The Diffusion of Humans and Cultures in the Course of the Spread of Farming

The most profound change in the relationship between humans and their environment was the introduction of agriculture and pastoralism. [....] For an understanding of the expansion process, it appears appropriate to apply a diffusive model. Broadly, these numerical modeling approaches can be catego- rized in correlative, continuous and discrete. Common to all approaches is the comparison to collections of radiocarbon data that show the apparent wave of advance of the transition to farming. However, these data sets differ in entry density and data quality. Often they disregard local and regional specifics and research gaps, or dating uncertainties. Thus, most of these data bases may only be used on a very general, broad scale. One of the pitfalls of using irregularly spaced or irregularly documented radiocarbon data becomes evident from the map generated by Fort (this volume, Chapter 16): while the general east-west and south-north trends become evident, some areas appear as having undergone anomalously early transitions to farming. This may be due to faulty entries into the data base or regional problems with radiocarbon dating, if not unnoticed or undocumented laboratory mistakes.Comment: 20 pages, 5 figures, submitted to Diffusive Spreading in Nature, Technology and Society, edited by Armin Bunde, J\"urgen Caro, J\"org K\"arger, Gero Vogl, Chapter 1

Pig domestication and human-mediated dispersal in western eurasia revealed through ancient DNA and geometric morphometrics

Zooarcheological evidence suggests that pigs were domesticated in Southwest Asia ∼8,500 BC. They then spread across the Middle and Near East and westward into Europe alongside early agriculturalists. European pigs were either domesticated independently or more likely appeared so as a result of admixture between introduced pigs and European wild boar. As a result, European wild boar mtDNA lineages replaced Near Eastern/Anatolian mtDNA signatures in Europe and subsequently replaced indigenous domestic pig lineages in Anatolia. The specific details of these processes, however, remain unknown. To address questions related to early pig domestication, dispersal, and turnover in the Near East, we analyzed ancient mitochondrial DNA and dental geometric morphometric variation in 393 ancient pig specimens representing 48 archeological sites (from the Pre-Pottery Neolithic to the Medieval period) from Armenia, Cyprus, Georgia, Iran, Syria, and Turkey. Our results reveal the first genetic signatures of early domestic pigs in the Near Eastern Neolithic core zone. We also demonstrate that these early pigs differed genetically from those in western Anatolia that were introduced to Europe during the Neolithic expansion. In addition, we present a significantly more refined chronology for the introduction of European domestic pigs into Asia Minor that took place during the Bronze Age, at least 900 years earlier than previously detected. By the 5th century AD, European signatures completely replaced the endemic lineages possibly coinciding with the widespread demographic and societal changes that occurred during the Anatolian Bronze and Iron Ages

Ancient pigs reveal a near-complete genomic turnover following their introduction to Europe

Archaeological evidence indicates that pig domestication had begun by ∼10,500 y before the present (BP) in the Near East, and mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA) suggests that pigs arrived in Europe alongside farmers ∼8,500 y BP. A few thousand years after the introduction of Near Eastern pigs into Europe, however, their characteristic mtDNA signature disappeared and was replaced by haplotypes associated with European wild boars. This turnover could be accounted for by substantial gene flow from local European wild boars, although it is also possible that European wild boars were domesticated independently without any genetic contribution from the Near East. To test these hypotheses, we obtained mtDNA sequences from 2,099 modern and ancient pig samples and 63 nuclear ancient genomes from Near Eastern and European pigs. Our analyses revealed that European domestic pigs dating from 7,100 to 6,000 y BP possessed both Near Eastern and European nuclear ancestry, while later pigs possessed no more than 4% Near Eastern ancestry, indicating that gene flow from European wild boars resulted in a near-complete disappearance of Near East ancestry. In addition, we demonstrate that a variant at a locus encoding black coat color likely originated in the Near East and persisted in European pigs. Altogether, our results indicate that while pigs were not independently domesticated in Europe, the vast majority of human-mediated selection over the past 5,000 y focused on the genomic fraction derived from the European wild boars, and not on the fraction that was selected by early Neolithic farmers over the first 2,500 y of the domestication process

Cranial Discrete Traits in a Byzantine Population and Eastern Mediterranean Population Movements

Since the beginning of the Holocene, the Anatolian region has been a crossroads for populations and civilizations from Europe, Asia, and the Near to Middle East, with increasing interactions since the Bronze Age. In this context, we examine cranial discrete traits from a Byzantine population from southwest Turkey, excavated at the archeological site of Sagalassos; the site displays human occupation since the 12th millennium b.p. To investigate the biological history of this population, we analyzed the frequency distribution of 17 cranial discrete traits from Sagalassos and 27 Eurasian and African populations. Ward’s clustering procedure and multidimensional scaling analyses of the standardized mean measure of divergence (MMDst), based on trait frequencies, were used to represent the biological affinity between populations. Our results, considered within a large interpretive framework that takes into account the idea that populations are dynamic entities affected by various influences through time and space, revealed different strata of the Sagalassos biological history. Indeed, beyond an expected biological affinity of the Sagalassos population with eastern Mediterranean populations, we also detected affinities with sub-Saharan and northern and central European populations. We hypothesize that these affinity patterns in the Sagalassos biological package are the traces of the major migratory events that affected southwest Anatolia over the last millennia, as suggested from biological, archeological, and historical data

Genetic analysis of a Scytho-Siberian skeleton and its implication in ancient central Asian migrations

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Mitochondrial DNA analysis of ancient Yakut skeletons

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Rock Art and (Re)Production of Narratives: A Cassowary Bone Dagger Stencil Perspective from Auwim, East Sepik, Papua New Guinea

Published online by Cambridge University Press: 10 February 2022.Cassowaries (Casuarius) are one of the largest indigenous animal species of New Guinea. Researchers have long been trying to understand their local socio-cultural significance. Here we present new results from interviews recorded in 2018 on ethnography associated with bone daggers, a material culture ornament and tool carved from the cassowary’s tibiotarsus. We present a ‘storied notion’—a contemporary narrative from oral history of why cassowary is not simply a bird, and briefly describe cassowary bone ornamentation in Auwim, East Sepik Province of Papua New Guinea. By exploring the material history of Casuarius through a ‘storied notion’ approach, we reveal that cassowary bone daggers in rock art are narrative ideas of the species from its landscape to ornamentation and through to people’s cosmological beliefs surrounding Casuarius. We argue that the cassowary bone dagger stencil can be seen as part of the life history of this animal.Roxanne Tsang, Sebastien Katuk, Sally K. May, Paul S.C. Taçon, François-Xavier Ricaut, Matthew G. Leavesle

SNP analysis of a 2300 year old Xiongnu population. Does the Tat polymorphism originate in northern Mongolia?

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Histoire génétique d’une population Antemoro du Sud-est malgache.

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