Researchers identify record number of ancient elephant bone tools

Ancient humans could do some impressive things with elephant bones.

In a new study, University of Colorado Boulder archaeologist Paola Villa and her colleagues surveyed tools excavated from a site in Italy where large numbers of elephants had died. The team discovered that humans at this site roughly 400,000 years ago appropriated those carcasses to produce an unprecedented array of bone tools—some crafted with sophisticated methods that wouldn’t become common for another 100,000 years.

“We see other sites with bone tools at this time,” said Villa, an adjoint curator at the CU Boulder Museum of Natural History. “But there isn’t this variety of well-defined shapes.”

Villa and her colleagues published their results this month in the journal PLOS ONE.

The study zeroes in on a site called Castel di Guido not far from modern-day Rome. Hundreds of thousands of years ago, it was the location of a gully that had been carved by an ephemeral stream—an environment where 13-foot-tall creatures called straight-tusked elephants (Palaeoloxodon antiquus) quenched their thirst and, occasionally, died. 

Castel di Guido’s hominids made good use of the remains, occupying the site off and on over the years. The researchers report that these Stone Age residents produced tools using a systematic, standardized approach, a bit like a single individual working on a primitive assembly line.

“At Castel di Guido, humans were breaking the long bones of the elephants in a standardized manner and producing standardized blanks to make bone tools,” Villa said. “This kind of aptitude didn’t become common until much later.”

Stone Age toolbox

These feats of ingenuity came at a significant time for hominids in general.

Right around 400,000 years ago, Neanderthals (Homo neanderthalensis) were just beginning to emerge in Europe. Villa suspects that Castel di Guido’s residents were Neanderthals. 

“About 400,000 years ago, you start to see the habitual use of fire, and it’s the beginning of the Neanderthal lineage,” Villa said. “This is a very important period for Castel di Guido.”

It may have been a productive one, too. In their new study, Villa and her colleagues identified 98 bone tools from Castel di Guido, which was excavated from 1979 to 1991. The findings represent the highest number of flaked bone tools made by pre-modern hominids that researchers have described so far. That rich toolbox offered a wide range of useful items: Some tools were pointed and could, theoretically, have been used to cut meat. Others were wedges that may have been helpful for splitting heavy elephant femurs and other long bones.

“First you make a groove where you can insert these heavy pieces that have a cutting edge,” Villa said. “Then you hammer it, and at some point, the bone will break.”

But one tool stood out from the rest: The team discovered a single artifact carved from a wild cattle bone that was long and smooth at one end. It resembles what archaeologists call a “lissoir,” or a smoother, a type of tool that hominids used to treat leather. The curious thing: Lissoir tools didn’t become common until about 300,000 years ago.

“At other sites 400,000 years ago, people were just using whatever bone fragments they had available,” Villa said.

Useful finds

Something special, in other words, seemed to be happening at the Italian site.

Villa doesn’t think that the Castel di Guido hominids were any more intelligent than their counterparts elsewhere in Europe. Instead, these early humans simply used the resources they had lying around. She explained that this region of Italy doesn’t have a lot of naturally-occurring, large pieces of flint, so ancient humans couldn’t make many large stone tools.

What the region might have had a lot of, however, were dead elephants. As the Stone Age progressed, straight-tusked elephants slowly disappeared from Europe. During the era of Castel di Guido’s bone-crafters, these animals may have flocked to watering holes at the site, occasionally dying from natural causes. Humans then found the remains and butchered them for their long bones.

“The Castel di Guido people had cognitive intellects that allowed them to produce complex bone technology,” Villa said. “At other assemblages, there were enough bones for people to make a few pieces, but not enough to begin a standardized and systematic production of bone tools.”

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PICTURE CAVE AUCTION: SEPTEMBER 14th | 10AM CDT

 

PICTURE CAVE

AUCTION: SEPTEMBER 14th | 10AM CDT

1. 
   

PICTURE CAVE:

A TWO-CAVE SYSTEM OF NATIVE AMERICAN POLYCHROME PAINTINGS, TOGETHER WITH 43 ACRES OF SURROUNDING LAND
Western Mississippian, present day Missouri, USA, 800-1100 CE

Understood to be an ancient hallowed site for sacred rituals, astronomical studies, oral tradition, vision quests, and described as “the most important rock art site in North America”. The two cave system boasts massive panels of over 290 prehistoric glyphs making it the largest collection of indigenous people’s polychrome paintings in Missouri. Considered to be one the most significant North American archeological sites, Picture Cave’s importance has been described by scholars as rivaling that of Cahokia and Chaco Canyon. The quantity and complexity of the wall images, like the renowned depiction of Red Horn, are unmatched compared to other prehistoric sites. For an extensive library of images and additional information related to Picture Cave, see THE WORK OF PROFESSOR MICHAEL FULLER and THE PHOTOGRAPHY OF ALAN CRESSLER.

Literature:

PICTURE CAVE- UNRAVELING THE MYSTERIES OF THE MISSISSIPPIAN COSMOS
Authors: Carol Diaz-Granados is Research Associate in the Department of Anthropology at Washington University, where she has taught for over thirty years. She is also Adjunct Professor at Webster University. James R. Duncan is an archaeologist and anthropologist who studies the Osage and Native American ethnography and is former Director of the Missouri State Museum. F. Kent Reilly III is Professor and Director of the Center for the Study of Arts and Symbolism of Ancient America at Texas State University. Foreword by Patti Jo Watson. Photographer: Alan Cressler. Publisher: University of Texas Press; Illustrated edition (June 15, 2015). Hard back copy containing 360 pages | 8.5 x 11 | 269 black & white photos, 35 black & white illustrations, 26 color illustrations, 7 maps, 185 color photo

Oldest genome from Wallacea shows previously unknown ancient human relations

 

International research team isolates DNA from modern human buried 7,000 years ago on the Indonesian island of Sulawesi

The international study was accomplished through close collaboration with several researchers and institutions from Indonesia. It was headed by Professor Johannes Krause of the Max Planck Institutes for Evolutionary Anthropology in Leipzig and the Science of Human History in Jena, Professor Cosimo Posth of the Senckenberg Centre for Human Evolution and Palaeoenvironment at the University of Tübingen, and Professor Adam Brumm of Griffith University, Australia. The study has been published in the latest edition of Nature.

Almost completely preserved skeleton

The Wallacean Islands formed stepping stones in the spread of the first modern humans from Eurasia to Oceania, probably more than 50,000 years ago. Archaeological finds show that the ancestors of our species lived in Wallacea as early as 47,000 years ago. Yet few human skeletons have been found. One of the most distinctive archaeological discoveries in this region is the Toalean technology complex, dated to a much more recent period between 8,000 and 1,500 years ago. Among the objects manufactured by the people of the Toalean culture are the characteristic stone arrowheads known as Maros points. The Toalean culture has only been found in a relatively small area on the southern peninsula of Sulawesi. “We were able to assign the burial at Leang Panninge to that culture,” says Adam Brumm. “This is remarkable since it is the first largely complete and well preserved skeleton associated with the Toalean culture.”

Selina Carlhoff, doctoral candidate at the Max Planck Institute for the Science of Human History and lead author of the study, isolated DNA from the petrous bone of the skull. “It was a major challenge, as the remains had been strongly degraded by the tropical climate,” she says. The analysis showed that the Leang Panninge individual was related to the first modern humans to spread to Oceania from Eurasia some 50,000 years ago. Like the genome of the indigenous inhabitants of New Guinea and Australia, the Leang Panninge individual’s genome contained traces of Denisovan DNA. The Denisovans are an extinct group of archaic humans known primarily from finds in Siberia and Tibet. “The fact that their genes are found in the hunter-gatherers of Leang Panninge supports our earlier hypothesis that the Denisovans occupied a far larger geographical area,” says Johannes Krause.

Another piece in the great genetic puzzle

A comparison with genomic data of hunter-gatherers who lived west of Wallacea at about the same time as the Leang Panninge individual provided further clues – that data showed no traces of Denisovan DNA. “The geographic distribution of Denisovans and modern humans may have overlapped in the Wallacea region. It may well be the key place where Denisova people and the ancestors of indigenous Australians and Papuans interbred,” says Cosimo Posth.

However, the Leang Panninge individual also carries a large proportion of its genome from an ancient Asian population. “That came as a surprise, because we do know of the spread of modern humans from eastern Asia into the Wallacea region – but that took place far later, around 3,500 years ago. That was long after this individual was alive,” Johannes Krause reports. Furthermore, the research team has found no evidence that the group Leang Panninge belonged to left descendants among today’s population in Wallacea. It remains unclear what happened to the Toalean culture and its people. “This new piece of the genetic puzzle from Leang Panninge illustrates above all just how little we know about the genetic history of modern humans in southeast Asia,” Posth says.

Pictograms are first written accounts of earthquakes in pre-Hispanic Mexico

The Codex Telleriano Remensis, created in the 16th century in Mexico, depicts earthquakes in pictograms that are the first written evidence of earthquakes in the Americas in pre-Hispanic times, according to a pair of researchers who have systematically studied the country’s historical earthquakes.

Gerardo Suárez of the Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México and Virginia García-Acosta of the Centro de Investigaciones y Estudios Superiores en Antropología Social studied pictograms reporting 12 earthquakes in the Telleriano-Remensis, occurring between 1460 and 1542.

 

CAPTION

Pictogram representing an earthquake that took place on the year 2 Reeds or 1507. The gloss describes that the pictogram recounts the drowning of 1,800 warriors in an unidentified river, presumably in southern Mexico, the termination of the temple of the New Fire, where the ceremony of the new cycle of life was celebrated, and a solar eclipse as a circle with rays emanating from it in the upper right-hand side, below the date sign.

CREDIT

Courtesy of Gerardo Suarez and Virginia Garcia-Acosta

The pictograms offer little information on the location, size or damage caused by the earthquakes, the authors note in the journal Seismological Research Letters. But along with other historical accounts found in annals written after the Spanish conquest, they extend the region’s seismic history back into the 15th century.

“It is not surprising that pre Hispanic records exist describing earthquakes for two reasons,” said Suárez. “Earthquakes are frequent in this country and, secondly, earthquakes had a profound meaning in the cosmological view of the original inhabitants of what is now Mexico.”

Mesoamerican civilizations viewed the universe as cyclical, with successive eras or “suns” destroyed by floods, wind, fire and other phenomena before the appearance of a new sun. The current and fifth “sun, “according to this view, will be destroyed by earthquakes.

Suárez and García-Acosta began studying historical earthquakes in Mexico after the devastating magnitude 8.0 Mexico City earthquake in 1985, eventually publishing their findings in the book Los sismos en la historia de México. “However, we had not tackled the pictographic representation of earthquakes,” said Suárez. “We recently embarked on a more detailed study of this pictographic representation and other texts written immediately after the Spanish conquest.”

Codex writing, a pre-Hispanic system of symbols and colors, was done by trained specialists called tlacuilos (in the original Nahuatl language, “those who write painting”). While many codices were burned as pagan objects after the Spanish conquest, some survived and the pictographic style was used in new codices up into the 18th century.

The Codex Telleriano-Remensis is written on European paper, with explanations or “glosses” written in Latin, Spanish and sometimes Italian by later commentators alongside the symbols.

Earthquakes, called tlalollin in the Nahuatl language, are represented by two signs: ollin (movement) and tlalli (earth). Ollin is a glyph consisting of four helices and a central eye or circle. Tlalli is a glyph consisting of one or several layers filled with dots and different colors.

In the Telleriano-Remensis, there are other modifications of the earthquake glyphs, but their meanings are not clear to scholars. “However, the consensus is that the various representations probably do have a meaning,” Suárez said. “Drawing codices was a strict discipline not open to artistic whims of the people trained to do it, the tlacuilos. We are hopeful that in the future an unknown codex or document may appear that may enlighten us in this respect.”

Suárez and García-Acosta note that other annals offer information that complements the codex earthquake drawings, perhaps filling in more details about the impacts and locations of specific earthquakes. For example, a historical account by the Franciscan friar Juan de Torquemada describes a 1496 earthquake that shook three mountains in “Xochitepec province, along the coast” and caused landslides in an area inhabited by the Yope people.

The site is within the Guerrero seismic gap, a region of relative seismic quiet along the subduction zone in southern Mexico. The historical descriptions suggest that the 1496 earthquake might have been a very large earthquake of magnitude 8.0 or larger within the gap. There have been no recorded earthquakes of that magnitude in the gap since 1845.

The historical evidence “really does not change our view of the seismic potential of that region in southern Mexico,” Suárez explained. “It simply adds additional evidence that great earthquakes have occurred in this segment of the subduction zone before, and the absence of these major earthquakes for several years should not be considered as though this region is aseismic.”

The researchers plan to study other codices that are not as well-known as the Telleriano-Remensis, but have so far been unable to access the libraries that hold them due to COVID-19 restrictions.

Central European prehistory was highly dynamic

Frequent cultural, genetic, and social change epitomises the history of central Europe from the Stone Age to the Early Bronze Age

 

IMAGE: RICHLY ENDOWED EARLY BRONZE AGE BURIAL FROM BOHEMIA, CZECH REPUBLIC. view more 

CREDIT: MICHAL ERNÉE

Centrally located along trade routes and tightly nestled around the important waterways such as the Elbe River, Bohemia attracted many different archaeological cultures, rendering it a key region in understanding the prehistory of Europe. In addition to the expansions associated with the spread of agriculture and "steppe"-related ancestry previously discovered, this new study identifies at least another three migratory events which shaped central European prehistory.

The genetic profiles of people associated with Funnelbeaker and Globular Amphora cultures show evidence of being recent migrants to the region. This finding shows that the period between arrival of agriculture and "steppe"-related ancestry, hitherto thought of as an uneventful period, was more dynamic than previously hypothesised.

Drastic changes to the genetic landscape

The large sample size of the study, particularly concentrated on the Late Neolithic and Early Bronze Age (~6,000-3,700 years ago), also allowed novel insights into social processes to be made. Individuals associated with the Corded Ware culture expanded from Eastern Europe and then assimilated preferentially central European women into their culture, giving them the same burial ritual as members of the immigrating group. "We were finally able to fill key temporal gaps, especially in the transition period around 5,000 years ago, when we see the genetic landscape changing drastically", says Max Planck researcher Wolfgang Haak, senior author and principal investigator of the study. "Intriguingly, in this early horizon we find individuals with high amounts of 'steppe' ancestry next to others with little or none, all buried according to the same customs."

Once established, individuals of the Corded Ware culture (4,900-4,400 years ago) changed genetically through time. One important change seems to have been the sharp decline in Y-chromosome lineage diversity. Although initially carrying five different Y-lineages, later Corded Ware males carry almost exclusively only a single lineage, essentially being descended from the same man in the recent past. "This pattern may reflect the emergence of a new social structure or regulation of mating in which only a subset of men fathered the majority of offspring", says first author Luka Papac, a researcher at the Max Planck Institute for the Science of Human History.

This social structure seems to have been even stricter in the following Bell Beaker society (4,500-4,200 years ago) where every single male sampled belonged to a single, newly introduced Y-lineage. Remarkably, this Bell Beaker Y-lineage is never seen before in Bohemia, implying that a new clan arrived in the region and almost immediately replaced all pre-existing Y-lineages with not a single lineage from Corded Ware or previous societies found among Bell Beaker males.

Cultural, biological, and social changes

The Early Bronze Age Unetice culture has traditionally been thought of descending from Bell Beaker individuals, with perhaps limited input from the southeast (Carpathian Basin). However, the new genetic data supports yet another genetic turnover originating from regions northeast of Bohemia. Remarkably, also 80 percent of the early Unetice Y-lineages are new to Bohemia, some of which are previously found in individuals from north-eastern Europe, providing clues to where they originated from. "This finding was very surprising to us archaeologists as we did not expect to see such clear patterns, even though the region has played a critical role, e.g. in the emerging trade of amber from the Baltic and became an important trading hub during the Bronze and Iron Ages", adds co-author and co-PI Michal Ernée from the Czech Academy of Sciences.

The results paint a highly dynamic picture of the prehistory of central Europe, with many and frequent changes in the cultural, biological, and social make-up of societies, highlighting the power and potential of high-resolution studies at regional scale. Challenges remain in understanding the socio-economic, environmental and/or political reasons and mechanisms behind these changes, which provides ample scope for future cross-disciplinary studies of Europe’s prehistory.

New research shows men and women of Roman Herculaneum had different diets

 

IMAGE: ARCHAEOLOGISTS EXAMINED SKELETAL REMAINS view more 

CREDIT: DR LUCIANO FATTORE

Researchers  - led by the University of York’s BioArCh team  - developed a new approach to analyse amino acids, the building blocks of proteins, from 17 adult skeletons found in the aftermath of the eruption of Vesuvius in 79 AD.   

By measuring the isotopes of carbon and nitrogen in the bone amino acids, the researchers were able to reconstruct the diets of people who lived contemporaneously in much more detail than was previously thought possible. 

Senior author, Professor Oliver Craig, the  Director of BioArCH from the Department of Archaeology said: “The remains of those who perished at Herculaneum in AD79 offer a unique opportunity to examine the lifestyles across an ancient community who lived and died together. Historical sources often allude to differential access to foodstuffs across Roman society but rarely provide direct or quantitative information.

“We found significant differences in the proportions of marine and terrestrial foods consumed between males and females, implying that access to food was differentiated according to gender.” 

In total, 340 individuals have been excavated from the beach and from nine adjacent fornici (stone vaults) that run parallel to the seashore in Herculaneum, near Pompeii, where people sought shelter from the pyroclastic flow.

Researchers said they were able to quantify the gender gap more accurately within the group, with males on average obtaining approximately 50 per cent more more of their dietary protein from seafood  compared with females. 

Males also obtained a slightly higher proportion of protein from cereals compared with their female contemporaries, whereas females obtained a greater proportion of protein from animal products and locally grown fruits and vegetables.

Lead author, PhD student Silvia Soncin, from the Department of Archaeology, said: “Our research builds on what we know that males had greater access to marine fish at Herculaneum and more broadly in Roman Italy. 

“Males were more likely to be directly engaged in fishing and maritime activities, they generally occupied more privileged positions in society, and were freed from slavery at an earlier age providing greater access to expensive commodities, such as fresh fish.

Using their new approach,  the researchers were able to more accurately quantify ancient diets so they could be compared with recent nutritional records. The team suggests that fish and seafood made a greater overall contribution to the diets at Herculaneum compared to the average modern Mediterranean diet; the latter increasingly dominated by animal products. Whereas a similar proportion of cereals were consumed between ancient and modern.  

The research was conducted in partnership with Rome’s  “Museo delle Civiltà” and the Archaeological Parks of Pompeii and Herculaneum, amongst others. 

The paper, “High-resolution dietary reconstruction of victims of the AD79 Vesuvius eruption at Herculaneum by compound specific isotope analysis” is published in Science Advances.

The Hobbit’s bite gets a stress test

Stone tools may have allowed Homo floresiensis to eat their meals with less chewing effort than earlier hominins. 

If you’ve ever suffered from a sore jaw that popped or clicked when you chewed gum or crunched hard foods, you may be able to blame it on your extinct ancestors.

That’s according to a Duke University-led study of the chewing mechanics of an ancient human relative called Homo floresiensis, which inhabited the Indonesian island of Flores before our species arrived there some 50,000 years ago.

Not much more than three feet tall, the hominin’s diminutive size earned it the nickname “the Hobbit,” after the characters in J.R.R. Tolkien’s “The Lord of the Rings.” For the new study, which was published Aug. 13 in the journal Interface Focus, the researchers wanted to understand how the Hobbit’s skull behaved while it ate its food.

However, thousands of years of fossilization had left its skull -- the only one that has been found so far -- damaged and misshapen. Before the researchers could test it out, they had to restore it as close to its original shape as possible. Collaborators at Italy’s University of Bologna created a 3D virtual model, built from X-ray CT scans, digitally filling in the missing pieces to reconstruct what the skull of Homo floresiensis might have looked like when it roamed the island some 100,000 to 60,000 years ago.

From that, they used computer simulations and a technique called finite element analysis to give the virtual skull characteristics that mimic the real thing, such as the stiffness of the bones and the pulling action of the muscles. Then they had the virtual skull chomp down with its back teeth -- premolars and molars -- and analyzed the forces at work with each bite, essentially subjecting it to a digital crash test.

The researchers mapped the strains within their digital model of the Hobbit’s facial bones during biting, comparing the results to similar simulations for earlier human relatives called australopiths that lived some two to three million years ago in Africa, along with chimpanzees and humans living today.

The team determined that the Hobbit’s bite could have exerted around 1300 Newtons of force, comparable to the chomping power of modern humans and several of our extinct cousins. But had it bitten down too vigorously on a hard nut or a tough hunk of meat, the findings suggest Homo floresiensis would have been at greater risk than our earlier human kin of straining its facial bones, or dislocating the joint where the lower and upper jaws meet.

“We don't really know what Homo floresiensis ate,” said first author Rebecca Cook, a doctoral student in evolutionary anthropology at Duke. Patterns of wear on the teeth, combined with pygmy elephant bones and other animal remains unearthed from the same cave where the Hobbit was found suggest that it ate at least some meat.

But the results suggest that exceedingly hard or tough foods, which would have been no problem for an australopith to gnaw on or crack open, might have given the Hobbit a TMJ headache.

“Similar patterns are observed in modern humans,” Cook said.

Millions of years of human evolution gave us smaller teeth and more lightweight skulls, because cooking our food and slicing and pounding it with stone tools, and probably also eating meat, made having overbuilt skulls unnecessary.

But years after the Hobbit’s discovery its facial features remain a puzzle. Its skull had a curious mix of traits, some of which -- like its heavyset lower jaw -- are similar to our earlier and more ape-like ancestors, while others -- like its small delicate face -- resemble humans today.

“This can make it confusing as to where this species falls on the family tree of hominin evolutionary relationships,” Cook said.

The new study suggests this shift to smaller faces, weaker bites and achey jaws evolved early, before the common ancestors of Homo floresiensis and modern humans went their separate ways.

Justin Ledogar, Duke researcher and senior author of the study, says the next step is to do similar analyses on earlier members of the genus Homo, including Homo erectus. The first known hominin to use fire and cook food, this species also had smaller teeth, jaws and faces than earlier hominins, and is thought by some to be the ancestor of Homo floresiensis.

The researchers say the work could help answer lingering questions about where Homo floresiensis came from, how it lived and how it fits into the human evolutionary tree.

“This study is just one small piece of a much larger puzzle,” Cook said.

This research was funded by the American Association of Physical Anthropology and Duke University, and by grants from the European Union’s Horizon 2020 Research and Innovation Programme (724046 SUCCESS) and the U.S. National Science Foundation (NSF-BCS-0725126).

CITATION: "The Cranial Biomechanics and Feeding Performance of Homo Floresiensis," Rebecca W. Cook, Antonino Vazzana, Rita Sorrentino, Stefano Benazzi, Amanda L. Smith, David S. Strait and Justin A. Ledogar. Interface Focus, Aug. 13, 2021. DOI: 10.1098/rsfs.2020.0083

Genetic histories and social organization in Neolithic and Bronze Age Croatia

 Present-day Croatia was an important crossroads for migrating peoples along the Danubian corridor and the Adriatic coast, linking east and west. "While this region is important for understanding population and cultural transitions in Europe, limited availability of human remains means that in-depth knowledge about the genetic ancestry and social complexity of prehistoric populations here remains sparse," says first author Suzanne Freilich, a researcher at the Max Planck Institute for the Science of Human History and the University of Vienna.

To this aim, an international team of researchers set out to fill the gap. They studied two archaeological sites in eastern Croatia -- one containing predominantly Middle Neolithic burials from within the settlement site, the other a Middle Bronze Age necropolis containing cremations and inhumations -- and sequenced whole genomes of 28 individuals from these two sites. The researchers' goal was to understand both the genetic ancestry as well as social organisation within each community -- in particular, to study local residency patterns, kinship relations and to learn more about the varied burial rites observed.

Middle Neolithic settlement at Popova zemlja

Dated to around 4,700-4,300 BCE the Middle Neolithic settlement at Beli-Manastir Popova zemlja belongs to the Sopot culture. Many children, especially girls, were buried here, in particular along the walls of pit houses. "One question was whether individuals buried in the same buildings were biologically related to each other," says Suzanne Freilich.

"We found that individuals with different burial rites did not differ in their genetic ancestry, which was similar to Early Neolithic people. We also found a high degree of haplotype diversity and, despite the size of the site, no very closely related individuals," Freilich adds. This suggests that this community was part of a large, mainly exogamous population where people marry outside their kin group. Interestingly, however, the researchers also identified a few cases of endogamous mating practices, including two individuals who would have been the children of first cousins or equivalent, something rarely found in the ancient DNA record.

Middle Bronze Age necropolis at Jagodnjak-Krčevine

The second site the researchers studied was the Middle Bronze Age necropolis of Jagodnjak-Krčevine that belongs to the Transdanubian Encrusted Pottery Culture and dates to around 1,800-1,600 BCE. "This site contains burials that are broadly contemporaneous with some individuals from the Dalmatian coast, and we wanted to find out whether individuals from these different ecoregions carried similar ancestry," says Stephan Schiffels.

The researchers found that the people from Jagodnjak actually carried very distinct ancestry due to the presence of significantly more western European hunter-gatherer-related ancestry. This ancestry profile is present in a small number of other studied genomes from further north in the Carpathian Basin. These new genetic results support archaeological evidence that suggests a shared population history for these groups as well as the presence of trade and exchange networks.

"We also found that all male individuals at the site had identical Y chromosome haplotypes," says Freilich. "We identified two male first degree relatives, second degree and more distantly related males, while the one woman in our sample was unrelated. This points to a patrilocal social organisation where women leave their own home to join their husband's home." Contrary to the Middle Neolithic site at Popova zemlja, biological kinship was a factor for selection to be buried at this site. In addition the authors found evidence of rich infant graves that suggests they likely inherited their status or wealth from their families.

Filling the gap in the archaeogenetic record

This study helps to fill the gap in the archaeogenetic record for this region, characterising the diverse genetic ancestries and social organisations that were present in Neolithic and Bronze Age eastern Croatia. It highlights the heterogeneous population histories of broadly contemporaneous coastal and inland Bronze Age groups, and connections with communities further north in the Carpathian Basin. Furthermore, it sheds light on the subject of Neolithic intramural burials -- burials within a settlement -- that has been debated among archaeologists and anthropologists for some time. The authors show that at the site of Popova zemlja, this burial rite was not associated with biological kinship, but more likely represented age and sex selection related to Neolithic community belief systems.

So far, few archaeogenetic studies have focused on within-community patterns of genetic diversity and social organisation. "While large-scale studies are invaluable in characterising patterns of genetic diversity on a broader temporal and spatial scale, more regional and single-site studies, such as this one, are necessary to gain insights into community and social organisation which vary regionally and even within a site," says Freilich. "By looking into the past with a narrower lens, archaeogenetics can shed more light on how communities and families were organised."

Grammar reflects best the common prehistory of a population and therefore mirrors genetics more than any other cultural feature

 Humans have been always on the move, creating a complex history of languages and cultural traditions dispersed over the globe. An international team under UZH's lead has now traced families of related languages over more than 10,000 years by combining data from genetics, linguistics and musicology using novel digital methods. Their findings: grammar reflects best the common prehistory of a population and therefore mirrors genetics more than any other cultural feature.

Since the beginning of their existence, some populations have split up while others have come together, leaving a deep mark on local languages and cultural traditions. Reconstructing this complex history remains a gigantic challenge. Depending on the places of origin, with more than 7000 languages are currently spoken in the world.

This huge range is also found in genetic variation. According to Charles Darwin, genes and culture evolve in a similar way, transmitted from generation to generation with slight variations in each step. "When their evolution no longer corresponds, it is the sign of contact in the history of a population, be it friendly, such as trade, or unfriendly, such as conquests," says Balthasar Bickel, professor at the Department of Comparative Language Science of the University of Zurich.

Northeast Asia as crossroads between Asia and Native America

An international team under UZH's lead has now identified which data reveal the best correlation between genetic and cultural diversity by combining data from genetics, linguistics and musicology using novel digital methods. The team selected Northeast Asia as a particularly interesting region for this study. "Northeast Asia is the central crossroad in the prehistory of Asia and Native America. Indeed, while their populations are genetically contiguous, the region is culturally and linguistically highly diverse," says Hiromi Matsumae, former postdoctoral researcher at UZH and now professor at Japan's Tokai University. Her team at UZH analyzed data spanning 11 language families incuding such as Tungusic, Chukuto-Kamchatkan, Eskimo-Aleut, Yukagir, Ainu, Korean and Japanese. They furthermore obtained new genetic data from speakers of Nivkh, an isolated language spoken on Sakhalin Island in Siberia.

Analogies and differences in genes, language and culture

The researchers compared the genomes of these populations with digital data on their language (grammar rules, sounds, word lists) and their music (structure, style). "Our results suggest that grammar reflects population history more closely than any other cultural data. We found significant correlations between genetics and grammar," explains co-lead author Peter Ranacher of UZH.

Word lists for example differ from each other in their own ways. And since word lists are the core data for reconstructing language families, such reconstructions remain elusive in the region. The researchers concluded that the correspondence between grammar and genetics reflects a complex maze of vertical descent and contact in prehistory.

Grammar as a mirror of cultural and genetic evolution

"It's through a unique collaboration between genetics and geography with modern digital linguistics and musicology that we have been able to take one small step closer to understanding human cultural history," adds last author Bickel. Further analysis will be needed to understand the complex web of cultural and genetic evolution. But discovering the importance of the grammatical factor is a first step in the right direction.

This joint work was made possible by the University Research Priority Programs (URPPs) "Language & Space" and "Evolution in Action," Switzerland's National Centre of Competence in Research (NCCR) "Evolving Language," and the Japan Society for the Promotion of Science (JSPS) Evolinguistics project.

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