Mobility and kinship in the world’s first village societies

Around 10,000 y ago in southwest Asia, the cessation of a mobile lifestyle and the emergence of the first village communities during the Neolithic marked a fundamental change in human history. The first communities were small (tens to hundreds of individuals) but remained semisedentary. So-called megasites appeared soon after, occupied by thousands of more sedentary inhabitants. Accompanying this shift, the material culture and ancient ecological data indicate profound changes in economic and social behavior. A shift from residential to logistical mobility and increasing population size are clear and can be explained by either changes in fertility and/or aggregation of local groups. However, as sedentism increased, small early communities likely risked inbreeding without maintaining or establishing exogamous relationships typical of hunter-gatherers. Megasites, where large populations would have made endogamy sustainable, could have avoided this risk. To examine the role of kinship practices in the rise of megasites, we measured strontium and oxygen isotopes in tooth enamel from 99 individuals buried at Pınarbaşı, Boncuklu, and Çatalhöyük (Turkey) over 7,000 y. These sites are geographically proximate and, critically, span both early sedentary behaviors (Pınarbaşı and Boncuklu) and the rise of a local megasite (Çatalhöyük). Our data are consistent with the presence of only local individuals at Pınarbaşı and Boncuklu, whereas at Çatalhöyük, several nonlocals are present. The Çatalhöyük data stand in contrast to other megasites where bioarchaeological evidence has pointed to strict endogamy. These different kinship behaviors suggest that megasites may have arisen by employing unique, community-specific kinship practices

Late Pleistocene human genome suggests a local origin for the first farmers of central Anatolia

Anatolia was home to some of the earliest farming communities. It has been long debated whether a migration of farming groups introduced agriculture to central Anatolia. Here, we report the first genome-wide data from a 15,000-year-old Anatolian hunter-gatherer and from seven Anatolian and Levantine early farmers. We find high genetic continuity (~80–90%) between the hunter-gatherers and early farmers of Anatolia and detect two distinct incoming ancestries: an early Iranian/Caucasus related one and a later one linked to the ancient Levant. Finally, we observe a genetic link between southern Europe and the Near East predating 15,000 years ago. Our results suggest a limited role of human migration in the emergence of agriculture in central Anatolia

The Demographic Development of the First Farmers in Anatolia

The archaeological documentation of the develop-ment of sedentary farming societies in Anatolia isnot yet mirrored by a genetic understanding of thehuman populations involved, in contrast to thespread of farming in Europe [1–3]. Sedentary farmingcommunities emerged in parts of the Fertile Crescentduring the tenth millennium and early ninth millen-nium calibrated (cal) BC and had appeared in centralAnatolia by 8300 cal BC [4]. Farming spread intowest Anatolia by the early seventh millennium calBC and quasi-synchronously into Europe, althoughthe timing and process of this movement remain un-clear. Using genome sequence data that we gener-ated from nine central Anatolian Neolithic individuals,we studied the transition period from early Aceramic(Pre-Pottery) to the later Pottery Neolithic, whenfarming expanded west of the Fertile Crescent. Wefind that genetic diversity in the earliest farmerswas conspicuously low, on a par with Europeanforaging groups. With the advent of the PotteryNeolithic, genetic variation within societies reachedlevels later found in early European farmers. Our re-sults confirm that the earliest Neolithic central Anato-lians belonged to the same gene pool as the firstNeolithic migrants spreading into Europe. Further,genetic affinities between later Anatolian farmersand fourth to third millennium BC Chalcolithic southEuropeans suggest an additional wave of Anatolianmigrants, after the initial Neolithic spread but beforethe Yamnaya-related migrations. We propose thatthe earliest farming societies demographicallyresembled foragers and that only after regionalgene flow and rising heterogeneity did the farmingpopulation expansions into Europe occur.WoSScopusPubMe

Variation in Genetic Relatedness Patterns among Co-burials in Anatolian Neolithic Societies

The Neolithic Transition to village life and food production first emerged in the Fertile Crescent (c.10th and early 9th millennium BCE) and fundamentally reshaped human history. Although this transition involved major changes in human lifestyle, the social organization and traditions of the earliest sedentary communities is poorly understood. Here, we investigate genetic relatedness patterns among co-buried individuals within domestic structures in Neolithic Anatolia by studying 22 newly generated ancient genomes from Aşıklı Höyük and Çatalhöyük and combining these with published genomes from other Anatolian Neolithic sites. We focus on the sites that span the early (Aşıklı Höyük and Boncuklu) and late Neolithic (Çatalhöyük and Barcın) to understand temporal variation in genetic relatedness patterns in association with burial location. During the early Neolithic period (late 9th and early 8th millennium BCE), represented by Aşıklı Höyük and Boncuklu, siblings and parent-offspring pairs are at relatively high frequency among co-burials. This suggests the existence of close genetic kinship components within the social organization of these settlements. In other settlements, such as the late Neolithic period (7th millennium BCE) Çatalhöyük and Barcın, the frequency of genetically close relatives among coburials is much lower. Despite the shortcomings of the small sample size, our results provide the first insights into the genetic kinship patterns between co-buried individuals, and how burial traditions of Neolithic societies in Anatolia varied among settlements, and may possibly have changed over time in conjunction with changing architecture, growing settlement size and cultural traditions