Rare archaeological site reveals ‘surprising’ Neanderthal behaviour at Pyrenees foothills

 

Peer-Reviewed Publication

 

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ANU archaeologist Dr Sofia Samper Carro says the insights found at Abric Pizarro challenge widespread beliefs that Neanderthals only hunted large animals. 

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Credit: Photo: Sofia Samper Carro

An unchartered area in the foothills of the Southern Pyrenees in Spain is providing insights into a poorly known period of Neanderthal history, offering clues that could help archaeologists uncover the mystery of their downfall, according to new research from The Australian National University (ANU).
 
Abric Pizarro is one of only a few sites worldwide dating from 100,000 to 65,000 years ago during a period called MIS 4. The researchers have gathered hundreds of thousands of artefacts, including stone tools, animal bones and other evidence, providing significant data about the Neanderthal way of life during that time -- largely unknown in human history until now.

The findings reveal Neanderthals were able to adapt to their environment, challenging the archaic humans’ reputation as slow-footed cavemen and shedding light on their survival and hunting skills.

Lead author and ANU archaeologist, Dr Sofia Samper Carro, said that the findings show that Neanderthals knew the best ways to exploit the area and territory and were resilient through harsh climate conditions.

“Our surprising findings at Abric Pizarro show how adaptable Neanderthals were. The animal bones we have recovered indicate that they were successfully exploiting the surrounding fauna, hunting red deer, horses and bison, but also eating freshwater turtles and rabbits, which imply a degree of planning rarely considered for Neanderthals,” she said.

According to the researchers, these new insights challenge widespread beliefs that Neanderthals only hunted large animals, such as horses and rhinoceros.

“Through the bones that we are finding, which display cut marks, we have direct proof that Neanderthals were capable of hunting small animals,” Dr Samper Carro said.

“The bones on this site are very well preserved, and we can see marks of how Neanderthals processed and butchered these animals.

“Our analysis of the stone artefacts also demonstrates variability in the type of tools produced, indicating Neanderthals’ capability to exploit the available resources in the area.”

Shedding light on this crucial transitional period helps archaeologists edge closer to solving a mystery that has plagued researchers for decades: what drove the Neanderthals to extinction?

According to the researchers, finding sites like Abric Pizarro, from this specific and not well-recorded period, gives information about how Neanderthals lived when modern humans were not in the area yet and shows that they were thriving.

“The unique site at Abric Pizarro gives a glimpse of Neanderthal behaviour in a landscape they had been roaming for hundreds of thousands of years,” Dr Samper Carro said.

“Neanderthals disappeared around 40,000 years ago. Suddenly, we modern humans appear in this region of the Pyrenees, and the Neanderthals disappear. But before that, Neanderthals had been living in Europe for almost 300,000 years.

“They clearly knew what they were doing. They knew the area and how to survive for a long time.

“This is one of the most interesting things about this site, to have this unique information about when Neanderthals were alone and living in harsh conditions and how they thrived before modern humans appeared.”

Thanks to modern excavation techniques, Abric Pizarro and other nearby Neanderthal sites provide fine-grain data to understand Neanderthal behaviour.

“We 3D plot every single remain found larger than one to two centimetres. This makes our work slow, and we have been excavating some of these sites for over 20 years, but it turns into a uniquely precise recording of the sites,” Dr Samper Carro said.

“We are interested in how the different data relates to each other, from stone tools to bones and hearths. This more thorough excavation gives archaeologists information on how Neanderthals lived and how long they were in an area.

“It’s not only the individual materials that give us clues, but also where exactly they are found in relation to other materials on the site that helps us understand how and when Neanderthals were visiting these sites. Were they settled there or just passing through?”

The research team also included scientists from the Autonomous University of Barcelona (CEPAP-UAB). Research in the Catalan Pre-Pyrenees is supported by The Spanish Ministry of Science and Innovation and the Culture Department of the Catalan Government.

The research is published in the Journal of Archaeological Science.

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Journal

Journal of Archaeological Science

DOI

10.1016/j.jas.2024.106038 

A Bronze Age technology could aid the switch to clean energy

Technology with roots going back to the Bronze Age may offer a fast and inexpensive solution to help achieve the United Nations climate goal of net zero emissions by 2050, according to recent Stanford-led research in PNAS Nexus.

The technology involves assembling heat-absorbing bricks in an insulated container, where they can store heat generated by solar or wind power for later use at the temperatures required for industrial processes. The heat can then be released when needed by passing air through channels in the stacks of “firebricks,” thus allowing cement, steel, glass, and paper factories to run on renewable energy even when wind and sunshine are unavailable.

These systems, which several companies have recently begun to commercialize for industrial heat storage, are a form of thermal energy storage. The bricks are made from the same materials as the insulating bricks that lined primitive kilns and iron-making furnaces thousands of years ago. To optimize for heat storage instead of insulation, the materials are combined in different amounts.

Batteries can store electricity from renewable sources and provide electricity to generate heat on demand. “The difference between firebrick storage and battery storage is that the firebricks store heat rather than electricity and are one-tenth the cost of batteries,” said lead study author Mark Z. Jacobson, a professor of civil and environmental engineering in the Stanford Doerr School of Sustainability and School of Engineering. “The materials are much simpler too. They are basically just the components of dirt.”

High heat storage

Many industries require high-temperature heat for manufacturing. Temperatures in factories need to reach at least 1,300 degrees Celsius (nearly 2,400 degrees Fahrenheit) to produce cement, and 1,000 C (about 1,800 F) or hotter for glass, iron, and steelmaking. Today, about 17% of all carbon dioxide emissions worldwide stem from burning fossil fuels to produce heat for industrial processes, according to Jacobson and co-author Daniel Sambor’s calculations. Generating industrial heat from renewable sources could all but eliminate these emissions.

“By storing energy in the form closest to its end use, you reduce inefficiencies in energy conversion,” said Sambor, a postdoctoral scholar in civil and environmental engineering. “It’s often said in our field that ‘if you want hot showers, store hot water, and if you want cold drinks, store ice’; so this study can be summarized as ‘if you need heat for industry, store it in firebricks.’”

Substantial savings

The researchers set out to examine the impact of using firebricks to store most industrial process heat in 149 countries in a hypothetical future where each country has transitioned to wind, geothermal, hydropower, and solar for all energy purposes. The 149 countries are responsible for 99.75% of global carbon dioxide emissions from fossil fuels. “Ours is the first study to examine a large-scale transition of renewable energy with firebricks as part of the solution,” Jacobson said. “We found that firebricks enable a faster and lower-cost transition to renewables, and that helps everyone in terms of health, climate, jobs, and energy security.”

The team used computer models to compare costs, land needs, health impacts, and emissions involved in two scenarios for a hypothetical future where 149 countries in 2050 are using renewables for all energy purposes. In one scenario, firebricks provide 90% of industrial process heat. In the other, there’s zero adoption of firebricks or other forms of thermal energy storage for industrial processes. In the no-firebrick scenario, the researchers assumed heat for industrial processes would come instead from electric furnaces, heaters, boilers, and heat pumps, with batteries used to store electricity for those technologies.

The researchers found the scenario with firebricks could cut capital costs by $1.27 trillion across the 149 countries compared with the scenario with no firebrick storage, while reducing demand for energy from the grid and the need for energy storage capacity from batteries.

Clean energy, cleaner air

Solutions for accelerating the transition to clean energy are also connected to human health. Previous research has shown that air pollution from burning fossil fuels causes millions of early deaths each year. “Every bit of combustion fuels we replace with electricity reduces that air pollution,” Jacobson said. “And because there is a limited amount of money to transition at a high speed, the lower the cost to the overall system, the faster we can implement it.”

Jacobson has spent his career understanding air pollution and climate problems and developing energy plans for countries, states, and cities to solve these problems. But his focus on firebricks is relatively new, inspired by a desire to identify effective solutions that could be adopted quickly.

“Imagine if we propose an expensive and difficult method of transitioning to renewable electricity – we’d have very few takers. But, if this will save money compared with a previous method, it will be implemented more rapidly,” he said. “What excites me is that the impact is very large, whereas a lot of technologies that I’ve looked at, they have marginal impacts. Here I can see a substantial benefit at low cost from multiple angles, from helping to reduce air pollution mortality to making it easier to transition the world to clean renewables.”

Arabs and Imazighen reached north Africa thousands of years apart -Imazighen reach north Africa more than 20,000 years ago

 

 

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DEMOGRAPHIC MODEL OF NORTH AFRICAN POPULATIONS OBTAINED WITH THE GP4PG ALGORITHM

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CREDIT: GENOME BIOLOGY

Made up of Tunisia, Libya, Morocco, Egypt and Algeria, north Africa is a melting pot of cultures with two predominant human populations with their own language and culture: the Arabs and the Imazighen. Part of their history has been buried beneath the desert, from which some research has extracted human remains up to 300,000 years old. However, their origins remained a mystery.

Demographic model of North African populations obtained with the GP4PG algorithm (IMAGE)

UNIVERSITAT POMPEU FABRA - BARCELONA

 

CAPTION

Demographic model of North African populations obtained with the GP4PG algorithm

CREDIT

Genome Biology

Now, research led by David Comas, a full professor at the UPF Department of Medicine and Life Sciences (MELIS) and principal investigator at the Institute of Evolutionary Biology (IBE), a joint centre of the Spanish National Research Council (CSIC) and the Pompeu Fabra University (UPF), and Òscar Lao, also an IBE principal investigator, has discovered, using artificial intelligence tools, that the Imazighen (Amazigh in the singular) and the Arab people of north Africa have different genetic origins. For the first time, the study reveals that the two separated more than 20,000 years ago and sheds light on the region’s complex demographic history.

The ancestors of the Imazighen reach north Africa more than 20,000 years ago

Due to its geographical location, north Africa is a conclave of cultures that has received people from Europe, the Middle East and sub-Saharan Africa for thousands of years. This confluence of populations has enriched the population genome of the region, generating a complex phylogenetic puzzle.

To shed light on the origin and evolution of the Arab and Imazighen populations, the team conducted a comprehensive analysis of 364 complete genomes from different populations. To do so, it developed an innovative computational model with natural computing methods, within the field of artificial intelligence, dubbed “genetic programming for population genetics” (GP4PG). The results reveal that the differentiation between the Arab people and the Amazigh took place far earlier than expected.

“The new GP4PG model has allowed a more precise, robust and refined analysis, which for the first time clearly separates the two peoples more than 20,000 years ago, when the Imazighen returned to Africa from Eurasia in the movement known as ‘back to Africa’”, says Óscar Lao, principal investigator of the Institute of Evolutionary Biology (IBE).

“Human remains from about 22,000 years old have been found in Morocco that, according to these results, could be the ancestors of today’s Imazighen”, says David Comas, a full professor of Anthropology at the MELIS-UPF and a researcher at the IBE.

Arabs and Imazighen reached north Africa thousands of years apart

The Arab and Amazigh peoples arrived in north Africa with the migratory phenomenon known as “back to Africa”, after the departure by human populations out of Africa, a population movement whose genetic legacy endures today in its inhabitants.

“With this study we have seen that Arabs and Imazighen have not separated recently due to a question of geography, culture or language, but the genomes confirm that they became genetically differentiated about 20,000 years ago due to the different times at which the two populations colonized north Africa”, David Comas comments.

Previous studies argued that the region’s current Arab population originated in the Neolithic. However, research reveals that the majority of the Arab population colonized north Africa from the Middle East much later, during the “Arabization” of the 7th century AD.

Thus, this would be the cause of the close genetic relationship between today’s Arab populations of north Africa and those of the Middle East.

“With the GP4PG model we can observe that the arrival of the Arab people around 600 AD generated a gradual genetic gradient that declines from east to west, from the Middle East to sub-Saharan Africa”, Óscar Lao comments.

Ancient DNA analyses imply brucellosis evolved with development of farming

 

Peer-Reviewed Publication

 

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THE 8,000-YEAR-OLD SHEEP BONE FROM WHICH DNA WAS EXTRACTED.

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CREDIT: DR KEVIN DALY

Scientists believe the bacterial infection brucellosis, which affects millions of people every year and causes significant harm to the welfare of livestock, may have evolved along with the development of farming. They came to this conclusion after performing analyses of ancient DNA extracted from an 8,000-year-old sheep bone, in which the Brucella melitensis pathogen was detected.

Passed on by the consumption of unpasteurised milk and close contact with infected animals, brucellosis can cause waves of undulating fever and, tragically, the infection-related loss of pregnancy in pregnant women. Now, researchers have recovered a millennia-old genome of the sheep, goat, and human-infecting pathogen.

Recently published in the leading journal Nature Communications, the study reveals that the pathogen responsible for most brucellosis infections, Brucella melitensis, existed over 8,000 years ago in Neolithic times. 

Pathogen evolution and ancient DNA

How long have we lived with disease-causing pathogens? How and when did the pathogens which infect both humans and animals – known as zoonoses – evolve? And did we play a role in their evolution? These are questions which have long challenged researchers, particularly due to the difficulty of studying the deep past. 

But recent advances in the field of ancient DNA – the sequencing of genomes from organisms thousands of years in the past, from DNA typically preserved in bones and teeth – have allowed these questions to be directly addressed.

Ancient Brucella

In this study an international team of geneticists and archaeologists succeeded in detecting the Brucella in DNA from an 8,000-year-old sheep bone from Menteşe Höyük, an archaeological settlement in Northwest Türkiye, which shows the pathogen was circulating in herds of the world's first animal farmers.

“Looking for ancient pathogen DNA is like looking for a needle in a haystack,” says Louis L'Hôte, PhD student in Trinity College Dublin’s School of Genetics and Microbiology, and lead author of the study.

“It requires well preserved DNA and the presence of the infectious agent during the life of the animal. We were lucky enough to detect the presence of Brucella melitensis in Menteşe Höyük, which is a sign that the bacteria was infecting livestock during the Neolithic.” 

The evolution of different pathogens

Using the genome, the researchers were able to time when Brucella melitensis, which typically infects sheep and goats, evolved from its shared ancestor with Brucella abortus, which mostly infects cattle. They estimate that this happened ~9,800 years ago, in a period known as the Neolithic, when crop and livestock farming first developed. 

Intriguingly, this overlaps with when livestock keeping had become more developed, with farming communities keeping a mixture of animals. 

Farming and pathogen host-jumping

“By bringing together animals such as sheep, goat, cattle and pigs, which may rarely have lived in the same spaces together, early livestock farmers may have created an evolutionary melting pot for pathogen host-jumping, says Dr Kevin Daly, Ad Astra Assistant Professor at University College Dublin (and formerly of Trinity), who supervised the study. 

“For as long as we have kept animals as livestock, humanity has risked disease exposure – a problem we still grapple with 10,000 years later,” he adds.

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JOURNAL

Nature Communications

DOI

10.1038/s41467-024-50536-1 

Rock art and archaeological record reveal man’s complex relationship with Amazonian animals

Peer-Reviewed Publication

 

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CERRO AZUL WITH THE LOCATION OF THE ROCK ART PANELS AND THE EXCAVATION SITE ANALYSED IN THIS STUDY

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CREDIT: UNIVERSITY OF EXETER

Rock art explored by archaeologists in the Colombian Amazon has provided an insight into the complex relationship between the earliest settlers on the continent and the animals they encountered.

Spectacular ochre paintings of a wide variety of animal species, including depictions of animals and humans transforming into one another, indicate the rich mythology that guided generations of indigenous Amazonians.

And while the images found adorning the rocky outcrop of Cerro Azul in the Serranía de la Lindosa have yet to be accurately dated, associated evidence of human activity suggests they are likely to have served as galleries for thousands of years, as far back as 10,500BC.

The research, led by an international team from the University of Exeter, Universidad de Antioquia, Medellín and the Universidad Nacional de Colombia, and published in the Journal of Anthropological Archaeology, integrated zooarchaeological analysis of animal remains recovered from nearby excavations with analysis of the artistic depictions. The animal remains revealed a diverse diet, including fish, a range of small to large mammals, and reptiles, including turtle, snake, and crocodile. However, the proportions of animal bones do not match the proportional representation of animals, suggesting the artists did not just paint what they ate. 

“These rock art sites include the earliest evidence of humans in western Amazonia, dating back 12,500 years ago,” says Dr Mark Robinson, Associate Professor of Archaeology in Exeter’s Department of Archaeology and History. “As such, the art is an amazing insight into how these first settlers understood their place in the world and how they formed relationships with animals. The context demonstrates the complexity of Amazonian relationships with animals, both as a food source but also as revered beings, which had supernatural connections and demanded complex negotiations from ritual specialists.” 

Archaeologists have documented several significant rock art sites in the region since a peace agreement between the Colombian government and FARC in 2016 paved the way for a safe resumption of scientific investigations. Cerro Azul, a free-standing table-top hill located close to the Guayabero River in the northwest of the Department of Guaviare, was among them. There, 16 ‘panels’ of ochre drawings were found, several of which could only be accessed via strenuous climbing and the use of ropes.

The research team, which included academics from the UK, Colombia, and Germany, chose to focus on six panels in detail. These ranged from the 40m-by-10m El Más Largo, which contained more than 1,000 images, to the much smaller, 10m-by-6m panel called Principal, many of whose 244 images are extremely well-preserved in vibrant red. 

A total of 3,223 images were catalogued using drone photogrammetry and traditional photography. The images were categorised by their form, with figurative images being the most commonly occurring, contributing 58% of the total. More than half of these related to animals. At least 22 different animals were identified, including deer, birds, peccary, lizards, turtles, and tapir. 

Although fish remains are abundant in the archaeological remains, their appearance in the art is limited to just two panels, in what appear to be fishing scenes. Notable by their absence were big cats, despite their position as apex predators and the evidence of artwork at other Colombian sites. The researchers speculate that the artists were potentially restricted from depicting powerful beasts, such as the jaguar. While images of figures combining human and animal characteristics reveal a complex mythology of transformation between animal and human states that is still present within modern Amazonian communities. 

The diverse array of animals represented in the art and the archaeological remains demonstrates a broad understanding and exploitation of a multitude of environments in the region, including savannah, flooded forests and rivers. 

“The Indigenous people of Cerro Azul and the surrounding lands hunted and depicted a diverse array of animals from different ecologies – from aquatic fish to arboreal monkeys; terrestrial deer to aerial birds, both nocturnal and diurnal,” says Dr Javier Aceituno, of Universidad de Antioquia, Medellín. “They had intimate knowledge of the various habitats in the region and possessed the relevant skills to track and hunt animals and harvest plants from each, as part of a broad subsistence strategy.”

“Our approach reveals differences between what indigenous communities exploited for food and what is conceptually important to represent – and not represent – in art," concludes Professor Jose Iriarte, also of Exeter. "Though we cannot be certain what meaning these images have, they certainly do offer greater nuance to our understanding of the power of myths in indigenous communities. They are particularly revealing when it comes to more cosmological aspects of Amazonian life, such as what is considered taboo, where power resides, and how negotiations with the supernatural were conducted.” 

Animals of the Serranía de la Lindosa: Exploring representation and categorisation in the rock art and zooarchaeological remains of the Colombian Amazon, has been published in the latest edition of the Journal of Anthropological Archaeology.

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JOURNAL

Journal of Anthropological Archaeology

DOI

10.1016/j.jaa.2024.101613 

Genetics reveal ancient trade routes and path to domestication of the Four Corners potato

 

Genetic analysis shows that ancient Indigenous people transported, cultivated and may have domesticated the native tuber outside of its natural distribution, reflecting the enduring ecological legacy of Indigenous people in the Southwestern U.S.

 

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ALASTAIR LEE BITSÓÍ, DINÉ, WITH FOUR CORNERS POTATOES AT HIS FARM IN THE NAVAJO NATION.

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CREDIT: ALASTAIR LEE BITSÓÍ

A new study shows that a native potato species was brought to southern Utah by Indigenous people in the distant past, adding to an ever-growing list of culturally significant plant species that pre-contact cultures domesticated in the Southwestern U.S. 

The team of researchers, led by Red Butte Garden and the Natural History Museum of Utah (NHMU) at the University of Utah, used genetic analysis to reveal how and where tubers of the Four Corners potato (Solanum jamesii) had been collected, transported and traded throughout the Colorado Plateau. The findings support the assertion that the tuber is a “lost sister,” joining maize, beans and squash—commonly known as the three sisters—as a staple of crops ingeniously grown across the arid landscape.

“Transport is one of the early crucial steps in the domestication of native plants into crops," said Dr. Lisbeth Louderback, curator of archaeology for NHMU, associate professor of anthropology at the U and coauthor of the study. “Domestication can begin with people gathering and replanting propagules in a new location.”

The authors collected DNA samples from modern Four Corners potato populations near archaeological sites and from non-archaeological populations within the potato's natural range in the Mogollon Rim of central Arizona and New Mexico. The findings indicate that the potato was transported and cultivated, likely by the ancestors of modern Pueblo (Hopi, Zuni, Tewa, Zia), Diné, Southern Paiute and Apache tribes. 

"The Four Corners potato, along with maize, cacao, and agave, reflects the significant influence of humans on plant diversity in the landscape over millennia,” said Dr. Bruce Pavlik, former director of conservation at Red Butte Garden and lead author of the study.

The paper published on July 12, 2024, in the American Journal of Botany.

S. jamesii has twice the protein, calcium, magnesium and iron content than an organic red potato, and a single tuber can grow to yield up to 600 small tubers in just four months. The nutritious crop would have been a highly valued trade item and crucial in the lean winter months. While the unique distribution of the Four Corners potato came as a surprise to scientists and researchers, local Tribal members suspected this all along. 

“The Southwest was an important, overlooked secondary region of domestication. Ancient Indigenous People were highly knowledgeable agriculturalists tuned into their regional ecological environs who traded extensively and grew the plants in many different environments,” said Wendy Hodgson, herbarium curator and research botanist at the Desert Botanical Garden. “Such studies highlight the need to learn from Indigenous Peoples’ perspectives, ethnographic reports, and to view landscapes and some plant species from a cultural, rather than ‘natural’, perspective.”

The lost sister

The Mogollon Rim region encompasses southcentral Arizona, extending east and north into the Mogollon Mountains of New Mexico. Jagged limestone and sandstone cliffs break up the ponderosas, pinyons and junipers scattered across the high-altitude terrain. S. jamesii is widely distributed across the Rim—the plants thrive in conifer woodlands, and thousands of small tubers can grow beneath a single pinyon pine canopy. These “non-archaeological” populations lack an association with artifacts, grow to be quite large and are continuously distributed across the habitat. 

In contrast, “archaeological populations” of the potato occur within 300 meters of ancient habitation sites and tend to be smaller than in the species’ central distribution. The sparse, isolated populations across the Colorado Plateau exhibit a genetic makeup only explained by human gathering and transport.

“Tribes of the Four Corners region have nurtured a connection to food and landscape biodiversity since time immemorial,” said Alastair Lee Bitsóí (Diné), a Navajo journalist who grows and reports on the Four Corners potato. “I've grown spuds from Bears Ears, Grand Staircase and Mesa Verde region at my family's farm in the Navajo Nation, and from them a new generation has been born. Like the ancestors, I am a dispersal agent for its transport and cultivation.”

To reproduce sexually—that is, to create viable seeds—flowers must receive pollen from a different plant with specific, compatible genetic factors. Without the right companion, plants will clone themselves by sprouting from underground stems to create a genetically identical daughter plant. Its cloning capability allows S. jamesii to persist even when conditions are far from ideal. It also provides a genetic stamp marking where each population originated. This signature is common in potatoes carried to locations with few other individuals and persists for hundreds of generations.

Researchers collected DNA samples from 682 individual plants across 25 populations of the Four Corner potato—14 populations were near archaeological sites, while 11 were from non-archaeological areas in its natural distribution. The results showed that the most genetically diverse populations of S. jamesii were concentrated around the Mogollon Rim. Conversely, populations from archaeological sites exhibited reduced genetic diversity because the transported tubers may have only contained a fraction of the available genes. 

Tracing the origins of archaeological populations

The authors found that populations of S. jamesii in Escalante Valley in Southern Utah have two different origins—one directly from the Mogollon Rim region and one related to Bears Ears, Mesa Verde and El Morro. These archaeological sites form a genetic corridor suggesting ancient people transported the tubers north south to north transport of tubers. 

Despite being close geographically, four archaeological populations around Escalante Valley show distinct origins. The genetic signatures could indicate that people transported potatoes to new locations multiple times in the distant past in a pattern likely corresponding to ancient trade routes.

“The potato joins a large assemblage of goods that were traded across this vast cultural landscape,” said Louderback. “For millennia, people of the southwest participated in social networks, migration and trade routes in the region.”

What is clear is that the species has been transported and grown far from its center of natural distribution. Scientists from the USDA Potato Gene Bank have been sampling the genetics of the Four Corner’s potato for decades and were intrigued by the diversity of genetic patterns along the geographic range.

“We used to wonder about the patterns of genetic diversity distribution of Solanum jamesii,” said Dr. Alfonso del Rio, plant geneticist at the University of Wisconsin-Madison and the U.S. Department of Agriculture Potato Genebank and coauthor of the study. “It wasn't clear to us that humans had altered its range, but now we have evidence confirming just that."

The researchers interpret the transport of the Four Corners potato as early stages of domestication, however, they plan to analyze specific gene sequences to learn more about S. jamesii.

“We’d like to look at specific genetic markers for certain desirable traits such as taste, tuber size and frost tolerance,” said Pavlik. “It's entirely possible that Indigenous people were preferring certain traits and thus trying to encourage favorable genes.”

“Agave, the Four Corners potato, and other domesticated species are excellent candidates for arid land cultivation at a time when we are faced with many challenges including food security and water resource availability,” said Hodgson. “As illustrated in this and other studies, protecting and understanding the distribution, and ecological and cultural roles of these plants require interdisciplinary collaboration between botanists, archaeologists, federal agencies and Indigenous Peoples.”

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JOURNAL

American Journal of Botany

DOI

10.1002/ajb2.16365 

Hunter-gatherers kept an 'orderly home' in the earliest known British dwelling

 

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A RECONSTRUCTION OF WHAT A DWELLING FOR A HUNTER-GATHERER COULD HAVE LOOKED LIKE.

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CREDIT: UNIVERSITY OF YORK, YEAR CENTRE

Archaeological evidence from the world-famous Mesolithic site of Star Carr in North Yorkshire has shown that hunter-gatherers likely kept an orderly home by creating ‘zones’ for particular domestic activities.

The research team from the University of York and the University of Newcastle, looked at microscopic evidence from the use of stone tools found inside three structures - potentially cone-like in shape or domed -  dating to over 11,000 years ago at the Star Carr site.

They found that there was a range of activities that were likely to have taken place inside the ‘home’, including wood, bone, antler, plant, hide, meat and fish related work.  The researchers then plotted out spatial patterns for these activities to pin-point where within the dwelling these activities might have occurred.

Dr Jess Bates, from the University of York’s Department of Archaeology said: “We found that there were distinct areas for different types of activity, so the messy activity involving butchery, for example, was done in what appears to be a designated space, and separate to the ‘cleaner’ tasks such as crafting bone and wooden objects, tools or jewellery.  

“This was surprising as hunter-gatherers are known for being very mobile, as they would have to travel out to find food, and yet they have a very organised approach to creating not just a house but a sense of home.  

“This new work, on these very early forms of houses suggests, that these dwellings didn’t just serve a practical purpose in the sense of having a shelter from the elements, but that certain social norms of a home were observed that are not massively dissimilar to how we organise our homes today.”

Previous work has also shown that there is evidence that hunter-gatherers kept their dwellings clean, as well as orderly, with indications that sweeping of the inside of the structure took place.

Star Carr provides the earliest known evidence of British dwellings and some of the earliest forms of architecture. One of the structures found was believed to be shaped like a cone and was constructed out of wood from felled trees, as well as coverings possibly made from plants, like reeds, or animal hides. There is still very little known about why hunter-gatherers would build such structures and continued to throughout the Mesolithic period.  

Dr Bates said: “Not only do we now know that hunter-gatherers were constructing these dwellings, but they had a shared group understanding of how to organise tasks within them. 

“In modern society we are very attached to our homes both physically and emotionally, but in the deep past communities were highly mobile so it is fascinating to see that despite this there is still this concept of keeping an orderly home space.

“This study shows that micro-scale analysis can be a really exciting way of getting at the details of these homes and what these spaces meant to those who lived there.”

The research is published in the journal PLOS One.