Community differentiation is a fundamental topic of the social sciences, and its prehistoric origins in Europe are typically assumed to lie among the complex, densely populated societies that ...developed millennia after their Neolithic predecessors. Here we present the earliest, statistically significant evidence for such differentiation among the first farmers of Neolithic Europe. By using strontium isotopic data from more than 300 early Neolithic human skeletons, we find significantly less variance in geographic signatures among males than we find among females, and less variance among burials with ground stone adzes than burials without such adzes. From this, in context with other available evidence, we infer differential land use in early Neolithic central Europe within a patrilocal kinship system.
In der Erforschung des langen Prozesses der Entstehung des Neolithikums im Vorderen Orient kommt der Archäozoologie eine essentielle Rolle zu. Die Feststellung erster Domestikations-merkmale, die ...wirtschaftliche Bedeutung der verschiedenen Jagd- und Wildtiere kann nur durch die Analyse der Tierknochen korrekt erfasst werden, die bildlichen Darstellungen (Göbekli Tepe und Çatal Höyük als Beispiele) scheinen mehrfach durch andere Wertigkeiten geprägt.
Die beiden wichtigsten Ausbreitungsrouten der Neolithisierung und damit der Haustiere führten nicht nur zu kulturell unterschiedlichen Ergebnissen, sondern auch zu etwas verschiedenen Strukturen der Viehhaltung aufgrund der Anpassung an die jeweilige Umwelt. Während im Mittelmeerraum die im Nahen Osten entstandene Wirtschaftsweise weitgehend unverändert weitergeführt werden konnte, kam es am Ostrand Mitteleuropas zu einem längeren Stillstand der Ausbreitung mit vielen Veränderungen in der ersten Hälfte des 6. Jahrtausends v. Chr. Der vom Jubilar mehrfach untersuchte, etwas retardierte Wandel von der Schaf/Ziegen-Wirtschaft zur Dominanz der Rinderhaltung spiegelt sich im östlichen Mitteleuropa auch im Keramikdekor wider.
An der Wende vom Früh- zum Mittelneolithikum (etwa 4900 / 4800 v. Chr.) vollzieht sich im Donauraum von Deutschland bis Ungarn eine große, regional differenzierte Veränderung. In der Subsistenzwirtschaft ist zwar allgemein ein markanter Rückgang der Bedeutung der Viehhaltung zugunsten der Nutzung von Jagdwild festzustellen, aber die Beliebtheit einzelner Jagdtiere korreliert wieder weitgehend mit unterschiedlichen Kulturgruppen. So bevorzugte man im Osten (Bereich der Lengyel-Kultur) den Auerochsen, im Westen (Gebiet der Stichbandkeramik-Kultur und verwandter Kulturgruppen) den Rothirsch.
Erst in den letzten beiden Jahrzehnten erschloss sich durch moderne, aufwendig dokumentierte Grabungen in Kombination mit detaillierten Analysen der Tierknocheninventare eine neue Möglichkeit interne Siedlungsstrukturen zu erkennen (Beispiele: Cuiry-les-Chaudardes, Frankreich; Mold bei Horn, Niederösterreich). Dabei zeigte sich, dass innerhalb der frühneolithischen Siedlungen der Kultur der Linearbandkeramik die Bewohner von Häusern unterschiedlicher Typen und Größe auch verschiedene wirtschaftliche Rollen innehatten.
Archaeozoology has an essential role for the investigation of the long procedure of the emergence of neolithisation in the Near East. The analyses of the animal bones alone allow to determine the characters of domestication and to give a correct statement about the importance of the different species of live-stock and hunted animals. Faunal representations in human art show different values than economics (Göbekli Tepe and Çatal Höyük as examples).
The two most important routes for the trajectory of neolithisation and therefore also for the spread of domesticated animals not only lead to culturally different results, but also to different structures of live-stock due to the adjustment to diverse ecological conditions. Around the Mediterranean Sea the economy as developed in the Near East could survive nearly without any changes, but at the eastern edge of Central Europe the spread of the new way of life stopped for quite a long time to develop the necessary adaptations (first half of 6ᵗʰ millennium BC). The change of the live-stock mainly with sheep and goat to an economy dominated by cattle breeding happened with some retreat in eastern Central Europe and was subject of many investigations by Erich Pucher. Interestingly this change is also to be observed in changing ceramics decoration.
At the turn of the early to the middle neolithic (around 4800/4900 BC) a lot of big, regionally variable changes took place in Central Europe. Concerning the food production we see a most remarkable decrease of life-stock together with an increasing importance of hunted animals in the Danube valley from Germany to Hungary. Interestingly the popularity of several species differs regionally and corresponds with different cultural groups. While the aurochs dominates in the East (region of Lengyel culture), the red deer is most popular in the West (region of Stroke-ornamented Pottery culture and related groups).
It was only in the last two decades that a new possibility to investigate the internal structure of settlements emerged due to modern excavations with most detailed documentation together with extensive analyses of faunal remains (Cuiry-les-Chaudardes, France, and Mold near Horn, Lower Austria, as examples). That way it was detected, that the inhabitants of houses of different size and types had also different economic roles within the early neolithic settlements of the Linear-Pottery-Culture.
In European and many African, Middle Eastern and southern Asian populations, lactase persistence (LP) is the most strongly selected monogenic trait to have evolved over the past 10,000 years
. ...Although the selection of LP and the consumption of prehistoric milk must be linked, considerable uncertainty remains concerning their spatiotemporal configuration and specific interactions
. Here we provide detailed distributions of milk exploitation across Europe over the past 9,000 years using around 7,000 pottery fat residues from more than 550 archaeological sites. European milk use was widespread from the Neolithic period onwards but varied spatially and temporally in intensity. Notably, LP selection varying with levels of prehistoric milk exploitation is no better at explaining LP allele frequency trajectories than uniform selection since the Neolithic period. In the UK Biobank
cohort of 500,000 contemporary Europeans, LP genotype was only weakly associated with milk consumption and did not show consistent associations with improved fitness or health indicators. This suggests that other reasons for the beneficial effects of LP should be considered for its rapid frequency increase. We propose that lactase non-persistent individuals consumed milk when it became available but, under conditions of famine and/or increased pathogen exposure, this was disadvantageous, driving LP selection in prehistoric Europe. Comparison of model likelihoods indicates that population fluctuations, settlement density and wild animal exploitation-proxies for these drivers-provide better explanations of LP selection than the extent of milk exploitation. These findings offer new perspectives on prehistoric milk exploitation and LP evolution.
The precise genetic origins of the first Neolithic farming populations in Europe and Southwest Asia, as well as the processes and the timing of their differentiation, remain largely unknown. ...Demogenomic modeling of high-quality ancient genomes reveals that the early farmers of Anatolia and Europe emerged from a multiphase mixing of a Southwest Asian population with a strongly bottlenecked western hunter-gatherer population after the last glacial maximum. Moreover, the ancestors of the first farmers of Europe and Anatolia went through a period of extreme genetic drift during their westward range expansion, contributing highly to their genetic distinctiveness. This modeling elucidates the demographic processes at the root of the Neolithic transition and leads to a spatial interpretation of the population history of Southwest Asia and Europe during the late Pleistocene and early Holocene.
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•European HGs diverged from SW Asian HGs during the LGM•Low genetic diversity of European HGs is due to a strong LGM demographic bottleneck•Ancestors of western early farmers emerged after repeated post-LGM admixtures•EFs strongly diverged from SW Asians during their expansion through Anatolia
Ancient DNA analysis and evolutionary modeling have allowed for the ancestral tracing of the Neolithic populations of Southwest Asia and Europe to resolve the genetic origins of the world’s first sedentary farmers.
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