Ancient Rome was the capital of an empire of ~70 million inhabitants, but little is known about the genetics of ancient Romans. Here we present 127 genomes from 29 archaeological sites in and around ...Rome, spanning the past 12,000 years. We observe two major prehistoric ancestry transitions: one with the introduction of farming and another prior to the Iron Age. By the founding of Rome, the genetic composition of the region approximated that of modern Mediterranean populations. During the Imperial period, Rome's population received net immigration from the Near East, followed by an increase in genetic contributions from Europe. These ancestry shifts mirrored the geopolitical affiliations of Rome and were accompanied by marked interindividual diversity, reflecting gene flow from across the Mediterranean, Europe, and North Africa.
Human evolutionary scholars have long supposed that the earliest stone tools were made by the genus Homo and that this technological development was directly linked to climate change and the spread ...of savannah grasslands. New fieldwork in West Turkana, Kenya, has identified evidence of much earlier hominin technological behaviour. We report the discovery of Lomekwi 3, a 3.3-million-year-old archaeological site where in situ stone artefacts occur in spatiotemporal association with Pliocene hominin fossils in a wooded palaeoenvironment. The Lomekwi 3 knappers, with a developing understanding of stone's fracture properties, combined core reduction with battering activities. Given the implications of the Lomekwi 3 assemblage for models aiming to converge environmental change, hominin evolution and technological origins, we propose for it the name 'Lomekwian', which predates the Oldowan by 700,000 years and marks a new beginning to the known archaeological record.
Anatomically modern humans (Homo sapiens, AMH) began spreading across Eurasia from Africa and adjacent Southwest Asia about 50,000–55,000 years ago (ca. 50–55 ka). Some have argued that human ...genetic, fossil, and archaeological data indicate one or more prior dispersals, possibly as early as 120 ka. A recently reported age estimate of 65 ka for Madjedbebe, an archaeological site in northern Sahul (Pleistocene Australia–New Guinea), if correct, offers what might be the strongest support yet presented for a pre–55-ka African AMH exodus. We review evidence for AMH arrival on an arc spanning South China through Sahul and then evaluate data from Madjedbebe.We find that an age estimate of >50 ka for this site is unlikely to be valid. While AMH may have moved far beyond Africa well before 50–55 ka, data from the region of interest offered in support of this idea are not compelling.
En este trabajo se presentan los resultados de las primeras investigaciones arqueológicas realizadas en el interfluvio ubicado entre los cursos medios de los ríos Colorado y Negro (Provincia de Río ...Negro, Argentina). En esta extensa planicie árida se encuentran lagunas temporarias en las que se concentra el material arqueológico, principalmente en superficie. Con el fin de comprender las estrategias humanas de uso del espacio y la intensidad de las ocupaciones se llevaron a cabo estudios distribucionales y, en menor medida, excavaciones arqueológicas. La información generada fue discutida a la luz de las expectativas arqueológicas derivadas del modelo de uso del espacio propuesto por Borrero y colaboradores (2008). Los resultados obtenidos indican que el registro arqueológico localizado en torno a estas lagunas efímeras es principalmente el efecto de un uso del espacio planificado y redundante. Asimismo, algunos sectores de estas lagunas fueron utilizados más intensa y repetidamente, sugiriendo casos de redundancia específica. Si bien no se cuenta con fechados radiocarbónicos, la presencia de cerámica permite vincular las ocupaciones humanas al menos al Holoceno Tardío. La evidencia discutida revela la importancia de este espacio interfluvial en los circuitos de asentamiento y movilidad de las sociedades cazadoras-recolectoras en torno a dos de los principales ríos norpatagónicos.
The extent to which pre-Columbian societies altered Amazonian landscapes is hotly debated. We performed a basin-wide analysis of pre-Columbian impacts on Amazonian forests by overlaying known ...archaeological sites in Amazonia with the distributions and abundances of 85 woody species domesticated by pre-Columbian peoples. Domesticated species are five times more likely than nondomesticated species to be hyperdominant. Across the basin, the relative abundance and richness of domesticated species increase in forests on and around archaeological sites. In southwestern and eastern Amazonia, distance to archaeological sites strongly influences the relative abundance and richness of domesticated species. Our analyses indicate that modern tree communities in Amazonia are structured to an important extent by a long history of plant domestication by Amazonian peoples.
Summary
Amber is a material of great social value that has been identified at various archaeological sites on the Iberian peninsula dating to Late Antiquity. The objects, mostly necklace beads, have ...been discussed to date with limited results in relation to a small number of studies. This article presents the characterization by Fourier Transform Infrared Spectroscopy (FTIR) of 52 amber beads from four Late Antique necropolises in the province of Granada (south‐eastern Iberian peninsula): Cortijo del Chopo (Colomera), El Castillón (Montefrío), Marugán (Atarfe) and Fuente Santa (Loja). The results obtained demonstrate the Baltic origin of the amber at these sites and advance our knowledge of this type of product in Hispanic Late Antique funerary contexts.
Archaeologists have long been puzzled by the appearance in Europe ∼40-35 thousand years (kyr) ago of a rich corpus of sophisticated artworks, including parietal art (that is, paintings, drawings and ...engravings on immobile rock surfaces) and portable art (for example, carved figurines), and the absence or scarcity of equivalent, well-dated evidence elsewhere, especially along early human migration routes in South Asia and the Far East, including Wallacea and Australia, where modern humans (Homo sapiens) were established by 50 kyr ago. Here, using uranium-series dating of coralloid speleothems directly associated with 12 human hand stencils and two figurative animal depictions from seven cave sites in the Maros karsts of Sulawesi, we show that rock art traditions on this Indonesian island are at least compatible in age with the oldest European art. The earliest dated image from Maros, with a minimum age of 39.9 kyr, is now the oldest known hand stencil in the world. In addition, a painting of a babirusa ('pig-deer') made at least 35.4 kyr ago is among the earliest dated figurative depictions worldwide, if not the earliest one. Among the implications, it can now be demonstrated that humans were producing rock art by ∼40 kyr ago at opposite ends of the Pleistocene Eurasian world.
Neanderthals and Denisovans are extinct groups of hominins that separated from each other more than 390,000 years ago
. Here we present the genome of 'Denisova 11', a bone fragment from Denisova Cave ...(Russia)
and show that it comes from an individual who had a Neanderthal mother and a Denisovan father. The father, whose genome bears traces of Neanderthal ancestry, came from a population related to a later Denisovan found in the cave
. The mother came from a population more closely related to Neanderthals who lived later in Europe
than to an earlier Neanderthal found in Denisova Cave
, suggesting that migrations of Neanderthals between eastern and western Eurasia occurred sometime after 120,000 years ago. The finding of a first-generation Neanderthal-Denisovan offspring among the small number of archaic specimens sequenced to date suggests that mixing between Late Pleistocene hominin groups was common when they met.
Comprehensive research, undertaken by a multidisciplinary team from the University of Vienna between 1974 and 2001 in the Lower town of Velia, studied the evolution of the city walls in relation to ...the urban development of the Phocaean polis on the Tyrrhenian coast and provided new information on the development of the city mainly between the 5th and the 2nd c. BC. The contextualization and processing of the finds from these excavations (pottery, small finds and coins) allowed for a new, precise dating of the individual periods of the urban development, ultimately changing older approaches. Furthermore, it helped to reconstruct the development of local pottery production in a new, comprehensive way. By means of an innovative determination of production centers for imported ceramics, Velia's socio-economic relationships could be followed on both a regional and supraregional level.
Die österreichischen Forschungen in der Unterstadt von Velia, die von 1974 bis 2001 von einem multidisziplinären Team durchgeführt wurden, erlaubten es, die Stadtmauern dieser phokäischen Polis an der tyrrhenischen Küste Süditaliens mit der urbanistischen Entwicklung der Siedlung in Bezug zu setzen und damit Einblicke in ihre Entwicklung vom 5. bis zum 2. Jh. v. Chr. zu gewinnen. Die vollständige Bearbeitung des Fundmaterials dieser Grabungen, das Keramik, Kleinfunde und Münzen umfasste, erbrachte erstmals eine präzise Datierung der einzelnen Perioden der Stadtentwicklung und ermöglichte es gleichzeitig, ein umfassendes Bild der Entwicklung der lokalen Keramikproduktion nachzuzeichnen sowie anhand einer innovativen Bestimmung der Produktionszentren der importierten Keramik die sozio-ökonomischen Beziehungen Velias sowohl auf regionaler als auch überregionaler Ebene zu verfolgen.
Early Neolithic wine of Georgia in the South Caucasus McGovern, Patrick; Jalabadze, Mindia; Batiuk, Stephen ...
Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences - PNAS,
11/2017, Letnik:
114, Številka:
48
Journal Article
Recenzirano
Odprti dostop
Chemical analyses of ancient organic compounds absorbed into the pottery fabrics from sites in Georgia in the South Caucasus region, dating to the early Neolithic period (ca. 6,000–5,000 BC), provide ...the earliest biomolecular archaeological evidence for grape wine and viniculture from the Near East, at ca. 6,000–5,800 BC. The chemical findings are corroborated by climatic and environmental reconstruction, together with archaeobotanical evidence, including grape pollen, starch, and epidermal remains associated with a jar of similar type and date. The very large-capacity jars, some of the earliest pottery made in the Near East, probably served as combination fermentation, aging, and serving vessels. They are the most numerous pottery type at many sites comprising the so-called “Shulaveri-Shomutepe Culture” of the Neolithic period, which extends into western Azerbaijan and northern Armenia. The discovery of early sixth millennium BC grape wine in this region is crucial to the later history of wine in Europe and the rest of the world.
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