Three-Dimensional Geometric Morphometric Analysis of Fossil Canid Mandibles and Skulls

Acknowledgements We thank C.P. Klingenberg for critical discussion of methodology. A. Drake and R. Losey were supported by a grant from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada grant (#SSHRC IG 435-2014-0075) and a European Research Council Grant to D. Anderson (#295458). M. Sablin acknowledges participation of ZIN RAS (state assignment № АААА-А17-117022810195-3) to this research. Supplementary information accompanies this paper at doi:10.1038/s41598-017-10232-1Peer reviewedPublisher PD

Avifauna at the Neolithic Sites of the Dnieper-Dvina Basin: the role of birds in the culture of ancient hunter-gatherers of the VI–III Millennium BC

The article presents a study of avifauna at the Neolithic sites of the Dnieper-Dvina basin (Serteya I and II sites). Changes of paleo-environmental conditions and biotopes, archaeological cultures and types of campsites might have determined changes in the cultural and economic model of the ancient population, having an influence on avifauna particularity in different time periods. Four biotopic groups of birds: near-water birds, woodside birds, forest and meadow-steppe birds are singled out. Birds from the near-water group dominate. It can be assumed, that birds played an important role in food ration in spring and autumn. Paleo-ecological studies allow us to reconstruct a change of water body types. That may have caused a change in bird species. Changes in bird nesting and migration areas may also be evidence of paleo-ecological changes in the V–III millennium BC. Despite the widespread practice of making tools and ornaments from bones and animals teeth at the Neolithic sites in Dnieper-Dvina basin, bird bones were used rather seldom. Almost the entire collection dates back to the end of IV–III millennium BC and is represented mainly by tube beads and blanks

Eastern Europe’s “Transitional Industry”? : Deconstructing the Early Streletskian

Acknowledgements We are very grateful to many friends and colleagues for discussions and various help, including Yuri Demindenko, Evgeny Giria, Brad Gravina, Anton Lada, Sergei Lisitsyn and Alexander Otcherednoy. Needless to say, they may or may not agree with our conclusions. We are also thankful to Jesse Davies and Craig Williams for the help with the illustrations and figures. Ekaterina Petrova kindly helped with ID’ing some of the sampled bones. We thank the staff of the Oxford Radiocarbon Accelerator Unit at the University of Oxford for their support with the chemical preparation and the measurement of the samples. We are also grateful to the three anonymous reviewers for their thoughtful and constructive comments, which helped improve the paper. This paper is a contribution to Leverhulme Trust project RPG-2012-800. The research leading to some of our radiocarbon results received funding from the European Research Council under the European Union’s Seventh Framework Programme (FP7/2007-2013); ERC grant 324139 “PalaeoChron” awarded to Professor Tom Higham. AB and AS acknowledge Russian Science Foundation grant number 20-78-10151 and Russian Foundation of Basic Research grant numbers 18-39-20009 and 20-09-00233 for support of their work. We also acknowledge the participation of IHMC RAS (state assignment 0184-2019-0001) and ZIN RAS (state assignment АААА-А19-119032590102-7).Peer reviewedPublisher PD

Grey wolf genomic history reveals a dual ancestry of dogs

The grey wolf (Canis lupus) was the first species to give rise to a domestic population, and they remained widespread throughout the last Ice Age when many other large mammal species went extinct. Little is known, however, about the history and possible extinction of past wolf populations or when and where the wolf progenitors of the present-day dog lineage (Canisfamiliaris) lived(1-8). Here we analysed 72 ancient wolf genomes spanning the last 100,000 years from Europe, Siberia and North America. We found that wolf populations were highly connected throughout the Late Pleistocene, with levels of differentiation an order of magnitude lower than they are today. This population connectivity allowed us to detect natural selection across the time series, including rapid fixation of mutations in the gene IFT8840,000-30,000 years ago. We show that dogs are overall more closely related to ancient wolves from eastern Eurasia than to those from western Eurasia, suggesting a domestication process in the east. However, we also found that dogs in the Near East and Africa derive up to half of their ancestry from a distinct population related to modern southwest Eurasian wolves, reflecting either an independent domestication process or admixture from local wolves. None of the analysed ancient wolf genomes is a direct match for either of these dog ancestries, meaning that the exact progenitor populations remain to be located.Peer reviewe

The origins and spread of domestic horses from the Western Eurasian steppes

This is the final version. Available on open access from Nature Research via the DOI in this recordData availability: All collapsed and paired-end sequence data for samples sequenced in this study are available in compressed fastq format through the European Nucleotide Archive under accession number PRJEB44430, together with rescaled and trimmed bam sequence alignments against both the nuclear and mitochondrial horse reference genomes. Previously published ancient data used in this study are available under accession numbers PRJEB7537, PRJEB10098, PRJEB10854, PRJEB22390 and PRJEB31613, and detailed in Supplementary Table 1. The genomes of ten modern horses, publicly available, were also accessed as indicated in their corresponding original publications57,61,85-87.NOTE: see the published version available via the DOI in this record for the full list of authorsDomestication of horses fundamentally transformed long-range mobility and warfare. However, modern domesticated breeds do not descend from the earliest domestic horse lineage associated with archaeological evidence of bridling, milking and corralling at Botai, Central Asia around 3500 BC. Other longstanding candidate regions for horse domestication, such as Iberia and Anatolia, have also recently been challenged. Thus, the genetic, geographic and temporal origins of modern domestic horses have remained unknown. Here we pinpoint the Western Eurasian steppes, especially the lower Volga-Don region, as the homeland of modern domestic horses. Furthermore, we map the population changes accompanying domestication from 273 ancient horse genomes. This reveals that modern domestic horses ultimately replaced almost all other local populations as they expanded rapidly across Eurasia from about 2000 BC, synchronously with equestrian material culture, including Sintashta spoke-wheeled chariots. We find that equestrianism involved strong selection for critical locomotor and behavioural adaptations at the GSDMC and ZFPM1 genes. Our results reject the commonly held association between horseback riding and the massive expansion of Yamnaya steppe pastoralists into Europe around 3000 BC driving the spread of Indo-European languages. This contrasts with the scenario in Asia where Indo-Iranian languages, chariots and horses spread together, following the early second millennium BC Sintashta culture

The Late Gravettian Site of Kostënki 21 Layer III, Russia: a Chronocultural Reassessment Based on a New Interpretation of the Significance of Intra-site Spatial Patterning

International audienceThe site of Kostënki 21 (also known as Gmelin or Gmelinskaia) is located on the very edge of the Don River at Kostënki (Voronezh Oblast, Russia). The main archaeological horizon, layer III, is dated to c. 23,000–21,000 14C BP (c. 27,500–24,500 cal BP) and contained six concentrations of archaeological material, mostly interpreted as the remains of dwelling structures. A substantial Gravettian lithic assemblage was found. The site has traditionally been seen as without parallels within the Gravettian chronocultural framework of Eastern Europe. It has long been noted that clear differences in the lithic typology and faunal assemblages of the six concentrations can be used to separate them into two groups, but this has previously been attributed to differences in the activities carried out in the two areas. In this paper, we argue that the two parts of the site were created at different times and that one part of the site can potentially be grouped with several other sites in Russia and Ukraine on lithic techno-typological grounds. The degree of patination of the flint artefacts found at the site provides support for our interpretation

Mothering the orphaned pup : the beginning of a domestication process in the upper Palaeolithic

Several hypotheses have been proposed to explain the initial steps in the domestication process of the wolf. We discuss the human-initiated model in which wolf pups were brought to camp sites by male hunters and cared for by nursing women. A good relation between the more sociable and playful pups and the women and their children likely formed affiliative bonds and led to the survival of such pups into maturity. Some of these animals could have reproduced and delivered at least one litter. A selection on the behaviour of subsequent generations could ultimately have led to Palaeolithic dogs

Preliminary results of an investigation of a single Barrow near the village of Serteya (Smolensk region)

A single burial mound is located on the right bank of the Serteyka River (north-western Russia). It was discovered by E.A. Schmidt in 1951 and is attributed to the Old Russian Period. New researches on the burial mound conducted in 2013 and 2014 have uncovered several diachronic constructions. The first stage was connected to a flint knapping site, which was located on a natural ele- vation. It can be attributed to the 6th millennium BC on the basis of the Early Neolithic pottery fragments found nearby. The next period is dated to the second half of the 3rd millennium BC, when a ritual platform was created. Moreover, on another mound, a ditch was created, which can be attributed to the Long Barrow Culture due to a ceramic fragment found there. Samples from burnt bones and charcoal indicate that the first and second stages of this construction could be dated to between the middle and the second half of the 3rd millennium BC – the late stage of the Zhizhitskaya Culture of pile-dwellers and the initial stage of the Uzmenskaya Culture. Animal bones were cremated along with bronze items, as evidenced by the patina visible on the surface of the bones. Such a rite has been recorded for the first time. Furthermore, a ritual fire-place was set on a flat platform, and additional fireplaces were situated on the slope of the burial mound. This complex, which can be interpreted as a site of worship from the Late Neolithic through the Early Bronze Age, existed for a long period of time. Nowadays, it is difficult to find analogies to such ritual complexes from the 3rd millennium BC from the territory of Poland and the Upper Dnepr region; only the kurgans and burial mounds of the Corded Ware Culture dating to the 3rd millennium BC are known. It might also be supposed that some of the sites with such a sepulchral rite, usually attributed to the Long Barrows Culture, could also be ritual sites – this, however, would require further research