The genetic history of the Southern Arc: a bridge between West Asia and Europe

By sequencing 727 ancient individuals from the Southern Arc (Anatolia and its neighbors in Southeastern Europe and West Asia) over 10,000 years, we contextualize its Chalcolithic period and Bronze Age (about 5000 to 1000 BCE), when extensive gene flow entangled it with the Eurasian steppe. Two streams of migration transmitted Caucasus and Anatolian/Levantine ancestry northward, and the Yamnaya pastoralists, formed on the steppe, then spread southward into the Balkans and across the Caucasus into Armenia, where they left numerous patrilineal descendants. Anatolia was transformed by intra–West Asian gene flow, with negligible impact of the later Yamnaya migrations. This contrasts with all other regions where Indo-European languages were spoken, suggesting that the homeland of the Indo-Anatolian language family was in West Asia, with only secondary dispersals of non-Anatolian Indo-Europeans from the steppe

Generosity and livelihoods: Dictator game evidence on the multidimensional nature of sharing among the Kenyan Maasai

This paper investigates whether sharing behavior is multidimensional and embedded in social organization and modes of economic production. It uses a modified dictator game varying social distance to the recipient and varying the resource (money vs. six in‐kind resources) being shared among the pastoral Maasai of Kenya. Results show that both social distance and the nature of the resource matter for sharing as well as their combination. The discussion argues that these findings are consistent with the nature and role of these resources in the pastoral livelihood among the Maasai

Adaptive cycles in the savannah: pastoral specialization and diversification in northern Kenya

Comparative evidence from Eastern Africa suggests the emergence of a highly specialized mobile pastoral livelihood came about in the early- to mid-nineteenth century. Developments in the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries have seen a distinct turn away from this model of pastoral specialization, towards a more mixed and spatially varied set of livelihood strategies. Low intensity warfare, environmental degradation, rapid population increase, and a shift away from cattle pastoralism and towards goat and camel herding are all evident in the current transition of Pokot livelihoods. Lifestyles have become more sedentary and diversified, while agricultural activities have rapidly spread, with the increased marketing of livestock and other commodities. This article traces the history of these changes among the pastoral Pokot of north-western Kenya (today's Baringo County), using the notions of the adaptive cycle and resilience as key explanatory tools in seeking to understand the patterns and drivers of change over time