A joint research group led by Jonghyun Kim and Jun Ohashi of the University of Tokyo has demonstrated that the majority of immigration to the Japanese Archipelago in the Yayoi and Kofun periods (between 3000 BCE and 538 CE) came from the Korean Peninsula. The researchers analyzed the complete genome of a “Yayoi” individual and found that, among the non-Japanese populations, the results bore the most similarity to Korean populations. Although it is widely accepted that modern Japanese populations have a dual ancestry, the discovery provides insight into the details of immigration patterns to the archipelago that have eluded scientists thus far. The findings were published in the Journal of Human Genetics.
Today, Japan is an international hub for both business and pleasure. However, this was not always the case. The Japanese Archipelago was relatively isolated during the Jomon period until around 3000 BCE. Then, during the Yayoi and Kofun periods, immigration to the islands from continental Asia began.
“East Asian-related and Northeast Asian-related ancestries account for over 80% of nuclear genomes of the modern Japanese population,” explains Ohashi, the principal investigator of the study. “However, how the Japanese population acquired these genetic ancestries—that is, the origins of the immigration—is not fully understood.”
Various theories have been proposed to explain the genetic variety in the modern population. Currently, the two contenders are the two-way and three-way admixture models. According to the two-way model, the main source of immigration was the same during the Yayoi and Kofun periods, while the three-way model assumes two different sources. To investigate which model was the better fit, the researchers analyzed the complete nuclear genome of an individual from the Doigahama Site, the archeological site of a Yayoi period cemetery in Yamaguchi prefecture, Japan.
The researchers compared the genome of this Yayoi-period individual with the genome of ancient and modern populations in East Asia and Northeast Asia. The comparison showed close similarity to Kofun period individuals with distinct Jomon-related, East Asian-related, and Northeast Asian-related ancestries. However, a comparison with modern genomes also revealed that the Yayoi individual, except for modern Japanese populations, was the closest to modern Korean populations, which also have both East Asian-related and Northeast Asian-related ancestries.
“Our results suggest that between the Yayoi and Kofun periods, the majority of immigrants to the Japanese Archipelago originated primarily from the Korean Peninsula,” says Ohashi. “The results also mean the three-way admixture model, which posits that a Northeast Asian group migrated to the Japanese Archipelago during the Yayoi period and an East Asian group during the Kofun period, is incorrect.”
Despite the significance of these findings, Ohashi is already looking ahead.
“Since our study has identified the primary origins of the immigrants, our next goal is to examine the genomes of more Yayoi individuals to clarify why more than 80% of the genomic components of the modern Japanese population are derived from immigration and how the admixture between continental Asian and indigenous Jomon people progressed within the Japanese Archipelago.”
Indigenous hunter-gatherer practices play key role in plant dispersal, genetic diversity and conservation, according to new research led by Penn State anthropologists
UNIVERSITY PARK, Pa. — Some of the wild plants that grow across the Australian landscape may not be so wild, according to new research led by Penn State scientists.
The researchers studied four wild Australian plants — three test species and one control group — and how the hunting-gathering practices of the Martu Aboriginal people affect where these non-domesticated plants grow on the landscape. They found that the three test species, especially the wild bush tomato, rely on human activity for seed dispersal. The findings, published in Nature Communications, challenge the conventional notion of agriculture and suggest that humans impacted plants’ genetic diversity long before the advent of farming.
“This research is one of the first to show that peoples who are not already engaged in agriculture are still having long-term effects on plant populations,” said Rebecca Bliege Bird, first author of the study and professor of anthropology at Penn State. “In Australia, we’re talking about 50,000 years of Aboriginal involvement with these plants.”
The Martu Aboriginal people have lived in Australia for thousands of years and largely maintained their hunter-gatherer lifestyle to the current day, eschewing the permanency of farming specific crops for their nomadic customs, the researchers explained. Many avoided contact with European settlers and their descendants until the 1960s, when the government removed them from their ancestral lands prior to conducting inter-ballistic missile tests. They began returning to their lands in the 1980s, according to the researchers.
To see how Martu customs and practices affect plant distribution across the landscape, the researchers focused on three edible plants important for sustenance and cultural identity — the bush raisin, the bush tomato and love grass, which the Martu winnow and turn into flour. The researchers also looked at the distribution of the fanflower, which is not actively foraged.
The researchers accompanied Martu harvesters on foraging expeditions over a 10-year period and surveyed plants at active and archaeological dinner camp locations where Martu peoples processed and consumed these and other foods. They also used satellite data and ecological surveys to understand the landscape impacts of fires intentionally set by Martu hunters to drive out game. Then they entered the data — like site type, nearest water permanence and fire frequency — into statistical models to see which variables most likely contributed to the presence or absence of the four plants on the landscape.
They found that the three edible plants, especially the bush tomato and love grass, highly depend on both the dispersion of seed and the use of landscape fire for propagation across the landscape. For instance, Martu foragers may taste bush tomatoes while picking the fruit to make sure it’s sweet, discarding the bitter seeds in the bush tomato patch. Or after foraging and transporting the fruit nearer to the community, they may discard the seeds while processing the fruit in bulk around a campfire, explained Bliege Bird. The bush raisin only persists in landscapes where people are actively burning landscape fires for hunting small animals.
“The findings call into question our whole notions of what agriculture is,” said Douglas Bird, study co-author and professor of anthropology at Penn State. “Rather than thinking about the difference between agricultural societies and hunter-gatherer societies as a matter of kind, we’d be better off thinking about it as a matter of degree — that people influence plants long before they engage in what we think of as farming.”
The findings have implications for global conservation efforts of plant and animal species and emphasizes the importance of indigenous involvement in those efforts, according to the researchers.
“In Australia, the importance of an anthropogenic — or human-influenced — landscape for certain species was just critical in the 20th century,” Bliege Bird said. “In addition to promoting the persistence of edible plants, many small native mammals in Australia, especially those in the desert, relied on the anthropogenic fire mosaic. When Aboriginal fire activity was removed, a lot of those small animals went extinct locally or even on a continental scale. Recognizing indigenous involvement in landscapes and ecosystems not only helps us design better conservation policy but contributes to supporting indigenous rights to access land and traditional resources.”
WashU archaeologists are investigating coastal and underwater caves in southeastern Sicily, tracing early human dispersal onto the island. (Photo: Ilaria Patania)
Archaeological surveys led by scientists at Washington University in St. Louis suggest that coastal and underwater cave sites in southern Sicily contain important new clues about the path and fate of early human migrants to the island.
A new study in PLOS ONE reports and assesses the contents of 25 caves and rock shelters, most of them first identified between 1870 and the 1990s but essentially lost to science over time. Study authors also conducted new land and underwater surveys in previously unexplored coastal areas and uncovered three new sites that contain potentially important archaeological sediments.
“What we are looking for is not just the first person who arrived, but the first community,” said Ilaria Patania, an assistant professor of archaeology in Arts & Sciences. “Understanding the timing of the initial colonization of Sicily provides key data for the pattern and mode of the early expansion of Homo sapiens into the Mediterranean.”
Sicily is considered by many scholars to be the earliest island in the region to be permanently occupied by human ancestors, but when and how the early migrants accomplished this feat remains unknown. Sicily is less than two miles from mainland Italy, but the water crossing would have been extremely difficult for early humans.
Other studies have primarily focused on possible entry points on the island’s northern side.
“This research shows that new ways of thinking and looking can reveal patterns that weren’t visible before,” said T.R. Kidder, the Edward S. and Tedi Macias Professor of anthropology in Arts & Sciences at WashU, a co-author of the new study.
“Previous scholars assumed that sites on the southern coast of Sicily would be eroded or too damaged to yield useful information,” Kidder said. “But finding underwater sites opens up a whole new terrain to study. It allows us to reconsider routes of migration of these earliest modern human ancestors.”
Dangerous water crossing
Sicily, the largest Mediterranean island, is located just off the “toe” of Italy’s boot.
In the ancient Greek poem the “Odyssey,” Homer describes how Odysseus sailed his ship past the mythical sea monsters Scylla and Charybdis as he crossed the Sicily strait. The strait was well known to sailors of the past; they attributed the deadly forces of its waves and whirlpools to powerful monsters.
In modern times, thousands of migrants from North Africa attempt to cross the strait each year. Many don’t make it, some capsizing just a few hundred meters from landing.
Patania, a native of the island of Sicily, has a deep respect for the power of the sea. Her grandfather was a fisherman who worked on the same shores she now studies.
“Very early on, I was taught that the sea can be a great resource,” she said. “At the same time, you never turn your back on the sea. The sea can be very dangerous.”
This idea plays out in her research. “I’m very interested in how humans occupy marginal environments,” Patania said. “These are environments where if everything goes well, we are in perfect harmony with nature. But if something changes — and this could be something like global climate change, or something smaller, like the arrival of a new animal — it could be a catastrophe.”
Scholars of the region agree that humans had made it to Sicily by 16,000 years after the last glacial maximum. But that established date is puzzlingly late, given that humans are known to have dispersed by land into Siberia about 30,000 years earlier. The discrepancy has led some to wonder if humans actually arrived on Sicily much before the currently accepted dates.
Also, no one yet knows whether humans arrived on Sicily by seafaring, or by foot over a land bridge — or even what direction they came from.
“A challenge for understanding the spread of early modern human ancestors is that we don’t fully understand how they spread and colonized the world at a very early stage,” Kidder said. “As Ilaria says, this is a very marginal environment. Did folks come down from Italy and cross the Straits of Messina, or did they come from the south along the African coast? Or, is it possible that they were island hopping across the Mediterranean? Locating sites on the south coast helps us consider pathways and thus modes of behavior.”
“Our project is still in its early stages, but already we have identified and assessed over 40 sites of interest, of which about 17 are sites that have been relocated with greater precision based on older identifications,” Patania said.
She and her team prepared for their recent cave explorations by poring through the archives of local town libraries in Sicily, reading historical bulletins and news articles as far back as the 19th century.
The researchers identified potential sites and reviewed records and photographs of materials recovered by local avocational archaeologists. When possible, they interviewed workers that had been involved in earlier excavations, and they also talked with local recreational divers and fishermen.
For example, one of the co-authors on the new study is a retired tugboat captain. He has no formal scientific training, but he spent decades working on the decks of boats in and around the Port of Augusta.
“The moment I said that I was looking for paleosols, and that paleosols look like clay dirt that could be red or gray underwater, he said, ‘I know exactly what you are looking for,’” Patania said.
Patania also partnered with the superintendent of cultural and natural heritage of Siracusa and Ragusa (two provinces of Sicily) and the superintendent of the sea of Sicily to locate and recruit other local experts and stakeholders.
As the research has progressed, Patania also has spoken with officers in the Italian navy about training members of their specialized dive team to help identify underwater archaeological features. These divers spend a lot of time in local waters completing their regular tasks related to clearing ordnance and other debris from World War II.
“We’ve started with the area close to the coast, and we’re slowly going to move further out in the years to come,” Patania said.
Excavations continue
Two of the new sites in the PLOS ONE study may contain Upper Paleolithic human occupation traces, including fossil fauna, study authors said.
Corruggi is located at the southernmost tip of Sicily. The site was originally identified by other researchers in the 1940s.
“This site is where a second land bridge would have connected this island with the island of Malta,” Patania said.
“When we inspected this site, we found teeth from a European wild ass and stone tools,” she said. “Analyzing the remains from this site might give us insight on the very last leg of the human journey south into the southernmost coast of Sicily and off toward Malta.”
During summer 2024, project team members worked on excavating the second site, a cave called Campolato.
“Here we have discovered evidence for sea-level changes caused by the last glaciation and a localized earthquake that we are still investigating,” Patania said.
“We hope to reconstruct not only the timing of human occupation, but also the environment these people lived in and how they negotiated with natural events like earthquakes, climatic and environmental changes and maybe even volcanic eruptions,” she said.
A new study published in the journal Science Advances [1] by researchers at the IBS Center for Climate Physics (ICCP) at Pusan National University in South Korea shows that the patchwork of different ecosystems found in mountainous regions played a key role in the evolution of humans.
A notable feature of the archeological sites of early humans, members of the genus Homo known as hominins, is that they are often found in and near mountain regions. Using an extensive dataset of hominin fossils and artifacts, along with high-resolution landscape data and a 3-million-year-long simulation of Earth’s climate, the team of scientists from ICCP have provided a clearer picture of how and why early humans adapted to such rugged landscapes. In other words, they have helped explain why so many of our evolutionary relatives preferred being “steeplanders” as opposed to “flatlanders.”
Mountainous regions have enhanced biodiversity because the changes in elevation result in shifts of the climate, providing a range of environmental conditions under which different plant and animal species can thrive. The authors showed that steep regions usually exhibit a larger variety and density of ecosystems and vegetation types, known as biomes. Such biome diversity was a draw for early humans, as it provided increased food resources and resilience to climate change, an idea known as the Diversity Selection Hypothesis [2].
“When we analyzed the environmental factors that controlled where human species lived, we were surprised to see that terrain steepness was standing out as the dominant one, even more than local climate factors, such as temperature and precipitation.“ said Elke Zeller, PhD student from the IBS Center for Climate Physics and lead author of the study.
On the other hand, steep regions are more difficult to navigate than flatter terrain and require more energy to traverse. Hominins needed to gradually adapt to the challenges of rougher terrain in order to take advantage of the increased resources. The ICCP researchers examined how, over time, human adaptations changed the cost-benefit balance of living in rugged environments.
The adaptation towards steeper environments (Figs. 1 and 2) is visible for the earliest human species Homo habilis, Homo ergaster, and Homo erectus until about 1 million years ago, after which the topographic signal disappears for about 300,000 years. It reemerges again around 700,000 years ago with the advent of better adapted and more culturally advanced species such as Homo heidelbergensis and Homo neanderthalensis. These groups, which were able to control fire, also exhibited a much higher tolerance for colder and wetter climates.
“The decrease in topographic adaptation around 1 million years ago roughly coincides with large-scale reorganizations in our climate system, known as the Mid-Pleistocene Transition. It also lines up with evolutionary events such as a recently discovered ancestral genetic bottleneck, which drastically reduced human diversity, and the timing of the chromosome 2 merger in hominins. Whether this is all a coincidence, or whether the intensifying glacial climate shifts contributed to the genetic transitions in early humans, remains an open question,” said Axel Timmermann, Director of the IBS Center of Climate Physics and co-author of the study.
How humans have evolved over the past 3 million years and adapted to emerging environmental challenges is a hotly-debated research topic. The results of the South Korean research team provide a new piece in the puzzle of human evolution. Averaged over hundreds of thousands of years, across different species and continents, the data clearly show that our ancestors were “steeplanders.”
“Our results clearly show that over time hominins adapted to steep terrain and that this trend was likely driven by the regionally increased biodiversity. Our analysis suggests that it was beneficial for early human groups to populate mountainous regions, despite the increased energy consumption needed to scale these environments,” said Elke Zeller in summary.
[1] The evolving 3-dimensional landscape of human adaptation, Elke Zeller, Axel Timmermann,Science Advances, doi:10.1126/sciadv.adq3613, (2024)
[2] Human adaptation to diverse biomes over the past 3 million years, Elke Zeller, Axel Timmermann, Kyung-Sook Yun, Pasquale Raia, Karl Stein and Jiaoyang Ruan, Science, vol. 380, 6645, pp. 604-608, doi: 10.1126/science.abq1288 (2023)
Studying microscopic layers of dirt dug from the Tam PÃ Ling cave site in northeastern Laos has provided a team of Flinders University archaeologists and their international colleagues further insights into some of the earliest evidence of Homo sapiens in mainland Southeast Asia.
The site, which has been studied for the past 14 years by a team of Laotian, French, American and Australian scientists, has produced some of the earliest fossil evidence of our direct ancestors in Southeast Asia.
Now a new study, led by PhD candidate Vito Hernandez and Associate Professor Mike Morley from the College of Humanities, Arts and Social Sciences, has reconstructed the ground conditions in the cave between 52,000 and 10,000 years ago.
“Using a technique known as microstratigraphy at the Flinders Microarchaeology Laboratory, we were able to reconstruct the cave conditions in the past and identify traces of human activities in and around Tam PÃ Ling,” says Hernandez.
“This also helped us to determine the precise circumstances by which some of the earliest modern human fossils found in Southeast Asia were deposited deep inside.”
Microstratigraphy allows scientists to study dirt in its smallest detail, enabling them to observe structures and features that preserve information about past environments and even traces of human and animal activity that may have been overlooked during the excavation process due to their minuscule size.
The human fossils discovered at Tam PÃ Ling were deposited in the cave between 86,000–30,000 years ago but until now, researchers had not conducted a detailed analysis of the sediments surrounding these fossils to gain an understanding of how they were deposited in the cave or the environmental conditions at the time.
Published in Quaternary Science Reviews, the findings reveal conditions in the cave fluctuated dramatically, going from a temperate climate with frequent wet ground conditions to becoming seasonally dry.
“This change in environment influenced the cave’s interior topography and would have impacted how sediments, including human fossils, were deposited within the cave,” says Associate Professor Morley.
“How early Homo sapiens came to be buried deep within the cave has long been debated, but our sediment analysis indicates that the fossils were washed into the cave as loose sediments and debris accumulating over time, likely carried by water from surrounding hillsides during periods of heavy rainfall.”
The team also identified preserved micro-traces of charcoal and ash in the cave sediments, suggesting that either forest fires occurred in the region during the drier periods, or that humans visiting the cave may have used fire, either in the cave or near the entrance.
“This research has allowed our team to develop unprecedented insights into the dynamics of our ancestors as they dispersed through the ever-changing forest covers of Southeast Asia, and during periods of variable regional climate instability,” says study co-author Assistant Professor Fabrice Demeter, palaeoanthropologist from the University of Copenhagen, who has been leading the team of international researchers studying Tam PÃ n Ling since 2009.
The paper ‘Late Pleistocene–Holocene (52–10 ka) microstratigraphy, fossil taphonomy and depositional environments from Tam Pa Ling cave (northeastern Laos)’ by VC Hernandez, MW Morley, AM Bacon, P Duringer, KE Westaway, R Joannes-Boyau, JL Ponche, C Zanolli, P Sichanthongtip, S Boualaphane, T Luangkhoth, JJ Hublin, F Demeter is published in Quaternary Science Reviews. DOI to come.
Journal
Quaternary Science Reviews
Method of Research
Observational study
Subject of Research
Not applicable
Article Title
Late Pleistocene–Holocene (52–10 ka) microstratigraphy, fossil taphonomy and depositional environments from Tam Pa Ling cave (northeastern Laos)
Experiment with experienced fighters who spar freely using different styles. From top to bottom: one-handed spear and shield, two-handed spear with binding, two-handed spear strike
Credit: Valerio Gentile, available via cc licence from https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jas.2024.106044
How can we tell whether and how a prehistoric weapon was used? How can we better understand the dexterity and combat skills involved in Bronze Age spear fighting? A research team including Göttingen University present a new approach to answering these questions: they simulated the actual fight step-by-step to get new insights into fighting styles and the formation of marks on the weapons. In addition, they took into account how these marks change over time. Their findings were published in the Journal of Archaeological Science.
Studying Bronze Age spear fighting helps researchers better understand battle strategies and the development of weapons. Experimental methods can be used to investigate how spears interact with different materials as well as how the marks form and what they mean. For this reason, the team constructed replicas of Bronze Age spears and used them in realistic combat scenarios to see how the spearheads reacted against metal blades, wooden shafts and shields. The researchers also used animal tissues to mimic the human body. The team used knowledge pooled from previous research to develop this reliably repeatable method to better understand the dynamics of combat and the formation of marks on the weapons. These experiments make it possible to examine the type and frequency of collisions in spear fighting and, for the first time, show how impact marks on spears develop over time. The tests provided clues to the skills required for various fighting techniques and produced precious information for the reconstruction of combat encounters from the marks that the weapons bear on their surface. In fact, the experimentally generated marks successfully mirrored those found on weapons in many archaeological finds: this means that it is now possible to reconstruct if and how Bronze Age spears in museum collections were used.
“Our experiments will benefit future research, because we have created a useful guide to recognize and understand the wear and tear on Bronze Age weapons. This information source will enable researchers and museum curators to study the objects already in their samples and collections with a fresh perspective. They can compare the marks they find with the ones we have documented and made freely available,” explains Dr Valerio Gentile, who carried out the study as part of his PhD studies at the University of Leiden and is now conducting similar research in the Department of Prehistory and Early History at the University of Göttingen. “Our findings show how weapons were used and what techniques were employed. We may also be able to use our research to find out whether the Bronze Age weapons were used in large-scale battles or in duels. This is important for understanding the nature and intensity of conflicts in the past.”
Original publication: Valerio Gentile et al. Multi-stage experiments in Bronze Age spear combat: insights on wear formation, trauma, and combat contexts. Journal of Archaeological Science 2024. DOI: 10.1016/j.jas.2024.106044
1. Casas del Turuñuelo archaeological site. (A) Location of the site in the context of the Iberian peninsula (Digital Terrain Model from OpenStreetMaps, QGIS version 3.4.6); (B) Map of the settlement of the Middle Guadiana Valley during the sixth/fifth centuries BC (DTM from Instituto Geográfico Nacional de España, QGIS version 3.4.6); (C) Aerial view of the Casas del Turuñuelo tumulus, 2017.
An international team of researchers have conducted groundbreaking research at the Casas del Turu̱uelo site in Guare̱a, Badajoz, Spain. This archaeological site stands as the best-preserved earthen building in the western Mediterranean. Thanks to its remarkable state of preservation, a team of researchers from the Universities of Helsinki and Murcia, alongside the Institute of Archaeology (CSIC РJunta de Extremadura), has successfully reconstructed the construction process of this monumental edifice. Esther Rodrigues Gonzales and Sebastian Celestino Perez, CSIC, have been in charge of the excavation of this amazing site since since 2014.
Marta Lorenzon from the University of Helsinki, a key member of the research team, explains:
“Our goal was to understand how the earthen materials were processed and used, the organization of labor, and the skill levels of the community involved in the construction. We aimed to shed light on the construction methods, environmental exploitation, and the socio-political structures that enabled the creation of such monumental architecture.”
According to one of the co-writers of the research, BenjamÃnCutillas Victoria, the Tartessians' use of earthen construction was a highly adapted and sustainable approach, particularly in local environmental contexts. The fact that they thrived using this form of architecture adds a new dimension to the story of their building skills and culture, one that has not been emphasized much in previous research.
This achievement not only highlights the advanced architectural skills of the Tartessians, but also underscores their sustainable approach to building in harmony with their local environment.
“This research can help us better understand sustainable building practices from the past that might inspire modern construction. The use of local, natural resources in a coordinated manner could offer ideas for eco-friendly building approaches today”, Lorenzon states.
Additionally, understanding how ancient societies organized labor and resource management can provide lessons for modern-day project management and workforce coordination.
“The ability to reconstruct these ancient techniques provides invaluable insights into how this protohistoric culture thrived and adapted, offering a new dimension to our understanding of their ingenuity and resilience”, Lorenzon concludes.
Contact information in Helsinki
Dr Marta Lorenzon, FSA Academy Research Fellow Docent in Archaeology, University of Helsinki Vice-Leader Team 3, Centre of Excellence in Ancient Near Eastern Empires Homepage: www.helsinki.fi/anee +358 503198409 marta.lorenzon@helsinki.fi X: @MartaLorenzon
