IMAGE: This is a geological amber sample from Cuchía, analysed as part of the study.
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Credit: M. Murillo-Barroso and Alvaro Fernandez Flores
Amber and other unusual materials such as jade, obsidian and rock
crystal have attracted interest as raw materials for the manufacture of
decorative items since Late Prehistory and, indeed, amber retains a high
value in present-day jewellery.
'Baltic' amber from Scandinavia is often cited as a key material
circulating in prehistoric Europe, but in a new study published today in
PLOS ONE researchers have found that amber from Sicily was
travelling around the Western Mediterranean as early as the 4th
Millennium BC - at least 2,000 years before the arrival of any Baltic
amber in Iberia.
According to lead author Dr Mercedes Murillo-Barroso of the
Universidad de Granada, "The new evidence presented in this study has
allowed the most comprehensive review to date on the provision and
exchange of amber in the Prehistory of Iberia. Thanks to this new work,
we now have evidence of the arrival of Sicilian amber in Iberia from at
least the 4th Millennium BC."
"Interestingly, the first amber objects recovered in Sicily and
identified as being made from the local amber there (known as simetite)
also date from the 4th Millennium BC, however, there is no other
evidence indicating direct contact between Sicily and Iberia at this
time."
"Instead, what we do know about are the links between the Iberian
Peninsula and North Africa. It is plausible that Sicilian amber reached
Iberia through exchanges with North Africa. This amber appears at
southern Iberian sites and its distribution is similar to that of ivory
objects, suggesting that both materials reached the Iberian Peninsula
following the same or similar channels."
Senior author Professor Marcos Martinón-Torres, of the Department of
Archaeology, University of Cambridge adds, "It is only from the Late
Bronze Age that we see Baltic amber at a large number of Iberian sites
and it is likely that it arrived via the Mediterranean, rather than
through direct trade with Scandinavia."
"What's peculiar is that this amber appears as associated with iron,
silver and ceramics pointing to Mediterranean connections. This
suggests that amber from the North may have moved South across Central
Europe before being shipped to the West by Mediterranean sailors,
challenging previous suggestions of direct trade between Scandinavia and
Iberia."
Murillo-Barroso concludes, "In this study, we've been able to
overcome traditional challenges in attempts at assigning corroded amber
to a geological source. These new analytical techniques can be used a
reference to identify Sicilian amber, even from highly deteriorated
archaeological samples."
"There are still unresolved issues to be investigated in the future -
namely exploring the presence of amber in North African contexts from
the same time period and further researching the networks involved in
the introduction and spread of Baltic amber in Iberia and the extent to
which metals or other Iberian commodities were provided in return."
Amber in prehistoric Iberia: New data and a review is published in PLOS ONE.
IMAGE: Glass artefacts from Samarra, including a range of vessel types, optical properties, and decorative techniques.
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Credit: Images A, C and D from the Victoria and
Albert Museum, London [http://collections.vam.ac.uk]; images B and E
from the Museum für islamische Kunst / Staatliche Museen zu Berlin
[www.smb-digital.de/eMuseumPlus]...
The palace-city of Samarra, capital of the former Abbasid Caliphate,
was home to an advanced industry of glass production and trade,
according to a study published August 22, 2018 in the open-access
journal PLOS ONE by Nadine Schibille of the CNRS, France and colleagues.
Located in Iraq about 125km north of Baghdad, Samarra was the
Abbasid capital from 836-892CE. Noted for its abundance of decorative
architectural glass, the city represents an important source of
archaeological information on early Islamic art and architecture.
However, details of the production of Samarra's glass artefacts, as well
as their role in the city's economy, have been elusive.
In this study, the authors examined 265 Samarra glass artefacts
housed in museum collections in Germany and England, including bowls,
lamps, bottles, decorative and architectural glasses, and more. Trace
elements in the glass, identified using mass-spectrometric analysis,
offered clues to the geographic origin of the raw materials used in the
making of the different types of glass artefacts.
The results suggest that a portion of Samarra's glass was imported
from other regions, such as the Levant and Egypt. But the majority of
the glass artefacts were so similar in composition that the authors
strongly suspect much of the glass was being produced locally. This
paints a picture of a city with an important industry of glass
production and trade, confirming earlier hypotheses based on writings
from this time period. The fact that the highest-quality glass was used
to decorate the city's main caliphal palace suggests that glass was of
great cultural and economic value at this time.
Schibille notes: "High-resolution chemical analysis of ninth-century
glasses from Samarra reveals a sophisticated Abbasid glass industry as
well as selective imports of specific glass objects. Our analytical data
thus confirm written sources about the production of glass in the
vicinity of the new capital city."
Together with their sister group the Neandertals, Denisovans are the
closest extinct relatives of currently living humans. "We knew from
previous studies that Neandertals and Denisovans must have occasionally
had children together", says Viviane Slon, researcher at the MPI-EVA and
one of three first authors of the study. "But I never thought we would
be so lucky as to find an actual offspring of the two groups."
The ancient individual is only represented by a single small bone
fragment. "The fragment is part of a long bone, and we can estimate that
this individual was at least 13 years old", says Bence Viola of the
University of Toronto. The bone fragment was found in 2012 at Denisova
Cave (Russia) by Russian archaeologists. It was brought to Leipzig for
genetic analyses after it was identified as a hominin bone based on its
protein composition.
"An interesting aspect of this genome is that it allows us to learn
things about two populations - the Neandertals from the mother's side,
and the Denisovans from the father's side", explains Fabrizio Mafessoni
from the MPI-EVA who co-authored the study. The researchers determined
that the mother was genetically closer to Neandertals who lived in
western Europe than to a Neandertal individual that lived earlier in
Denisova Cave. This shows that Neandertals migrated between western and
eastern Eurasia tens of thousands of years before their disappearance.
Analyses of the genome also revealed that the Denisovan father had
at least one Neandertal ancestor further back in his family tree. "So
from this single genome, we are able to detect multiple instances of
interactions between Neandertals and Denisovans", says Benjamin Vernot
from the MPI-EVA, the third co-author of the study.
"It is striking that we find this Neandertal/Denisovan child among
the handful of ancient individuals whose genomes have been sequenced",
adds Svante Pääbo, Director of the Department of Evolutionary Genetics
at the MPI-EVA and lead author of the study. "Neandertals and Denisovans
may not have had many opportunities to meet. But when they did, they
must have mated frequently - much more so than we previously thought."
New study by Historic England and McMaster
University in Canada looked at 2,787 skeletons from 18 cemeteries across
the Roman Empire
Evidence for rickets, caused by vitamin D deficiency, found in more than one in 20 children - with most cases seen in infants
‘Study shows that vitamin D deficiency is far from being a new problem’
Vitamin D deficiency is not a new problem. A
century ago rickets in children was rife due to crowded urban living and
industrial pollution. However, a new study published today in the American Journal of Physical Anthropology reveals that it was already widespread as far back as Roman times.
The
study, carried out by researchers from Historic England and McMaster
University in Canada, looked at 2,787 human skeletons from 18 cemeteries
across the Roman Empire (1st - 6th centuries AD), ranging from northern
England to southern Spain. The findings of the study showed that
vitamin D deficiency was not as bad in Roman times as it became in the
Industrial Revolution in the 19th century, but it was still a
significant problem. Among children, more than 1 in 20 showed evidence
for rickets, with most cases in infants.
The results also
revealed that, in general, rickets in children was more common in
northern parts of the Roman Empire than in Mediterranean lands. Weaker
sunshine at northern latitudes means it is less effective for vitamin D
synthesis, but the high number of rickets cases in the very young
suggests that infant care practices may also have been to blame. Colder
conditions in northern areas may have meant people more often kept their
babies indoors, away from direct natural light. Also, pregnant mothers
may have been vitamin D deficient and passed this onto their babies.
Unlike
in Victorian times, vitamin D deficiency in the Roman Empire was not
more common in towns than in the countryside, according to the results
of this study. The researchers concluded that this was because most
Roman towns were fairly small by later standards and industrial
pollution would not have been enough to obscure sunlight. However, there
was one place in the study, a cemetery near Ostia in Italy that was an
exception to this, showing a high number of skeletons with rickets.
Ostia was a port on the River Tiber, not far from Rome. It was densely
populated and many people lived in multi-storey apartment buildings.
Commenting on this, Megan Brickley of McMaster University, the principle investigator on the project, said:
“Living in apartments with small windows, in blocks that were closely
spaced around courtyards and narrow streets, may have meant that many
children weren’t exposed to enough sunlight to prevent vitamin D
deficiency”.
Simon Mays, a Human Skeletal Biologist at Historic England, said:
“Our study shows that vitamin D deficiency is far from being a new
problem – even 2,000 years ago people, especially babies, were at risk.
Being indoors away from sunshine was probably a key factor. Infant care
practices that were innocuous in a Mediterranean climate may have been
enough to tip babies into vitamin D deficiency under cloudy northern
skies.”
Vitamin D is vital to health – most vitamin D
is made in the body when the skin is exposed to sunlight. Deficiency
can lead to rickets in children, the main signs of which are skeletal
deformity with bone pain or tenderness, and muscle weakness. It can also
make them more vulnerable to infections.
Today, many people
living in England have low vitamin D levels, linked to indoor
lifestyles. According to National Institute for Clinical Excellence
(NICE) guidance, surveys suggest that 8 to 24% of children (depending on
age and gender) and around 1 in 5 adults may have low vitamin D status.
This is not the same as being deficient in vitamin D which is more
severe.
In 2012 all UK Health Departments recommended a daily
vitamin D supplements for infants and young children aged 6 months to 5
years (unless fed instant formula which is fortified with vitamin D),
and for all pregnant and breastfeeding women.
Exceptional dry conditions reveal ancient sites from the air
Prehistoric settlements, burial mounds and Iron Age, Bronze Age and Roman farms discovered
Neolithic cursus monuments - one of the oldest monument types in England discovered
Mysterious
Neolithic ceremonial monuments, Iron Age settlements, square barrows
and a Roman farm have been newly discovered by Historic England’s flying
archaeologists who have been surveying the parched landscape from the
skies during this spell of prolonged dry weather.
This summer’s
heatwave is particularly good for aerial archaeologists as cropmarks
form faster and are more obvious when the soil is very dry. Over the
past few months, Historic England’s archaeologists in the skies have
been looking for patterns in crops and grass that reveal thousands of
years of buried English history.
Historic England uses aerial
photography of cropmarks to produce archaeological maps which help to
determine the significance of buried remains. This can help when making
decisions about protecting them from future development or damage caused
by ploughing.
Duncan Wilson, Chief Executive of Historic England said:
“This spell of very hot weather has provided the perfect conditions for
our aerial archaeologists to ‘see beneath the soil’ as cropmarks are
much better defined when the soil has less moisture. The discovery of
ancient farms, settlements and Neolithic cursus monuments is exciting.
The exceptional weather has opened up whole areas at once rather than
just one or two fields and it has been fascinating to see so many traces
of our past graphically revealed.”
Helen Winton, Historic England Aerial Investigation and Mapping Manager said:
“This is the first potential bumper year in what feels like a long
time. It is very exciting to have hot weather for this long. 2011 was
the last time we had an exceptional year when we discovered over 1,500
sites, with most on the claylands of eastern England." Damian Grady, Historic England Aerial Reconnaissance Manager said:
“This has been one of my busiest summers in 20 years of flying and it
is has been very rewarding making discoveries in areas that do not
normally reveal cropmarks.”
The new discoveries
Two Neolithic cursus monuments near Clifton Reynes, Milton Keynes
These
long rectangles are believed to be Neolithic cursus monuments, one of
the oldest monument types in the country, usually dating from between
3600 and 3000 BC. The rectangular feature on the left was recently
mapped as part of a project funded by Historic England to record all
archaeology from aerial photographs and airborne laser scanning (lidar)
in North Bedfordshire. Until this year, the enclosure on the right has
lain hidden beneath a medieval bank known as a headland, that is being
gradually ploughed away.
Cursus monuments range in length from
around 100 metres to nearly 10 kilometres in the case of the Dorset
Cursus. Their exact function is still a mystery but they are generally
thought of as enclosed paths or processional ways, while they may also
have served to demarcate or even act as a barrier between different
landscape zones. Most of the 100 plus cursus monuments known in England
were discovered through aerial survey.
The mummy has been housed in the Egyptian Museum in Turin since 1901.
Credit: Dr Stephen Buckley, University of York
It is the first time that extensive
tests have been carried out on an intact prehistoric mummy,
consolidating the researchers' previous findings that embalming was
taking place 1,500 years earlier than previously accepted.
Dating from c.3700-3500 BC, the mummy has been housed in the Egyptian
Museum in Turin since 1901, but unlike the majority of other
prehistoric mummies in museums, it has never undergone any conservation
treatments, providing a unique opportunity for accurate scientific
analysis.
Like its famous counterpart Gebelein Man A in the British Museum, the
Turin mummy was previously assumed to have been naturally mummified by
the desiccating action of the hot, dry desert sand.
Using chemical analysis, the scientific team led by the Universities
of York and Macquarie uncovered evidence that the mummy had in fact
undergone an embalming process, with a plant oil, heated conifer resin,
an aromatic plant extract and a plant gum/sugar mixed together and used
to impregnate the funerary textiles in which the body was wrapped.
This 'recipe' contained antibacterial agents, used in similar
proportions to those employed by the Egyptian embalmers when their skill
was at its peak some 2,500 years later.
The study builds on the previous research from 2014 which first
identified the presence of complex embalming agents in surviving
fragments of linen wrappings from prehistoric bodies in now obliterated
tombs at Mostagedda in Middle Egypt.
The team, which includes researchers from the Universities of York,
Macquarie, Oxford, Warwick, Trento and Turin, highlight the fact that
the mummy came from Upper (southern) Egypt, which offers the first
indication that the embalming recipe was being used over a wider
geographical area at a time when the concept of a pan-Egyptian identity
was supposedly still developing.
Archaeological chemist and mummification expert, Dr Stephen Buckley,
from the University of York's BioArCh facility, said: "Having identified
very similar embalming recipes in our previous research on prehistoric
burials, this latest study provides both the first evidence for the
wider geographical use of these balms and the first ever unequivocal
scientific evidence for the use of embalming on an intact, prehistoric
Egyptian mummy.
"Moreover, this preservative treatment contained antibacterial
constituents in the same proportions as those used in later 'true'
mummification. As such, our findings represent the literal embodiment of
the forerunners of classic mummification, which would become one of the
central and iconic pillars of ancient Egyptian culture."
Dr Jana Jones, Egyptologist and expert on ancient Egyptian burial
practices from Macquarie University, said: "The examination of the Turin
body makes a momentous contribution to our limited knowledge of the
prehistoric period and the expansion of early mummification practices as
well as providing vital, new information on this particular mummy.
"By combining chemical analysis with visual examination of the body,
genetic investigations, radiocarbon dating and microscopic analysis of
the linen wrappings, we confirmed that this ritual mummification process
took place around 3600 BC on a male, aged between 20 and 30 years when
he died."
Professor Tom Higham, Deputy Director Oxford Radiocarbon Accelerator
Unit, said: "There are very few mummies of this 'natural' type available
for analysis. Our radiocarbon dating shows it dates to the early Naqada
phase of Egyptian prehistory, substantially earlier than the classic
Pharaonic period, and this early age offers us an unparalleled glimpse
into funerary treatment before the rise of the state.
"The results change significantly our understanding of the
development of mummification and the use of embalming agents and
demonstrate the power of interdisciplinary science in understanding the
past."
IMAGE: A timescale for the evolution of life on planet Earth summarising the findings of Betts et al. study.
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Credit: University of Bristol
A new study led by scientists from the University of Bristol has
used a combination of genomic and fossil data to explain the history of
life on Earth, from its origin to the present day.
Palaeontologists have long sought to understand ancient life and the shared evolutionary history of life as a whole.
However, the fossil record of early life is extremely fragmented,
and its quality significantly deteriorates further back in time towards
the Archaean period, more than 2.5 billion years ago, when the Earth's
crust had cooled enough to allow the formation of continents and the
only life forms were microbes.
Holly Betts, lead author of the study, from the University of
Bristol's School of Earth Sciences, said: "There are few fossils from
the Archaean and they generally cannot be unambiguously assigned to the
lineages we are familiar with, like the blue-green algae or the
salt-loving archaebacteria that colours salt-marshes pink all around the
world.
"The problem with the early fossil record of life is that it is so
limited and difficult to interpret - careful reanalysis of the some of
the very oldest fossils has shown them to be crystals, not fossils at
all."
Fossil evidence for the early history of life is so fragmented and
difficult to evaluate that new discoveries and reinterpretations of
known fossils have led to a proliferation of conflicting ideas about the
timescale of the early history of life.
Co-author Professor Philip Donoghue, also from Bristol's School of
Earth Sciences, added: "Fossils do not represent the only line of
evidence to understand the past. A second record of life exists,
preserved in the genomes of all living creatures."
Co-author Dr Tom Williams, from Bristol's School of Biological
Sciences, said: "Combining fossil and genomic information, we can use an
approach called the 'molecular clock' which is loosely based on the
idea that the number of differences in the genomes of two living species
(say a human and a bacterium) are proportional to the time since they
shared a common ancestor."
By making use of this method the team at Bristol and Mark Puttick
from the University of Bath were able to derive a timescale for the
history of life on Earth that did not rely on the ever-changing age of
the oldest accepted fossil evidence of life.
Co-author Professor Davide Pisani said: "Using this approach we were
able to show that the Last Universal Common Ancestor all cellular life
forms, 'LUCA', existed very early in Earth's history, almost 4.5 Billion
years ago - not long after Earth was impacted by the planet Theia, the
event which sterilised Earth and led to the formation of the Moon.
"This is significantly earlier than the currently accepted oldest fossil evidence would suggest.
"Our results indicate that two "primary" lineages of life emerged
from LUCA (the Eubacteria and the Archaebacteria), approximately one
Billion years after LUCA.
"This result is testament to the power of genomic information, as it
is impossible, based on the available fossil information, to
discriminate between the oldest eubacterial and archaebacterial fossil
remains."
The study confirms modern views that the eukaryotes, the lineage to
which human life belongs (together with the plants and the fungi, for
example), is not a primary lineage of life. Professor Pisani added: "It
is rather humbling to think we belong to a lineage that is billions of
years younger than life itself."
IMAGE: View of Lothagam North Pillar Kenya, built
by eastern Africa's earliest herders ~5000-4300 years ago. Megaliths,
stone circles, and cairns can be seen behind the 30-m platform mound;
its mortuary...
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Credit: Image courtesy of Katherine Grillo.
An international team, including researchers at Stony Brook
University and the Max Planck Institute for the Science of Human
History, has found the earliest and largest monumental cemetery in
eastern Africa. The Lothagam North Pillar Site was built 5,000 years ago
by early pastoralists living around Lake Turkana, Kenya. This group is
believed to have had an egalitarian society, without a stratified social
hierarchy. Thus their construction of such a large public project
contradicts long-standing narratives about early complex societies,
which suggest that a stratified social structure is necessary to enable
the construction of large public buildings or monuments.
The study, led
by Elisabeth Hildebrand, of Stony Brook University, is published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
The Lothagam North Pillar Site was a communal cemetery constructed
and used over a period of several centuries, between about 5,000 and
4,300 years ago. Early herders built a platform approximately 30 meters
in diameter and excavated a large cavity in the center to bury their
dead.
After the cavity was filled and capped with stones, the builders
placed large, megalith pillars, some sourced from as much as a kilometer
away, on top. Stone circles and cairns were added nearby. An estimated
minimum of 580 individuals were densely buried within the central
platform cavity of the site. Men, women, and children of different ages,
from infants to the elderly, were all buried in the same area, without
any particular burials being singled out with special treatment.
Additionally, essentially all individuals were buried with personal
ornaments and the distribution of ornaments was approximately equal
throughout the cemetery. These factors indicate a relatively egalitarian
society without strong social stratification.
Historically, archeologists have theorized that people built
permanent monuments as reminders of shared history, ideals and culture,
when they had established a settled, socially stratified agriculture
society with abundant resources and strong leadership. It was believed
that a political structure and the resources for specialization were
prerequisites to engaging in monument building. Ancient monuments have
thus previously been regarded as reliable indicators of complex
societies with differentiated social classes. However, the Lothagam
North cemetery was constructed by mobile pastoralists who show no
evidence of a rigid social hierarchy.
"This discovery challenges earlier
ideas about monumentality," explains Elizabeth Sawchuk of Stony Brook
University and the Max Planck Institute for the Science of Human
History. "Absent other evidence, Lothagam North provides an example of
monumentality that is not demonstrably linked to the emergence of
hierarchy, forcing us to consider other narratives of social change."
The discovery is consistent with similar examples elsewhere in
Africa and on other continents in which large, monumental structures
have been built by groups thought to be egalitarian in their social
organization. This research has the potential to reshape global
perspectives on how - and why - large groups of people come together to
form complex societies.
In this case, it appears that Lothagam North was
built during a period of profound change. Pastoralism had just been
introduced to the Turkana Basin and newcomers arriving with sheep,
goats, and cattle would have encountered diverse groups of
fisher-hunter-gatherers already living around the lake.
Additionally,
newcomers and locals faced a difficult environmental situation, as
annual rainfall decreased during this period and Lake Turkana shrunk by
as much as fifty percent. Early herders may have constructed the
cemetery as a place for people to come together to form and maintain
social networks to cope with major economic and environmental change.
"The monuments may have served as a place for people to congregate,
renew social ties, and reinforce community identity," states Anneke
Janzen also of the Max Planck Institute for the Science of Human
History. "Information exchange and interaction through shared ritual may
have helped mobile herders navigate a rapidly changing physical
landscape." After several centuries, pastoralism became entrenched and
lake levels stabilized. It was around this time that the cemetery ceased
to be used.
"The Lothagam North Pillar Site is the earliest known monumental
site in eastern Africa, built by the region's first herders," states
Hildebrand. "This finding makes us reconsider how we define social
complexity, and the kinds of motives that lead groups of people to
create public architecture."
IMAGE: Comparison between a Handaxe and a Clovis Point
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Credit: Alastair Key and Metin Eren
This research is the first to link a stone tool production technique
known as 'platform preparation' to the biology of human hands.
Demonstrating that without the ability to perform highly forceful
precision grips, our ancestors would not have been able to produce
advanced types of stone tool like spear points.
The technique involves preparing a striking area on a tool to remove
specific stone flakes and shape the tool into a pre-conceived design.
Platform preparation is essential for making many different types of
advanced prehistoric stone tool, with the earliest known occurrence
observed at the 500,000-year-old site of Boxgrove in West Sussex (UK).
The study, led by Dr Alastair Key, of the University's School of
Anthropology and Conservation, and funded by the British Academy,
investigated how hands are used during the production of different types
of early stone technology.
Using sensors attached to the hand of skilled flint knappers (stone
tool producers), the researchers were able to identify that platform
preparation behaviours required the hand to exert significantly more
pressure through the fingers when compared to all other stone tool
activities studied.
The research demonstrates that the Boxgrove hominins (early humans)
would have needed significantly stronger grips compared to earlier
populations who did not perform this behaviour. It further suggests that
highly modified and shaped stone tools, such as the handaxes discovered
at Boxgrove and stone spear points found in later prehistory, may not
have been possible to produce until humans evolved the ability to
perform particularly forceful grips.
This discovery is particularly important because human hand bones rarely survive in the fossil record.
Dr Key said: 'Hand bones from before 300,000 years ago are rare,
particularly when compared to other human fossils such as teeth, so the
fact we can study the manipulative capabilities of our early ancestors
from the stone tools they produced is incredibly exciting'.
###
The findings Manual restrictions on Palaeolithic technological
behaviours Key, A. and Dunmore, C.J. 2018 are published open access in PeerJ 6: e5399 and are freely available here:
IMAGE: Ossuaries from the Chalcolithic Period, excavated at Peqi'in Cave.
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Credit: Mariana Salzberger, courtesy of the Israel Antiquities Authority.
An international team of researchers from Tel Aviv University, the
Israel Antiquities Authority and Harvard University has discovered that
waves of migration from Anatolia and the Zagros mountains (today's
Turkey and Iran) to the Levant helped develop the Chalcolithic culture
that existed in Israel's Upper Galilee region some 6,500 years ago.
The study is one of the largest ancient DNA studies ever conducted
in Israel and for the first time sheds light on the origins of the
Chalcolithic culture in the Levant, approximately 6,000-7,000 years ago.
Research for the study was led by Dr. Hila May and Prof. Israel
Hershkovitz of the Department of Anatomy and Anthropology, Dan David
Center for Human Evolution and Biohistory Research, at TAU's Sackler
Faculty of Medicine; Dr. Dina Shalem of the Institute for Galilean
Archaeology at Kinneret College and the Israel Antiquities Authority;
and Éadaoin Harney and Prof. David Reich of Harvard University. It was
published today in Nature Communications.
In 1995, Zvi Gal, Dina Shalem and Howard Smithline of the Israel
Antiquities Authority began excavating the Peqi'in Cave in northern
Israel, which dates to the Chalcolithic Period in the Levant. The team
unearthed dozens of burials in the natural stalactite cave that is 17
meters long and 5-8 meters wide.
The large number of unique ceramic ossuaries and the variety of
burial offerings discovered in the cave suggest that it was once used as
a mortuary center by the local Chalcolithic people.
"The uniqueness of the cave is evident in the number of people
buried in it -- more than 600 -- and the variety of ossuaries and jars
and the outstanding motifs on them, including geometric and
anthropomorphic designs," Dr. Shalem says. "Some of the findings in the
cave are typical to the region, but others suggest cultural exchange
with remote regions.
"The study resolves a long debate about the origin of the unique
culture of the Chalcolithic people. Did the cultural change in the
region follow waves of migration, the infiltration of ideas due to trade
relations and/or cultural exchange, or local invention? We now know
that the answer is migration."
The researchers subjected 22 of the skeletons excavated at Peqi'in,
dating to the Chalcolithic Period, to a whole genome analysis.
"This study of 22 individuals is one of the largest ancient DNA
studies carried out from a single archaeological site, and by far the
largest ever reported in the Near East," Dr. May says.
"The genetic analysis provided an answer to the central question we
set out to address," says Prof. Reich. "It showed that the Peqi'in
people had substantial ancestry from northerners -- similar to those
living in Iran and Turkey -- that was not present in earlier Levantine
farmers."
"Certain characteristics, such as genetic mutations contributing to
blue eye color, were not seen in the DNA test results of earlier
Levantine human remains," adds Dr. May. "The chances for the success of
such a study seemed slim, since most of the ancient DNA studies carried
out in Israel have failed due to difficult climatic conditions in the
region that destroy DNA."
"Fortunately, however, human DNA was preserved in the bones of the
buried people in Peqi'in cave, likely due to the cool conditions within
the cave and the limestone crust that covered the bones and preserved
the DNA," says Prof. Hershkovitz.
"We also find that the Peqi'in population experienced abrupt
demographic change 6,000 years ago," concludes Harney, who led the
statistical analysis for the study.
"Indeed, these findings suggest that the rise and falls of the
Chalcolithic culture are probably due to demographic changes in the
region," says Dr. May.
Aging usually improves the flavor of cheese, but that's not why some
very old cheese discovered in an Egyptian tomb is drawing attention.
Instead, it's thought to be the most ancient solid cheese ever found,
according to a study published in ACS' journal Analytical Chemistry.
The tomb of Ptahmes, mayor of Memphis in Egypt during the 13th
century BC, was initially unearthed in 1885. After being lost under
drifting sands, it was rediscovered in 2010, and archeologists found
broken jars at the site a few years later. One jar contained a
solidified whitish mass, as well as canvas fabric that might have
covered the jar or been used to preserve its contents. Enrico Greco and
colleagues wanted to analyze the whitish substance to determine its
identity.
After dissolving the sample, the researchers purified its protein
constituents and analyzed them with liquid chromatography and mass
spectrometry. The peptides detected by these techniques show the sample
was a dairy product made from cow milk and sheep or goat milk. The
characteristics of the canvas fabric, which indicate it was suitable for
containing a solid rather than a liquid, and the absence of other
specific markers, support the conclusion that the dairy product was a
solid cheese.
Other peptides in the food sample suggest it was
contaminated with Brucella melitensis, a bacterium that causes
brucellosis. This potentially deadly disease spreads from animals to
people, typically from eating unpasteurized dairy products. If the
team's preliminary analysis is confirmed, the sample would represent the
earliest reported biomolecular evidence of the disease.
Studies of ancient preserved plant
remains from a medieval archaeological site in the Pamir Mountains of
Uzbekistan have shown that fruits, such as apples, peaches, apricots,
and melons, were cultivated in the foothills of Inner Asia. The
archaeobotanical study, conducted by Robert Spengler of the Max Planck
Institute for the Science of Human History, is among the first
systematic analyses of medieval agricultural crops in the heart of the
ancient Silk Road. Spengler identified a rich assemblage of fruit and
nut crops, showing that many of the crops we are all familiar with today
were cultivated along the ancient trade routes.
The Silk Road was the largest vector for cultural spread in the
ancient world -- the routes of exchange and dispersal across Eurasia
connected Central Asia to the rest of the world. These exchange routes
functioned more like the spokes of a wagon wheel than a long-distance
road, placing Central Asia at the heart of the ancient world. However,
most historical discussions of the ancient Silk Road focus on the
presence of East Asian goods in the Mediterranean or vice versa.
The
present study, published in PLOS ONE, looks at archaeological
sites at the center of the trans-Eurasian exchange routes during the
medieval period, when cultural exchange was at its highest.
Additionally, scholarship has focused on a select handful of goods that
moved along these trade routes, notably silk, metal, glass, and pastoral
products. However, historical sources and now archaeological data
demonstrate that agricultural goods were an important commodity as well.
Notably, higher value goods, such as fruits and nuts, spread along
these exchange routes and likely contributed to their popularity in
cuisines across Europe, Asia, and North Africa today. Ultimately this
study helps demonstrate how the Silk Road shaped what foods we all eat
today.
Our everyday fruits and nuts have their roots in the Silk Road
Spengler analyzed preserved ancient seeds and plant parts recovered
from a medieval archaeological site in the foothills of the Pamir
Mountains of eastern Uzbekistan. The site, Tashbulak, is currently under
excavation by a collaborative international Uzbek/American project
co-directed by Michael Frachetti, of Washington University in St. Louis,
and Farhod Maksudov, of the Institute for Archaeological Research,
Academy of Sciences in Tashkent, Uzbekistan. The plant remains recovered
from this site represent one of the first systematic studies of the
crops that people were growing along the Silk Road. In the article,
archaeobotanical data are contrasted with historical and other
archaeological evidence in order to discuss the timing and routes of
spread for the cultivated plants. These plant remains date to roughly a
millennium ago and include apple, grape, and melon seeds, peach and
apricot pits, and walnut and pistachio shells.
This study helps demonstrate that there was a rich and diverse
economy in Central Asia during this period, including a wide array of
cultivated grains, legumes, fruits, and nuts. The site of Tashbulak is
located at 2100 meters above sea level, above the maximum elevations at
which many of these fruit trees can be grown, suggesting that the fruit
remains recovered at the site were carried from lower elevations.
Historical sources attest to the importance of fresh and dried fruits
and nuts as a source of commerce at market bazaars across Inner Asia.
These trade routes facilitated the spread of many of our most familiar
crops across the ancient world. For example, the earliest clear
archaeological evidence for peaches and apricots comes from eastern
China, but they were present in the Mediterranean by the Classical
period. Likewise, grapes originated somewhere in the broader
Mediterranean region, but grape wine was a popular drink in the Tang
Dynasty. We can now say that all of these fruit crops were prominent in
Central Asia by at least a millennium ago, likely much earlier. As
Spengler points out, "The ecologically rich mountain valleys of Inner
Asia fostered the spread of many cultivated plants over the past five
millennia and, in doing so, shaped the ingredients in kitchens across
Europe and Asia." Central Asia is a key homeland and dispersal point for many important arboreal crops, such as apples and pistachios
Spengler also points out that many economically important fruit crops
originated in the foothill forests of eastern Central Asia. For
example, studies suggest that much of the genetic material for our
modern apples comes from the Tien Shan wild apples of southeastern
Kazakhstan, and pistachios originated in southern Central Asia. Despite
the importance of these arboreal crops in the modern world economy,
relatively limited scholarly focus has gone into the study of their
origins and dispersal. The data from Tashbulak are an important
contribution to that study. The article shows the importance of
archaeological research in Central Asia, highlighting its role in the
development of cultures across the ancient world.
In his forthcoming book, "Fruit from the Sands," Spengler traces the
spread of domesticated plants across Central Asia. In the book, set to
hit shelves in April 2019, he states, "The plants in our kitchens today
are archaeological artifacts, and part of the narrative for several of
our favorite fruits and nuts starts on the ancient Silk Road."
Excavations at Tashbulak are ongoing, with support from Washington
University in St. Louis, the Max von Berchem Foundation, and the
National Geographic Society. Over the next few years, the research team
expects that their research will better elucidate the nature of
interaction and contact in the mountains of Central Asia. Frachetti
notes, "The insights gained from this archaeobotanical study help link
the juicy details of ancient cuisine to our modern tables, and in doing
so highlights the long-term impact of interactions between diverse
communities and regions on a global scale."
Somewhere in the American Southwest or
northern Mexico, there are probably the ruins of a scarlet macaw
breeding operation dating to between 900 and 1200 C.E., according to a
team of archaeologists who sequenced the mitochondrial DNA of bird
remains found in the Chaco Canyon and Mimbres areas of New Mexico.
Remains of a thriving prehistoric avian culture and breeding colony
of scarlet macaws exist at the northern Mexican site of Paquimé, or
Casas Grande. However, this community existed from 1250 to 1450, well
after the abandonment of Chaco Canyon, and could not have supplied these
birds to Southwest communities prior to the 13th century, said Richard
George, graduate student in anthropology, Penn State.
Historically, scarlet macaws lived from South America to eastern
coastal Mexico and Guatemala, thousands of miles from the American
Southwest. Previously, researchers thought that ancestral Puebloan
people might have traveled to these natural breeding areas and brought
birds back, but the logistics of transporting adolescent birds are
difficult. None of the sites where these early macaw remains were found
contained evidence of breeding -- eggshells, pens or perches.
"We were interested in the prehistoric scarlet macaw population
history and the impacts of human direct management," said George.
"Especially any evidence for directed breeding or changes in the genetic
diversity that could co-occur with different trade networks."
The researchers sequenced the mitochondrial DNA of 20 scarlet macaw
specimens, but were only able to obtain full sequences from 14. They
then directly radiocarbon-dated all 14 birds with complete or near
complete genomes and found they fell between 900 and 1200 CE.
"We looked at the full mitochondrial genome of over 16,000 base pairs
to understand the maternal relationships represented in the Chaco
Canyon and Mimbres regions," said George.
Mitochondrial DNA exists separate from the cell nucleus and is
inherited directly from the mother. While nuclear DNA combines the DNA
inherited from both parents, mitochondrial DNA can show direct lineage
because all siblings have the same mtDNA as their mother, and she has
the same mtDNA as her own siblings and mother, all the way back through
their ancestry.
Scarlet macaws in Mexico and Central America have five haplogroups --
genetically similar, but not identical mitochondrial DNA lines -- and
each haplogroup has a number of haplotypes containing identical DNA
lines. The researchers found that their scarlet macaws were all from
haplogroup 6 and that 71 percent of the birds shared one of four unique
haplotypes. They report the results of this analysis today (Aug 13) in
the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
The researchers found that the probability of obtaining 14 birds from
the wild and having them all come from the same haplogroup, one that is
small and isolated, was extremely small. A better explanation,
especially because these specimens ranged over a 300-year period, is
that all the birds came from the same breeding population and that this
population existed somewhere in the American Southwest or northern
Mexico.
"These birds all likely came from the same source, but we don't have
any way to support that assumption without examining the full genome,"
said George. "However, the genetic results likely indicate some type of
narrow breeding from a small founder population with little or no
introgression or resupply."
However, no one has found macaw breeding evidence dating to the 900 to 1200 period in the American Southwest or northern Mexico.
"The next step will be to analyze macaws from other archaeological
sites in Arizona and northern Mexico to narrow down the location of this
early breeding colony," said Douglas Kennett, professor and head of
anthropology, Penn State, and co-director or the project.
An Israeli archaeologist shows a golden earring
believed to be more than 2,000 years old discovered at the site of a
national park in annexed east Jerusalem near the Old City walls
Israel on Wednesday unveiled a golden earring dating from the second
or third century BC, found in the shadow of the Old City walls in
Israeli-annexed east Jerusalem.
The Israel Antiquities Authority (IAA) said the artifact, in the
Hellenistic style and shaped like a horned animal, was found in October
in the City of David National Park, between the Old City and the
flashpoint Palestinian neighbourhood of Silwan.
The find was not announced publicly until now to give archeologists time to study the find and publish an academic paper.
"It is unclear whether the gold earring was worn by a man or a woman,
nor do we know their cultural or religious identity, but we can say for
certain that whoever wore this earring definitely belonged to
Jerusalem's upper class," an IAA statement said, citing "the quality of
the gold piece of jewelry".
Following the conquest of Alexander the Great in the 4th century BC,
Jerusalem remained under Hellenist rule for the next 200 years.
Israeli
archaeologists have unveiled what they said was a major pottery
plant which produced wine storage jars continuously from Roman to
Byzantine times.
The Israel Antiquities Authority (IAA) said that excavations near the town of Gedera,
south of Tel Aviv, revealed the factory and an adjacent leisure complex
of 20 bathing pools and a room used for board games.
Excavation
director Alla Nagorsky told journalists at the site that from the third
century AD the plant produced vessels of a type known to historians as
"Gaza" jars for an unbroken period of 600 years.
"This kind of a place is not built in an instant," she said. "An engineer worked on it. The site is very designed."
An
IAA statement added that the jars' main function was storage and
shipment of wine, which was a flourishing local industry at the time,
with large-scale exports.
"The
continuous production of these jars probably indicates that the
business was a family one, which passed from generation to generation to
generation," the IAA said in a statement.
It said the remains of around 100,000 jars found buried at the site were probably discarded rejects.
Alongside
the factory, it added, were two Byzantine bathhouses, at least one with
a heating boiler and 20 "finely constructed" pools, connected to one
another by channels and pipes.
"The
archaeologists consider that the water complex served both the local
population and the many travellers along the ancient main road
connecting the port of Gaza with the centre of the country," the
statement said.
Gaza
City lies about 30 miles (48 kilometres) southwest of Gedera, on the
Mediterranean coast. During its long history, Gaza has been ruled by the
Romans, Byzantines, Crusaders, Mamluks and Ottomans.
At Gedera, the IAA said, the games room was "a rare and surprising discovery".
In it were boards used for playing backgammon and "mancala", games which are still popular in the area.
The
statement said the Gedera pottery works may have built the leisure
centre for its employees, just as today's hi-tech companies provide
recreation facilities for their workers.
1 / 2
1. Israel
Antiquities Authority archaeologist Alla Nagorsky carries a
1,600-year-old Mancala game from the Byzantine time found during a large
excavation in the central Israeli town of Gedera
2. An
Israel Antiquities Authority archaeologist shows shows pottery shreds
with finger prints on them from the Byzantine time found during a large
excavation in the central Israeli town of Gedera
Israeli
archaeologists on Tuesday unveiled what they said was a major pottery
plant which produced wine storage jars continuously from Roman to
Byzantine times.
Israeli
archaeologists on Tuesday unveiled what they said was a major pottery
plant which produced wine storage jars continuously from Roman to
Byzantine times.
Israeli
archaeologists on Tuesday unveiled what they said was a major pottery
plant which produced wine storage jars continuously from Roman to
Byzantine times.
The Israel
Antiquities Authority (IAA) said that excavations near the town of
Gedera, south of Tel Aviv, revealed the factory and an adjacent leisure
complex of 20 bathing pools and a room used for board games.
Excavation director Alla Nagorsky told journalists at the site that
from the third century AD the plant produced vessels of a type known to
historians as "Gaza" jars for an unbroken period of 600 years.
"This kind of a place is not built in an instant," she said. "An engineer worked on it. The site is very designed."
An IAA statement added that the jars' main function was storage and
shipment of wine, which was a flourishing local industry at the time,
with large-scale exports.
"The continuous production of these jars probably indicates that the
business was a family one, which passed from generation to generation to
generation," the IAA said in a statement.
It said the remains of around 100,000 jars found buried at the site were probably discarded rejects.
Alongside the factory, it added, were two Byzantine bathhouses, at
least one with a heating boiler and 20 "finely constructed" pools,
connected to one another by channels and pipes.
Israel Antiquities Authority archaeologist Alla Nagorsky carries
a 1,600-year-old Mancala game from the Byzantine time found during a
large excavation in the central Israeli town of Gedera
Israeli archaeologists on Tuesday unveiled
what they said was a major pottery plant which produced wine storage
jars continuously from Roman to Byzantine times.
The Israel
Antiquities Authority (IAA) said that excavations near the town of
Gedera, south of Tel Aviv, revealed the factory and an adjacent leisure
complex of 20 bathing pools and a room used for board games.
Excavation director Alla Nagorsky told journalists at the site that
from the third century AD the plant produced vessels of a type known to
historians as "Gaza" jars for an unbroken period of 600 years.
"This kind of a place is not built in an instant," she said. "An engineer worked on it. The site is very designed."
An IAA statement added that the jars' main function was storage and
shipment of wine, which was a flourishing local industry at the time,
with large-scale exports.
"The continuous production of these jars probably indicates that the
business was a family one, which passed from generation to generation to
generation," the IAA said in a statement.
It said the remains of around 100,000 jars found buried at the site were probably discarded rejects.
Alongside the factory, it added, were two Byzantine bathhouses, at
least one with a heating boiler and 20 "finely constructed" pools,
connected to one another by channels and pipes.
An Israel Antiquities Authority archaeologist shows shows
pottery shreds with finger prints on them from the Byzantine time found
during a large excavation in the central Israeli town of Gedera
"The archaeologists consider that the water
complex served both the local population and the many travellers along
the ancient main road connecting the port of Gaza with the centre of the
country," the statement said.
Gaza City lies about 30 miles (48 kilometres) southwest of Gedera, on
the Mediterranean coast. During its long history, Gaza has been ruled
by the Romans, Byzantines, Crusaders, Mamluks and Ottomans.
At Gedera, the IAA said, the games room was "a rare and surprising discovery".
In it were boards used for playing backgammon and "mancala", games which are still popular in the area.
The statement said the Gedera pottery works may have built the
leisure centre for its employees, just as today's hi-tech companies
provide recreation facilities for their workers.
IMAGE: In situ pottery at the archaeological site of Çatalhöyük.
view more
Credit: Çatalhöyük Research Project.
Research led by the University of Bristol has uncovered evidence that
early farmers were adapting to climate change 8,200 years ago.
The study, published today in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America (PNAS),
centred on the Neolithic and Chalcolithic city settlement of Çatalhöyük
in southern Anatolia, Turkey which existed from approximately 7500 BC
to 5700 BC.
During the height of the city's occupation a well-documented climate
change event 8,200 years ago occurred which resulted in a sudden
decrease in global temperatures caused by the release of a huge amount
of glacial meltwater from a massive freshwater lake in northern Canada.
Examining the animal bones excavated at the site, scientists
concluded that the herders of the city turned towards sheep and goats at
this time, as these animals were more drought-resistant than cattle.
Study of cut marks on the animal bones informed on butchery practices:
the high number of such marks at the time of the climate event showed
that the population worked on exploiting any available meat due to food
scarcity.
The authors also examined the animal fats surviving in ancient
cooking pots. They detected the presence of ruminant carcass fats,
consistent with the animal bone assemblage discovered at Çatalhöyük. For
the first time, compounds from animal fats detected in pottery were
shown to carry evidence for the climate event in their isotopic
composition.
Indeed, using the "you are what you eat (and drink)" principle, the
scientists deducted that the isotopic information carried in the
hydrogen atoms (deuterium to hydrogen ratio) from the animal fats was
reflecting that of ancient precipitation. A change in the hydrogen
signal was detected in the period corresponding to the climate event,
thus suggesting changes in precipitation patterns at the site at that
time.
The paper brings together researchers from the University of
Bristol's Organic Geochemistry Unit (School of Chemistry) and the
Bristol Research Initiative for the Dynamic Global Environment (School
of Geographical Sciences).
Co-authors of the paper include archaeologists and archaeozoologists
involved in the excavations and the study of the pottery and animal
bones from the site.
Dr Mélanie Roffet-Salque, lead author of the paper, said: "Changes
in precipitation patterns in the past are traditionally obtained using
ocean or lake sediment cores.
"This is the first time that such information is derived from
cooking pots. We have used the signal carried by the hydrogen atoms from
the animal fats trapped in the pottery vessels after cooking.
"This opens up a completely new avenue of investigation - the
reconstruction of past climate at the very location where people lived
using pottery."
Co-author, Professor Richard Evershed, added: "It is really
significant that the climate models of the event are in complete
agreement with the H signals we see in the animal fats preserved in the
pots.
"The models point to seasonal changes farmers would have had to
adapt to - overall colder temperatures and drier summers - which would
have had inevitable impacts on agriculture."
New archaeological research from The Australian National University (ANU) has found that Homo erectus, an extinct species of primitive humans, went extinct in part because they were 'lazy'.
An archaeological excavation of ancient human populations in the Arabian Peninsula during the Early Stone Age, found that Homo erectus used 'least-effort strategies' for tool making and collecting resources.
This 'laziness' paired with an inability to adapt to a changing
climate likely played a role in the species going extinct, according to
lead researcher Dr Ceri Shipton of the ANU School of Culture, History
and Language.
"They really don't seem to have been pushing themselves," Dr Shipton said.
"I don't get the sense they were explorers looking over the horizon. They didn't have that same sense of wonder that we have."
Dr Shipton said this was evident in the way the species made their stone tools and collected resources.
"To make their stone tools they would use whatever rocks they could
find lying around their camp, which were mostly of comparatively low
quality to what later stone tool makers used," he said.
"At the site we looked at there was a big rocky outcrop of quality stone just a short distance away up a small hill.
"But rather than walk up the hill they would just use whatever bits had rolled down and were lying at the bottom.
"When we looked at the rocky outcrop there were no signs of any activity, no artefacts and no quarrying of the stone.
"They knew it was there, but because they had enough adequate resources they seem to have thought, 'why bother?'".
This is in contrast to the stone tool makers of later periods, including early Homo sapiens and Neanderthals, who were climbing mountains to find good quality stone and transporting it over long distances.
Dr Shipton said a failure to progress technologically, as their
environment dried out into a desert, also contributed to the
population's demise.
"Not only were they lazy, but they were also very conservative," Dr Shipton said.
"The sediment samples showed the environment around them was
changing, but they were doing the exact same things with their tools.
"There was no progression at all, and their tools are never very far
from these now dry river beds. I think in the end the environment just
got too dry for them."
The excavation and survey work was undertaken in 2014 at the site of Saffaqah near Dawadmi in central Saudi Arabia.
The research has been published in a paper for the PLoS One scientific journal.
IMAGE: These are experiments concerning genome
analysis of ancient skeleton. (In the clean room specialized for ancient
DNA analyses, Kitazato University School of Medicine.)
Top left: DNA extraction in a clean...
view more
Credit: Kanazawa University
Background
Uncovering the expansion processes of human habitats in the past
is of great importance for understanding the origins and establishment
of present-day populations and the acquisition of genetic
characteristics of individuals as well as for investigating mechanisms
of resistance against diseases and pathogens. Previous genetic/genomic
studies aimed to uncover the expansion processes using present-day human
genomes of different individuals and locations.
However, it is not
always possible to elucidate the expansion processes based on the
genomic similarity of present-day populations due to the possibility of
migrations of populations between regions in various periods. It is
therefore impossible to uncover the precise expansion processes of
populations in the past without knowledge of the genomic information
existing in a designated region and period. Thus, expansion processes
hypothesized so far were nothing but speculations based on assumptions
about present-day genomes.
Recent developments of DNA analysis technology have made it possible
to obtain whole genome information from ultratrace amounts of DNA; we
are now in an era where whole genome information can be obtained
directly from ancient human skeletons discovered at archaeological
sites. There remain, however, technical problems for obtaining whole
genome information of ancient human skeletons.
In particular, there are
two main problems: first, genomic analyses*1) of poorly-preserved
ancient remains in hot and humid regions of the world have up until now
failed (Figure 1). Secondly, there is the risk of contamination of
present-day human DNA in the DNA samples of ultratrace amounts from
prehistoric remains.
To evaluate objectively the possibility of such
contamination, several different research groups must cross-check*2) one
another in order to achieve exact genome sequencing; in other words,
establishment of a collaborative research system is a prerequisite for
attaining the highest level of scientific authenticity.
In order to cope with these problems, the present international
research team, led by researchers from the University of Copenhagen with
the participation of three researchers from Kanazawa University has
established technologies to efficiently extract human DNA from skeletons
discovered at prehistoric remains even under very poor conditions for
DNA preservation. At the same time, an international system of research
collaboration has been established for objectively evaluating the
effects of contamination by present-day human DNA. Thanks to these
efforts, the team has uncovered the expansion processes of human
habitats and genetic interactions in hot and wet Southeast Asia, which
was not possible previously with conventional technologies and research
systems (Figure 2).
Worthy of special mention, the present study has been successful in
determining the "whole genome" sequence of an individual with typical
Jomon culture, while previous studies were only able to show a very
limited "partial genome" sequence of two Jomon individuals. Thus, the
present study is the first successful example to show the possibility of
whole genome sequencing of prehistoric individuals in regions like
Japan where preservation conditions are quite poor, possibly leading to
further major progress in prehistoric genome studies.
Results
In the present study, the international research team succeeded
in extracting and sequencing DNA from 25 ancient individuals' skeletons
from Southeast Asian remains, where the condition of DNA preservation is
very poor, and from one Japanese Jomon female skeleton. Upon comparison
of the genomic data of ancient human skeletons with those of
present-day human skeletons, it has become clear that those prehistoric
populations in Southeast Asia can be classified into six groups (Figure
3).
Group 1 contains Hoabinhians from Pha Faen, Laos, hunter-gatherers
(~8000 years ago), and prehistoric populations discovered from Gua Cha,
Malaysia (~4000 years ago), being genetically close to present-day Önge
and Jarawa from the Andaman Islands and Jehai from the Peninsular
Malaysia. To our surprise, group 1 has higher genetic affinities with
Ikawazu*3) Jomon individual (Tahara, Aichi), a female adult*4), than
other present-day Southeast Asians. In addition, the Ikawazu Jomon
genome*5) is best modelled contributing genetically present-day
Japanese.
On the other hand, Groups 2-6 consist of ancient skeletons from the
Neolithic Age, when farming started, until ~500 years ago. It is now
found that they are genetically much different from Hoabinhians, each
group having histories of migration and genetic interaction, i.e.,
inter-population mixture. Group 2 is found to be genetically close to
the present-day Austroasiatic language-speaking groups such as Mlabri,
but to have few genetic components common with the present-day East
Asian populations. Group 3 is found to be genetically close to Kradai,
Thailand, in the present-day Southeast Asian populations and to the
Austronesian language-speaking groups. Group 4 is found to be
genetically close to the present-day populations in South China. Group 5
is genetically close to the present-day populations in the western part
of Indonesia. Group 6 is most closely related to present day
Austronesian populations, with one individual showing slightly elevated
Denisovan ancestry, an archaic hominin which is classified as a sister
group of Neanderthals.
As above, Neolithic Southeast Asians are found to have been
partially genetically influenced by ethnic groups in South China and to
have had a genetic connection with populations in Taiwan; Neolithic
Southeast Asians are found not to have been indigenous hunter-gatherers
passively accepting farming but to have accepted farming gradually in
the process of migrations of populations between the continent and
islands. Conventional archaeology proposed the two-layer hypothesis
that, in those periods, a large population with farming culture with
rice and millet migrated into Southeast Asia and that they replaced the
indigenous population.
Additionally, the present study indicates that
the genetic influence from South China with rice farming was only
partial and that the migrating population did not replace the indigenous
population completely. The present analysis shows that there were at
least four big migration waves; migrations of Southeast Asians should be
investigated with a new "complex model" framework.
The present study successfully elucidates for the first time the
expansion/migration of prehistoric populations by genome analysis of
skeletons discovered in Southeast Asia; conventionally, it was thought
that such population expansion/migration could only be investigated
using archaeological artifacts. An important outcome of the present
study is that the same or analogous analyses could be applied to various
regions to evaluate the history of population expansion/migration in
much more detail and in a more scientific manner. [Future prospects]
The genomic data obtained from ancient skeletons in Southeast
Asia and from a Ikawazu Jomon individual provides an important basis for
investigations on the origins of populations in wider East Asia. The
whole genome information of a Jomon individual will be useful for direct
comparison of genomic similarity with ancient East Asians of the
corresponding period to Jomon in present-day Korea, China, Russia and
others in the vicinity of the Japanese archipelago. More comparative
studies are in progress on populations in wider areas. Note that the
whole genome sequence obtained in this study for a Jomon individual
corresponds to the Draft Genome Sequence in the Human Genome Project for
the present-day humans. We aim at Complete Genome Sequence with higher
accuracy.
This study is an interdisciplinary undertaking combining
anthropology and archaeology in a close collaboration, allowing us to
establish ourselves at the starting point for research on the origin of
Jomon and its diversity. By more genome analyses of more Jomon skeletons
from different Jomon sites, genetic diversity of Jomon populations will
be explored over the Japanese archipelago. It is expected through such
studies that various interactions among Jomon groups should be revealed
together with migrations of archaeological artifacts such as potteries
and stone tools as well as migrations of populations. Based on the
outcome of the present study, novel anthropological and archaeological
approaches would be further developed.
###
[Glossary]
*1) Genomic Analysis
Analysis of whole genome of a species.
*2) Cross-check analysis
Cross-check analysis is an analytical method that evaluates whether
the same result will be produced irrespective of different research
institutions, different analytical methods, and so on. It is an
important scientific index in research on ancient DNA.
*3) Ikawazu kaizuka (shellmound)
A kaizuka (shellmound) site at Tahara city, Aichi prefecture, dating
back to late and final Jomon period. One of the best known
archaeological site of Jomon period, where more than 200 individual
skeletons have been discovered from Meiji era till today. A number of
renowned anthropologists like Profs. Yoshikiyo KOGANEI and Hisashi
SUZUKI performed morphological research on prehistoric skeletons from
this site. There are also other kaizuka sites in Tahara city, such as
Yoshigo kaizuka and Hobi kaizuka, representative Jomon sites. Those
sites have been well studied and many skeletons have been excavated.
*4) A female skeleton dating back to late Jomon period, ~2500 years ago.
A Jomon skeleton discovered from Ikawazu kaizuka site in 2010.
Recent studies indicate the beginning of Yayoi period to be ~3000 years
ago, but the arrival of Yayoi culture differed depending on regions. The
female adult skeleton from Ikawazu kaizuka site is accompanied with a
pottery that is validated to date back to the period of Gokanmori type
pottery, indicating that the period was still Jomon at those sites in
Atsumi peninsula, Aichi prefecture. In addition, the female skeleton
analyzed here shows typical Jomon morphology.
*5) Whole genome sequence
Whole genome sequence is the total DNA sequence of a species
covering not only DNA sequences for genes but also DNA sequences for
non-gene regions.
1. Israel Antiquities Authority archaeologist Alla Nagorsky carries a 1,600-year-old Mancala game from the Byzantine time found during a large excavation in the central Israeli town of Gedera
2. An Israel Antiquities Authority archaeologist shows shows pottery shreds with finger prints on them from the Byzantine time found during a large excavation in the central Israeli town of Gedera