Article: Ancient Cave Paintings Found in Brazil

This article discusses the recent discovery of ancient -possibly 10,000 year old- cave paintings in Brazil.

Timeline

c. 448,000 BCE:  A glacier-fed ice lake catastrophically breaks through the chalk hills connecting what are today England and France.  In possibly less than a month this flood carves a canyon that will eventually become the English Channel.  The ice dam-ice lake-flood repeats through several ice ages with the canyon at times funneling a joint Thames-Rhine river system to the Atlantic.

c. 100,000 BCE:  At least three major river systems appear to have flowed north across the Sahara in this period.  The resulting corridors would have provided ways for early humans to cross the Sahara from sub-Saharan Africa to the North African coast.

c. 8500 BCE:  Cattle domesticated in the Near East.

c. 8000 BCE:  Cattle management is taking place in northern China.

c. 7500 BCE to 6400 BCE:  Hasan Dağ volcano had a minor eruption.  An artist appears to have recorded the eruption on a wall mural at Çatalhöyük, the earliest city/proto-city known.

c. 5500 BCE:  James Ballard finds human-made structures, fresh water shells, and drowned beaches under the Black Sea at a depth of 100m.  Carbon dating finds the shells are approximately 7500 years old.  Whether in a catastrophic flood or through gradual intrusion of Aegean salt waters into this former fresh water lake, the Black Sea floods.  Some argue this drove survivors into Europe as the first Neolithic farmers, but farming already had spread to modern Hungary.  The flooded area, however, represents a possible origin area for Indo-European speakers who may have begun their moves after flooding of their homeland.

1250 BCE to 1100 BCE:  300 year drought began in eastern Mediterranean.  Researchers believe this drought led to the collapse and/or decline of Bronze Age civilizations around the eastern Mediterranean and created the diaspora of Sea Peoples from Greece and other areas into the Levant and Egypt.

Article: Contradictory Studies on Cattle Origins

A new study finds genetic and other evidence for cattle domestication and management in northern China.  This new study points to the possibility that cows were domesticated about the same time in different parts of the world.  This would seem to contradict an earlier study linking cattle to a small herd domesticated in the Near East.

Article: African Slavery and American Genealogy

This article is a fascinating look at how genetics is assisting African-Americans in uncovering family genealogies.  In this case, a man was able to track down an ancestor captured and sold by a neighboring African kingdom into slavery.

Article: Earliest Representation of a Volcanic Eruption?

Earliest Representation of a Volcanic Eruption?

Catalhoyuk is a fascinating place. It is the earliest known example of a city -or proto-city.  Its homes were built adjoining each other with no streets.  Instead residents walked across the city's roofs and used ladders to climb down into their homes.  The city's dead were also buried in the floors of the homes.  Yet, this grand experiment seems to have been one of a kind with no other cities like it built around the area.

This article discusses a mural at the site that appears to be the earliest representation of a volcanic eruption of a nearby volcano.

Article: Pigs and the Sea Peoples

Pigs and the Sea Peoples

This article ties into other recent research into a series of severe droughts in the eastern Mediterranean around 1250 to 1100 BCE.  Researchers now theorize that the droughts created widespread famine and the collapse of Bronze Age civilizations around the eastern Mediterranean including the Mycenaeans, Hittites, etc.  Egyptian records speak of an invasion of Sea Peoples who appear to be displaced survivors seeking food and new homes.  The article on the genetics of Israeli pigs and wild boars appears to show an influx around the time of the Sea Peoples of European pigs.  Before this period the bones of pigs from the region show kinship with other, Near Eastern pig breeds.  So it appears the Sea Peoples brought their pigs with them, destroyed some of the Canaanite cities along the coast, and settled there.  Others have pointed to similarities between Cretan and Mycenaean pottery and the early pottery of the Philistines.

Article: Ancient European Admixture in the Americas, or Ancient Amerindian Admixture in Europe?

Ancient European admixture in the Americas, or ancient Amerindian admixture in Europe?

As I understand this article, mastodon hunters once occupied an environmental niche of steppes running from Europe to Siberia.  One group of hunters from Europe/West Asia migrated eastward to Siberia where a boy from this group was born and died.  It is primarily his DNA that is studied in the article.

The authors theorize this boy's relatives later interbred with humans whose genes are more common among East Asians.  This later, hybrid group of people -part European/West Asian and part East Asian genetically- later crossed Beringia to settle the Americas.

Article: Scientists Can Tell Your Ethnicity From The Germs In Your Mouth

Scientists Can Tell Your Ethnicity From The Germs In Your Mouth

Interesting article

Europe's First Farmers

Here is another post I wrote a few months ago for some friends:

Europe's First Farmers:  New genetic clues are developing a major historical mystery in Europe:

In geography there is the concept of diffusion or how things (ideas, peoples, diseases, fashions) spread across space to new lands.  In general, there are two ways new ideas -like say agriculture- would have spread from agriculture's birthplace in the Near East to Europe.  The 1) idea and technology of farming could have spread to Europe from one people to another or 2) farmers could have moved to Europe with their technology and families.  So did the idea of farming or the actual farmers move?

Some background:  Prior genetic and archaeological evidence points to the settlement of Europe by Neanderthals and then Homo sapiens.  The first Homo sapien populations were hunter-gatherers who were pushed back to refuges on the Iberian, Italian and Balkan peninsulas during the last Ice Age.  Homo sapiens arrived in Europe (Greece specifically) around 36,000 years ago.  About 9,500 BCE the first farming began in the Levant (Israel/Lebanon/Syria/Turkey) and spread to the Fertile Crescent and Turkey.  By about 7,000 BCE farming appears in Greece and spreads up the Danube Valley into Europe.

Adding to some earlier studies, a paper out last year in 2012 analyzed the DNA of 3 Neolithic hunter-gathers and 1 Neolithic farmer whose bodies were discovered in Sweden.  The genetic evidence suggests the farmer's DNA was much different than the hunter-gatherers' DNA.  The farmer's DNA in fact resembled that of ancient bodies found among Near Eastern immigrant farmers in Southern Europe.  Even Özti, the Austrian Ice Man, more closely resembles modern Sardinians genetically than modern Austrians.

So, it appears that the Neolithic farmers moved and took their farming technology with them into Europe.  These farmers, however, do not appear to have been as successful in passing on their genes though.  Today's Swedes more closely resemble the hunter-gatherers genetically than the early farmers.

Moreover, another recent paper looks at various Neolithic and Mesolithic ancient skeletons for their DNA.  It finds the earliest European farmers were immigrants from the Near East who settled and thrived from about 7000 to 2500 BCE.  Then there was a major population change with the DNA of these earlier settlers being replaced by new settlers who appear to have been from the Beaker-Bell population that spread along trade routes out of Portugal and Spain.  This group appears to have spread Celtic languages and to have been the main megalithic builders of sites such as Carnac and Stonehenge.  The genetic studies find their DNA relatively quickly becomes the dominant genomes in Europe; they largely replaced the former farmers.

Another study in Science argues the migration of the Corded Ware people from the Ukraine brought Proto-Indo-European into Europe.  If so, their influence must have quickly converted the original language of the Beaker-Bell ancestors to Celtic languages -a branch of Indo-European.  Or, the Bell-Beaker people are themselves an Indo-European offshoot.

So, the first wave of Homo sapien hunter-gatherers were largely crowded out by farmers from the Near East.  This second wave of farmers were then replaced by a culture of traders from Spain/Portugal with later additions from eastern Europe.  It is this third wave that defines the genetics of most modern Europeans and not the hunter-gatherers or the first farmers.