scholarly journals Integrated stable isotopic and radiocarbon analyses of Neolithic and bronze age hunter-gatherers from the Little Sea and Upper Lena micro- regions, Cis-Baikal, Siberia

2020 ◽  
Vol 119 ◽  
pp. 105161 ◽  
Author(s):  
J. Alyssa White ◽  
Rick J. Schulting ◽  
Andrew Lythe ◽  
Peter Hommel ◽  
Christopher Bronk Ramsey ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Bronze Age ◽  
Hunter Gatherers ◽  
Stable Isotopic

Language dispersals and the “Secondary Peoples’ Revolution”

2020 ◽  
pp. 806-814
Author(s):  
Mark James Hudson
Keyword(s):  
Bronze Age ◽  
Northeast Asia ◽  
Ryukyu Islands ◽  
State Control ◽  
Hunter Gatherers ◽  
Population Movements ◽  
The Ryukyu Islands ◽  
Northeast Asian ◽  
Cattle Husbandry ◽  
The Bronze Age

Population growth and demic diffusion help explain the early Neolithic expansions of agriculture and Transeurasian languages in Northeast Asia. By the Bronze Age, alluvial agrarian states had come to possess considerable political and economic dominance over their subjects in the civilizational centers of Eurasia. At the same time, however, Bronze Age economies offered new opportunities for trade and secondary expansion into areas outside state control. This chapter argues that the resulting population movements—here termed the “secondary peoples’ revolution”—were of great significance in the post-Neolithic dispersals of Transeurasian languages. Four examples are briefly discussed: steppe nomadic pastoralism, Sakha horse and cattle husbandry, northeast Asian hunter-gatherers, and agriculture associated with trade/piracy networks in the Ryukyu Islands.

scholarly journals Ancient genomes from present-day France unveil 7,000 years of its demographic history

2020 ◽  
Vol 117 (23) ◽  
pp. 12791-12798 ◽  
Author(s):  
Samantha Brunel ◽  
E. Andrew Bennett ◽  
Laurent Cardin ◽  
Damien Garraud ◽  
Hélène Barrand Emam ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Bronze Age ◽  
Demographic History ◽  
Hunter Gatherers ◽  
Genetic Landscape ◽  
Genomic Studies ◽  
Nuclear Loci ◽  
Demographic Patterns ◽  
Low Coverage ◽  
The Bronze Age ◽  
Complete Mitochondrial Genomes

Genomic studies conducted on ancient individuals across Europe have revealed how migrations have contributed to its present genetic landscape, but the territory of present-day France has yet to be connected to the broader European picture. We generated a large dataset comprising the complete mitochondrial genomes, Y-chromosome markers, and genotypes of a number of nuclear loci of interest of 243 individuals sampled across present-day France over a period spanning 7,000 y, complemented with a partially overlapping dataset of 58 low-coverage genomes. This panel provides a high-resolution transect of the dynamics of maternal and paternal lineages in France as well as of autosomal genotypes. Parental lineages and genomic data both revealed demographic patterns in France for the Neolithic and Bronze Age transitions consistent with neighboring regions, first with a migration wave of Anatolian farmers followed by varying degrees of admixture with autochthonous hunter-gatherers, and then substantial gene flow from individuals deriving part of their ancestry from the Pontic steppe at the onset of the Bronze Age. Our data have also highlighted the persistence of Magdalenian-associated ancestry in hunter-gatherer populations outside of Spain and thus provide arguments for an expansion of these populations at the end of the Paleolithic Period more northerly than what has been described so far. Finally, no major demographic changes were detected during the transition between the Bronze and Iron Ages.

scholarly journals Early integration of pastoralism and millet cultivation in Bronze Age Eurasia

2019 ◽  
Vol 286 (1910) ◽  
pp. 20191273 ◽  
Author(s):  
Taylor R. Hermes ◽  
Michael D. Frachetti ◽  
Paula N. Doumani Dupuy ◽  
Alexei Mar'yashev ◽  
Almut Nebel ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Bronze Age ◽  
Northern China ◽  
Faunal Remains ◽  
Early Integration ◽  
Near Eastern ◽  
Inner Asia ◽  
Plant Cultivation ◽  
Mobile Pastoralists ◽  
Stable Isotopic ◽  
Initial Transmission

Mobile pastoralists are thought to have facilitated the first trans-Eurasian dispersals of domesticated plants during the Early Bronze Age ( ca 2500–2300 BC). Problematically, the earliest seeds of wheat, barley and millet in Inner Asia were recovered from human mortuary contexts and do not inform on local cultivation or subsistence use, while contemporaneous evidence for the use and management of domesticated livestock in the region remains ambiguous. We analysed mitochondrial DNA and multi-stable isotopic ratios (δ 13 C, δ 15 N and δ 18 O) of faunal remains from key pastoralist sites in the Dzhungar Mountains of southeastern Kazakhstan. At ca 2700 BC, Near Eastern domesticated sheep and goat were present at the settlement of Dali, which were also winter foddered with the region's earliest cultivated millet spreading from its centre of domestication in northern China. In the following centuries, millet cultivation and caprine management became increasingly intertwined at the nearby site of Begash. Cattle, on the other hand, received low levels of millet fodder at the sites for millennia. By primarily examining livestock dietary intake, this study reveals that the initial transmission of millet across the mountains of Inner Asia coincided with a substantial connection between pastoralism and plant cultivation, suggesting that pastoralist livestock herding was integral for the westward dispersal of millet from farming societies in China.

scholarly journals Ancestral contributions to contemporary European complex traits

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Davide Marnetto ◽  
Vasili Pankratov ◽  
Mayukh Mondal ◽  
Francesco Montinaro ◽  
Katri Pärna ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Bronze Age ◽  
Complex Traits ◽  
Phenotypic Variability ◽  
Complex Trait ◽  
Blood Cholesterol ◽  
Hunter Gatherers ◽  
Genetic Components ◽  
Genome Wide ◽  
A Genome ◽  
Genomic Regions

The contemporary European genetic makeup formed in the last 8000 years as the combination of three main genetic components: the local Western Hunter-Gatherers, the incoming Neolithic Farmers from Anatolia and the Bronze Age component from the Pontic Steppes. When meeting into the post-Neolithic European environment, the genetic variants accumulated during their three distinct evolutionary histories mixed and came into contact with new environmental challenges. Here we investigate how this genetic legacy reflects on the complex trait landscape of contemporary European populations, using the Estonian Biobank as a case study. For the first time we directly connect the phenotypic information available from biobank samples with the genetic similarity to these ancestral groups, both at a genome-wide level and focusing on genomic regions associated with each of the 27 complex traits we investigated. We also found SNPs connected to pigmentation, cholesterol, sleep, diastolic blood pressure, and body mass index (BMI) to show signals of selection following the post Neolithic admixture events. We recapitulate existing knowledge about pigmentation traits, corroborate the connection between Steppe ancestry and height and highlight novel associations. Among others, we report the contribution of Hunter Gatherer ancestry towards high BMI and low blood cholesterol levels. Our results show that the ancient components that form the contemporary European genome were differentiated enough to contribute ancestry-specific signatures to the phenotypic variability displayed by contemporary individuals in at least 11 out of 27 of the complex traits investigated here.

scholarly journals Genetic ancestry changes in Stone to Bronze Age transition in the East European plain

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Lehti Saag ◽  
Sergey V. Vasilyev ◽  
Liivi Varul ◽  
Natalia V. Kosorukova ◽  
Dmitri V. Gerasimov ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Bronze Age ◽  
Western Europe ◽  
Sequence Data ◽  
Source Area ◽  
East European Plain ◽  
Hunter Gatherers ◽  
Population Movements ◽  
East European ◽  
Genome Wide ◽  
Clear Change

AbstractTransition from the Stone to the Bronze Age in Central and Western Europe was a period of major population movements originating from the Ponto-Caspian Steppe. Here, we report new genome-wide sequence data from 28 individuals from the territory north of this source area – from the under-studied Western part of present-day Russia, including Stone Age hunter-gatherers (10,800–4,250 cal BC) and Bronze Age farmers from the Corded Ware complex called Fatyanovo Culture (2,900–2,050 cal BC). We show that Eastern hunter-gatherer ancestry was present in Northwestern Russia already from around 10,000 BC. Furthermore, we see a clear change in ancestry with the arrival of farming – the Fatyanovo Culture individuals were genetically similar to other Corded Ware cultures, carrying a mixture of Steppe and European early farmer ancestry and thus likely originating from a fast migration towards the northeast from somewhere in the vicinity of modern-day Ukraine, which is the closest area where these ancestries coexisted from around 3,000 BC.

Turning eastward: New radiocarbon and stable isotopic data for Middle Holocene hunter-gatherers from Fofanovo, Trans-Baikal, Siberia

2021 ◽  
Vol 28 ◽  
pp. 100323
Author(s):  
J. Alyssa White ◽  
Rick J. Schulting ◽  
Peter Hommel ◽  
Vyacheslav Moiseyev ◽  
Valeri Khartanovich ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Isotopic Data ◽  
Hunter Gatherers ◽  
Middle Holocene ◽  
Stable Isotopic

Radiocarbon Dates and Stable Isotope Data from the Early Bronze Age Burials in Riigiküla I and Kivisaare Settlement Sites, Estonia

Radiocarbon ◽  
2015 ◽  
Vol 57 (4) ◽  
pp. 645-656 ◽  
Author(s):  
Mari Tõrv ◽  
John Meadows
Keyword(s):  
Stable Isotope ◽  
Bronze Age ◽  
Early Bronze Age ◽  
Stone Age ◽  
Hunter Gatherers ◽  
Radiocarbon Dates ◽  
Agricultural Communities ◽  
Time Period ◽  
Freshwater Reservoir ◽  
Relationship Of

Four inhumations from Kivisaare and Riigiküla I settlement and burial sites were dated in the course of a project about hunter-gatherer mortuary practices in Estonia, as they were believed to belong to the Stone Age. However, these burials appear to be Early Bronze Age inhumations instead, and thus are discussed separately in the present article. These burials are the first evidence in Estonia of a long-lasting tradition of inhumations without any visible aboveground structures. As the archaeology of the Early Bronze Age in Estonia is poorly known, these four inhumations contribute immensely to our understanding about this time period. Moreover, stable isotope values show that these people had a more terrestrial subsistence strategy than Stone Age hunter-gatherers. Nevertheless, aquatic resources were probably still significant components of their diet, particularly at Kivisaare, and the radiocarbon dates could therefore be subject to significant freshwater reservoir effects. This creates ambiguity in the chronological relationship of these four individuals to burials in stone-cist graves, which are attributed to the Late Bronze Age and which appear to be associated with fully agricultural communities.

Interdisciplinary study on dietary complexity in Central China during the Longshan Period (4.5–3.8 kaBP): New isotopic evidence from Wadian and Haojiatai, Henan Province

The Holocene ◽  
2020 ◽  
pp. 095968362097025
Author(s):  
Wei Li ◽  
Ligang Zhou ◽  
YiHsien Lin ◽  
Hai Zhang ◽  
Ying Zhang ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Bronze Age ◽  
Central China ◽  
Feeding Strategies ◽  
Cultural Backgrounds ◽  
Hunter Gatherers ◽  
Western Asia ◽  
The Social ◽  
Interdisciplinary Study ◽  
Longshan Period ◽  
Cattle And Sheep

Central China is one of the key regions of the world that sees the transition from early Neolithic urbanization into the social complexity of Bronze Age civilizations. Previous evidence had indicated that the diets of humans and the feeding strategies of livestock in Central China during the Longshan Period (4.5–3.8 kaBP) became more complex and diverse, including the widespread introduction of cattle and sheep, and the coexistence of different human dietary groups within several settlements. Within this paper new and pre-existing stable isotope analyses from human ( n = 31) and animal bones ( n = 76) recovered from Wadian and Haojiatai, two important Longshan sites in the southeast of Central China, are integrated with multiproxy data from archaeological, environmental, and cultural contexts to interpret the social conditions behind dietary complexity from an interdisciplinary perspective. We suggest that the feeding strategies of cattle and sheep from Western Asia were successfully adapted to the pre-existing local millet farming subsistence regimes, and that the different human dietary groups seen corresponded to continuing diversified subsistence strategies that included millet farming, rice farming, and hunter-gathering. This dietary complexity is considered as a reflection of different patterns within the cultural interactions in Central China during the Longshan Period that saw the mixing of populations with diversified cultural backgrounds. This is represented by the introduction of extraneous livestock and the coexistence of millet and rice farmers at Wadian, and the continued expansion of millet agriculture within Central China indicated by the coexistence of millet farmers and hunter-gatherers at Haojiatai.

scholarly journals The formation of human populations in South and Central Asia

Science ◽  
2019 ◽  
Vol 365 (6457) ◽  
pp. eaat7487 ◽  
Author(s):  
Vagheesh M. Narasimhan ◽  
Nick Patterson ◽  
Priya Moorjani ◽  
Nadin Rohland ◽  
Rebecca Bernardos ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
South Asia ◽  
Central Asia ◽  
Bronze Age ◽  
South Asians ◽  
Primary Source ◽  
Ancestral Population ◽  
Human Populations ◽  
Hunter Gatherers ◽  
Distinctive Features ◽  
Slavic Languages

By sequencing 523 ancient humans, we show that the primary source of ancestry in modern South Asians is a prehistoric genetic gradient between people related to early hunter-gatherers of Iran and Southeast Asia. After the Indus Valley Civilization’s decline, its people mixed with individuals in the southeast to form one of the two main ancestral populations of South Asia, whose direct descendants live in southern India. Simultaneously, they mixed with descendants of Steppe pastoralists who, starting around 4000 years ago, spread via Central Asia to form the other main ancestral population. The Steppe ancestry in South Asia has the same profile as that in Bronze Age Eastern Europe, tracking a movement of people that affected both regions and that likely spread the distinctive features shared between Indo-Iranian and Balto-Slavic languages.

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