IMAGE: THE SEDIMENT OF WHICH THE SEDADNA WAS STUDIED view more
CREDIT: DR MARTIN BATES, UWTSD
Thousands of years ago the UK was physically joined to the rest of Europe through an area known as Doggerland. However, a marine inundation took place during the mid-holocene, separating the British landmass from the rest of Europe, which is now covered by the North Sea.
Scientists from the School of Life Sciences at the University of Warwick have studied sedimentary ancient DNA (sedaDNA) from sediment deposits in the southern North Sea, an area which has not previously been linked to a tsunami that occurred 8150 years ago.
The paper, led by the University of Bradford and involving Universities of Warwick, Wales St. Trinity David, St. Andrews, Cork, Aberystwyth, Tartu as well as the Smithsonian and Natural History Museum, 'Multi-Proxy Characterisation of the Storegga Tsunami and Its Impact on the Early Holocene Landscapes of the Southern North Sea', published in the Journal Geosciences, sees Life Scientists from the University of Warwick work specifically on the sedimentary ancient DNA from Doggerland.
A number of innovative breakthroughs were achieved by the University of Warwick scientists in terms of analysing the sedaDNA. One of these was the concept of biogenomic mass, where for the first time they were able to see the how the biomass changes with events, evidence of this presented in the paper refers to the large woody mass of trees from the tsunami found in the DNA of the ancient sediment.
New ways of authenticating the sedaDNA were also developed, as current methods of authentication do not apply to sedaDNA which has been damaged whilst under the sea for thousands of years because there is too little information for each individual species. Researchers therefore came up with a new way, metagenomic assessment methodology, whereby the characteristic damage found at the ends of ancient DNA molecules is collectively analysed across all species rather than one.
Alongside this a key part of analysing the sedaDNA is to determine whether or not it was deposited in situ or has moved over time. This led researchers to develop statistical methods to establish which scenario was appropriate, using stratigraphic integrity they were able to determine that the sedaDNA in the sediment deposits had not moved a massive amount since deposition by assessing the biomolecules vertical movement in the core column of the sedaDNA.
Identifying which organisms the ancient fragmented molecules of DNA came from is also challenging because often there is nothing to directly compare. In a fourth innovation the researchers refined algorithms to define these regions of "dark phylogenetic space" from where organisms must have originated overcome this issue.
Professor Robin Allaby from the School of Life Sciences at the University of Warwick comments: "This study represents an exciting milestone for sedimentary ancient DNA studies establishing a number of breakthrough methods to reconstruct an 8,150 year old environmental catastrophe in the lands that existed before the North Sea flooded them away into history."
Professor Vince Gaffney from the School of Archaeological and Forensic Sciences at the University of Bradford said: "Exploring Doggerland, the lost landscape underneath the North Sea, is one of the last great archaeological challenges in Europe. This work demonstrates that an interdisciplinary team of archaeologists and scientists can bring this landscape back to life and even throw new light on one of prehistory's great natural disasters, the Storegga Tsunami.
"The events leading up to the Storegga tsunami have many similarities to those of today. Climate is changing and this impacts on many aspects of society, especially in coastal locations."
IMAGE: SEAL AMULET WITH THE NAME OF THE HYKSOS PHAROAH APOPHIS. view more
CREDIT: THE METROPOLITAN MUSEUM OF ART (CC0)
The Hyksos, who ruled during the 15th Dynasty of ancient Egypt, were not foreign invaders, but a group who rose to power from within, according to a study published July 8, 2020 in the open-access journal PLOS ONE by Chris Stantis of Bournemouth University, UK and colleagues.
The Hyksos were a foreign dynasty that ruled parts of Egypt between approximately 1638-1530 BCE, the first instance of Egypt being ruled by individuals of a foreign origin. The common story is that the Hyksos were invaders from a far-off land, but this idea has been drawn into question. Archaeological evidence does link Hyksos culture with an origin in the Near East, but exactly how they rose to power is unclear.
In this study, Stantis and colleagues collected enamel samples from the teeth of 75 humans buried in the ancient Hyksos capital city of Tell el-Dab'a in the northeast Nile Delta. Comparing ratios of strontium isotopes in the teeth to environmental isotope signatures from Egypt and elsewhere, they assessed the geographic origins of the individuals who lived in the city. They found that a large percentage of the populace were non-locals who immigrated from a wide variety of other places. This pattern was true both before and during the Hyksos dynasty.
This pattern does not match the story of a sudden invasion from a single far-off land, but of a multi-cultural region where one internal group - the Hyksos - eventually rose to power after living there for generations. This is the first study to use archaeological chemistry to address the origins of the Hyksos rulers, but the authors note that more investigations and broader chemical techniques will be needed to identify the specific ancestries of the Hyksos and other non-local residents of Egypt.
Stantis adds: "Archaeological chemistry, specifically isotopic analysis, shows us first-generation migration during a time of major cultural transformations in ancient Egypt. Rather than the old scholastic theories of invasion, we see more people, especially women, migrating to Egypt before Hyksos rule, suggesting economic and cultural changes leading to foreign rule rather than violence."
IMAGE: THE MONTELLA CHAPEL NEAR NAPLES, SOUTHERN ITALY, WAS BUILT IN THE 1620S WHEN GIOVANNI BERNARDINO IANNELLI DONATED A LARGE SUM TO THE MONASTERY. IT HAS BEEN EXCAVATED SINCE 2007. view more
CREDIT: UNIVERSITY OF SOUTHERN DENMARK
In the 1600s, two private chapels were erected as family burial sites for two noble families. One in the town Svendborg in Denmark, the other in Montella, Italy. They were both attached to a Franciscan Friary, and only a few meters from the chapels, more common townspeople and friars were buried in the cloister walks.
Now scientists have had access to the earthly remains of both the noble families and the less fortunate in Svendborg and Montella, and this gives an intriguing insight into what these people consumed while they were alive.
- We expected to find common features for the two different social classes, and we did so - in part. But we also found similarities and differences that are not linked to social status, says professor of archaeometry, Kaare Lund Rasmussen, University of Southern Denmark.
The researchers looked for a number of specific trace elements and heavy metals in the bone samples: Strontium, barium, lead, copper and mercury.
Common to these elements is that their presence in bones reveal information about a person's diet and what that person's mouth has been in touch with during his or her life.
Less strontium and barium were found in the bones from the noble chapels compared to the bones from the cloister walks.
These two trace elements are most often ingested through food, and the low levels in the nobles indicate that they ate more animal meat. This makes good sense, because meat in both Italy and Denmark was a more expensive than for example cereals and porridge.
The copper content in the Danish bones is significantly lower than in the Italian - both in those from the chapels and the cloister walks.
- This can be explained by the fact that the Danes did not prepare food in copper pots and vessels - and conversely, that the Italians did it diligently, regardless of their social status, Kaare Lund Rasmussen comments.
When cooking or storing food in copper pots, knives and spoons may scrape off small amounts of copper, which are then consumed with the food, and thus the body can accumulate copper over time. The copper level was 21 times higher in the Italians than in the Danes.
Both the Danish and Italian noble families had more lead in the bones than the less wealthy - the Danes slightly more than the Italians.
- High lead concentrations indicate high social status. We have also seen that from other studies, says Kaare Lund Rasmussen.
Lead had many uses in the Middle Ages, and especially the wealthy could afford it: It was used to glaze earthenware: kitchen utensils could consist of pure lead; lead salts were added to wine to inhibit fermentation, and lead sheets were used as roofing with the result that collected rainwater came to contain some lead.
Kaare Lund Rasmussen has previously shown that the ancient Romans and wealthy Germans and Danes in the Middle Ages could be more or less permanently sick with lead poisoning from consuming too much food and drink that had been in contact with lead.
Mercury was a widespread remedy for diseases such as leprosy and syphilis in the Middle Ages. The analyzes show that at least a handful of the noble Italian Iannelli family members ingested mercury in their lifetime. None of the skeletons from the Italian cloister walk contained mercury.
In Denmark, the distribution of mercury was more equal.
- It seems that both social groups in Denmark had equal access to mercury containing medicine. However, none of them exhibited particularly high levels.
In American history, we learn that the arrival of Spanish explorers led by Hernando de Soto in the 1500s was a watershed moment resulting in the collapse of Indigenous tribes and traditions across the southeastern United States.
While these expeditions unquestionably resulted in the deaths of countless Indigenous people and the relocation of remaining tribes, new research from Washington University in St. Louis provides evidence that Indigenous people in Oconee Valley -- present-day central Georgia -- continued to live and actively resist European influence for nearly 150 years.
The findings, published July 15 in American Antiquity, speak to the resistance and resilience of Indigenous people in the face of European insurgence, said Jacob Lulewicz, a lecturer in archaeology in Arts & Sciences and lead author.
"The case study presented in our paper reframes the historical contexts of early colonial encounters in the Oconee Valley by way of highlighting the longevity and endurance of Indigenous Mississippian traditions and rewriting narratives of interactions between Spanish colonizers and Native Americans," Lulewicz said.
It also draws into question the motives behind early explanations and interpretations that Euro-Americans proposed about Indigenous earthen mounds -- platforms built out of soil, clay and stone that were used for important ceremonies and rituals.
'Myths were purposively racist'
"By the mid-1700s, less than 100 years after the abandonment of the Dyar mound [now submerged under Lake Oconee], explanations for the non-Indigenous origins of earthen mounds were being espoused. As less than 100 years would have passed between the Indigenous use of mounds and these explanations, it could be argued that the motives for these myths were purposively racist, denying what would have been a recent collective memory of Indigenous use in favor of explanations that stole, and disenfranchised, these histories from contemporary Indigenous peoples," Lulewicz said.
The Dyar mound was excavated by University of Georgia archaeologists in the 1970s to make way for a dam. Lulewicz and co-authors -- Victor D. Thompson, professor of archaeology and director of the Laboratory of Archaeology at the University of Georgia; James Wettstaed, archaeologist at Chattahoochee-Oconee National Forests; and Mark Williams, director emeritus of the Laboratory of Archaeology at the University of Georgia -- received funding from the USDA Forest Service to re-date the platform mound, which contained classic markers of Indigenous rituals and ceremonies.
Using advanced radiocarbon dating techniques and complex statistical models, modern-day archaeologists are able to effectively construct high-resolution, high-precision chronologies. In many cases, they can determine, within a 10- to 20-year range, dates of things that happened as far back as 1,000 years ago.
"Radiocarbon dating is really important, not just for getting a date to see when things happened, but for understanding the tempo of how things changed throughout time and really understanding the complex histories of people over hundreds of years," Lulewicz said. "In archaeology, it's really easy to group things in long periods of time, but it would be false to say that nothing changed over those 500 years."
Their research yielded 20 new dates from up and down the mound, which provided a refined perspective on the effects that early Indigenous-colonizer encounters did, and did not, have on the Indigenous people and their traditions.
Missing from the mound was any sign of European artifacts, which is one of the reasons why archaeologists originally believed sites in the region were abruptly abandoned just after their first encounters with Spanish colonizers. "Not only did the ancestors of Muscogee (Creek) people continue their traditions atop the Dyar mound for nearly 150 years after these encounters, but they also actively rejected European things," Lulewicz said.
According to Lulewicz, the Dyar mound does not represent an isolated hold-over after contact with European colonizers. There are several examples of platform mounds that were used beyond the 16th century, including the Fatherland site associated with the Natchez in Louisiana, Cofitachequi in South Carolina and a range of towns throughout the Lower Mississippi Valley.
"However, the mound at Dyar represents one of the only confirmed examples, via absolute dating, of continued Mississippian traditions related to mound-use and construction to date."
Today, members of the Muscogee (Creek) Nation, descendants of the Mississippians who built platform mounds like the one at Dyar, live in Oklahoma. "We have a great, collaborative relationship with archaeologists of the Muscogee (Creek) Nation Historic and Cultural Preservation Department, so we sent them the paper to review. It was really well received. They saw, reflected in that paper, a lot of the traditions they still practice in Oklahoma and were generous enough to contribute commentary that bolstered the results presented in the paper," he said.
"This is where the archaeology that we write becomes so important in the present. ... Without this type of work, we are contributing to the disenfranchisement of Indigenous peoples from their history."
"Of course, they already knew many of the things we 'discovered,' but it was still meaningful to be able to reaffirm their ancestral link to the land."
In the end, Lulewicz said this is the most important part of the paper. "We are writing about real human lives -- Indigenous lives that we have historically treated very poorly and who continue to be treated poorly today in some cases. With the use of advanced radiocarbon dating and the development of really high resolution chronologies, we are able to more effectively reinject lives into narratives of the past."
IMAGE: MIDDEN SHELL EXPOSED ON THE PIKE CLIFF LINE ON THE RIVER MURRAY. view more
CREDIT: FLINDERS UNIVERSITY
The known timeline of the Aboriginal occupation of South Australia's Riverland region has been vastly extended by new research led by Flinders University in collaboration with the River Murray and Mallee Aboriginal Corporation (RMMAC).
Radiocarbon dating of shell middens - remnants of meals eaten long ago - capture a record of Aboriginal occupation that extends to around 29,000 years, confirming the location as one of the oldest sites along the 2500km river to become the oldest River Murray Indigenous site in South Australia.
In the first comprehensive survey of the region, one of the oldest Indigenous sites along Australia's longest river system has been discovered. The results, published in Australian Archaeology, used radiocarbon dating methods to analyse river mussel shells from a midden site overlooking the Pike River floodplain downstream of Renmark.
"These results include the first pre-Last Glacial Maximum ages returned on the River Murray in South Australia and extend the known Aboriginal occupation of the Riverland by approximately 22,000 years," says Flinders University archaeologist and PhD candidate Craig Westell.
More than 30 additional radiocarbon dates were collected in the region, spanning the period from 15,000 years ago to the recent present. Together, the results relate Aboriginal people to an ever-changing river landscape, and provide deeper insights into how they responded to these challenges.
The period represented by the radiocarbon results brackets the Last Glacial Maximum (commonly known as the last Ice Age) when climatic conditions were colder and drier and when the arid zone extended over much of the Murray-Darling Basin. The river and lake systems of the basin were under stress during this time.
In the Riverland, dunes were advancing into the Murray floodplains, river flows were unpredictable, and salt was accumulating in the valley.
The ecological impacts witnessed during one of the worst droughts on record, the so-called Millennium Drought (from late 1996 extending to mid-2010), provides an idea of the challenges Aboriginal people may have faced along the river during the Last Glacial Maximum, and other periods of climate stress, researchers conclude.
"These studies show how our ancestors have lived over many thousands of years in the Riverland region and how they managed to survive during times of hardship and plenty," says RMMAC spokesperson Fiona Giles.
"This new research, published in Australian Archaeology, fills in a significant geographic gap in our understanding of the Aboriginal occupation chronologies for the Murray-Darling Basin," adds co-author Associate Professor Amy Roberts.
The dating, which was undertaken at the Australian Nuclear Science and Technology Organisation (ANSTO) and Waikato University, forms part of a much larger and ongoing research program led by Associate Professor Amy Roberts which is undertaking a broad-ranging investigation of past and contemporary Aboriginal connections to the Riverland region.
The paper, 'Initial results and observations on a radiocarbon dating program in the Riverland region of South Australia' (2020) by C Westell, A Roberts, M Morrison, G Jacobsen and the River Murray and Mallee Aboriginal Corporation has been published in Australian ArchaeologyDOI: 10.1080/03122417.2020.1787928
The Last Glacial Maximum is the most significant climatic event to face modern humans since their arrival in Australia some 40,000-50,000 years ago. Recent studies have demonstrated that the LGM in Australia was a period of significant cooling and increased aridity beginning ?30 ka and peaking between ?23 and 18 ka.
An interdisciplinary team of scientists studying thousands of oyster shells along the Georgia coast, some as old as 4,500 years, has published new insights into how Native Americans sustained oyster harvests for thousands of years, observations that may lead to better management practices of oyster reefs today.
Their study, led by University of Georgia archaeologist Victor Thompson, was published July 10 in the journal Science Advances.
The new research argues that understanding the long-term stability of coastal ecosystems requires documenting past and present conditions of such environments, as well as considering their future. The findings highlight a remarkable stability of oyster reefs prior to the 20th century and have implications for oyster-reef restoration by serving as a guide for the selection of suitable oyster restoration sites in the future.
Shellfish, such as oysters, have long been a food staple for human populations around the world, including Native American communities along the coast of the southeastern United States. The eastern oyster Crassostrea virginica is a species studied frequently by biologists and marine ecologists because of the central role the species plays in coastal ecosystems.
Oyster reefs are a keystone species that provide critical habitats for other estuarine organisms. Oyster populations, however, have dramatically declined worldwide over the last 100 years due to overexploitation, climate change and habitat degradation.
"Oyster reefs were an integral part of the Native American landscape and our study shows that their sustainability over long periods of time was likely due to the sophisticated cultural systems that governed harvesting practices," said Thompson, professor of anthropology in the Franklin College of Arts and Sciences and director of the UGA Laboratory of Archaeology.
According to Thompson, prior models used by archaeologists have not adequately accounted for the role Indigenous people had not only sustaining ecosystems, but also enhancing biodiversity.
"Our research shows that harvesting was done likely with an aim towards sustainability by Native American communities," he said. "Work here along the Georgia coast, along with colleagues working in the Pacific and in Amazonia, indicates that Indigenous peoples had a wealth of traditional ecological knowledge regarding these landscapes and actively managed them for thousands of years."
Changes in oyster shell size and abundance is widely used to examine human population pressures and the health of oyster reefs. The researchers measured nearly 40,000 oyster shells from 15 Late Archaic (4500 - 3500 years Before Present) through Mississippian (1150 - 370 years BP) period archaeological sites situated along the South Atlantic coast of the United States to provide a long-term record of oyster harvesting practices and to document oyster abundance and size across time.
The new findings show an increase in oyster size throughout time and a nonrandom pattern in their distributions across archaeological sites up and down the coastline that the authors believe is related to the varying environmental conditions found in different areas.
When the researchers compared their work to maps of the 19th-century oyster reef distributions, they found that the two were highly correlated. All of the data on oyster size and reef size suggested there was considerable stability in oyster productivity over time, even if some reefs were not quite as productive as others. This overall productivity changed, however, in the early 1900s when industrial oyster canning devastated the reefs, leaving only a small percent of the reefs viable today.
"This work, which was partially supported by the Georgia Coastal Ecosystems Long Term Ecological Research project, demonstrates the importance of understanding the role that humans play in shaping the landscape, and that is something that is not always appreciated in ecological studies," said Merryl Alber, professor and director of the UGA Marine Institute on Sapelo Island, a site of excavations for this study.
IMAGE: PERSPEKTYWICZNA CAVE INSIDE VIEW DURING EXCAVATION. view more
CREDIT: MAGDALENA KRAJCARZ
A loner and a hunter with highly developed territorial instincts, a cruel carnivore, a disobedient individual: the cat. These features make the species averse to domestication. Even so, we did it. Nowadays, about 500 million cats live in households all around the world; it is also difficult to estimate the amount of the homeless and the feral ones
Although the common history of cats and people began 10,000 years ago, the origins of the relation still remain unknown. How was the domestication process carried out? When did the first domesticated cats appear in Central Europe? Where did they come from, and how? What was their role in contemporary people's lives. The knowledge gaps in the topic are numerous; thus, archaeologists, archaeozoologists, biologists, anthropologists as well as other researchers all around the world cooperate to find answers to the questions. Scientists from the Institute of Archaeology at the Nicolaus Copernicus University in Torun have outstanding merits in this field. An article discussing significant research achievements in the area has been published in PNAS, a prestigious official journal of the National Academy of Sciences. The first author is Dr Magdalena Krajcarz who has made an attempt to find ancestors of domestic cats in Neolithic Central Europe. By analyzing cat diet, she is trying to check how close they cohabitated with people
Winding paths of the domesticated cat
According to the assumptions made, the deliberate creation of a breed which involved selecting particular individuals, cross-breeding and reproducing them, took place relatively recently, in the 19th century. In Medieval Poland, cats were not as popular as we could think. According to evidence provided by researchers, semi-domesticated weasels, or even snakes, were used to protect grain crops against rodents. These were people who settled in towns founded in the second half of the 13th century who increased the popularity of cats.
It does not mean, however, that cats had entered into no relations with people even earlier. The first, best-documented domesticated cat remains on the territory of Poland date back to the beginnings of our era. The animals are believed to have spread across Central Europe mainly due to the influence of the Roman Empire. Nonetheless, the earliest cat remains in the area date back to even 4,200-2,300 BC and evidence the first migrations of the Nubian cat which originally inhabited the Near East and North Africa. This particular species is considered as the ancestor of domestic cats in Central Europe.
The Nubian cat is one of wildcat subspecies (next to the European wildcat which is not the domestic cat ancestor even though it is able to cross-bread with it) whose domestication began in the Fertile Crescent ca. 10,000 - 9.000 years ago. In archaeological excavation sites in Anatolia, Syria as well as Israel, a variety of stone figurines representing those cats has been found. Apparently, cats stayed in the proximity of the first farmers and, with high probability, the Neolithic Age is when the first human-cat interrelations were initiated. People gave up nomadism in favor of sedentary life and started to gather eatables which, consequently, attracted rodents of many kinds. This could result in attracting wild cats to easily achievable food sources and the benefits turned out to be mutual. With much likelihood, cats remained rather neutral to people.
Cat skeleton analyses, together with the mammal iconography, allow researchers to make an assumption that cats reached Europe migrating from the Near East, through Anatolia, Cyprus, Crete, Greece, to Ancient Rome, where they were taken over by Celts and Germans .
Cat diet vs the history of domestication
The role cats played in Late Neolithic Poland is not clear since scientists have little evidence of these animals presence. The remains found come from caves rather than from human settlements which means that cats not necessarily had to be buried by men. They could as well be pray to other predators or they simply lived and died in caves. Nevertheless, researchers do not reject the hypothesis which says that the animals could be kept by men in order to protect crops from rodents, and thus, benefit from their skills, and occasionally follow them to the caves which contemporary people used as shelters.
Research performed by Dr Magdalena Krajcarz helps to resolve the mystery. In the article entitled Ancestors of domestic cats in Neolithic Central Europe: Isotopic evidence of a synanthropic diet published in PNAS, she provides an insight into cats diet in order to determine how close human-cat relations were.
To carry out studies, six Neolithic cat remains of the Near East characteristics from four cave sites in the Kraków- Czestochowa Upland (southern Poland) were used. Nearby, there used to be farmer settlements located on fertile soils. Moreover, four European wildcat remains from an analogous period and area as well as three Pre-Neolithic and two others from the Roman Period were examined. The reference material additionally covered human and other animal remains.
Analyzing stable carbon and nitrogen isotopes in bone collagen constituted the methodological basis. The stable isotope analysis method is a commonly applied tool in the paleontology and ecology of animals because the isotope composition of their remains reflects the isotope composition of food. According to Krajcarz, the method enables, for example, the identification of feeding habits of particular fossil animal species. In research on wild animal feeding habits, conventional techniques involve analyzing food remnants in faeces or stomachs, which imposes significant limitations. Most importantly, not all the remnants can be identified. Moreover, the remnants are from the last feeding. Finally, the access to such fossil material is very poor.
Owing to the isotope analysis, taking accurate chemical measurements as well as recognizing average diet covering the whole animal lifespan are possible. Primarily, the method allows the examination of feeding habits of animals from the past. All we have are bone tissue remnants which have survived in the unaltered state as the isotope composition of bones has been unchanged for thousands of years - says Dr Krajcarz. To simplify the issue, the Neolithic farmers were knowledgeable enough to apply fertilizers such as dung or plant ash. Rodents which fed on the collected crops were consumed by cats. By the stable isotopes examination we are able to decide whether contemporary cats found food taking advantage of human activity somehow.
So, what are the conclusions drawn by the researchers? According to the examination results, the Near East cats were not fully dependent on men. They made use of all the available food sources, but could also find others in their habitat. They could do it periodically, either benefiting from human activity or hunting individually in forests. Thus, they maintained their independence.
As Dr Krajcarz explains, their findings confirm the hypothesis that the Near East wildcats have spread across Europe accompanying the first farmers, probably as commensal animals. The results of the stable isotope analysis obtained for the Roman Period cats. however, seem to resemble those of men and dogs which suggests that cats followed a similar diet, i.e. they benefited from human resources or were possibly fed by men. Also, the development in farming partially influenced our native European wildcat, even if it was more forest resources oriented.
On the track of the cat history
Dr Magdalena Krajcarz and Prof. Daniel Makowiecki from the Institute of Archaeology at the Nicolaus Copernicus University are continuing their research on the history of domestic cats. Together with a team of paleogeneticians supervised by Dr Danijela Popovi? from the Warsaw University, they are initiating a new research project, 5,000 Years of History of Domestic Cats in Central Europe: an Interdisciplinary Paleogenetic and Archaeozoological Study funded by the National Centre of Science. The project will be based on the international cooperation with researchers representing European institutions including Belgium, Serbia, Lithuania, Slovakia, and the Czech Republic.
The main aim of the four year project is to reconstruct migration trails of domestic cats from their domestication regions to Europe and look for traces of the cat genome selection, natural and/or controlled by men. The research team is planning to analyze hundreds of cat bone remains from archaeological and paleontological sites. In the interdisciplinary project, conventional archaeozoological and paleontological morphometric methods as well as fossil DNA analysis and radiocarbon dating will be employed.
The researchers wish to trace all the phenotypic and genetic changes in cats which are responsible for domestication (aesthetic: size, coloration; behavioral: reducing aggression; physiological: adopting to digest anthropogenic food, e.g. milk, starch).
On the basis of the genomic data, they want to estimate the cross-breeding intensity of the Nubian cat and the European wildcat in order to check whether it increased together with the domestic cat population expansion.
