Precision chronology sheds new light on the origins of Mongolia's nomadic horse culture

According to new research, nomadic horse culture -- famously associated with Genghis Khan and his Mongol hordes -- can trace its roots back more than 3,000 years in the eastern Eurasian Steppes, in the territory of modern Mongolia.

The study, published online March 31 in Journal of Archaeological Science, produces scientific estimates of the age of horse bones found from archaeological sites belonging to a culture known as the Deer Stone-Khirigsuur Complex. This culture, named for the beautiful carved standing stones ("deer stones") and burial mounds (khirigsuurs) it built across the Mongolian Steppe (Figure 2), is linked with some of the oldest evidence for nomadic herding and domestic livestock use in eastern Eurasia. At both deer stones and khirigsuurs, stone mounds containing ritual burials of domestic horses - sometimes numbering in the hundreds or thousands - are found buried around the edge of each monument (Figure 3).

A team of researchers from several academic institutions - including the Max Planck Institute for the Science of Human History, Yale University, University of Chicago, the American Center for Mongolian Studies, and the National Museum of Mongolia - used a scientific dating technique known as radiocarbon dating to estimate the spread of domestic horse ritual at deer stones and khirigsuurs.

When an organism dies, an unstable radioactive molecule present in living tissues, known as radiocarbon, begins to decay at a known rate. By measuring the remaining concentration of radiocarbon in organic materials, such as horse bone, archaeologists can estimate how many years ago an animal took its final step. Many previous archaeological projects in Mongolia produced radiocarbon date estimates from horse remains found at these Bronze Age archaeological sites. However, because each of these measurements must be calibrated to account for natural variation in the environment over time, individual dates have large amounts of error and uncertainty, making them difficult to aggregate or interpret in groups.

By using a statistical technique known as Bayesian analysis - which combines probability with archaeological information to improve precision for groups of radiocarbon dates - the study authors were able to produce a high-precision chronology model for early domestic horse use in Mongolia. Lead author William Taylor, a postdoctoral research fellow at the Max Planck Institute for the Science of Human History, says that this model "enables us for the first time to link horse use with other important cultural developments in ancient Mongolia and eastern Eurasia, and evaluate the role of climate and environmental change in the local origins of horse riding."

According to the study, domestic horse ritual spread rapidly across the Mongol Steppe at around 1200 BC - several hundred years before mounted horsemen are clearly documented historical records. When considered alongside other evidence for horse transport in the Deer Stone-Khirigsuur Complex these results suggest that Mongolia was an epicenter for early horse culture - and probably early mounted horseback riding.

The study has important consequences for our understanding of human responses to climate change. For example, one particularly influential hypothesis argues that horse riding and nomadic herding societies developed during the late second millennium BCE, as a response to drought and a worsening climate. Taylor and colleagues' results indicate instead that early horsemanship took place during a wetter, more productive climate period - which may have given herders more room to experiment with horse breeding and transport.

In recent years, scholars have become increasingly aware of the role played by Inner Asian nomads in early waves of globalization. A key article by Dr. Michael Frachetti and colleagues, published this month in Nature argues that nomadic movement patterns shaped the early trans-Eurasian trade networks that would eventually move goods, people, and information across the continent. The development of horsemanship by Mongolian cultures might have been one of the most influential changes in Eurasian prehistory - laying the groundwork for the economic and ecological exchange networks that defined the Old World for centuries to come.

Prehistoric alpine farming much earlier than previously assumed

The people in Switzerland were on the move in the High Alps and running alpine pastures 7,000 years ago and therefore much earlier than previously assumed. A study by the University of Bern that combines archaeological knowledge with findings from palaeoecology comes to this conclusion. Prehistoric finds from the Schnidejoch Pass played a crucial part in this.

Did shepherds actually drive their herds from Lower Valais to the Bernese Oberland and graze their sheep there around 5,000 BC? Many factors indicate that this theory, which would have just been dismissed as speculation until recently, reflects reality. "We have strong indications that argue that people were on the move in the mountains with their animals much earlier than previously assumed," says Albert Hafner, Professor of Prehistoric Archaeology at University of Bern.

Albert Hafner and Christoph Schwörer, environmental scientist and specialist in vegetation history at the Institute of Plant Sciences at University of Bern, have just provided the chain of evidence that supports this assumption in an article in the Quaternary International specialist journal. Both scientists are members of the Oeschger Centre for Climate Change Research at University of Bern "The combination of two approaches," explains Albert Hafner, "allowed us to collect better data and also interpret it with a new perspective. Neither archaeology nor palaeoecology would have come to these new findings on their own."

According to the study, this is how we have to imagine early alpine farming between Valais and the Bernese Oberland: the region around today's Sitten was populated by people who ran arable and cattle farming around 5,000 BC. They kept sheep and goats, among others. However, the steep and dry slopes in Lower Valais did not produce much feed, which is why the shepherds undertook a two-day hike as far as the Bernese Oberland where they found good grazing opportunities below the Schnidejoch Pass situated at 2,756 metres above sea level. This nomadic pasture farming was only possible as the glaciers drastically retreated during the so-called Holocene Climatic Optimum. The Schnidejoch did not have any ice for several centuries.

Sediment analysis and prehistoric finds

The two researchers support their theory on the one hand with prehistoric finds from the Schnidejoch situated above the Lenk and on the other hand by the analysis of sediment cores from Lake Iffig (Iffigensee) just a few kilometres away.

A melting ice field on the Schnidejoch Pass has exposed several hundreds of these kinds of objects since 2003. Including remnants of containers made out of wood, which were very probably used to transport food. The Valais shepherds probably transported provisions in them for the time that they spent with their animals on the Bernese side of the pass.

Indications of early alpine farming are also provided by the rings made out of plaited twigs which were used to hold the posts of mobile fences together. The rings originate from the Early Bronze Age (from 2,100 BC). What is interesting though is that one tradition from this phase of prehistoric alpine farming in the Bernese Oberland was preserved over thousands of years: cattle farmers can be seen in a historic photo from the Thun region who are building a mobile fence using rings made out of plaited twigs -- probably using the same method that their Valais ancestors applied around 5,000 BC. "This is obviously an extremely simple and convenient technique that could last long in traditional communities ," says Albert Hafner.

Strong indications of very early pastoralism in the area of the Schnidejoch is mainly provided by the reconstruction of the region's vegetation history. Christoph Schwörer analysed the composition of sediment deposits from Lake Iffig for this. The pollen was of particular interest in the process. From the composition of this pollen it can be deduced which plant species were very widespread in a specific location in the past. For example, nettles, among others, can be evidenced for the time after 5,000 BC. These nutrient-loving plants frequently appear in places where cattle were fenced in overnight. Spores from the Sporormiella, a fungus that thrives extremely well on cattle dung was also found in the sediment core.

 When the glaciers advanced again during a colder climatic phase just under a thousand years after the oldest Schnidejoch finds, the route over the pass became impassable again. There is also no indication of the Valais shepherds and their sheep in the lake sediments from Lake Iffig during this time.

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Medieval Jewish graves unearthed in Rome

The burial area where the bodies were found during building construction in the Trastevere district of Rome. Photo courtesy of Rome's Archaeological Superintendency

Italian archaeologists have discovered the remains of 38 skeletons buried in a Jewish cemetery in Rome more than 500 years ago, offering further evidence of their ubiquity and persecution under papal rule.

The well-preserved skeletons were found during excavations beneath a building in an area identified on ancient maps as “Campus Iudeorum” – Latin for “Field of Jews” — in the Trastevere quarter of Rome just across the Tiber River from the Italian capital.

The burial area where the bodies were found during building construction in the Trastevere district of Rome. Photo courtesy of Rome’s Archaeological Superintendency

The bodies were believed to have been buried there between the mid-14^th and mid-17^th centuries, and the discovery is giving archaeologists new insights into how the community lived and died in the medieval era.

The skeletons were discovered during excavations nearly 20 feet beneath a large modern building undergoing renovation.  Apart from the cemetery, archaeologists also found the remains of an ancient tannery at the site dating back to the era of Roman Emperor Septimius Severus in the third century.

Rossi, from Rome’s Archaeological Superintendency, said the graves confirmed customary Jewish funeral practices: The bodies were buried in plain wooden caskets without any objects and were only identified after a fragment of a Hebrew epigraph was found at the dig.

She said the absence of headstones was a result of decrees issued by Pope Urban VIII, who ruled in 1625 that Jews be buried in unmarked graves and ordered headstones to be removed from existing graves.

The only Hebrew inscription, a fragment, came from a layer where the graves were obliterated so without a doubt that was the result of Pope Urban VIII decrees in October 1625.

Apart from the skeletons, the only objects found were two gold rings found on a woman’s fingers and part of an iron scale attached to a man’s hand, which Rossi said may have been an indication of his profession or his honesty.

Experts said the skeletons were predominantly adult males and there were few children. Scientific analysis also showed signs of a poor hygiene and inadequate diet lacking in protein.

The first recorded news about the Field of Jews on ancient maps dates back to 1363 when the Company of Death, a military corps, ordered a cemetery to be set aside on a plot of land in Trastevere.

Rome’s Jewish community has welcomed the discovery and pledged to rebury the 38 bodies with the prayers and rituals of a Jewish funeral.

Steppe migrant thugs pacified by Stone Age farming women

An article in the journal Antiquity argues that Yamnaya warriors belonging to raiding parties married local Stone Age women, settling and adopting an agrarian lifestyle; during this process a Proto-Germanic language and the Corded Ware Culture was formed


In an earlier study Professor Kristian Kristiansen from the University of Gothenburg in Sweden and Lundbeck Foundation Professor Eske Willerslev from the Centre for GeoGenetics at the University of Copenhagen, and their research teams, showed that the large demographic changes during the first part of the Bronze Age happened as a result of massive migrations of Yamnaya people from the Pontic-Caspian steppes into Neolithic Europe. They were also able to show that plague was widespread in both Europe and Central Asia at this time.

Corded ware vessel, an axe and two discs made of amber from an early male grave.
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Danish National Museum

Now Professor Kristiansen and Professor Willerslev with co-authors reveal a more detailed view of the mechanism behind the emerging culture known as the Corded Ware Culture -- the result of the encounter between the Yamnaya and the Neolithic people. Professor Kristian Kristiansen says: "We are now for the first time able to combine results from genetics, strontium isotopes on mobility and diet, and historical linguistics on language change, to demonstrate how the integration process unfolded on the ground after the Yamnaya migrations from the steppe. In our grand synthesis we argue that Yamnaya migrants were predominantly males, who married women who came from neighbouring Stone Age farming societies" These Stone Age Neolithic societies were based on large farming communities reflected in their collective burial ritual often in big stone chambers, so called megaliths. Very different from the traditions of the incoming migrants.

The origin of the Yamnaya

The Yamnaya people originated on the Caspian steppes where they lived as pastoralists and herders, using wagons as mobile homes. From burial pits archaeologists have found extensive use of thick plant mats and felt covers. Their economy was based on meat, dairy products and fish, they were tall and rather healthy with little caries in their teeth. No agriculture is documented. Barrows were aligned in groups forming lines in the landscape to mark seasonal routes and after death diseased people were put into individual graves under small family barrows. Their burial ritual thus embodied a new perception of the individual and of small monogamous family groups as the foundation of society. The continent encountered by the Yamnaya people around 3000 BC had seen a decline in the agrarian Stone Age societies, thereby allowing space for incoming migrants. This decline was probably the result of a widespread plague from Siberia to the Baltic.

"The disease dynamic here may have been comparable to the European colonization process in America after Christopher Columbus", says Kristiansen. "Perhaps Yamnaya brought plague to Europe and caused a massive collapse in the population".

"Black Youth" as migrating males and their marriage to Neolithic women

In the new synthesis article, Kristiansen and colleagues argue for a dominance of males during the early phase after the migrations, and correspond to the old Indo-European mythology of later times. These sources talk about war-bands of youths - called "Black Youth" -- who were employed in pioneer migrations as a dynamic force. Evidence from strontium isotopic analyses, published in 2016 by Kristiansen together with Douglas Price and Karl Goran Sjogren, showed that a majority of the women in Corded Ware burials in south Germany were non-locals who had married in from Neolithic societies, since they had a Neolithic diet in their childhood. These results now form part of the new synthesis. Professor Kristian Kristiansen says: "Existing archaeological evidence of a strong 90% male dominance in the early phase of the Corded Ware/Single Grave Culture settlement in Jutland, Denmark, and elsewhere can now be explained by the old Indo-European tradition of war bands of young males who did not have any inheritance to look forward to. Therefore they were probably more willing to make a career as migrating war bands."

These Neolithic women also brought new knowledge of pottery production, and started to imitate pottery containers made of wood from the Yamnaya migrants. In this way a new pottery culture was created called Corded Ware, because of the cord impressions around the neck of the pots. They were made for beer drinking, and the new migrants also learned how to grow barley from the in-married Neolithic women in order to produce beer.

Rapid genetic changeover from Neolithic to Corded Ware cultures after 3000 BC

Eske Willerslev undertook the ancient DNA analyses together with Morten Allentoft and Martin Sikora. Professor Willerslev says:

"In our big Bronze Age study, published in 2015 we were astonished to see how strong and fast the genetic changeover was from the Neolithic to the Corded Ware. There was a heavy reduction of Neolithic DNA in temperate Europe, and a dramatic increase of the new Yamnaya genomic component that was only marginally present in Europe prior to 3000 BC. Moreover, the apparent abruptness with which this change occurred indicates that it was a large-scale migration event, rather than a slow periodic inflow of people".

New words and new Proto-Germanic dialect

The Yamnaya brought the Indo-European languages into Bronze Age Europe, but as herders, they did not have words for crops or cultivation, unlike the Neolithic farmers. As the Corded Ware Culture developed it adopted words related to farming from the indigenous Neolithic people, which they were admixing with. Guus Kroonen, a historical linguist, was able to demonstrate that these new words did not belong to the original Indo-European languages. Therefore it was possible to conclude that the Neolithic people were not speaking an Indo-European language, as did the Yamnaya migrants. Thus, the process of genetic and cultural admixture was accompanied by a process of language admixture, creating the foundations for later Germanic languages, termed Proto-Germanic.

The birth of the Bronze Age

The Yamnaya migrations from the Pontic-Caspian steppe into temperate Europe changed the course of history: they brought not only a new language, but also new ideas about how society was organized around small monogamous families with individual ownership to animals and land. This new society became the foundation for the Bronze Age, and for the way European societies continued to develop to the present.

Study reveals 10,000 years of genetic continuity in northwest North America

A study of the DNA in ancient skeletal remains adds to the evidence that indigenous groups living today in southern Alaska and the western coast of British Columbia are descendants of the first humans to make their home in northwest North America more than 10,000 years ago.

Researchers are analyzing DNA from ancient individuals found in southeast Alaska, coastal British Columbia, Washington state and Montana. A new genetic analysis of some of these human remains finds that many of today's indigenous peoples living in the same regions are descendants of ancient individuals dating to at least 10,300 years ago.
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Graphic by Julie McMahon, University of Illinois

"Our analysis suggests that this is the same population living in this part of the world over time, so we have genetic continuity from 10,000 years ago to the present," said University of Illinois anthropology professor Ripan Malhi, who led the study with University of Chicago postdoctoral researcher John Lindo; Penn State University biology professor Michael DeGiorgio; Rosita Worl, the director of the Sealaska Heritage Institute in Juneau, Alaska; and University of Oklahoma anthropology professor Brian M. Kemp.

The findings, reported in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, also suggest that these early American peoples had a complex population history, the researchers report.

The new work comes on the heels of earlier studies of ancient Americans that focused on mitochondrial DNA, which occurs outside the nucleus of cells and is passed only from mothers to their offspring.

"Mitochondrial DNA just traces the maternal line - your mother's mother's lineage - so, you're missing information about all of these other ancestors," said Lindo, the first author on the paper. "We wanted to analyze the nuclear genome so we could get a better assessment of the population history of this region."

The team looked at genomic data from Shuká Káa (Tlingit for "Man Before Us"), an ancient individual whose remains - found in a cave in southeastern Alaska - date to about 10,300 years ago. They also analyzed the genomes of three more individuals from the nearby coast of British Columbia whose remains date to between 6,075 and 1,750 years ago.

"Interestingly, the mitochondrial type that Shuká Káa belonged to was also observed from another ancient skeleton dated to about 6,000 years ago," Kemp said. "It seems to disappear after that. The nuclear DNA suggests that this is probably not about population replacement, but rather chance occurrence through time. If a female has no children or only sons, the mitochondrial DNA is not passed to the next generation. As a male, Shuká Káa could not have passed on his own mitochondrial DNA; he must have had some maternal relatives that did so."

The researchers turned their attention to nuclear DNA, which offers a more comprehensive record of a person's ancestry.

"DNA from the mitochondria and Y chromosome provide unique yet sometimes conflicting stories, but the nuclear genome provides a more comprehensive view of past events," DeGiorgio said.

"The data suggest that there were multiple genetic lineages in the Americas from at least 10,300 years ago," Malhi said.

The descendants of some of those lineages are still living in the same region today, and a few are co-authors on the new study. Their participation is the result of a long-term collaboration between the scientists and several native groups who are embracing genomic studies as a way to learn from their ancestors, said Worl, who is Tlingit, Ch'áak' (Eagle) moiety of the Shangukeidí­ (Thunderbird) Clan from the Kawdliyaayi Hít (House Lowered From the Sun) in Klukwan, Alaska.

"We supported DNA testing of Shuká Káa because we believed science ultimately would agree with what our oral traditions have always said - that we have lived in southeast Alaska since time immemorial. The initial analysis showed the young man was native, and now further studies are showing that our ancestral lineage stems from the first initial peopling of the region," said Worl, who also is an anthropologist. "Science is corroborating our oral histories.\\

Kent State archaeologist explains innovation of 'fluting' ancient stone weaponry

Approximately 13,500 years after nomadic Clovis hunters crossed the frozen land bridge from Asia to North America, researchers are still asking questions and putting together clues as to how they not only survived in a new landscape with unique new challenges but adapted with stone tools and weapons to thrive for thousands of years.

Pictured is a collection of Clovis point replicas and casts in the archaeology lab at Kent State University.
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Kent State University

Kent State University's Metin Eren, Ph.D., director of archaeology and assistant professor in the Department of Anthropology in the College of Arts and Sciences, and his colleagues are not only asking these questions but testing their unique new theories. They want to better understand the engineering, techniques and purposes of Clovis weapon technologies. Specifically, they study stone projectile points, such as arrowheads and spear points, made by flint knapping, the ancient practice of chipping away at the edges of rocks to shape them into weapons and tools.

In their most recent article published online in the Journal of Archaeological Science, Eren and his co-authors from Southern Methodist University (Brett A. Story, David J. Meltzer and Kaitlyn A. Thomas), University of Tulsa (Briggs Buchanan), Rogers State University (Brian N. Andrews), Texas A&M University and the University of Missouri (Michael J. O'Brien) explain the flint knapping technique of "fluting" the Clovis points, which could be considered the first truly American invention. This singular technological attribute, the flake removal or "flute," is absent from the stone-tool repertoire of Pleistocene Northeast Asia, where the Clovis ancestors came from.

Archaeologists have debated for years as to why the Clovis added this flute feature to their points. Basically, it is a thin groove chipped off at the base on both sides, perhaps first made by accident, which logically makes it very thin and brittle. However, after several types of testing, the researchers have reported that this thinning of the base can make it better able to withstand and absorb the shock of colliding with a hard object, such as the bone of a mastodon or bison.

This fluted point turned out to be an invention that allowed these colonizers to travel great distances with some confidence that their weaponry would hold up at least long enough until they could find the next rock quarry to make new points.

"It was risky and couldn't have been easy to learn how to do this effectively," Eren explained. "Archaeological evidence suggests that up to one out of five points break when you try to chip this fluted base, and it takes at least 30 minutes to produce a finished specimen. So, though it was a time-consuming process and risky technique, successfully fluted Clovis points would have been extremely reliable, especially while traveling great distances into unknown regions on a new continent. They needed points that would hold up and be used over and over again."

In their article, the researchers compared standardized computer models of fluted and unfluted points, as well as experimental "real-world" test specimens, and found that the fluted-point base does in fact act as a "shock absorber," increasing point robustness and ability to withstand physical stress via stress redistribution and damage relocation. In other words, upon impact, the brittle base of the spearhead crumples and absorbs some energy, which prevents fatal breaks elsewhere on the point so it could be reused.

"It's amazing to think that people 12,000 years ago were flaking shock absorbers and engineering stone weapons in a way that it took 21st century modern engineering to figure out," Eren said.

"As engineers, we don't typically get to work with archaeologists, but this project has allowed us the exciting opportunity to provide additional tools from engineering mechanics to explore how fluting affects the behavior of Clovis points," Story said.

New DNA research shows true migration route of early farming in Europe 8,000 years ago

A NEW article co-authored by experts at the University of Huddersfield bolsters a theory that the spread of agriculture throughout Europe followed migration into the Mediterranean from the Near East more than 13,000 years ago - thousands of years earlier than widely believed.

This was during the Late Glacial period and initially the migrants were hunter-gatherers. But they later developed a knowledge of agriculture from further newly-arrived populations from the Near East - where farming began - and during the Neolithic, approximately 8,000 years ago, they began to colonise other parts of Europe, taking their farming practices with them.

The University of Huddersfield is home to the Archaeogenetics Research Group, which uses DNA analysis to solve questions from archaeology, anthropology and history. It is headed by Professor Martin Richards, and the issue of the genetic ancestry of Europeans has been one of his major research areas for many years.

Now he is a principal contributor to the article that appears in Proceedings of the Royal Society B. It describes how the researchers used almost 1,500 mitochondrial genome lineages to date the arrival of people in different regions of Europe.

It was found that in central Europe and Iberia, these could mainly be traced to the Neolithic. However, in the central and eastern Mediterranean, they predominantly dated to the much earlier Late Glacial period.

The authors write that: "This supports a scenario in which the genetic pool of Mediterranean Europe was partly a result of Late Glacial expansions from a Near Eastern refuge, and that this formed an important source pool for subsequent Neolithic expansions into the rest of Europe".

Professor Richards explained that he and his co-researchers carried out their latest investigations using modern DNA samples because in Italy and Greece there is an acute shortage of pre-Neolithic skeletal remains from which ancient samples can be taken. The warmth of the climate has resulted in low levels of preservation.

"We haven't been able to fill the gap with ancient DNA, so we found a way to get round that by looking at modern samples. Instead of dating the lineages across Europe as a whole we have dated them firstly in the Mediterranean area and then we have looked at what happens if you assume that they have arrived in that area and then moved on," said Professor Richards.

Now he hopes that new sources of ancient DNA in Italy and Greece will be discovered, so that his migration scenario can be tested more directly.

"In the past, it's been difficult to recover DNA from these kinds of environments but there have been so many technical developments in the recovery of ancient DNA in the last few years that I think it will happen soon." In fact, another team of researchers has already confirmed one of the paper's main predictions, by looking at pre-Neolithic DNA from Sardinia, just one week ago.