Genes reveal kinship between 3 victims of Mongol army in 1238 massacre

IMAGE: Skulls from mass grave in Yaroslavl, Russia, showing traces of violence view more 

Credit: Institute of Archaeology, Russian Academy of Sciences

Researchers from the Moscow Institute of Physics and Technology and the Russian Academy of Sciences Institute of Archaeology have used DNA testing to prove close genetic kinship between three individuals buried in a mass grave following the capture of the Russian city Yaroslavl by Batu Khan's Mongol army in 1238. This confirms the hypothesis made by archaeologists and anthropologists after studying the remains of 15 persons interred on a historic estate.
"In addition to recreating the overall picture of the fall of the city in 1238, we now see the tragedy of one family," said Asya Engovatova, deputy director of the Institute of Archaeology, RAS, and head of excavations on the Yaroslavl site. "DNA analysis has shown that there were remains of genetically related individuals representing three generations. Anthropological data suggest these were a grandmother aged 55 or older, her daughter aged 30 to 40 and grandson, a young man of about 20. A fourth member of the family related through the female line was buried in the neighboring mass grave."
"Importantly, these family relations were initially postulated by archaeologists and anthropologists, and then confirmed by genetic data," the scientist added. "This makes our research more evidential and allows us to discuss the 13th-century events and way of life with more certainty."
The researchers announced their discovery at the eighth Alekseyev Readings, an international conference held Aug. 26-28 at the Anuchin Research Institute and Museum of Anthropology in Moscow.
Historical records name Yaroslavl among other cities devastated by Batu Khan's army during his military campaign against the Grand Duchy of Vladimir in the early 13th century. However, the true scope of the tragedy only became clear in 2005, when salvage excavations began on the site of the city's Assumption Cathedral, built in the early 13th century, demolished in 1937, and restored between 2004-2010. Over just five years, nine mass graves and over 300 buried individuals who had died a violent death were found, more than in the other ravaged cities. The findings of prior research then enabled a detailed reconstruction of the events: It was proved that the unearthed victims died during the capture of Yaroslavl by Batu Khan's forces in February 1238.
"Batu Khan's conquest was the greatest national tragedy, surpassing any other event in cruelty and destruction. It is not by chance that it is among the few such events that made its way into the Russian folklore," Engovatova said. "What we now know about those raids suggests that chronicle descriptions of 'a city drowned in blood' were not merely a figure of speech."
"The first third of the 13th century saw the conquest of China, Central Asia, the Caucasus, Volga Bulgaria, and the part of the East European Plain where Yaroslavl lies," the researcher went on. "Some publications of the past 10-15 years took the viewpoint that the inclusion of Rus [the present-day Russia] into the Golden Horde was almost peaceful and voluntary, with practically no major atrocities committed. But it is now obvious this was not really the case."
One of the mass graves -- now identified as No. 76 -- was located at the center of the inner city citadel. There, corpses were buried in a shallow pit on a rich homestead burned during the assault on the city. The main wooden house and the outbuildings on the estate contained many artifacts, pointing to the high status of the owners.
That grave in particular attracted the researchers' attention, because the pit for it was dug on purpose, while the other mass graves nearby were located in the basements of houses and burned-down outbuildings. That kind of burial contradicted the norms of the day and did not observe the ritual. The 15 men, women, and children in the pit were unearthed in different poses, and some of the corpses had badly decomposed by the time they were interred. This strongly suggests that the bodies were simply disposed of in that way, for sanitary reasons.
Many of the corpses bore marks of a violent death on the bones -- traces of unhealed piercing and cutting wounds. Some of the bones were burnt, pointing to the fire that ravaged the city.
Fly larvae, shown in figure 1 (left), were found in the remains, indicating advanced stages of decomposition and allowing the researchers to date the burial. By identifying the blowfly species, entomologists knew at what average daily temperature their larvae would reach the observed stage of development. That temperature corresponded to late May or early June conditions.
"The data on the time they were buried are very precise and support the anthropologists' hypothesis that the corpses had partly decomposed. These people were killed, and their bodies remained lying in the snow for a fairly long time. In April or May, flies started to multiply on the remains, and in late May or early June they were buried in a pit on the homestead, which is where they probably had lived," Engovatova said.
Anthropologists studying the remains were the first to hypothesize kinship between some of the buried individuals. This was suggested by epigenetic feature similarities: the presence of a birth defect known as spina bifida, a persistent metopic suture, an expressed osteoma on the cranial vault, and intercondylar fossa characteristics.
The anthropology group also inferred possible intermarriages within the family from certain abnormalities that are characteristic of children born from such marriages. Apart from that, the members of this family suffered from tooth decay more than the other buried individuals. Since it predominantly develops in connection with a diet rich in sugars and carbohydrates, the family apparently consumed more sugar and honey than their average contemporaries.
Kharis Mustafin and Irina Alborova led the research team from MIPT's Historical Genetics, Radiocarbon Analysis and Applied Physics Lab, which undertook a complex molecular and genetic study of the remains of eight buried individuals. The team cleaned the archaeological samples of bones and teeth, pulverized them, and recovered the ancient DNA. Its analysis revealed the same mitochondrial DNA mutations in three individuals, while studying autosomal DNA markers supplied the data on how closely the persons were related. In addition, one mitochondrial DNA line pointed to a fourth possible maternal relative, buried in a neighboring grave.
"Genetic studies have confirmed the relationship between three of them. They were probably members of the same wealthy, high-ranking family," Engovatova said. "The location of the estate at the center of the citadel confirms this, and so do the archaeological finds made on the estate. Even a hanging seal was found. This might well be the very family that owned the rich homestead excavated 3 meters from the grave."

Church of the Apostles Found? Archaeologists Claim Byzantine-Era Church is Highly Significant

Archaeologists with the Israel Antiquities Authority have made what they claim to be a major discovery. They believe that they have found a Byzantine-era church that was built on the site of the home of two of Jesus Christ ’s earliest disciples, Peter and Andrew. If this is true then it could help to settle a long-running dispute over the location of the Biblical village of Bethsaida, later a city known as Julias.
A team of Israeli and American archaeologists, from the Kinneret Academic College and Nyack College, New York made the discovery, near Lake Galilee in Northern Israel. They found what they claim are the remains of a Byzantine-era church (330-700 AD) at Beit Habel, which is also known as el-Araj.
They have been working at this site for four years and in 2017, according to the I AM Nyack website, the archaeologists “uncovered evidence of the ancient city, Bethsaida-Julias”. El-Araj has been inhabited since the period of the Second Temple .
According to Haaretz, the experts found “gilded glass tesserae ( mosaic tiles )”. These are from wall mosaics one of the distinguishing characteristics of a Byzantine church .

Mosaic tiles were discovered at the unearthed Byzantine church. Shown is a mosaic of Christ from the Hagia Sophia in Istanbul. (Dianelos / CC BY-SA 3.0 )

They have also found some evidence of floor mosaics , roof-tiles, and a carving in chalk with a Christian symbol . The building has a west-east axis, this and the presence of the outline of a nave indicates that it was a Christian place of worship.

A Lost Byzantine Church

The team believe that the structure is lost Church of the Apostles. According to Christian tradition, it was constructed on the home of the two apostles Peter and Andrew. The ruins have not been dated but they are believed to be from the 5th century AD, some five hundred years after Peter and Andrew became followers of Jesus.

The experts believe that they found the church because of the writings of a southern German bishop from 725 AD. The prelate, who was named Willibald stated that he saw the church while traveling from Capernaum to Kursine, near the Lake of Galilee.

-The archaeologists believe that this is the only church ever found or documented in this location. This they claim means that they have discovered the church that marked the home of St. Andrew and St. Peter , the first Pope .

The Bethsaida-Julias Debate

Professor Mordechai Aviam from Kinneret Academic College and his colleague R. Steven Notley of Noyeck College, believe that the discovery of the Church of the Apostles provides further evidence that el-Araj was the location of ancient Bethsaida, which is mentioned in the New Testament . This was a small Galilean fishing village before one of the descendants of Herod the Great turned it into a city, known as Julias, in the 1st century AD.

But not everyone in the archaeological community accepts this and Haaretz reports that some believe that the nearby site of e-Tell, is the location of Bethsaida, which is argued by Professor Rami Arav of the Hebrew Union College. He believes that the probable church at el-Araj was not the same as that seen by the German bishop in the 8th century AD.

Largest coin hoard of the post-Conquest period found near Somerset

The British Museum’s Portable Antiquities Scheme (PAS)  has announced the discovery of the largest hoard from the immediate post-Conquest period ever unearthed.

The hoard, which primarily includes coins depicting Harold II (1066), the last crowned Anglo-Saxon king of England and his successor, William the Conqueror (1066-87), first Norman King of England, is also the largest Norman hoard found since 1833, and the largest ever found from the immediate aftermath of the Norman Conquest.

The hoard is in good condition and is made up of 1,236 coins of Harold II and 1,310 coins of the first type of William I, as well as a number of fragments. 

The discovery is hugely significant, not least because it contains almost double the amount of Harold II coins compared with all of the previous known examples combined. Most of these Harold coins were produced in Sussex and the South East, which indicates financial preparation in the area to resist the Norman invasion. In addition, the hoard makes up five times more examples of the first coin type issued by William I, following his coronation on Christmas Day, 1066.The hoard thus provides an unprecedented opportunity to examine changes in the coinage in the immediate aftermath of the Norman Conquest. Preliminary analysis indicates the presence of mints previous unrecorded for Harold and William respectively, including coins of Harold from the local mint of Bath. There are also suggestions that the Norman die cutters producing these coins struggled to understand Old English based on the quality of spelling on the coin.

The Chew Valley hoard also contains the first known examples of a ‘mule’ between Harold and William. Mules are coins with a design from different coin types on each side of the coin, indicating that the moneyer for the coin re-used a die to create one side. An early form of tax evasion, this avoided the moneyer paying a fee each time new dies were acquired – re-using an old die one illicitly avoided the fee. In this case, the mule demonstrates that coins were produced with Harold II's name on after William I had taken control of the country following the Norman Conquest and established coinage of his own. The hoard also includes a rare example of a mule of Harold’s predecessor Edward the Confessor (1042–66) and William I. 

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The exact circumstances in which the hoard was buried are uncertain. It was buried in the period c.1067–8, but in 1067 the Welsh attacked Herefordshire, in 1068 William himself besieged Exeter, and later the same year the sons of Harold returned from Ireland, raiding around the mouth of the Avon, Bristol and down into Somerset. The last of these is the most likely to be directly associated with the hoard, but all three indicate a period of unrest in the south-west which might lead to wealth being buried for safety. Gareth Williams, Curator of Early Medieval Coinage, said: “This is an extremely significant find for our understanding of the impact of the Norman Conquest of 1066. One of the big debates amongst historians is the extent to which there was continuity or change, both in the years immediately after the Conquest and across a longer period. Surviving historical sources tend to focus on the top level of society, and the coins are also symbols of authority and power. At the same time, they were used on a regular basis by both rich and poor, so the coins help us understand how changes under Norman rule impacted on society as a whole.” Councillor Paul Crossley, cabinet member for Community Services at Bath & North East Somerset Council, said: “We are very excited about the discovery of this important hoard in North East Somerset with such strong connections to our area. If we are able to acquire the coins, we will work to display them locally, as well as partnering with the British Museum to make them available for loan to other exhibitions so that they can be seen by a wider audience.” Lisa Grace and Adam Staples, finders of the hoard, said: “It's an amazing feeling to have unearthed this spectacular hoard. We've been dreaming of this for 15 years but it's finally come true.” Rebecca Pow, Minister for Arts, Heritage and Tourism said: "This is a very exciting discovery and important finds like this shed new light on the remarkable and fascinating history of our country. If the Coroner rules that the Chew Valley Hoard is Treasure, then I hope it might find a new home in one of the UK's museums, where it can be seen, studied and enjoyed by all."
Sample of the Chew Valley Hoard from overhead. Photo: Pippa Pearce © The Trustees of the British Museum. 18
ADVERTISING In January 2019 a group of metal-detectorists including Lisa Grace and Adam Staples were searching on land near the Chew Valley, Somerset when they discovered an initial group of coins. Along with five other colleagues they found a total of 2,528 coins dispersed in the ploughsoil over a small area. The find was reported to the local Coroner, as required under the Treasure Act 1996. The coins were brought to the British Museum the day after being discovered, where they have been cleaned for identification purposes and catalogued in a report for the Coroner. The hoard is in good condition and is made up of 1,236 coins of Harold II and 1,310 coins of the first type of William I, as well as a number of fragments. It will now be examined by the local Coroner to confirm if it is Treasure. Under the Treasure Act, which in England is administered by the British Museum, museums are given the opportunity to acquire finds of Treasure. If the finder(s) and owner of land where Treasure is found wish to claim a reward, the find is then valued by the independent Treasure Valuation Committee and museums have to raise funds to acquire it. If this find is declared Treasure by the coroner, the Roman Baths & Pump Room in Bath have expressed interest in acquiring the hoard for their collection. The discovery is hugely significant, not least because it contains almost double the amount of Harold II coins compared with all of the previous known examples combined. Most of these Harold coins were produced in Sussex and the South East, which indicates financial preparation in the area to resist the Norman invasion. In addition, the hoard makes up five times more examples of the first coin type issued by William I, following his coronation on Christmas Day, 1066.The hoard thus provides an unprecedented opportunity to examine changes in the coinage in the immediate aftermath of the Norman Conquest. Preliminary analysis indicates the presence of mints previous unrecorded for Harold and William respectively, including coins of Harold from the local mint of Bath. There are also suggestions that the Norman die cutters producing these coins struggled to understand Old English based on the quality of spelling on the coin. The Chew Valley hoard also contains the first known examples of a ‘mule’ between Harold and William. Mules are coins with a design from different coin types on each side of the coin, indicating that the moneyer for the coin re-used a die to create one side. An early form of tax evasion, this avoided the moneyer paying a fee each time new dies were acquired – re-using an old die one illicitly avoided the fee. In this case, the mule demonstrates that coins were produced with Harold II's name on after William I had taken control of the country following the Norman Conquest and established coinage of his own. The hoard also includes a rare example of a mule of Harold’s predecessor Edward the Confessor (1042–66) and William I. The exact circumstances in which the hoard was buried are uncertain. It was buried in the period c.1067–8, but in 1067 the Welsh attacked Herefordshire, in 1068 William himself besieged Exeter, and later the same year the sons of Harold returned from Ireland, raiding around the mouth of the Avon, Bristol and down into Somerset. The last of these is the most likely to be directly associated with the hoard, but all three indicate a period of unrest in the south-west which might lead to wealth being buried for safety. Gareth Williams, Curator of Early Medieval Coinage, said: “This is an extremely significant find for our understanding of the impact of the Norman Conquest of 1066. One of the big debates amongst historians is the extent to which there was continuity or change, both in the years immediately after the Conquest and across a longer period. Surviving historical sources tend to focus on the top level of society, and the coins are also symbols of authority and power. At the same time, they were used on a regular basis by both rich and poor, so the coins help us understand how changes under Norman rule impacted on society as a whole.” Councillor Paul Crossley, cabinet member for Community Services at Bath & North East Somerset Council, said: “We are very excited about the discovery of this important hoard in North East Somerset with such strong connections to our area. If we are able to acquire the coins, we will work to display them locally, as well as partnering with the British Museum to make them available for loan to other exhibitions so that they can be seen by a wider audience.” Lisa Grace and Adam Staples, finders of the hoard, said: “It's an amazing feeling to have unearthed this spectacular hoard. We've been dreaming of this for 15 years but it's finally come true.” Rebecca Pow, Minister for Arts, Heritage and Tourism said: "This is a very exciting discovery and important finds like this shed new light on the remarkable and fascinating history of our country. If the Coroner rules that the Chew Valley Hoard is Treasure, then I hope it might find a new home in one of the UK's museums, where it can be seen, studied and enjoyed by all."

Archeologists find remains of 227 children sacrificed between 1200 and 1400.in Peru

Archeologists in Peru say the 227 bodies they have unearthed from a site used by the pre-Columbian Chimu culture is the biggest-ever discovery of sacrificed children.

Archeologists have been digging since last year at the huge sacrificial site in Huanchaco, a beachside tourist town north of the capital Lima...

Huanchaco was a site where many child sacrifices took place during the time of the Chimu culture, whose apogee was between 1200 and 1400.

Archeologists first found children's bodies at the dig site in the town's Pampa la Cruz neighborhood in June 2018, unearthing 56 skeletons.

Pampa la Cruz is a short distance from Huanchaquito, where the remains of 140 sacrificed children and 200 llamas were found in April 2018.

The Chimu civilization extended along the Peruvian coast to Ecuador but disappeared in 1475 after it was conquered by the Inca empire.

 Complete article

Cooper's Ferry archaeological finds reveal humans arrived more than 16,000 years ago

American Association for the Advancement of Science

Archaeological discoveries from the Cooper's Ferry site in western Idaho indicate that humans migrated to and occupied the region by nearly 16,500 years ago. The findings expand the timing of human settlement in the Americas to a period predating the appearance of an ice-free corridor linking Beringia and the rest of North America and support the growing notion that the very first Americans likely landed upon the shores of the Pacific coast.

How and when human populations first arrived and settled in the Americas remains debated. A longstanding and influential hypothesis proposes that travelers initially entered North America and parts beyond from eastern Beringia, by way of a deglaciated ice-free corridor that separated the Cordilleran and Laurentide ice sheets approximately 14,800 years ago. However, a small but growing body of research has shown that human populations were present and likely well-established south of the Late Pleistocene ice sheets long before such a passage; its proponents hypothesize a Pacific coastal migration route.

Loren Davis and colleagues present new findings from Cooper's Ferry that provide evidence of repeated occupation beginning between 16,560 to 15,280 years ago. Artifacts recovered from the site's earliest contexts indicate the use of unfluted and stemmed stone projectile point technologies before the use of fluted, broad-based points of the widespread Clovis Paleoindian Tradition.

According to Davis et al., the age, design and manufacture of Cooper's Ferry's distinctive stemmed points closely resemble features of artifacts found in Late Pleistocene archeological sites in northeastern Asia. The results suggest an initial migration along the Pacific Coast more than 16,000 years ago.

First human ancestors breastfed for longer than contemporary relatives

IMAGE: The differences in dental morphology are obvious between Australopithecus africanus (TM1518 to the left) and early Homo (SK27 to the right), but these teeth are also different in their calcium... view more 

Credit: Vincent Balter

By analysing the fossilised teeth of some of our most ancient ancestors, a team of scientists led by the universities of Bristol (UK) and Lyon (France) have discovered that the first humans significantly breastfed their infants for longer periods than their contemporary relatives.
The results, published in the journal Science Advances, provide a first insight into the practice of weaning that remain otherwise unseen in the fossil record.
The team sampled minute amounts from nearly 40 fossilised teeth of our South African fossil relatives, early Homo, Paranthropus robustus and Australopithecus africanus.
They measured the proportions of their stable calcium isotopes in the tooth enamel, which are a function of the mother milk intake by infants.
By reconstructing the age at tooth enamel development, they show that early Homo offspring was breastfed in significant proportions until the age of around three to four years, which likely played a role in the apparition of traits that are specific to human lineage, such as the brain development.
In contrast, infants of Paranthropus robustus, that became extinct around one million years ago and were a more robust species in terms of dental anatomy, as well as infants of Australopithecus africanus, stopped drinking sizeable proportions of mother milk in the course of the first months of life.
These differences in nursing behaviours likely come with major changes in the social structures of groups as well as the time between the birth of one child and the birth of the next.
One of the study's lead authors, Dr Theo Tacail from the University of Bristol's School of Earth Sciences, said: "The practice of weaning - the duration of breastfeeding, age at non-milk food introduction and the age at cessation of suckling - differs among the modern members of the hominid family which includes humans and modern great apes: orangutan, gorillas, chimpanzees and bonobos.
"The development of such behavioural differences likely played major roles in the evolution of the members of human lineage, being associated for instance with size and structure of social groups, brain development or demography.
"However, getting insights into these behavioural changes from fossils that are millions of years old is a challenge and, so far, little evidence allow discussing nursing practices in these fossil species.
"The findings stress the need for further exploration of calcium stables isotopes compositions in the fossil record in order to understand the co-evolution of weaning practices with other traits such as brain size or social behaviours."

People transformed the world through land use by 3,000 years ago

 Humans started making an impact on the global ecosystem through intensive farming much earlier than previously estimated, according to a new study published in the journal Science.

Humans caused significant environmental change around the globe by about 3,000-4,000 years ago, much earlier than prior estimates, as revealed by a new international study

Max Planck Institute for the Science of Human History

IMAGE: Human transformation of slopes for rice farming, Ubud, Bali. view more 

Credit: Andrea Kay

Land use by early farmers, pastoralists and even hunter-gatherer societies was extensive enough to have created significant global landcover change by 3,000-4,000 years ago. This is much earlier than has been recognised, and challenges prevailing opinions concerning a mid-20th century start date for the Anthropocene. These are the findings of a new study published this week in Science, by a large international team of archaeologists and environmental scientists.
This study brought together several hundred archaeologists from around the world, who pooled extensive datasets summarising decades of archaeological research. Nicole Boivin, Director of the Department of Archaeology at the Max Planck Institute for the Science of Human History and a lead author on the study, notes that "archaeologists possess critical datasets for assessing long-term human impacts to the natural world, but these remain largely untapped in terms of global-scale assessments". She observes that "this novel crowd-sourcing approach to pooling archaeological data is extremely innovative, and has provided researchers with a unique perspective".
Unique collaboration allows for creation of large database of archaeological data to study past environmental change The ArchaeoGLOBE project was coordinated by an international team of researchers who developed an online survey to gather past land-use estimates from archaeologists with regional expertise. The current study offers a novel way to assess archaeological knowledge on human land use across the globe over the past 10,000 years. By incorporating online archaeological crowdsourcing, the study was able to incorporate the local expertise of 255 archaeologists to reach an unprecedented level of global coverage. This global archaeological assessment, and the collaborative approach it represents, will help stimulate and support future efforts towards the common goal of understanding early land use as a driver of long-term global environmental changes across the Earth system, including changes in climate.
"This type of work causes us to rethink the role of humans in environmental systems, particularly in the way we understand 'natural' environments," said Lucas Stephens of the University of Maryland Baltimore County, University of Pennsylvania and Max Planck Institute for the Science of Human History, who led the global collaboration of archaeologists that produced the study. "It also allows us to identify patterns in the distribution of our data and prioritize future collection areas to improve the reliability of global datasets."
Study of archaeological data reveals huge impact of humans over thousands of years "While modern rates and scales of anthropogenic global change are far greater than those of the deep past, the long-term cumulative changes wrought by early food producers are greater than many realize," said Andrea Kay of the Max Planck Institute for the Science of Human History and The University of Queensland, a lead author on the study. "Even small-scale or shifting agriculture can cause global change when considered at large scales and over long time-periods," she adds.
By acknowledging the deep time impact of humans on this planet and better understanding human-environment interactions over the long term, the researchers believe we can better plan for future climate scenarios and possibly find ways of mitigating negative impacts on soils, vegetation, and climate. "It's time to get beyond the mostly recent paradigm of the Anthropocene and recognize that the long-term changes of the deep past have transformed the ecology of this planet, and produced the social-ecological infrastructures - agricultural and urban - that made the contemporary global changes possible," said Erle Ellis of University of Maryland Baltimore County, a senior author who initially proposed and helped design the study. "These past changes produced the social-ecological infrastructures - agricultural and urban - that made the contemporary global changes possible."
Led by archeologist Lucas Stephens, a researcher affiliated with the Max Planck Institute for the Science of Human History, ArchaeoGLOBE used a crowdsourcing approach, inviting experts in ancient land use to contribute to a questionnaire on 146 regions (covering all continents except Antarctica) at ten historical time intervals to assess and integrate archaeological knowledge at a global scale. The result was a complete, though uneven, meta-analysis of global land use over time.
Significantly, the study also reveals that hunting and gathering was more varied and complex than originally thought, helping archeologists to recognize that foragers "may have initiated dramatic and sometimes irreversible environmental change." Intensive forms of agriculture reported around the world included activities like clearing land, creating fields that were fixed on the landscape, raising large herds of animals, and putting increasing amounts of effort into growing food.
SMU anthropologist and ArchaeoGLOBE team member K. Ann Horsburgh notes the rise in agriculture and livestock is primarily due to growing populations needing to be fed.
"Food production such as agriculture and pastoralism, when compared with foraging in the same environment, is linked to a faster population growth and can sustain higher population densities," said Horsburgh.
Horsburgh, Assistant Professor of Anthropology, and McCoy, Associate Professor of Anthropology, provided information on land use in Africa and the remote islands of the Pacific, respectively. McCoy also brought his expertise in geospatial technology to study how people in the past inhabited and shaped the world around them, while Horsburgh brought her knowledge of ancient DNA to retrace the spread of domesticated animals.
The map could provide new light on how the spread of farming and herding were linked to major migrations in human prehistory.
"This is first time that regional expertise on ancient land use has been synthesized on this scale," Horsburgh said. "That matters because we know that although the shift from foraging to farming tends to be a 'one-way' transition, it did not progress the same way around the world. The details of how it did progress has shaped everything from our diets to the languages we speak today."
Horsburgh went on to say, "What remains the topic of intense study is how much of the transition is food producers spreading and displacing foragers, and how much is it foragers adopting or marrying into food producing groups, or some other scenario. Most of this was done in the absence of written records, so it is up to anthropology to sort things out.
"The natural next step for this revised model of the spread of different types, and intensities, of land use is to compare them with human genetics and linguistics and integrate these findings into the big story of humanity," said Horsburgh.