago we more or less founded the discipline of Neolithic Palaeogenetics single-handedly. However, undertaking genomic projects is possible only with the help of international colleagues. That is why we are so pleased that such networks give us and our colleagues the chance to train young research talents."

Besides academic training, the young researchers will be able to do practical work for the two commercial companies within the network and thereby gain work experience in a non-university environment. "This is important as not all of the candidates will opt for a pure research career," explains Karola Kirsanow, who moved from Harvard to Mainz last year and now administrates the network together with Burger. "Our young colleagues have to attend many workshops, courses, and internships, most of them abroad. While this makes for a very tough program, we believe that it significantly enhances the quality of the training and similarly enhances candidates' career prospects."

Earliest "Czech" farmers

The Prague district of Bubeneč, in the bend of the Vltava river, is a quiet, mostly residential part of town, and a scene of continuous archaeological discoveries. People have been living in the area since at least the 5th millennium BC, when the phenomenon of agriculture began to spread through Central Europe. Only last year the district made the international news with the discovery of an atypical burial site from the ancient Corded Ware culture. Now archaeologists working on the site of the new Canadian embassy have found what appears to be the earliest use of agricultural ploughing in the Czech lands. In this episode of Czech History, Christian Falvey speaks with Petra Maříková Vlčková, one of the members of the archaeological team.

LINK - MP3

Farming Conquered Europe at Least Twice

The rise of agriculture in the Middle East, nearly 11,000 years ago, was a momentous event in human prehistory. But just how farming spread from there into Europe has been a matter of intense research. A new study of ancient DNA from 5000-year-old skeletons found in a French cave suggests that early farmers entered the European continent by at least two different routes and reveals new details about the social structures and dairying practices of some of their societies.

Scientists studying the spread of farming into Europe have numerous questions: Was agriculture brought in primarily by Middle Eastern farmers who replaced the resident hunter-gatherers? Or did agriculture advance through the spread of technology and ideas rather than people? And was there just one wave of farming into the continent or multiple waves and routes?

Until recently, researchers had to rely on the genetic profiles of modern-day Europeans and Middle Easterners for clues. Numerous such studies, especially of Y chromosomes, which are transmitted via the paternal line, suggest that actual farmers, not just their ideas, spread westward over the millennia, eventually reaching the British Isles. Yet other studies, based on mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA), which is inherited maternally, have come to the opposite conclusion, suggesting that farmers had local European ancestry.

Now, new studies have begun to resolve these issues by sequencing the DNA of the prehistoric farmers themselves. Some of this research, most notably in Germany, suggests that male farmers entering central Europe mated with local female hunter-gatherers—thus possibly resolving the contradiction between the Y chromosome and mtDNA results.

The new paper, published online this week in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, backs up that idea. A team led by molecular anthropologist Marie Lacan of the Paul Sabatier University in Toulouse, France, reports work on ancient DNA—both mitochondrial and Y-chromosomal—from more than two dozen skeletons found in the 1930s in a cave called Treilles in southern France. Archaeologists think Treilles is a communal grave site because the bones add up to 149 individuals, 86 adults and 63 children. The team took DNA in such a way as to ensure that each individual was sampled only once (using teeth that were still attached to a lower jaw) and was able to obtain ancient DNA from 29 people.

They found that the female and male lineages seemed to have different origins. The mtDNA showed genetic markers previously identified as having deep roots in ancient European hunter-gatherer populations, but the Y chromosomes showed the closest affinities to Europeans currently living along the Mediterranean regions of southern Europe, such as Turkey, Cyprus, Portugal, and Italy. The team concludes that, in addition to the spread of farming into Central Europe suggested by the German studies, there appears to have been at least one additional route via southern Europe.

The communal grave also yielded additional intriguing details about these ancient Europeans. Most of the skeletons were males, and many appeared to be very closely related: At least two pairs of individuals were almost certainly father and son, and another pair were brothers. That suggests that the incoming male farmers established a so-called patrilocal society, in which the men stay put on their land but mate with women who come in from surrounding regions, the team concludes.

The study also showed that, in contrast to ancient DNA findings from central Europe, the people from Treilles lacked a key genetic variant that allows the body to digest lactose into adulthood. That’s consistent with other archaeological evidence that central European farmers herded dairy cows, whereas Mediterranean farmers herded sheep and goats and drank fermented milk, which has much lower lactose levels.

Lounès Chikhi, a geneticist at Paul Sabatier University who has studied the spread of farming for many years, praises the team for getting both Y chromosome and mtDNA from the same skeletal collection. “We have been calling for exactly this kind of data,” Chikhi says, “so I am very excited.” Colin Renfrew, an archaeologist at the University of Cambridge in the United Kingdom, agrees that the findings support a second, southern European spread of farming. “They do indeed suggest a significant population influx from the Eastern Mediterranean.”

But Wolfgang Haak, a geneticist at the University of Adelaide in Australia, says that Treilles may be too young to provide reliable information about the spread of farming in southern Europe, which began at least 2000 years earlier. While these earlier migrations “should have left a genetic mark in later periods,” Haak says, Treilles might not be the “best candidate” for tracing them. The ancient DNA Lacan is now extracting from skeletons across France and Spain, Haak says, should provide more “piece[s] of the enormous puzzle we are trying to put together.”

RIP matrilocal egalitarian early European farmers

Original txt taken from http://dienekes.blogspot.com/2012/05/rip-matrilocal-egalitarian-early.html

It seems that Marija Gimbutas' feminist Old Europe fantasy is collapsing like a house of cards.

Michael Balter covers this in Science:

The results of the study, published online today in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, suggest that men who were buried with adzes—thought to be an indication of higher social status—were more likely to have grown up on loess soils than men who were buried without adzes.
...
A similarly striking pattern was seen when the team looked at the female skeletons, which made up 153 of the total 311 individuals analyzed. The variation in strontium ratios for females was significantly greater than for males, suggesting that a greater number of females than males had grown up in non-fertile areas.
...
The team came to two main conclusions: First, some males had greater access to fertile soils than others, probably because they were the sons of farmers who had inherited access to the best land. And second, LBK societies were "patrilocal," meaning that males tended to stay put in one place while females moved in from other areas to mate with them.

From the press release:

Professor Bentley said: "Our results, along with archaeobotanical studies that indicate the earliest farmers of Neolithic Germany had a system of land tenure, suggest that the origins of differential access to land can be traced back to an early part of the Neolithic era, rather than only to later prehistory when inequality and intergenerational wealth transfers are more clearly evidenced in burials and material culture. 

"It seems the Neolithic era introduced heritable property (land and livestock) into Europe and that wealth inequality got underway when this happened. After that, of course, there was no looking back: through the Bronze Age, Iron Age and Industrial era wealth inequality increased but the 'seeds' of inequality were sown way back in the Neolithic."

PNAS doi: 10.1073/pnas.1113710109

Community differentiation and kinship among Europe’s first farmers 

R. Alexander Bentley et al.

Community differentiation is a fundamental topic of the social sciences, and its prehistoric origins in Europe are typically assumed to lie among the complex, densely populated societies that developed millennia after their Neolithic predecessors. Here we present the earliest, statistically significant evidence for such differentiation among the first farmers of Neolithic Europe. By using strontium isotopic data from more than 300 early Neolithic human skeletons, we find significantly less variance in geographic signatures among males than we find among females, and less variance among burials with ground stone adzes than burials without such adzes. From this, in context with other available evidence, we infer differential land use in early Neolithic central Europe within a patrilocal kinship system.

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Rates of expansion farming system in Europe and neolithisation of the East Adriatic coast

Expansion of the farming system occurred in several well differentiated spurts, crossing the Taurus barrier around 8000 calBC, the southern Adriatic barrier around 6700–6100 BC, and the central European agro-ecological barrier around 6100–5600 BC, and reaching the last peripheral zones towards 5000–4000 calBC. 

If the overall expansion of the farming system was determined by the Neolithic Demographic Transition (NDT), i.e. by demographic pressure, what determined the rate of expansion? What is the link between the rate of expansion, the farming system and demographic density?

Bocquet-Appel et al. (2012) addresses this issue of dfferent rates of expansion of farming system in terms of 21 geo-ecological, climatic and cultural factors and forager population, via an ordinary least square regression technique (OLS). In second approach the variability of the rate of expansion is analyzed in terms of specific pattern identified for the ceramic culture areas, via a cluster analysis.




As a first approach, the issue of the different rates of expansion of the farming system on the map is addressed in terms of geo-ecological, climatic and cultural factors and forager populations. On the Europe-wide scale, what were the main factors that influenced the rate of expansion of the farming system, given that the rate of expansion was not the same in the cultural areas identified by ceramics?
As a second approach, the variability of the rate of expansion is analyzed in terms of specific patterns identified for the ceramic culture areas. On this more regional scale, can such patterns be recognized? If so, do they express different farming systems and if so, which ones? If the overall expansion of the farming system was determined by the NDT, i.e. by demographic pressure, what determined the rate of expansion? What is the link between the rate of expansion, the farming system and demographic density?


The data collected for this study were as follows: i) geographical, with the geographical coordinates and the relief and rivers that were favourable or unfavourable to the penetration of the farming system ii) ecological, with temperatures and biomes expressing soils that were favourable or unfavourable to domesticated plants and animal species, iii) the traditional ceramic markers considered as proxies for cultural systems with different expansion rates, iv) population, with the presence or absence of a Mesolithic population of indigenous foragers causing (or not) resistance to the Neolithic expansion, v) chronology, which expresses variations in the timing of expansion rates.

I will use same parameters when I will talk about how is it seen from the East Adriatic (South East Europe) perspective based on the data we have.



Despite nearly 100 years of investigation, the process, character, and diversity of Southeastern European ‘neolithization’ remain largely unknown – perhaps due to the bias in the record toward sites that would have been unsuitable all for farming (we will come to this later)

Geographical variables could be one of the most important factors when we talk about neolithisation process. Reason for this is the fact that Eastern Adriatic cost (Dalmatia) is mostly made of karst environment as part of a Dinaric karst system. In fact the Dinaric karst hosts the largest number of poljes (130) of any karst terrain, while bedrock structure and polje morphology continue toco-evolve due to tectonic activity in the Adriatic microplate. Poljes are karst landforms, valleys with steep-sides and flat-bottoms. Though they occur in many well-developed karst terrains, the central Dalmatian polje-karst hosts the largest concentration of poljes of any region in the world. According to that Cyntia Fadem (2009) propose that in this region Neolithic subsistence choices evolved coincident with geomorphology, granting the central Dalmatian polje-karst preference in Neolithic occupation, and its fields subsequent predominance in archaeological site location. The better we understand the geologic matrices of cultural change, the closer we will be to understanding cultural evolution itself.



Ecological variables
In Central Europe, the Mesolithic seems to have a weak role in the transition to farming, as indicated by the probable low density of a population that depended on forest cover. On the Balkan–Danubian axis, the low density of the Mesolithic archaeological data, taken as a proxy for demographic density, as well as the lack of archaeological evidence of contacts between foragers and farmers, suggest that in fact, ecological barriers had the main negative influence on the rate of expansion.Bocquet-Appel et al. (2012) represented ecological variables on the  estimated distribution of biomes in Europe, during the Holocene at 8000–7000 CalBP and at 6000-4000 CalBP. Where the palaeobotanical data are concerned, the European peninsula was mainly covered in cool temperate forest (closed forest including mixed conifer and broadleaved forest), with a relatively low ungulate biomass, except in some zones with aquatic, river or marine biomass and sedentary occupation (ex: Iron Door, Tagus estuary, Scandinavian coasts, Dniepr), and also the coastal Mediterranean and north-eastern Black Sea areas. A multi-proxy lake core study from the Isle of Mljet, Croatia indicates a wet (pluvial) phase from 8.4-4.5 ka, with tephra deposition occurring at 7.3 ka, a dry period at 7.1 ka, and the transition to the current xeric moisture regime (most of annual precipitation falling in winter) between 6.3 and 5.5 ka.

This is important when they talk about intensive and extensive agriculture system. Correlation between ecosystem, agricultural system, demography and rate of expansion. The intensive LBK agricultural system in an ecosystem made up almost exclusively of mixed temperate closed forest, is
associated with high demographic density and a slow and homogeneous average rate of expansion (0.821 km/yr, σ = 0.575). The extensive Mediterranean agricultural system, in an ecosystem comprising 55% of mixed forest (1.623  km/y, σ = 1.173 km/yr) and 45% Mediterranean vegetation (3.332 km/yr, σ = 3.740), is associated with low demographic density and an appreciably faster and more heterogeneous average rate of expansion compared to the LBK.

At the regional geographical scale of a ceramic culture area, the OLS and the tree diagram show two main patterns for the rate of expansion of the farming system. The first, running in a NW to SE latitudinal direction, represents a slowly expanding farming system probably conveyed by groups moving on foot in mainly or even exclusively closed ecosystems. The second pattern represents the faster speeds of groups using sea-going craft along the long coastal limits of their expansion front, whether the nature of the inland ecosystems these groups came from or progressed to later were open  or closed. The cool, dry climatic event of 8200 calBP marks an acceleration of the expansion rate and the emergence on the Anatolian-Greek bridge of marine expansion, which could not previously be distinguished from the inland expansion rate.



The expansion rate is negatively correlated with the intensification gradient of the agricultural system, as well as with demographic density. Expansion is slow in closed ecosystems with an intensive farming system and relatively high demographic density. Conversely, expansion is fast in open ecosystems with an extensive farming system and relatively lower demographic density. But the  responses of farming groups to the historical circumstances encountered during their expansion, in particular the physical barriers of the sea and the demands of sailing across them, produced higher rates of expansion, by geographical zone, than those of their farming systems in their natural surroundings inland.



When we talk abot available dates for East Adriatic (based on the Impressed ware finds) and the spread of neolithic package they correlate with expansion rates proposed by Bocquet-Appel et al. (2012) (see http://arheologija.ff.uni-lj.si/documenta/pdf33/forenbaher_miracle33.pdf). Unfortunately dates that are presented in this peper by Forenbaher & Miracle are almost of no use if we want to talk about neolithisation process, because of the limited data and lack of early neolithic sites along the cost. they can only tell us that neolithic package sprad rapidly across Adriatic but almost nothing about why and how.


Current explanatory models for universal agricultural diffusion are human migration (the influx of farmers equipped with the necessary cultigens, livestock, and tools)  and technology migration (the movement of cultigens and tools through natural and cultural process). Fort and Méndez presented reaction-diffusion equations for population dynamics to describe the human migration model. Davison et al. adapted these equations to include ecological variables, and Dolukhanov et al. suggest modification to account for interaction with local foraging populations. General origins of agriculture and Southeast Europe-specific research are both shifting toward more complex models of neolithization, in which human behavioral ecology is coming to the fore. This evolutionary paradigm is founded on the understanding that environmental attributes and their variance are as large a part of human adaptation as selection itself.

Incorporating ideas of energy budget and subsistence strategy into origins-of-agriculture research means considering the costs and benefits of changes in technology and subsistence strategy. Although environmental variables are being considered in current research on the spread of the Neolithic, general discussion and speculation of environmental conditions does not constitute a cost-benefit analysis. This is not to say that climate is the only selective force that acted on Neolithic foragers and farmers, but  that it is a vital force, and one of great prominence in current Neolithic explanatory models for Southeast Europe and worldwide. Increasingly, researchers in behavioral ecology are realizing the need for better measures of environment, the need to consider not only environmental attribute averages, as traditionally applied in evolutionary models (productivity, heterogeneity, etc.), but the scale and predictability of these attributes’ variability. If researchers seek to explain the persistence of agricultural subsistence technologies and behaviours, they must observe them at appropriate scales and in selective context, asking:
• Can we deduce the ecological context of the transition from foragingto farming in this
place and time? and
• Can we isolate the environmental attributesthat would have selected for agricultural
subsistence choices?

Jaromír Beneš (2004). Palaeoecology of the LBK: The Earliest Agriculturalist and Landscape of Bohemia BAR

Bocquet-Appel, J., Naji, S., Vander Linden, M., & Kozlowski, J. (2012). Understanding the rates of expansion of the farming system in Europe Journal of Archaeological Science, 39 (2), 531-546 DOI: 10.1016/j.jas.2011.10.010

Staso Forenbaher, & Preston T. Miracle (2005). The spread of farming in the Eastern Adriatic Antiquity


Cynthia M. Fadem (2009). GEOARCHAEOLOGY OF THE DANILO BITINJ AND POKROVNIK SITES, DALMATIA, CROATIA A dissertation presented to the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences of Washington University in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy

The Mesolithic–Neolithic transition in southern Iberia

Abstract

New data and a review of historiographic information from Neolithic sites of the Malaga and Algarve coasts (southern Iberian Peninsula) and from the Maghreb (North Africa) reveal the existence of a Neolithic settlement at least from 7.5 cal ka BP. The agricultural and pastoralist food producing economy of that population rapidly replaced the coastal economies of the Mesolithic populations. The timing of this population and economic turnover coincided with major changes in the continental and marine ecosystems, including upwelling intensity, sea-level changes and increased aridity in the Sahara and along the Iberian coast. These changes likely impacted the subsistence strategies of the Mesolithic populations along the Iberian seascapes and resulted in abandonments manifested as sedimentary hiatuses in some areas during the Mesolithic–Neolithic transition. The rapid expansion and area of dispersal of the early Neolithic traits suggest the use of marine technology. Different evidences for a Maghrebian origin for the first colonists have been summarized. The recognition of an early North-African Neolithic influence in Southern Iberia and the Maghreb is vital for understanding the appearance and development of the Neolithic in Western Europe.
Our review suggests links between climate change, resource allocation, and population turnover.

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The 8200 cal BP abrupt environmental change and the Neolithic transition: A Mediterranean perspective

Abstract

A major environmental and societal event struck the Mediterranean basin during the 9th millennium cal BP. A sudden and major climatic crisis occurred in the Northern Hemisphere around 8200 cal BP leading to hyper arid conditions along a tropical zone between 15° and 40° North (Near and Middle East), cooler and wetter conditions in western and central Europe, and marked climatic irregularity in the northern Mediterranean basin. At the same time, frequent cultural gaps are observed in cave infillings from Greece to the Spanish peninsula between 8500 and 8000 cal BP, making the vision of the European Mesolithic–Neolithic transition more complex. Furthermore, a stratigraphic and socio-economic rupture associated with a spatial redistribution of sites characterizes the PPNB-NC/Yarmoukian transition in the Near East. The impact of these climatic and environmental changes in the first centuries of the neolithisation of Mediterranean Europe is discussed, using the socio-cultural, economic, stratigraphic and chronological evidence for the first farmers and last hunter-gatherers. This evidence is compared to recent paleoclimatic and geo-archaeological data obtained from prehistoric contexts, in order to measure the hydro-morphological impact on activities in valleys and karstic rockshelters.

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Detection of diffusion and contact zones of early farming in Europe from the space-time distribution of 14C dates

Abstract

The spread of early farming in Europe is revisited using a sample of 3072 audited 14C calBC dates from 940 georeferenced early Neolithic sites. The surface expansion of early Neolithic has been reconstituted using the kriging technique of spatial interpolation. Centres of renewed expansion, of contact zones, and the main routes of expansion have been highlighted by means of a vector map, representing the gradient. The expansion of the agricultural system on the map, was not uniform and regular across Europe as a whole, but proceeded in leaps. With the scale of detection of the 500-year isochrones, several leaps are identifiable: at 8000 calBC crossing the Taurus barrier, 6700–6100 calBC crossing the southern Adriatic barrier, 6100–5600 calBC crossing the Central European agro-ecological barrier and 5000–4000 calBC expanding on the other, marginal zones. Using a vector map, 10 points of renewed expansion and nine contact zones, were detected. The whole does not correspond to a process of homogeneous diffusion, approximately steady, but a process marked by phases of geographical expansion and stasis.

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High levels of Paleolithic Y-chromosome lineages characterize Serbia

Abstract

Whether present-day European genetic variation and its distribution patterns can be attributed primarily to the initial peopling of Europe by anatomically modern humans during the Paleolithic, or to latter Near Eastern Neolithic input is still the subject of debate. Southeastern Europe has been a crossroads for several cultures since Paleolithic times and the Balkans, specifically, would have been part of the route used by Neolithic farmers to enter Europe. Given its geographic location in the heart of the Balkan Peninsula at the intersection of Central and Southeastern Europe, Serbia represents a key geographical location that may provide insight to elucidate the interactions between indigenous Paleolithic people and agricultural colonists from the Fertile Crescent. In this study, we examine, for the first time, the Y-chromosome constitution of the general Serbian population. A total of 103 individuals were sampled and their DNA analyzed for 104 Y-chromosome bi-allelic markers and 17 associated STR loci. Our results indicate that approximately 58% of Serbian Y-chromosomes (I1-M253, I2a-P37.2 and R1a1a-M198) belong to lineages believed to be pre-Neolithic. On the other hand, the signature of putative Near Eastern Neolithic lineages, including E1b1b1a1-M78, G2a-P15, J1-M267, J2-M172 and R1b1a2-M269 accounts for 39% of the Y-chromosome. Haplogroup frequency distributions in Western and Eastern Europe reveal a spotted landscape of paleolithic Y chromosomes, undermining continental-wide generalizations. Furthermore, an examination of the distribution of Y-chromosome filiations in Europe indicates extreme levels of Paleolithic lineages in a region encompassing Serbia, Bosnia-Herzegovina and Croatia, possibly the result of Neolithic migrations encroaching on Paleolithic populations against the Adriatic Sea.

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The spread of Neolithic plant economies from the Near East to northwest Europe: a phylogenetic analysis

Abstract

Phylogenetic techniques are used to analyse the spread of Neolithic plant economies from the Near East to northwest Europe as a branching process from a founding ancestor. The analyses are based on a database of c. 7500 records of plant taxa from 250 sites dated to the early Neolithic of the region in which they occur, aggregated into a number of regional groups. The analysis demonstrates that a phylogenetic signal exists in the data but it is complicated by the fact that in comparison with the changes that occurred when the crop agriculture complex expanded out of the Near East, once it arrived in Europe it underwent only limited further changes. On the basis of the analysis it has been possible to identify the species losses and gains that occurred as the complex of crops and associated weeds spread and to show the influence of geographical location and cultural affinity on the pattern of losses and gains. This has led to consideration of the processes producing that history, including some reasons why the dispersal process did not produce a perfect tree phylogeny, as well as to the identification of some specific anomalies, such as the unusual nature of the Bulgarian pattern, which raise further questions for the future.

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