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.

Link

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.

LINK

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.

LINK

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.

LINK

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.

DOWNLOAD @

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.

DOWNLOAD @

New light on early caprine herding strategies from isotope analysis: a case study from Neolithic Anatolia

Abstract

The measurement of stable carbon (δ¹³C) and nitrogen (δ¹⁵N) isotopes of caprine bone collagen from the Neolithic sites of Çatalhöyük and Aşıklı Höyük in south-central Anatolia have allowed examination of exploitation and herding practices of sheep and goats. The isotope values from protodomestic caprines at Aşıklı Höyük suggests that these animals were consuming very similar foods to each other and were all confined to the same or similar environments with no access to C₄ plants. At Çatalhöyük, the results show how the caprine management strategy develops from the strategy seen at Aşıklı Höyük into a more varied practice at an early stage as the site grows with an increasing dietary contribution obtained from C₄ plants. No change in diet is isotopically discernible at Aşıklı Höyük. Interestingly, no distinction could be made between the diets of sheep and goats at either site. Therefore, such studies are a useful method of examining the development of early herding or management strategies of caprines in the Near East.

DOWNLOAD @

Founder effect, drift, and adaptive change in domestic crop use in early Neolithic Europe

Abstract

We document and quantify a significant reduction in crop diversity in the early central European Neolithic using a large multi-site database of archaeobotantical remains we compiled from published Neolithic sites across southwest Asia and Europe. Two hypotheses are proposed to account for the observed changes: one which claims that the different environmental conditions of central Europe selected for a different set of crop choices and strategies than in use in southeast and Mediterranean Europe; and a null hypothesis that explains the change as a drift process associated with a small founding population that subsequently undergoes rapid expansion. Through an agent-based simulation model, we test the null hypothesis and demonstrate that the drop in diversity exceeds that predicted by a drift process. We conclude by re-evaluating the possible adaptive changes underlying crop use in early Neolithic Europe.

DOWNLOAD @

Y chromosome genetic variation in the Italian peninsula is clinal and supports an admixture model for the Mesolithic–Neolithic encounter

Abstract

The Italian peninsula, given its geographical location in the middle of the Mediterranean basin, was involved in the process of the peopling of Europe since the very beginning, with first settlements dating to the Upper Paleolithic. Later on, the Neolithic revolution left clear evidence in the archeological record, with findings going back to 7000 B.C. We have investigated the demographic consequences of the agriculture revolution in this area by genotyping Y chromosome markers for almost 700 individuals from 12 different regions. Data analysis showed a non-random distribution of the observed genetic variation, with more than 70% of the Y chromosome diversity distributed along a North–South axis. While the Greek colonisation during classical time appears to have left no significant contribution, the results support a male demic diffusion model, even if population replacement was not complete and the degree of Neolithic admixture with Mesolithic inhabitants was different in different areas of Italy.

DOWNLOAD @

Late glacial recolonization of Europe from Near Eastern refugia

 couple of quick comments on this important new paper:

• It is important to confirm the hypotheses put forward with ancient DNA data. For example, haplogroup V is said to be traced to Paleolithic SW Europe, and yet it is lacking in ancient DNA data. Looking at Jean Manco's ancient Eurasian DNA compendium, I only find a very late Neolithic hunter-gatherer sample from Pitted Ware in Sweden (2,800-2,000BC); if J/T subclades had entered Europe prior to the Neolithic, their almost complete absence in ancient DNA data is puzzling.
• Both this and the recent "Copernican" paper provide age estimates for the same nodes of the tree using the mutation rate of Soares et al. (2009). The estimaets of Pala et al. (2012) appear to be older by several thousand years than those of Behar et al. (2012) for different nodes. I don't know whether this is due to a different methodology or different dataset, but, in any case, it is a warning to avoid very close correlations between archaeological-geological events and age estimates.

UPDATE: A press release on the article.

The American Journal of Human Genetics, Volume 90, Issue 5, 915-924, 4 May 2012 doi:10.1016/j.ajhg.2012.04.003

Mitochondrial DNA Signals of Late Glacial Recolonization of Europe from Near Eastern Refugia 

Maria Pala et al. 

Human populations, along with those of many other species, are thought to have contracted into a number of refuge areas at the height of the last Ice Age. European populations are believed to be, to a large extent, the descendants of the inhabitants of these refugia, and some extant mtDNA lineages can be traced to refugia in Franco-Cantabria (haplogroups H1, H3, V, and U5b1), the Italian Peninsula (U5b3), and the East European Plain (U4 and U5a). Parts of the Near East, such as the Levant, were also continuously inhabited throughout the Last Glacial Maximum, but unlike western and eastern Europe, no archaeological or genetic evidence for Late Glacial expansions into Europe from the Near East has hitherto been discovered. Here we report, on the basis of an enlarged whole-genome mitochondrial database, that a substantial, perhaps predominant, signal from mitochondrial haplogroups J and T, previously thought to have spread primarily from the Near East into Europe with the Neolithic population, may in fact reflect dispersals during the Late Glacial period, ∼19–12 thousand years (ka) ago. 

Link

Horse domestication

New research indicates that domestic horses originated in the steppes of modern-day Ukraine, southwest Russia and west Kazakhstan, mixing with local wild stocks as they spread throughout Europe and Asia. The research was published today, 07 May, in the journal PNAS.

For several decades scientists puzzled over the origin of domesticated horses. Based on archaeological evidence, it had long been thought that horse domestication originated in the western part of the Eurasian Steppe (Ukraine, southwest Russia and west Kazakhstan); however, a single origin in a geographically restricted area appeared at odds with the large number of female lineages in the domestic horse gene pool, commonly thought to reflect multiple domestication "events" across a wide geographic area.

In order to solve the perplexing history of the domestic horse, scientists from the University of Cambridge used a genetic database of more than 300 horses sampled from across the Eurasian Steppe to run a number of different modelling scenarios.

Their research shows that the extinct wild ancestor of domestic horses, Equus ferus, expanded out of East Asia approximately 160,000 years ago. They were also able to demonstrate that Equus ferus was domesticated in the western Eurasian Steppe, and that herds were repeatedly restocked with wild horses as they spread across Eurasia.

ScienceNOW also covers the new research, and reports on a contrasting viewpoint: 

Not all researchers are convinced, however. Archaeologist Marsha Levine of the University of Cambridge thinks using modern genetic samples to retrace horses' evolution is a dead end. "There's been mixing of cultures and mixing of horses in this region for many thousands of years," she says. "And so when you're looking at any modern horse, you just don't know where it's from." 

Bringing together many kinds of evidence is what will ultimately answer the whens and wheres of horse domestication, Levine says. "What we need to be doing is using material from excavations, sequencing ancient genes, and combining that with what we know from archaeological evidence about how animals were used in the past."

I agree with the idea that ancient DNA will ultimately confirm/reject the model presented in the paper. Of course, it may be the case that the west Eurasian steppe was the place where horse domestication happened, but it is also the place where local horses may be descended from European, West Asian, and Central Asian breeds. I'll have to read the paper to see how the problem of possible admixture between western and eastern horse breeds on the steppe is accounted for in the paper. 

PNAS doi: 10.1073/pnas.1111122109 

Reconstructing the origin and spread of horse domestication in the Eurasian steppe 

Vera Warmuth et al. 

Despite decades of research across multiple disciplines, the early history of horse domestication remains poorly understood. On the basis of current evidence from archaeology, mitochondrial DNA, and Y-chromosomal sequencing, a number of different domestication scenarios have been proposed, ranging from the spread of domestic horses out of a restricted primary area of domestication to the domestication of numerous distinct wild horse populations. In this paper, we reconstruct both the population genetic structure of the extinct wild progenitor of domestic horses, Equus ferus, and the origin and spread of horse domestication in the Eurasian steppes by fitting a spatially explicit stepping-stone model to genotype data from >300 horses sampled across northern Eurasia. We find strong evidence for an expansion of E. ferus out of eastern Eurasia about 160 kya, likely reflecting the colonization of Eurasia by this species. Our best-fitting scenario further suggests that horse domestication originated in the western part of the Eurasian steppe and that domestic herds were repeatedly restocked with local wild horses as they spread out of this area. By showing that horse domestication was initiated in the western Eurasian steppe and that the spread of domestic herds across Eurasia involved extensive introgression from the wild, the scenario of horse domestication proposed here unites evidence from archaeology, mitochondrial DNA, and Y-chromosomal DNA. 


LINK

Agriculture arrived in Cyprus 10,600 years ago

PNAS doi: 10.1073/pnas.1201693109

First wave of cultivators spread to Cyprus at least 10,600 y ago

Jean-Denis Vigne et al.

Early Neolithic sedentary villagers started cultivating wild cereals in the Near East 11,500 y ago [Pre-Pottery Neolithic A (PPNA)]. Recent discoveries indicated that Cyprus was frequented by Late PPNA people, but the earliest evidence until now for both the use of cereals and Neolithic villages on the island dates to 10,400 y ago. Here we present the recent archaeological excavation at Klimonas, which demonstrates that established villagers were living on Cyprus between 11,100 and 10,600 y ago. Villagers had stone artifacts and buildings (including a remarkable 10-m diameter communal building) that were similar to those found on Late PPNA sites on the mainland. Cereals were introduced from the Levant, and meat was obtained by hunting the only ungulate living on the island, a small indigenous Cypriot wild boar. Cats and small domestic dogs were brought from the mainland. This colonization suggests well-developed maritime capabilities by the PPNA period, but also that migration from the mainland may have occurred shortly after the beginning of agriculture. 

LINK

 By the mid-8th millennium calBP, both sides of the Western Mediterranean were inhabited by hunter-gatherer groups which probably maintained intercontinental contacts. However, from around 7.6 ka calBP, Neolithic groups from the Eastern Mediterranean arrived in the region along the littoral of what is today Andalusia. Neolithic innovations were adopted step by step by local Epipalaeolithic groups and subsequently dispersed via already existing networks. At the same time indigenous elements were integrated into this transitional process. New ¹⁴C-data confirm the simultaneity of the Epipalaeolithic–Neolithic transition in southern Spain and northern Morocco. Results are discussed considering models and concepts from social anthropology dealing with migration and acculturation.

Technology, typology and use wear analysis of lithic tools during the early Neolithic in the cave of Murciélagos de Zuheros (Córdoba, Spain): Reflexions on the Neolithisation of the southern Iberian Peninsula

• António Faustino Carvalho^a,  , 
• Juan Francisco Gibaja^b, , 
• Beatriz Gavilán^c, 

• ^a Instituto de Arqueologia e Paleociências das Universidades Nova de Lisboa e do Algarve, Universidade do Algarve, FCHS, Campus de Gambelas, 8000-117 Faro, Portugal
• ^b Departamento de Arqueología del Consejo Superior de Investigaciones Científicas (CSIC-IMF), Investigador contratado por el Ministerio de Ciencia e Innovación - Subprograma Ramón y Cajal, C/Egipciàques, 15, 08001 Barcelona, Espagne
• ^c Universidad de Huelva, Facultad de Humanidades, Campus del El Carmen, Avda, Tres de Marzo S/N, Espagne

Abstract

The cave of Murciélagos de Zuheros (Cordoba, Spain) is one of the most important sites in Southern Iberian Peninsula. Its thick chronostratigraphic sequence includes occupations ranging from the Middle Palaeolithic to Roman times. Occupation levels corresponding to the earliest farming communities that established in modern-day Andalucia are remarkable due to its archaeological richness. This article focuses on the study of the lithic industry from these Early Neolithic levels, which is approached according to various tightly connected questions: raw material characterization, technical systems of production, and morphology and function of tools. Obtained results in their archaeological context are related to the questions on the origin of the Neolithic in Southern Iberian Peninsula.

DOWNLOAD @ 

Emerging genetic patterns of the european neolithic

American Journal of Physical Anthropology DOI: 10.1002/ajpa.22074

Emerging genetic patterns of the european neolithic: Perspectives from a late neolithic bell beaker burial site in Germany

Esther J. Lee et al. 

Abstract 

The transition from hunting and gathering to agriculture in Europe is associated with demographic changes that may have shifted the human gene pool of the region as a result of an influx of Neolithic farmers from the Near East. However, the genetic composition of populations after the earliest Neolithic, when a diverse mosaic of societies that had been fully engaged in agriculture for some time appeared in central Europe, is poorly known. At this period during the Late Neolithic (ca. 2,800–2,000 BC), regionally distinctive burial patterns associated with two different cultural groups emerge, Bell Beaker and Corded Ware, and may reflect differences in how these societies were organized. Ancient DNA analyses of human remains from the Late Neolithic Bell Beaker site of Kromsdorf, Germany showed distinct mitochondrial haplotypes for six individuals, which were classified under the haplogroups I1, K1, T1, U2, U5, and W5, and two males were identified as belonging to the Y haplogroup R1b. In contrast to other Late Neolithic societies in Europe emphasizing maintenance of biological relatedness in mortuary contexts, the diversity of maternal haplotypes evident at Kromsdorf suggests that burial practices of Bell Beaker communities operated outside of social norms based on shared maternal lineages. Furthermore, our data, along with those from previous studies, indicate that modern U5-lineages may have received little, if any, contribution from the Mesolithic or Neolithic mitochondrial gene pool. 


LINK

BEAN: Bridging the European and Anatolian Neolithic

The Neolithic first appears outside its core region in the Near East and central Anatolia after 7.000 BC, in the western part of Anatolia. This is a key staging area for the further spread of the Neolithic culture through Europe. The mode and tempo of the spread of the Neolithic remains problematic: although detailed chronologies of Neolithisation exist for individual regions, a precise and comprehensive Neolithisation theory is still needed for the entire area between central Anatolia and central Europe.

Marie Curie International Training Network aims to build a new generation of students able to identify and address the main aspects of this crucial period for the future history of the entire Eurasian continent.The BEAN network focuses on demographic questions surrounding the dissemination of the cultural, technological, and biological components of the Neolithic from western Anatolia and the Balkans to the rest of Europe.  The following are the primary research questions of  Marie Curie International Training Network :

       

1.  To determine the extent to which humans migrated (along with their domesticates) into  new lands during the establishment of the Neolithic in western Anatolia and southeastern Europe.

 2.  To understand the mode and tempo of the change from foraging to farming in the Neolithic of western Anatolia and southeastern Europe and the degree of cultural exchange  between local and migrant populations.

 3.  To reconstruct the patterns of circulation of raw materials, manufactured goods and ideas.

 4. To map the population structure and estimate demographic parameters of the human  groups involved in the transition.

BEAN is a Marie Curie initial training network (ITN). The aim of the BEAN training network is to educate a new generation of researchers that will be able to combine the important aspects of  prehistoric archaeology, palaeodemography, population genetics, biostatistics, and next-generation molecular genetics while developing specialized skills in their particular scientific discipline. The broader question of the Neolithisation of Europe will serve as an intellectual framework structuring the research and training opportunities provided by BEAN network participants. 

The BEAN network proposes to carry out much-needed research into the origins of settled farming life in Europe  and the Europeans themselves while training the next generation of European researchers in the cutting-edge techniques of three different research areas:

                1.       Anthropology and Genetics

                2.       Simulations and Modelling

                3.       Prehistoric Archaeology

These  scientific disciplines reinforce each other to form a robust research framework within which researchers in the BEAN network can approach one of the most pressing archaeological questions of our time: the Neolithisation of Europe.

Simulations and Modelling

Advanced computer models can be used to simulate the diffusion of genes through a population with time, in order to test hypothetical demographic scenarios for the Neolithic transition in Western Anatolia and the Balkans.  These  models can be built using data obtained from archaeological and palaeodemographic research, and evaluated using modern and ancient DNA from populations living in the region.  By altering demographic and biological parameters, alternative hypotheses can be explored. Modelling prehistoric gene flow will enable researchers to better understand the genetic correlates and consequences of the Neolithic transition.

Anthropology and Genetics
Recent advances in the anthropological sciences have made the Neolithisation question much more tractable for modern researchers. With the advent of palaeogenetic methods such as the analysis of DNA from archaeological skeletons, and especially with the possibilities of the next generation sequencing technologies (NGS), new data have become available that now render prehistoric demographic inferences possible. When ancient DNA data are analysed by appropriate statistical inference methods, particularly those applying coalescent theory, a reliable reconstruction of past populations structure is feasible. The increasingly sophisticated methods employed by biological anthropologists to examine the morphology and composition of fossilized tissues have further enhanced the informative potential of ancient human remains.