Excess protein enabled dog domestication during severe Ice Age winters

AbstractDogs (Canis familiaris) are the first animals to be domesticated by humans and the only ones domesticated by mobile hunter-gatherers. Wolves and humans were both persistent, pack hunters of large prey. They were species competing over resources in partially overlapping ecological niches and capable of killing each other. How could humans possibly have domesticated a competitive species? Here we present a new hypothesis based on food/resource partitioning between humans and incipient domesticated wolves/dogs. Humans are not fully adapted to a carnivorous diet; human consumption of meat is limited by the liver’s capacity to metabolize protein. Contrary to humans, wolves can thrive on lean meat for months. We present here data showing that all the Pleistocene archeological sites with dog or incipient dog remains are from areas that were analogous to subarctic and arctic environments. Our calculations show that during harsh winters, when game is lean and devoid of fat, Late Pleistocene hunters-gatherers in Eurasia would have a surplus of animal derived protein that could have been shared with incipient dogs. Our partitioning theory explains how competition may have been ameliorated during the initial phase of dog domestication. Following this initial period, incipient dogs would have become docile, being utilized in a multitude of ways such as hunting companions, beasts of burden and guards as well as going through many similar evolutionary changes as humans.

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Fine-tuning citrate synthase flux potentiates and refines metabolic innovation in the Lenski evolution experiment

eLife ◽

10.7554/elife.09696 ◽

2015 ◽

Vol 4 ◽

Cited By ~ 47

Author(s):

Erik M Quandt ◽

Jimmy Gollihar ◽

Zachary D Blount ◽

Andrew D Ellington ◽

George Georgiou ◽

...

Keyword(s):

Citrate Synthase ◽

Fine Tuning ◽

Ecological Niches ◽

Glta Gene ◽

Evolutionary Changes ◽

Before And After ◽

Evolution Experiment ◽

History Of ◽

Second Wave

Evolutionary innovations that enable organisms to colonize new ecological niches are rare compared to gradual evolutionary changes in existing traits. We discovered that key mutations in the gltA gene, which encodes citrate synthase (CS), occurred both before and after Escherichia coli gained the ability to grow aerobically on citrate (Cit+ phenotype) during the Lenski long-term evolution experiment. The first gltA mutation, which increases CS activity by disrupting NADH-inhibition of this enzyme, is beneficial for growth on the acetate and contributed to preserving the rudimentary Cit+ trait from extinction when it first evolved. However, after Cit+ was refined by further mutations, this potentiating gltA mutation became deleterious to fitness. A second wave of beneficial gltA mutations then evolved that reduced CS activity to below the ancestral level. Thus, dynamic reorganization of central metabolism made colonizing this new nutrient niche contingent on both co-opting and overcoming a history of prior adaptation.

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Hunter-gatherers of the Last Ice Age in northern Eurasia

Before Farming ◽

10.3828/bfarm.2003.2.2 ◽

2003 ◽

Vol 2003 (2) ◽

pp. 1-25

Author(s):

Pavel Dolukhanov

Keyword(s):

Ice Age ◽

Northern Eurasia ◽

Hunter Gatherers ◽

Last Ice Age

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Paleolithic DNA from the Caucasus reveals core of West Eurasian ancestry

10.1101/423079 ◽

2018 ◽

Cited By ~ 3

Author(s):

Iosif Lazaridis ◽

Anna Belfer-Cohen ◽

Swapan Mallick ◽

Nick Patterson ◽

Olivia Cheronet ◽

...

Keyword(s):

Near East ◽

Great Majority ◽

Ice Age ◽

Western Anatolia ◽

Hunter Gatherers ◽

The Caucasus ◽

Genome Wide ◽

Population Turnover ◽

Genome Wide Data ◽

Relationship Of

AbstractThe earliest ancient DNA data of modern humans from Europe dates to ∼40 thousand years ago1-4, but that from the Caucasus and the Near East to only ∼14 thousand years ago5,6, from populations who lived long after the Last Glacial Maximum (LGM) ∼26.5-19 thousand years ago7. To address this imbalance and to better understand the relationship of Europeans and Near Easterners, we report genome-wide data from two ∼26 thousand year old individuals from Dzudzuana Cave in Georgia in the Caucasus from around the beginning of the LGM. Surprisingly, the Dzudzuana population was more closely related to early agriculturalists from western Anatolia ∼8 thousand years ago8 than to the hunter-gatherers of the Caucasus from the same region of western Georgia of ∼13-10 thousand years ago5. Most of the Dzudzuana population’s ancestry was deeply related to the post-glacial western European hunter-gatherers of the ‘Villabruna cluster’3, but it also had ancestry from a lineage that had separated from the great majority of non-African populations before they separated from each other, proving that such ‘Basal Eurasians’6,9 were present in West Eurasia twice as early as previously recorded5,6. We document major population turnover in the Near East after the time of Dzudzuana, showing that the highly differentiated Holocene populations of the region6 were formed by ‘Ancient North Eurasian’3,9,10 admixture into the Caucasus and Iran and North African11,12 admixture into the Natufians of the Levant. We finally show that the Dzudzuana population contributed the majority of the ancestry of post-Ice Age people in the Near East, North Africa, and even parts of Europe, thereby becoming the largest single contributor of ancestry of all present-day West Eurasians.

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A note on the earliest distribution, cultivation and genetic changes in bitter vetch (Vicia ervilia) in ancient Europe

Genetika ◽

10.2298/gensr1501001m ◽

2015 ◽

Vol 47 (1) ◽

pp. 1-11 ◽

Cited By ~ 5

Author(s):

Aleksandar Mikic ◽

Aleksandar Medovic ◽

Zivko Jovanovic ◽

Nemanja Stanisavljevic

Keyword(s):

Modern Human ◽

Grain Legumes ◽

Ice Age ◽

Hunter Gatherers ◽

Genetic Changes ◽

Agricultural Revolution ◽

Bitter Vetch ◽

Linguistic Evidence ◽

Last Ice Age ◽

Seed Testa

Bitter vetch (Vicia ervilia (L.) Willd.) was a part of the everyday diet of the Eurasian Neanderthal population and the modern human Palaeolithic hunter-gatherers at the end of the last Ice Age. The major criteria to determine the domestication in bitter vetch and other ancient grain legumes are non-dehiscent pods, larger seed size and smooth seed testa. Bitter vetch seeds were found among the earliest findings of cultivated crops at the site of Tell El-Kerkh, Syria, from 10th millennium BP. Along with cereals, pea and lentil, bitter vetch has become definitely associated with the start of the 'agricultural revolution' in the Old World. Bitter vetch entered Europe in its south-east regions and progressed into its interior via Danube. Its distribution was rapid, since the available evidence reveals its presence in remote places at similar periods. Recently the first success has been obtained in the extraction of ancient DNA from charred bitter vetch seeds. The linguistic evidence supports the fact that most of Eurasian peoples have their own words denoting bitter vetch, meaning that its cultivation preceded the diversification of their own proto-languages.

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The Hidden Shaman

The Origins of Monsters ◽

10.23943/princeton/9780691159041.003.0004 ◽

2013 ◽

Author(s):

David Wengrow

Keyword(s):

Near East ◽

Upper Paleolithic ◽

Ice Age ◽

Southern Europe ◽

Hunter Gatherers ◽

Last Ice Age ◽

Paleolithic Art ◽

Predynastic Egypt

This chapter considers the case for a much earlier beginning to the composite's story, among the hunter-gatherers and villagers of remote prehistory. It has been suggested that “imaginary animals,” “monsters,” and composite figures are found throughout the Upper Paleolithic art tradition that flourished among hunter-gatherers of the last Ice Age, between around 40,000 and 10,000 years ago. That tradition, or better complex of traditions, is most richly documented across a broad swath of southern Europe, on what were then the fringes of a vast steppe bordering the zone of maximum glaciation. The chapter first examines the frequency of composites among the surviving corpus of Paleolithic art, along with the significance of such images in the ritual life of prehistoric societies, before discussing the development of pictorial art in the later Neolithic of the Near East. It also describes animal figures in predynastic Egypt.

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Origins of house mice in ecological niches created by settled hunter-gatherers in the Levant 15,000 y ago

Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences ◽

10.1073/pnas.1619137114 ◽

2017 ◽

Vol 114 (16) ◽

pp. 4099-4104 ◽

Cited By ~ 34

Author(s):

Lior Weissbrod ◽

Fiona B. Marshall ◽

François R. Valla ◽

Hamoudi Khalaily ◽

Guy Bar-Oz ◽

...

Keyword(s):

Environmental Influence ◽

Human Mobility ◽

Ecological Niches ◽

House Mice ◽

Hunter Gatherers ◽

Wild Mice ◽

Selection Dynamics ◽

Pastoral Households ◽

Animal Communities

Reductions in hunter-gatherer mobility during the Late Pleistocene influenced settlement ecologies, altered human relations with animal communities, and played a pivotal role in domestication. The influence of variability in human mobility on selection dynamics and ecological interactions in human settlements has not been extensively explored, however. This study of mice in modern African villages and changing mice molar shapes in a 200,000-y-long sequence from the Levant demonstrates competitive advantages for commensal mice in long-term settlements. Mice from African pastoral households provide a referential model for habitat partitioning among mice taxa in settlements of varying durations. The data reveal the earliest known commensal niche for house mice in long-term forager settlements 15,000 y ago. Competitive dynamics and the presence and abundance of mice continued to fluctuate with human mobility through the terminal Pleistocene. At the Natufian site of Ain Mallaha, house mice displaced less commensal wild mice during periods of heavy occupational pressure but were outcompeted when mobility increased. Changing food webs and ecological dynamics in long-term settlements allowed house mice to establish durable commensal populations that expanded with human societies. This study demonstrates the changing magnitude of cultural niche construction with varying human mobility and the extent of environmental influence before the advent of farming.

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Variation in global distribution, population structures, and demographic history for four Trichiurus cutlassfishes

PeerJ ◽

10.7717/peerj.12639 ◽

2021 ◽

Vol 9 ◽

pp. e12639

Author(s):

Hsiu-Chin Lin ◽

Chia-Jung Tsai ◽

Hui-Yu Wang

Keyword(s):

Population Structure ◽

Phylogenetic Trees ◽

Sequence Data ◽

Demographic History ◽

Ice Age ◽

Fish Stock ◽

Ecological Niches ◽

Specific Information ◽

Similar Species ◽

Haplotype Networks

Background Species-specific information on distribution and demographic patterns provides important implications for conservation and fisheries management. However, such information is often lacking for morphologically-similar species, which may lead to biases in the assessments of these species and even decrease effort towards sustainable management. Here, we aimed to uncover the distribution range, population structure and demographic history for four exploited Trichiurus cutlassfishes using genetics. These cutlassfishes contribute substantial global fisheries catch, with a high proportion of catch harvested from the NW Pacific. Methods We chose the widely available mitochondrial 16S ribosomal RNA (16S) as the genetic marker for cutlassfishes. We compiled the 16S sequence data from both the GenBank and a survey of trawler catch samples along the NW Pacific coasts 22–39°N. Genealogical relationships within each species was visualized with haplotype networks and potential population differentiations were further evaluated with AMOVA. Demographic histories were estimated using neutrality test, mismatch analysis, and the Bayesian skyline plot. The reconstructed phylogenetic trees were used to delimit and estimate the divergence time of species and included populations. Results In each of two cosmopolitan species, T. lepturus and T. nanhaiensis, we observed distinct populations along the coasts of warm oceans; such population differentiation might result from historical geographic barriers in the Pleistocene. In the NW Pacific, four Trichiurus species vary in their distribution habitats, which reflect differential ecological niches among these species. The small-sized T. brevis are primarily found in nearshore habitats; the warm-affiliated T. nanhaiensis are present along the path of the Kuroshio Current; the cold-affiliated T. japonicus spatially diverged from the widely-distributed T. lepturus, with the latter mainly occupy in warmer regions. Despite these differences, a single well-mixing fish stock, thus one management unit, was identified in each of the four species, presumably due to expansion of their population sizes predated the Last Glacial Maximum and a lack of distribution barrier. The most dominant T. japonicus, which have at least one magnitude higher effective population size than the others, show a unique abrupt size expansion event at 75 to 50-kilo years ago when the low sea level occurred during the ice age. Main conclusions The demographic history revealed by our genetic analyses advances understanding of the current distribution and population structure for these congeneric species. Moreover, the uncovered population structure provides insight into the assessment and management of these species. Such information complements contemporary knowledge about these species and enables us to forecast their ability to resist future environmental and anthropogenic disturbances.

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Enhanced Ecologies and Ecosystem Engineering

10.1093/oxfordhb/9780190095611.013.14 ◽

2021 ◽

Author(s):

Ian J. McNiven ◽

Tiina Manne ◽

Anne Ross

Keyword(s):

Food Resource ◽

Ecosystem Engineering ◽

Ecological Processes ◽

Hunter Gatherers ◽

Aboriginal Australians ◽

The Past ◽

Resource Enhancement ◽

Agricultural Societies ◽

Intimate Knowledge ◽

Animal Resource

Anthropological and archaeological representations of Aboriginal Australians as hunter-gatherers adapting to the natural availability of food resources are simplistic and inconsistent with ethnographic records of active, strategic, and sociopolitically meaningful resource enhancement. Scholarship over the past four decades has documented plant and animal food resource enhancement by Aboriginal Australians that blur socioeconomic boundaries with agricultural societies of New Guinea. Enhancements were achieved by using intimate knowledge of local ecological processes to modify ecosystems through a range of strategies such as landscape burning, animal translocation, protected rearing, shelter creation, and restocking. These strategies were embedded within broader sociocultural and sociopolitical domains that were often accompanied by ritual. Such engineered food enhancement practices reveal that many documented and modelled associations between environment and behaviour are in fact correlations between behaviour and the products of behaviour. The uneven distribution of animal resource enhancement practices across Australia indicates considerable regional diversity and supports existing views that many enhancements are related to regionally specific and historically contingent developments in social complexity.

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Evidence of Absence or Absence of Evidence?

Journal of Mediterranean Archaeology ◽

10.1558/jma.19471 ◽

2021 ◽

Vol 33 (2) ◽

pp. 160-184

Author(s):

Sonja Kačar

Keyword(s):

Central Italy ◽

Food Resource ◽

Western Mediterranean ◽

Marine Resources ◽

Important Food ◽

Hunter Gatherers ◽

South Central ◽

Historical Factors ◽

Late Mesolithic ◽

Blade Production

The last hunter-gatherers of the central and western Mediterranean are associated with the Castelnovian technocomplex, which developed during the seventh millennium BC and is characterized mainly by its lithic industries, which reflect important changes that occurred during the Late Mesolithic: debitage from this time is oriented towards blade production by pressure-flaking and the manufacture of special tools, such as trapezes (made by the microburin technique) and notched blades. Although rare, Castelnovian sites have been identified in the wider Adriatic region of south-central Italy, Albania, Montenegro and the Italian and Slovenian Karst. However, it seems that the Croatian coast and its hinterland in the eastern Adriatic lack any traces. No sites were found in Dalmatia and only a few questionable surface finds come from Istria. This study explores whether this absence is due to historical factors, such as depopulation during the Late Mesolithic or the region being outside the Castelnovian expansion route, or whether it is because of a combination of taphonomic causes (such as loss of sites by marine transgression) and lack of previous research. The paper also focuses on the hypothesis that the presence of the last hunter-gatherers can be detected indirectly through the persistence of Castelnovian elements in the oldest Neolithic Impressed Ware assemblages of the eastern Adriatic. I further propose that Castelnovian traits are observable in the Impressed Ware assemblages of Istria. This Mesolithic tradition consists of the use of local flint, blade production by indirect percussion and ‘simpler’ forms of pressure flaking in lithic production, while marine resources remain an important food resource.

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The Future of Civilization

Information Technology and Societal Development ◽

10.4018/978-1-60566-004-2.ch017 ◽

2009 ◽

pp. 395-418

Author(s):

Andrew Targowski

Keyword(s):

User Interfaces ◽

Homo Sapiens ◽

Rapid Development ◽

Ice Age ◽

Information Communication ◽

Hunter Gatherers ◽

The Earth ◽

The Future ◽

Short Run ◽

Faster Development

The purpose of this chapter is the investigation whether human civilization has much of a future on the Earth. This investigation is partially based upon research by members of the Polish Academy of Arts and Sciences (Krakow), conducted in 1998-2002. The discoveries and applications of technology which led to our civilization are impressive. Archaeology and history teach us about it. However, in the Age of information-communication technology, it is apparent that technology may no longer merely support civilization but conquer it. In the past, civilization’s progress was slow. Centuries elapsed with no events meaningful to modern questions. Nowadays, civilization faces an impact from technology so tremendous as to disturb the fragile equilibrium between humans and the ecosystem. This raises many questions in respect of the future of civilization and its ability to survive despite many threats. Therefore, it is worthy to reflect on its future and duration. Can or even must it vanish due to the inevitable end of the solar system? In the short run, let us look at current problems of civilization, a very complex system composed of three components (Figure 17-1): • Human entities • Culture • Infrastructure The development of human civilization, as defined in this study1, has been proceeding as long as humans have lived in organized societies in favorable environments. According to accepted estimates, hominids began to live in the Earth about 6-5 million years ago. The development of more skillful mankind began about 200,000- 150,000 years ago, when modern man, Homo sapiens, was living in South-Eastern Africa2. From this location, Homo sapiens began to move to: South-Western Asia (50,000 years ago), Australia (50,000), Europe (40,000), New Guinea (40,000), Siberia (25,000), and North America (12,000) (Burenhult, 2003a). Modern men began to be more social first as hunter-gatherers, then when the Ice Age ended (-10,000) as farmers and town-dwellers (-9,000). Recorded historic civilization is about 6,000 years old (Burenhult, 2003b) and is associated with the rise of Mesopotamian civilization (includes Sumerian and Semitic people) (4,000 B.C.), followed by Egyptian (3,100 B.C.), Indus (2,500 B.C.), Sinic (1,500 B.C.), and so forth. At the beginning of the 21st century, humans (applying electronic information-communication tools based on unlimited memories and on friendly graphic user interfaces that require huge memories and processing speed) improve their symbols processing capability as humans were 60,000 years ago, when language was formed and decided about human socialization and organization through the rapid development of brain/mind as Homo verbalis2. The next leap took place in about 4,000 B.C. when Homo scriba applied INFOCO- 2 (manuscripts). Nowadays, we deal with the information-communication revolution or INFOCO revolution (Homo electronicus), which is the next challenge for civilization. It leads to the faster development of knowledge and wisdom; on the other hand, it may support projects which may first conquer and later destroy civilization. Does civilization, as a short cosmologic instance, have any chance of survival? Let us reflect on this possibility in the next sections.

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