Horse domestication revolutionized warfare and accelerated travel, trade, and the geographic expansion of languages. Here, we present the largest DNA time series for a non-human organism to date, ...including genome-scale data from 149 ancient animals and 129 ancient genomes (≥1-fold coverage), 87 of which are new. This extensive dataset allows us to assess the modern legacy of past equestrian civilizations. We find that two extinct horse lineages existed during early domestication, one at the far western (Iberia) and the other at the far eastern range (Siberia) of Eurasia. None of these contributed significantly to modern diversity. We show that the influence of Persian-related horse lineages increased following the Islamic conquests in Europe and Asia. Multiple alleles associated with elite-racing, including at the MSTN “speed gene,” only rose in popularity within the last millennium. Finally, the development of modern breeding impacted genetic diversity more dramatically than the previous millennia of human management.
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•Two now-extinct horse lineages lived in Iberia and Siberia some 5,000 years ago•Iberian and Siberian horses contributed limited ancestry to modern domesticates•Oriental horses have had a strong genetic influence within the last millennium•Modern breeding practices were accompanied by a significant drop in genetic diversity
Genome-wide data from 278 ancient equids provide insights into how ancient equestrian civilizations managed, exchanged, and bred horses and indicate vast loss of genetic diversity as well as the existence of two extinct lineages of horses that failed to contribute to modern domestic animals.
Necropolitics Ferrandiz, Francisco; Robben, Antonius C. G. M; Wilson, Richard Ashby
07/2015
eBook
The unmarked mass graves left by war and acts of terror are lasting traces of violence in communities traumatized by fear, conflict, and unfinished mourning. Like silent testimonies to the wounds of ...history, these graves continue to inflict harm on communities and families that wish to bury or memorialize their lost kin. Changing political circumstances can reveal the location of mass graves or facilitate their exhumation, but the challenge of identifying and recovering the dead is only the beginning of a complex process that brings the rights and wishes of a bereaved society onto a transnational stage.
Necropolitics: Mass Graves and Exhumations in the Age of Human Rightsexamines the political and social implications of this sensitive undertaking in specific local and national contexts. International forensic methods, local-level claims, national political developments, and transnational human rights discourse converge in detailed case studies from the United States, Argentina, Chile, Peru, Spain, Bosnia-Herzegovina, Greece, Rwanda, Cambodia, and Korea. Contributors analyze the role of exhumations in transitional justice from the steps of interviewing eyewitnesses and survivors to the painstaking forensic recovery and comparison of DNA profiles. This innovative volume demonstrates that contemporary exhumations are as much a source of personal, historical, and criminal evidence as instruments of redress for victims through legal accountability and memory politics.
Contributors: Zoë Crossland, Francisco Ferrándiz, Luis Fondebrider, Iosif Kovras, Heonik Kwån, Isaias Rojas-Perez, Antonius C. G. M. Robben, Elena Lesley Rozen, Katerina Stefatos, Francesc Torres, Sara Wagner, Richard Ashby Wilson.
This is a phenomenological study pivoted in the spiral time theory on the effects of the private burial of 25 attendees on the mortuary rites culture of Ghana during the COVID-19 restriction on the ...mass gathering. Sixty-one study participants were purposively sampled for the study. Their views were gathered through face-to-face, telephone, and video interviews. The findings revealed that 82% of the study participants objected to the private burial arrangement for cultural reasons such as disrespecting the dead, resulting in social mockery of the bereaved family and its failure in preparing the dead toward the journey to his afterlife amongst others. The remaining 18% who supported the private burial cited health reasons as a result of the mortuary congestion and the COVID-19 pandemic as well as the huge financial costs associated with the extravagant mortuary rites observation. The study concludes that the mortuary rites culture in Ghana exerts a great influence on the decisions of the Ghanaian people toward the private burial arrangement within the period of COVID-19. Culture-driven alternatives to the extravagant mortuary rites that would best compensate for the established cultural protocols must be pursued by the Ghana government after broad consultations with all stakeholders.
To quantify the potential impact of engaging religious leaders in promoting safe burial practices during the 2014-2016 Ebola virus disease outbreak in Sierra Leone.
We analysed population-based ...household survey data from 3540 respondents collected around the peak of the outbreak in Sierra Leone, December 2014. Respondents were asked if in the past month they had heard an imam or pastor say that people should not touch or wash a dead body. We used multilevel logistic regression modelling to examine if exposure to religious leaders' messages was associated with protective burial intentions if a family member died at home and other Ebola protective behaviours.
Of the respondents, 3148 (89%) had been exposed to faith-based messages from religious leaders on safe Ebola burials and 369 (10%) were unexposed. Exposure to religious leaders' messages was associated with a nearly twofold increase in the intention to accept safe alternatives to traditional burials and the intention to wait ≥ 2 days for burial teams (adjusted odds ratio, aOR: 1.69; 95% confidence interval, CI: 1.23-2.31 and aOR: 1.84; 95% CI: 1.38-2.44, respectively). Exposure to messages from religious leaders was also associated with avoidance of traditional burials and of contact with suspected Ebola patients (aOR: 1.46; 95% CI: 1.14-1.89 and aOR: 1.65; 95% CI: 1.27-2.13, respectively).
Public health messages promoted by religious leaders may have influenced safe burial behaviours during the Ebola outbreak in Sierra Leone. Engagement of religious leaders in risk communication should be prioritized during health emergencies in similar settings.
This paper introduces the finding of mural burials in building A, Cerro de las Monjas sector, at Marcahuamachuco archaeological site. Building A is part of a set of multifamily residences. A ...description and analysis of bone remains is made. Finally, according with ethnographical data, we suggest the role of the buried individuals’ souls as guardians and protectors of the buildings and their occupants.
In five megalithic monuments in the Paris Basin, major structural rearrangements occurred from the Neolithic, involving displacements and removals of orthostats. The use of these monuments as tombs ...was periodically interrupted, possibly – but not necessarily – in conjunction with deposits of generally thin "underlayers", though at times these could also be relatively thick. Primary or secondary burials could co-occur or sometimes follow each other, in relation to these "underlayers". At times, an entire burial layer was almost completely eliminated. At two of these sites, evidence shows that heavy "cover slabs" were put in place only after burials had ceased, as a gesture of permanent closure: prior to their installation, only a lightweight, water-tight cover had been present. Although permanently closed, these megalithic structures continued to be visited for some time until they were sealed again, this time with a clearly destructive intention associated with their final abandon.
The aim of this paper is to shed new light on the religious placemaking of the dead in the very dense and diverse metropolis of Rome in order to understand the role of the urban in the burial of the ...deceased in antiquity. In the Republican and Imperial periods in Rome, there is ample evidence of the impressive variety of sites and practices by which the dead were buried. However, the location of burial sites and the practices changed dynamically as they had to adapt not only to the growth of the city but also to new civic regulations, which were particularly focused on controlling public hygiene. The tension between the location of burial sites and their place biographies is made even more complex by the pomerium (sacred boundary) in Rome, an intangible and flexible boundary within which burials were forbidden. However, illegal and legal exceptions do exist. Therefore, the aim of this paper is not to provide an overview or classification of burial types, but to shed light on the role of the urban in influencing burial sites and rituals in order to identify where and how urban actors had to negotiate spaces and practices.
El presente trabajo analiza uno de los fenómenos de la Edad del Hierro del Noroeste peninsular que más dificultades ha ofrecido para su identificación y caracterización: el mundo funerario. El ...principal objetivo de esta publicación es exponer una breve revisión del actual estado de la investigación, sintetizando todas aquellas evidencias disponibles e intentando trazar algunas líneas comunes entre ellas. De esta forma, se expone un análisis arqueológico de todos los yacimientos en los que puedan haberse realizado prácticas relacionadas con la gestión de la muerte y que puedan encuadrarse en la Edad del Hierro, con la intención de definir sus características, analizar sus cronologías y verificar, en la medida de lo posible, su orientación funcional. Los datos expuestos serán sintetizados y correlacionados entre sí, analizando conjuntamente algunas de sus principales características y esbozando una aproximación preliminar a las prácticas funerarias de la Edad del Hierro del Noroeste
The coexistence of several types of urns in the funerary antiquities of the Aestians and Prussians testifies to the fact that in the imagination of community members (obviously, mainly women), there ...were prototypes of urns that were of ethno-cultural significance for (forced) ceramists. The aforementioned inhabitants of the Amber Coast at the beginning of our era were called Aestii by the Germans (ancient German - "living in the east"). The low quality of urn ceramics and their weak firing characterize the insignificant professional training of members of the tribal collective, who are forced to mold vessels only when necessary to prepare the urn for the funeral of a relative. The large sizes of the main part of the types of urns in our array are obviously the result of some cult norms. Ashes from the fire and cremated remains of the deceased, together with his inventory, occupy a small part of the urn's volume and were not necessarily at its bottom. Existing in the traditions of the population of the Amber Coast for half a millennium, the urn, as it turned out, can contain information of a chronological and ethno-cultural nature, and not just be recorded by archaeologists as a repository of the ashes of the buried.
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