Yersinia pestis, the etiologic agent of plague, is a bacterium associated with wild rodents and their fleas. Historically it was responsible for three pandemics: the Plague of Justinian in the 6th ...century AD, which persisted until the 8th century 1; the renowned Black Death of the 14th century 2, 3, with recurrent outbreaks until the 18th century 4; and the most recent 19th century pandemic, in which Y. pestis spread worldwide 5 and became endemic in several regions 6. The discovery of molecular signatures of Y. pestis in prehistoric Eurasian individuals and two genomes from Southern Siberia suggest that Y. pestis caused some form of disease in humans prior to the first historically documented pandemic 7. Here, we present six new European Y. pestis genomes spanning the Late Neolithic to the Bronze Age (LNBA; 4,800 to 3,700 calibrated years before present). This time period is characterized by major transformative cultural and social changes that led to cross-European networks of contact and exchange 8, 9. We show that all known LNBA strains form a single putatively extinct clade in the Y. pestis phylogeny. Interpreting our data within the context of recent ancient human genomic evidence that suggests an increase in human mobility during the LNBA, we propose a possible scenario for the early spread of Y. pestis: the pathogen may have entered Europe from Central Eurasia following an expansion of people from the steppe, persisted within Europe until the mid-Bronze Age, and moved back toward Central Eurasia in parallel with human populations.
•Six Late Neolithic–Early Bronze Age European Y. pestis genomes were reconstructed•All Late Neolithic and Early Bronze Age Y. pestis form a single phylogenetic branch
Andrades Valtueña et al. present the first six European Y. pestis genomes dating from the Late Neolithic and the Early Bronze Age. These data suggest that Y. pestis entered Europe during a human migration around 4800 BP, persisted in Europe, and traveled back to Central Eurasia.
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GEOZS, IJS, IMTLJ, KILJ, KISLJ, NLZOH, NUK, OILJ, PNG, SAZU, SBCE, SBJE, UILJ, UL, UM, UPCLJ, UPUK, ZAGLJ, ZRSKP
The Assimilation Model (AM) was developed to explain the presence of evidence for small, but not insignificant, anatomical contributions of Eurasian archaic humans (including Neandertals) to modern ...Eurasians within a framework of the documented African origin of the majority of modern Eurasian ancestry. The AM was based entirely on morphological evidence for introgression in Eurasia and was initially not well supported by genetic studies, including ancient DNA. However, beginning with the publication of the first Neandertal draft genome in 2010, genomic data have consistently demonstrated low levels of archaic human gene flow into modern Eurasian populations and recently have shown modern gene flow into a Siberian Neandertal. Current data also indicate the complexity of archaic–modern human population dynamics during the late Pleistocene, another tenet of the AM. We conclude that the AM is strongly supported by current genetic and genomic data, as well as morphological evidence that has been documented elsewhere.
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GEOZS, IJS, IMTLJ, KILJ, KISLJ, NUK, OILJ, PNG, SAZU, SBCE, SBJE, UL, UM, UPCLJ, UPUK, ZRSKP
3.
The genomic history of southeastern Europe Mathieson, Iain; Alpaslan-Roodenberg, Songül; Posth, Cosimo ...
Nature (London),
03/2018, Volume:
555, Issue:
7695
Journal Article
Peer reviewed
Open access
Farming was first introduced to Europe in the mid-seventh millennium bc, and was associated with migrants from Anatolia who settled in the southeast before spreading throughout Europe. Here, to ...understand the dynamics of this process, we analysed genome-wide ancient DNA data from 225 individuals who lived in southeastern Europe and surrounding regions between 12000 and 500 bc. We document a west-east cline of ancestry in indigenous hunter-gatherers and, in eastern Europe, the early stages in the formation of Bronze Age steppe ancestry. We show that the first farmers of northern and western Europe dispersed through southeastern Europe with limited hunter-gatherer admixture, but that some early groups in the southeast mixed extensively with hunter-gatherers without the sex-biased admixture that prevailed later in the north and west. We also show that southeastern Europe continued to be a nexus between east and west after the arrival of farmers, with intermittent genetic contact with steppe populations occurring up to 2,000 years earlier than the migrations from the steppe that ultimately replaced much of the population of northern Europe.
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KISLJ, NUK, SBMB, UL, UM, UPUK
Paleogenomic and bioanthropological studies of ancient massacres have highlighted sites where the victims were male and plausibly died all in battle, or were executed members of the same family as ...might be expected from a killing intentionally directed at subsets of a community, or where the massacred individuals were plausibly members of a migrant community in conflict with previously established groups, or where there was evidence that the killing was part of a religious ritual. Here we provide evidence of killing on a massive scale in prehistory that was not directed to a specific family, based on genome-wide ancient DNA for 38 of the 41 documented victims of a 6,200 year old massacre in Potočani, Croatia and combining our results with bioanthropological data. We highlight three results: (i) the majority of individuals were unrelated and instead were a sample of what was clearly a large farming population, (ii) the ancestry of the individuals was homogenous which makes it unlikely that the massacre was linked to the arrival of new genetic ancestry, and (iii) there were approximately equal numbers of males and females. Combined with the bioanthropological evidence that the victims were of a wide range of ages, these results show that large-scale indiscriminate killing is a horror that is not just a feature of the modern and historic periods, but was also a significant process in pre-state societies.
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DOBA, IZUM, KILJ, NUK, PILJ, PNG, SAZU, SIK, UILJ, UKNU, UL, UM, UPUK
Objectives
To provide a comprehensive analysis of perimortem cranial injuries found on human remains from the Eneolithic (ca. 4200 BCE) mass grave discovered at Potočani, Croatia, to test if the ...assemblage is a result of a deliberate violent episode on a massive scale.
Materials and Methods
Standard bioarchaeological analysis, including inventory of the preserved elements, minimum number of individuals, sex determination, age at death, as well as pattern and distribution of trauma, was recorded.
Results
A minimum of 41 people are present in the sample. Both sexes and almost all age groups are represented, with a prevalence of children and young adults. Four blunt force antemortem injuries are registered in three adult males and one subadult while perimortem injuries are recorded on 13 crania with a total of 28 injuries. The distribution of perimortem injuries is not patterned with age, sex, or siding, and their location is on lateral, posterior, or superior parts of the crania. No “defensive wounds” or other type of injuries are observed on postcranial elements.
Discussion
The injuries, manner of disposal of the bodies, radiocarbon dates, and other available data strongly suggest that the Potočani sample represents a single episode of execution during which the Potočani people were unable to defend themselves. The Potočani massacre is the oldest such example in southeastern Europe and provides additional evidence that indiscriminate violence on a massive scale is not a product of modern societies.
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BFBNIB, FZAB, GIS, IJS, KILJ, NLZOH, NUK, OILJ, SAZU, SBCE, SBMB, UL, UM, UPUK
By sequencing 727 ancient individuals from the Southern Arc (Anatolia and its neighbors in Southeastern Europe and West Asia) over 10,000 years, we contextualize its Chalcolithic period and Bronze ...Age (about 5000 to 1000 BCE), when extensive gene flow entangled it with the Eurasian steppe. Two streams of migration transmitted Caucasus and Anatolian/Levantine ancestry northward, and the Yamnaya pastoralists, formed on the steppe, then spread southward into the Balkans and across the Caucasus into Armenia, where they left numerous patrilineal descendants. Anatolia was transformed by intra-West Asian gene flow, with negligible impact of the later Yamnaya migrations. This contrasts with all other regions where Indo-European languages were spoken, suggesting that the homeland of the Indo-Anatolian language family was in West Asia, with only secondary dispersals of non-Anatolian Indo-Europeans from the steppe.
A short research history and current interpretations of evidence from Middle Paleolithic sites in Croatia are presented. Sites are situated in two main geographic regions, continental and Adriatic, ...divided by the Dinaric Mountains, providing two different landscapes for the adaptation of Mousterian people and their settlement system. Fossil human remains are discussed from both paleoanthropological and genetic perspectives within their archaeological framework. Interpretations of sites were based on analyses of both old and new archaeological collections (material recovered by recent excavations). Mousterian lithic material originated from three different types of sites: cave sites, open air sites and an underwater site. Research results are presented from various perspectives.
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GEOZS, IJS, IMTLJ, KILJ, KISLJ, NLZOH, NUK, OILJ, PNG, SAZU, SBCE, SBJE, UL, UM, UPCLJ, UPUK, ZRSKP
Debate continues concerning the role of the Neandertals in the emergence of early modern Europeans. This paper presents one assessment of aspects of the morphological data, chronological patterns, ...genetic information and archaeology relevant to the debate. It is clear that none of these unequivocally support any of the models offered to explain modern human origins. In fact despite various claims to the contrary, there continues to be valid scientific debate about the interpretation of patterns from all of these disciplinary domains and which models they are more commensurate with. The assessment presented here concludes that the assimilation model is the best explanation for the origin of anatomically modern humans in Europe. If Neandertals are assimilated into in-migrating populations of modern people in Europe, then Neandertals do not go extinct in the classical sense of the word.
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GEOZS, IJS, IMTLJ, KILJ, KISLJ, NUK, OILJ, PNG, SAZU, SBCE, SBJE, UL, UM, UPCLJ, UPUK
We present the first ancient DNA data from the Pre-Pottery Neolithic of Mesopotamia (Southeastern Turkey and Northern Iraq), Cyprus, and the Northwestern Zagros, along with the first data from ...Neolithic Armenia. We show that these and neighboring populations were formed through admixture of pre-Neolithic sources related to Anatolian, Caucasus, and Levantine hunter-gatherers, forming a Neolithic continuum of ancestry mirroring the geography of West Asia. By analyzing Pre-Pottery and Pottery Neolithic populations of Anatolia, we show that the former were derived from admixture between Mesopotamian-related and local Epipaleolithic-related sources, but the latter experienced additional Levantine-related gene flow, thus documenting at least two pulses of migration from the Fertile Crescent heartland to the early farmers of Anatolia.
This paper presents the results of carbon and nitrogen stable isotope analyses on human remains uncovered from Potočani, a Copper Age (Eneolithic) mass burial site in continental Croatia. The remains ...of at least 41individuals were uncovered in a pit in 2007 during rescue excavations in Požeško‐Slavonska county. Skeletal evidence of violence and the disorganized arrangement of bodies suggest that burial took place over a short period of time. Radiocarbon dates and associated ceramics indicate these people were part of the Lasinja cultural group, dating to the Middle Copper Age (ca.4200 cal BC). Carbon and nitrogen stable isotope analyses on 40individuals indicate higher than expected nitrogen values in comparison with other regional populations and significant differences between children, juveniles, and adults at the site of Potočani. Bioarchaeological and stable isotope results support the interpretation that the people buried at Potočani likely experienced dietary stress in the years leading up to their violent deaths.
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FZAB, GIS, IJS, KILJ, NLZOH, NUK, OILJ, SAZU, SBCE, SBMB, UL, UM, UPUK
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