Ten millennia of hepatitis B virus evolution

Hepatitis B virus (HBV) has been infecting humans for millennia and remains a global health problem, but its past diversity and dispersal routes are largely unknown. We generated HBV genomic data from 137 Eurasians and Native Americans dated between ~10,500 and ~400 years ago. We date the most recent common ancestor of all HBV lineages to between ~20,000 and 12,000 years ago, with the virus present in European and South American hunter-gatherers during the early Holocene. After the European Neolithic transition, Mesolithic HBV strains were replaced by a lineage likely disseminated by early farmers that prevailed throughout western Eurasia for ~4000 years, declining around the end of the 2nd millennium BCE. The only remnant of this prehistoric HBV diversity is the rare genotype G, which appears to have reemerged during the HIV pandemic

Concerning Absolute Date of the Imenkovo Culture Sites from the Samara Bend

The article addresses development of absolute chronology of the Imenkovo culture sites from the Samara Bend. The radiocarbon dating method allows the author to refine the chronological position of the archaeological sites, which are key sites to distinction of the two stages of the Imenkovo culture in the Samara Volga region. The radiocarbon data from Sidelkino - Timyashevo type of site and the Studeny Ovrag settlement confirm the fact of simultaneous existence of several cultural – historical groups in the Middle Volga. The dates obtained for the archeological sites of the Khazar time on the Samara Bend are later compared to the Imenkovo sites and mark the upper chronological border of the Imenkovo culture. The chronological framework of the Imenkovo culture in the Samara Volga region is defined within 4th – middle 7th century

Extraordinary Burial of the Eneolithic Burial Ground Ekaterinovsky Cape

In 2017, excavation of burial ground Ekaterinovsky cape were continued, located in the area of the confluence of the Bezenchuk River in the Volga River. During the new excavations, 14 burials were studied. The skeleton of the buried were in a position elongated on the back, less often – crooked on the back with knees bent at the knees. In one burial (No. 90), a special position of the skeleton was recorded. In the burial number 90 in the anatomical order, parts of the male skeleton. This gave grounds for the reconstruction of his original position in a semi-sitting position with the support of elbows on the bottom of the pit. Noteworthy inventory: on the pelvic bones on the left lay a bone spoon, near the right humerus, the pommel of a cruciform club was found.The conclusion is made about the high social status of the buried. The results of the analysis of burial allow us to outline the closest circle of analogies in the materials of Khvalynsky I and Murzikhinsky burial grounds

Approaches to the reconstruction of dynamic of the territory occupation according to the soil signs

The dynamics of human settling Samarskaya Luka (Volga bend) area adjacent to the Zhiguli archaeological site and burial ground has been studied by analyzing both the cultural layer of the monument and the soil strata in the adjacent ravine. Seven erosion and accumulation cycles have been distinguished in the ravine development during the Holocene, correlated with periods of the water catchment area development. Each cycle used to start with forest fires, leading to an increase in runoff and ravine cutting-in, and to complete with surface stabilization as grassland or forest was reestablished. The length of periods between changes of land use varied from a few decades in the agricultural cycles of the early Middle Ages, up to several hundred years in the nomadic-pastoral cycles of the Eneolithic – the Bronze Age, the Iron Age and the late Middle Ages. Vegetation changed within each cycle, as human utilization of the watershed resulted in elimination of the understory, reduction of tree species variety, an increase in the proportion of conifers, and, due to combination of fire and grazing, led to deforestation. A lengthy deforestation period occurred in the mid-Holocene (Eneolithic – early Bronze Age). A new period of progressive deforestation and open space growth started in the middle of the 1st millennium AD. Discontinuities in human occupation lasting a few hundred years observed in the mid-Holocene. Shorter breaks (less than a century) took place between the Scythian-Gorodets period and the Imenkovo-Khazar period, later between the Khazar period and the Bulgarian period, and in that preceding Russian colonization of the Samara Luka area in the 16th century