Article: Tattooed Mummies!

Tarim Basin Mummy
http://archaeology.org/issues/109-1311/features/tattoos/1405-china-tarim-basin-mummy

Like the Iceman Ötzi, this mummy of a woman who lived in what is today western China is covered with tattoos.  Were these for decoration or an early form of medicine as some think was the case with Ötzi?

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.

Article and Discussion: Four Key Migratory Events Shape the European Gene Pool

As you all know, I am intrigued by the stories genetics is adding to human history.  The journal Science has a very interesting article that I will summarize and contextualize for folks.

By about 600,000 years ago, the hominid ancestor of Neanderthals leaves Africa and eventually settles Europe.  This ancient relative of modern humans will evolve into Neanderthals.

~40,000 years ago:  The first modern humans, Cro-Magnons, enter Europe -probably via Greece and the Danube Valley.  They encounter Neanderthals, and genetics point to some limited interbreeding.

~30,000 to ~25,000 years ago:  The last full Neanderthals die out.  The last skeleton of Neanderthals found to date is from a cave in Gibraltar.  

~28,000 to ~14,000 years ago:  The last Ice Age drives human and Neanderthal populations south to four refuges in a) Iberia, b) Italy, c) the Balkans, and d) the Ukraine.  A mutation arises in the population living in Iberia.  This mutation gives rise to the Rhesus negative factor in human blood (A-, B-, O-, and AB-).  Today  about 50% of Basque people carry this mutation with the frequency of the mutation dwindling the farther you get from the Pyrenees.  

~8,000 years ago:  agriculture arrives in Europe -again with people moving up the Danube Valley- via farmers immigrating from Turkey (Anatolia) and the Fertile Crescent.  These first European farmers appear genetically to be similar to modern Sardinians, residents of a large, relatively isolated island that is now part of Italy.  The genetics of Ötzi, the Ice Man whose body was found in a glacier on the Austrian-Italian border, places him as belonging to this group of Neolithic farmers.  The T and J mitochondrial haplogroups are also associated with these first farmers.  Note:  Ötzi and I are both in the T haplogroup.

~7,500 years ago:  Among the new Neolithic farmers in the Danube Valley a mutation occurs that will allow most Europeans to have lactose persistence, or the ability to digest dairy products after childhood.  

Now for where the paper starts off:

Geneticists and historians wondered if the first farmers assimilated the original Cro-Magnon hunter-gatherers, killed them off, or diluted their genetic contributions by filling Europe with larger families supported by agriculture. Instead, the researchers -Brandt et al.-  found some really unexpected and fascinating things by comparing modern European populations' DNA with the DNA from skeletons found in central Germany.  These German skeletons cover 4,000 years of history from the first farmers to about 3,500 years ago during the Bronze Age.  What did they find?

a. For 2,000 years after the Neolithic farmers arrived, there appears to have been limited interbreeding between the farmers and the hunter-gatherers.  The farmers appear to have been successful with their numbers steadily growing.  It is interesting to ponder what social mechanisms kept two populations from intermarrying for two millennia.  

b. ~7000 years ago:  About a 1,000 years after the farmers arrived, their overall percentage in the gene pool appears to decline and the hunter-gatherers and their genes make a comeback.  This may have resulted from climate change or disease.  Adapting Near Eastern plants and farming to cooler Europe surely must have entailed crop failures and setbacks.  The rapid spread of the lactose persistence gene points to the importance of dairy.  The ability to digest it conferred survival when those without it starved.  Moreover, most infectious diseases in humans arise from pathogens that jump the species boundary and are more likely to infect people living with livestock.  

c. ~4,800 years ago:  A new migration of people from the Russian steppes arrives.  These people have horses and carts.  They decorate their pottery in a distinctive design giving them the name the Corded Ware people.  They likely are the first proto-Indo-European speakers, and thus are the linguistic ancestors of almost every European language spoken today except Basque, Hungarian and Finnish.

d. ~4,500 years ago:  A fourth migration starts in Portugal around modern Lisbon.  These people, the Bell-Beaker people, work copper and appear to have a culture built around trade.  They make pottery in the shape of wide-lipped, upside-down bells and build megalithic stone monuments.  At first they spread along the Atlantic and Mediterranean coasts.  These first maritime settlements include modern Brittany in northwest France.  From there the traders appear to follow existing, ancient trading routes up the valley of the Seine to the Rhine and then into the heart of Germany.  In Germany the Bell-Beaker traders mix with the a) hunter-gatherers, b) farmers, and c) Indo-European speakers.  They bring with them the H mtDNA haplogroup, the most common maternal lineage in Europe today.

The authors say Europeans' -and European-Americans'- DNA is a more complex story than Neolithic farmers simply replacing Paleolithic hunter-gatherers.  Instead, today's European gene pool appears to be a mix of these four migrations plus a little Neanderthal, Denisovan, and some later additions from outside Europe.

Guido Brandt, Wolfgang Haak, Christina J. Adler, Christina Roth, Anna Szécsényi-Nagy, Sarah Karimnia, Sabine Möller-Rieker, Harald Meller, Robert Ganslmeier, Susanne Friederich, Veit Dresely, Nicole Nicklisch, Joseph K. Pickrell, Frank Sirocko, David Reich, Alan Cooper, Kurt W. Alt, the Genographic Consortium. Ancient DNA Reveals Key Stages in the Formation of Central European Mitochondrial Genetic Diversity. Science, 2013 DOI: 10.1126/science.1241844