There was a Huge Steppe Migration into Europe Circa 3,300 BC

Consider the unexpected movement of people who originally lived on the steppes of Central Asia, north of the Black and Caspian seas. About 5,300 years ago, the local hunter-gatherer cultures were replaced in many places by nomadic herders, dubbed the Yamnaya, who were able to expand rapidly by exploiting horses and the new invention of the cart, and who left behind big, rich burial sites.

Archeologists have long known that some of the technologies used by the Yamnaya later spread to Europe. But the startling revelation from the ancient DNA was that the people moved, too - all the way to the Atlantic coast of Europe in the west to Mongolia in the east and India in the south. This vast migration helps explain the spread of Indo-European languages. And it significantly replaced the local hunter-gatherer genes across Europe with the indelible stamp of steppe DNA, as happened in Britain with the migration of the Bell Beaker people to the island.

"This whole phenomenon of the steppe expansion is an amazing example of what ancient DNA can show," says Reich. And, adds Cunliffe, "no one, not even archeologists in their wildest dreams, had expected such a high steppe genetic content in the populations of northern Europe in the third millennium B.C."

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Tracking African Migrations of People Through the Last 4,000 Years Through Genetics

Researchers from the University of Oxford have revealed that the genetic ancestries of many of sub-Saharan Africa's populations are the result of historical DNA mixing events, known as admixture, within the last 4,000 years.

Their study, to be published in the journal eLife, uncovers signatures of these admixture events through a large analysis of DNA from populations across the continent. The discovery provides a foundation for the recent genetic history of the continent, which could aid future studies of non-communicable and infectious diseases, such as malaria.

While admixture has been demonstrated in other regions of the world, the new analysis has allowed the team to characterise sub-Saharan Africa's mixing events in an unprecedented level of detail.

"As Africa has few written records of its history, it is somewhat unknown what important movements of people generated the populations in the continent today," says lead author George Busby, Statistical Geneticist at the Wellcome Trust Centre for Human Genetics.

"Looking at and comparing the differences in the genomes of people alive today can help us better understand and reconstruct the historical interactions that brought their ancestors together."

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Climate Change Likely to Cause Mass Exodus From Middle East

The number of climate refugees could increase dramatically in future. Researchers of the Max Planck Institute for Chemistry and the Cyprus Institute in Nicosia have calculated that the Middle East and North Africa could become so hot that human habitability is compromised. The goal of limiting global warming to less than two degrees Celsius, agreed at the recent UN climate summit in Paris, will not be sufficient to prevent this scenario. The temperature during summer in the already very hot Middle East and North Africa will increase more than two times faster compared to the average global warming. This means that during hot days temperatures south of the Mediterranean will reach around 46 degrees Celsius (approximately 114 degrees Fahrenheit) by mid-century. Such extremely hot days will occur five times more often than was the case at the turn of the millennium. In combination with increasing air pollution by windblown desert dust, the environmental conditions could become intolerable and may force people to migrate.

More than 500 million people live in the Middle East and North Africa - a region which is very hot in summer and where climate change is already evident. The number of extremely hot days has doubled since 1970. "In future, the climate in large parts of the Middle East and North Africa could change in such a manner that the very existence of its inhabitants is in jeopardy," says Jos Lelieveld, Director at the Max Planck Institute for Chemistry and Professor at the Cyprus Institute.

Lelieveld and his colleagues have investigated how temperatures will develop in the Middle East and North Africa over the course of the 21st century. The result is deeply alarming: Even if Earth's temperature were to increase on average only by two degrees Celsius compared to pre-industrial times, the temperature in summer in these regions will increase more than twofold. By mid-century, during the warmest periods, temperatures will not fall below 30 degrees at night, and during daytime they could rise to 46 degrees Celsius (approximately 114 degrees Fahrenheit). By the end of the century, midday temperatures on hot days could even climb to 50 degrees Celsius (approximately 122 degrees Fahrenheit). Another finding: Heat waves could occur ten times more often than they do now.

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Celts Were NOT (!) the Ancient Irish?

A team of geneticists from Trinity College Dublin and archaeologists from Queen's University Belfast has sequenced the first genomes from ancient Irish humans, and the information buried within is already answering pivotal questions about the origins of Ireland's people and their culture.

The team sequenced the genome of an early farmer woman, who lived near Belfast some 5,200 years ago, and those of three men from a later period, around 4,000 years ago in the Bronze Age, after the introduction of metalworking. Their landmark results are published today in international journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, USA.

Ireland has intriguing genetics. It lies at the edge of many European genetic gradients with world maxima for the variants that code for lactose tolerance, the western European Y chromosome type, and several important genetic diseases including one of excessive iron retention, called haemochromatosis.

However, the origins of this heritage are unknown. The only way to discover our genetic past is to sequence genomes directly from ancient people, by embarking on a type of genetic time travel.

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Europeans are Really all Turkish, well, Anatolian

The introduction of agriculture into Europe about 8,500 years ago changed the way people lived right down to their DNA.

Until recently, scientists could try to understand the way humans adapted genetically to changes that occurred thousands of years ago only by looking at DNA variation in today's populations. But our modern genomes contain mere echoes of the past that can't be connected to specific events.

Now, an international team reports in Nature that researchers can see how natural selection happened by analyzing ancient human DNA.

"It allows us to put a time and date on selection and to directly associate selection with specific environmental changes, in this case the development of agriculture and the expansion of the first farmers into Europe," said Iain Mathieson, a research fellow in genetics at Harvard Medical School and first author of the study.

By taking advantage of better DNA extraction techniques and amassing what is to date the largest collection of genome-wide datasets from ancient human remains, the team was able to identify specific genes that changed during and after the transition from hunting and gathering to farming.

Many of the variants occurred on or near genes that have been associated with height, the ability to digest lactose in adulthood, fatty acid metabolism, vitamin D levels, light skin pigmentation and blue eye color. Two variants appear on genes that have been linked to higher risk of celiac disease but that may have been important in adapting to an early agricultural diet.

Other variants were located on immune-associated genes, which made sense because "the Neolithic period involved an increase in population density, with people living close to one another and to domesticated animals," said Wolfgang Haak, one of three senior authors of the study, a research fellow at the University of Adelaide and group leader in molecular anthropology at the Max Planck Institute for the Science of Human History.

"Although that finding did not come fully as a surprise," he added, "it was great to see the selection happening in 'real time.'"

The work also supports the idea that Europe's first farmers came from ancient Anatolia, in what is now Turkey, and fills in more details about how ancient groups mixed and migrated.

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The Solar System Probably did NOT Have Another Gas Giant

TILTING SATURN WITHOUT TILTING JUPITER: CONSTRAINTS ON GIANT PLANET MIGRATION

Authors:

Brasser et al

Abstract:

The migration and encounter histories of the giant planets in our solar system can be constrained by the obliquities of Jupiter and Saturn. We have performed secular simulations with imposed migration and N-body simulations with planetesimals to study the expected obliquity distribution of migrating planets with initial conditions resembling those of the smooth migration model, the resonant Nice model and two models with five giant planets initially in resonance (one compact and one loose configuration). For smooth migration, the secular spin–orbit resonance mechanism can tilt Saturn's spin axis to the current obliquity if the product of the migration timescale and the orbital inclinations is sufficiently large (exceeding 30 Myr deg). For the resonant Nice model with imposed migration, it is difficult to reproduce today's obliquity values, because the compactness of the initial system raises the frequency that tilts Saturn above the spin precession frequency of Jupiter, causing a Jupiter spin–orbit resonance crossing. Migration timescales sufficiently long to tilt Saturn generally suffice to tilt Jupiter more than is observed. The full N-body simulations tell a somewhat different story, with Jupiter generally being tilted as often as Saturn, but on average having a higher obliquity. The main obstacle is the final orbital spacing of the giant planets, coupled with the tail of Neptune's migration. The resonant Nice case is barely able to simultaneously reproduce the orbital and spin properties of the giant planets, with a probability $\sim 0.15\%.$ The loose five planet model is unable to match all our constraints (probability less than 0.08%). The compact five planet model has the highest chance of matching the orbital and obliquity constraints simultaneously (probability ~0.3%).

Eurasian Farmers "Invaded" Africa at Least 4,500 Years ago, 4 to 7% of African Genome is Eurasian

Geneticists have sequenced the first prehistoric genome from Africa: that of Mota, a hunter-gatherer man who lived 4500 years ago in the highlands of Ethiopia. Named for the cave that held the remains, the Mota genome gives scientists their first glimpse into what an African genome looked like prior to many recent migrations in Africa. This ancient Ethiopian highlander is most closely related to the Ari, an ethnic group that speaks Omotic languages in the Ethiopian highlands today. And when researchers compared Mota's genome to that of other Africans, Europeans, and Asians, they got a surprise: Africa is usually seen as a source of outward migrations, but the genomes suggest a major migration into Africa by farmers from the Middle East, possibly about 3500 years ago. These farmers' DNA reached deep into the continent, spreading even to groups considered isolated such as the Khoisan of South Africa and the pygmies of the Congo.

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The Spread and Distrbution of Humanity in Holocene Quaternary North America

Spatiotemporal distribution of Holocene populations in North America

Authors:

Chaput et al

Abstract:

As the Cordilleran and Laurentide Ice Sheets retreated, North America was colonized by human populations; however, the spatial patterns of subsequent population growth are unclear. Temporal frequency distributions of aggregated radiocarbon (14C) dates are used as a proxy of population size and can be used to track this expansion. The Canadian Archaeological Radiocarbon Database contains more than 35,000 14C dates and is used in this study to map the spatiotemporal demographic changes of Holocene populations in North America at a continental scale for the past 13,000 y. We use the kernel method, which converts the spatial distribution of 14C dates into estimates of population density at 500-y intervals. The resulting maps reveal temporally distinct, dynamic patterns associated with paleodemographic trends that correspond well to genetic, archaeological, and ethnohistoric evidence of human occupation. These results have implications for hypothesizing and testing migration routes into and across North America as well as the relative influence of North American populations on the evolution of the North American ecosystem.

Could Jupiter or Saturn Have Ejected a Fifth Giant Planet?

Could Jupiter or Saturn Have Ejected a Fifth Giant Planet?

Authors:

Cloutier et al

Abstract:

Models of the dynamical evolution of the early solar system following the dispersal of the gaseous protoplanetary disk have been widely successful in reconstructing the current orbital configuration of the giant planets. Statistically, some of the most successful dynamical evolution simulations have initially included a hypothetical fifth giant planet, of ice giant mass, which gets ejected by a gas giant during the early solar system's proposed instability phase. We investigate the likelihood of an ice giant ejection event by either Jupiter or Saturn through constraints imposed by the current orbits of their wide-separation regular satellites Callisto and Iapetus respectively. We show that planetary encounters that are sufficient to eject an ice giant, often provide excessive perturbations to the orbits of Callisto and Iapetus making it difficult to reconcile a planet ejection event with the current orbit of either satellite. Quantitatively, we compute the likelihood of reconciling a regular Jovian satellite orbit with the current orbit of Callisto following an ice giant ejection by Jupiter of ~ 42% and conclude that such a large likelihood supports the hypothesis of a fifth giant planet's existence. A similar calculation for Iapetus reveals that it is much more difficult for Saturn to have ejected an ice giant and reconcile a Kronian satellite orbit with that of Iapetus (likelihood ~ 1%), although uncertainties regarding the formation of Iapetus, on its unusual orbit, complicates the interpretation of this result.

PreColumbian Native Americans had 2nd Ghost Ancestry With Aboriginal Australian Affinities

Genetic evidence for two founding populations of the Americas

Authors:

Skoglund et al

Abstract:

Genetic studies have consistently indicated a single common origin of Native American groups from Central and South America. However, some morphological studies have suggested a more complex picture, whereby the northeast Asian affinities of present-day Native Americans contrast with a distinctive morphology seen in some of the earliest American skeletons, which share traits with present-day Australasians (indigenous groups in Australia, Melanesia, and island Southeast Asia). Here we analyse genome-wide data to show that some Amazonian Native Americans descend partly from a Native American founding population that carried ancestry more closely related to indigenous Australians, New Guineans and Andaman Islanders than to any present-day Eurasians or Native Americans. This signature is not present to the same extent, or at all, in present-day Northern and Central Americans or in a ~12,600-year-old Clovis-associated genome, suggesting a more diverse set of founding populations of the Americas than previously accepted.

multiple pop sci write-ups available.

Modern Humans Were in Europe by 41,000 Years Ago During Pleistocene Quaternary

The makers of the Protoaurignacian and implications for Neandertal extinction

Authors:

Benazzi et al

Abstract:

The Protoaurignacian culture is pivotal to the debate about the timing of the arrival of modern humans in western Europe and the demise of Neandertals. However, which group is responsible for this culture remains uncertain. We investigated dental remains associated with the Protoaurignacian. The lower deciduous incisor from Riparo Bombrini is modern human, based on its morphology. The upper deciduous incisor from Grotta di Fumane contains ancient mitochondrial DNA of a modern human type. These teeth are the oldest human remains in an Aurignacian-related archaeological context, confirming that by 41,000 calendar years before the present, modern humans bearing Protoaurignacian culture spread into southern Europe. Because the last Neandertals date to 41,030 to 39,260 calendar years before the present, we suggest that the Protoaurignacian triggered the demise of Neandertals in this area.

Royal Tyrrell Museum Lecture Series: The Role of Beringia in the Peopling of the Americas

Polynesian Canoe From 1400 AD Found on New Zealand Coast

An early sophisticated East Polynesian voyaging canoe discovered on New Zealand's coast

Authors:

Johns et al

Abstract:

The colonization of the islands of East Polynesia was a remarkable episode in the history of human migration and seafaring. We report on an ocean-sailing canoe dating from close to that time. A large section of a complex composite canoe was discovered recently at Anaweka on the New Zealand coast. The canoe dates to approximately A.D. 1400 and was contemporary with continuing interisland voyaging. It was built in New Zealand as an early adaptation to a new environment, and a sea turtle carved on its hull makes symbolic connections with wider Polynesian culture and art. We describe the find and identify and radiocarbon date the construction materials. We present a reconstruction of the whole canoe and compare it to another early canoe previously discovered in the Society Islands.

Could Ebola Reaching Central America or Caribbean Trigger a Mass Emigration?

The head of U.S. Southern Command (SOUTHCOM) warned an Ebola outbreak in Central America or the Caribbean could trigger a mass migration to the U.S. of people fleeing the disease and implied established Central American illegal trafficking networks could introduce the infected into the U.S., during remarks at a Tuesday panel on security issue in the Western Hemisphere at the National Defense University.

“If it comes to the Western Hemisphere, the countries that we’re talking about have almost no ability to deal with it — particularly in Haiti and Central America,” SOUTHCOM Commander, Marine Gen. John F. Kelly, said in response to a question of his near term concerns in the region.
“It will make the 68,000 unaccompanied minors look like a small problem.”

An Ebola outbreak could encourage the poor and increasingly desperate populations in Central American countries — like Honduras, Guatemala and El Salvador — to leave in droves.

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Exploring the Bantu Expansion in Africa Through Genetics

Genetic variation reveals large-scale population expansion and migration during the expansion of Bantu-speaking peoples

Authors:

Li et al

Abstract:

The majority of sub-Saharan Africans today speak a number of closely related languages collectively referred to as ‘Bantu’ languages. The current distribution of Bantu-speaking populations has been found to largely be a consequence of the movement of people rather than a diffusion of language alone. Linguistic and single marker genetic studies have generated various hypotheses regarding the timing and the routes of the Bantu expansion, but these hypotheses have not been thoroughly investigated. In this study, we re-analysed microsatellite markers typed for large number of African populations that—owing to their fast mutation rates—capture signatures of recent population history. We confirm the spread of west African people across most of sub-Saharan Africa and estimated the expansion of Bantu-speaking groups, using a Bayesian approach, to around 5600 years ago. We tested four different divergence models for Bantu-speaking populations with a distribution comprising three geographical regions in Africa. We found that the most likely model for the movement of the eastern branch of Bantu-speakers involves migration of Bantu-speaking groups to the east followed by migration to the south. This model, however, is only marginally more likely than other models, which might indicate direct movement from the west and/or significant gene flow with the western Branch of Bantu-speakers. Our study use multi-loci genetic data to explicitly investigate the timing and mode of the Bantu expansion and it demonstrates that west African groups rapidly expanded both in numbers and over a large geographical area, affirming the fact that the Bantu expansion was one of the most dramatic demographic events in human history.

Genetics Unravels the Populating of the North American Arctic

The North American Arctic was one of the last major regions to be settled by modern humans. This happened when people crossed the Bering Strait from Siberia and wandered into a new world. While the area has long been well researched by archaeologists, little is known of its genetic prehistory. In this study, researchers show that the Paleo-Eskimo, who lived in the Arctic from about 5,000 years ago until about 700 years ago, represented a distinct wave of migration, separate from both Native Americans – who crossed the Bering Strait much earlier – and the Inuit, who came from Siberia to the Arctic several thousand years after the Paleo-Eskimos.

- Our genetic studies show that, in reality, the Paleo-Eskimos – representing one single group – were the first people in the Arctic, and they survived without outside contact for over 4,000 years, says Lundbeck Foundation Professor Eske Willerslev from Centre for GeoGenetics at the Natural History Museum, University of Copenhagen, who headed the study.

- Our study also shows that the Paleo-Eskimos, after surviving in near-isolation in the harsh Arctic environment for more than 4,000 years, disappeared around 700 years ago – about the same time when the ancestors of modern-day Inuit spread eastward from Alaska, adds Dr. Maanasa Raghavan of Centre for GeoGenetics and lead author of the article.

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Was Vanuatu Settled 3,000 Years ago?

Radiocarbon dating of burials from the Teouma Lapita cemetery, Efate, Vanuatu

Authors:

Petchey et al

Abstract:

The discovery of a cemetery at Teouma on the island of Efate in Vanuatu dated to c. 3000 years ago increased the number of early Pacific human remains available for study by nearly an order of magnitude and provided for the first time the ability to study the population dynamics of these early colonizers. The cemetery also provided an opportunity to investigate the chronological development of such a unique site. Although identified short-lived plant materials are favoured for dating archaeological sites, the reality of research in the Pacific region is that such materials are often rare, difficult to identify to species because of an absence of suitable reference collections, and dates on other materials often have greater potential to refine and focus 14C chronologies that deal with specific research questions. At Teouma, dates on the burial remains themselves are the best means to answer questions about the age and duration of the burial ground. Human bone, however, is one of the most complicated materials to date reliably because of dietary 14C offsets and bone preservation. One commonly used methodology for calibrating dates on human bone from Pacific human skeletal remains, based on linear interpolation between δ13C endpoints and δ15N values, is complicated by the wide range of foods available (marine, reef, C4 and C3), and remains largely untested in Pacific contexts. Radiocarbon dating of the Teouma site, including 36 Lapita-age burials, 5 dates on Conus sp. ring artefacts, and dates from the associated midden deposit, has enabled further evaluation of 14C dietary offsets and the reliability of calibrated radiocarbon ages on human bone. Bayesian evaluation of the 14C dates suggests the burial ground was in regular use by c. 2940–2880 cal BP, with the last interments occurring c. 2770–2710 cal BP. A number of burials could indicate possible earlier use, perhaps as early as 3110–2930 cal BP as indicated by the calibrated age range of Burial 57. This cannot be independently substantiated using other radiocarbon dates or context at the present time. Overall, these results suggest the burial ground was in use over a possible 150–240 years during the formative phase of Lapita expansion into Remote Oceania.

Human Bone and Tooth Enamel Isotopic Ratios are VERY Different

Investigating inherent differences in isotopic composition between human bone and enamel bioapatite: implications for reconstructing residential histories

Authors:

Webb et al

Abstract:

In archaeological research, human bone and enamel bioapatite isotopic compositions are commonly used to reconstruct residential and dietary histories. In doing so, enamel and bone bioapatite are implicitly treated as isotopically equivalent, but recent research has determined that carbonate–carbon and –oxygen isotopic compositions of these two tissues may be offset by several per mil. Here, we compare the isotopic compositions of co-forming bone and enamel from juvenile humans. We also assess the impact of a standard pre-treatment procedure for the removal of organic matter and exogenous carbonates on carbon- and oxygen-isotope compositions and on bioapatite crystallinity and carbonate content. Pre-treatment procedures had minimal effect on both enamel and bone carbon and oxygen isotopic compositions (±0.4–±0.9‰) and bioapatite crystallinity, and effectively removed exogenous carbonates. The offset between enamel and bone phosphate–oxygen isotopic compositions is relatively small (±0.7 ± 0.5‰). The offsets for carbonate–oxygen (+1.4 ± 1.0‰) and –carbon (+4.3 ± 1.2‰) are larger, and enamel is consistently 18O- and 13C-enriched relative to bone. Interpreted conservatively, phosphate–oxygen isotopic data from paired enamel and bone remain suitable for determining residential history, whereas the isotopic compositions of carbonate–oxygen and –carbon from enamel and bone bioapatite are inherently different and cannot be compared uncritically.

Multiple Waves out of Africa?

Genomic and cranial phenotype data support multiple modern human dispersals from Africa and a southern route into Asia

Authors:

Reyes-Centeno et al

Abstract:

Despite broad consensus on Africa as the main place of origin for anatomically modern humans, their dispersal pattern out of the continent continues to be intensely debated. In extant human populations, the observation of decreasing genetic and phenotypic diversity at increasing distances from sub-Saharan Africa has been interpreted as evidence for a single dispersal, accompanied by a series of founder effects. In such a scenario, modern human genetic and phenotypic variation was primarily generated through successive population bottlenecks and drift during a rapid worldwide expansion out of Africa in the Late Pleistocene. However, recent genetic studies, as well as accumulating archaeological and paleoanthropological evidence, challenge this parsimonious model. They suggest instead a “southern route” dispersal into Asia as early as the late Middle Pleistocene, followed by a separate dispersal into northern Eurasia. Here we test these competing out-of-Africa scenarios by modeling hypothetical geographical migration routes and assessing their correlation with neutral population differentiation, as measured by genetic polymorphisms and cranial shape variables of modern human populations from Africa and Asia. We show that both lines of evidence support a multiple-dispersals model in which Australo-Melanesian populations are relatively isolated descendants of an early dispersal, whereas other Asian populations are descended from, or highly admixed with, members of a subsequent migration event.

How the Paleoenvironment Impacted Migration into Precolumbian California

Environmental productivity predicts migration, demographic, and linguistic patterns in prehistoric California

Authors:

1. Brian F. Codding (a)
2. Terry L. Jones (b)

Affiliations:

a. Department of Anthropology, University of Utah, Salt Lake City, UT 84112 and

b. Department of Social Sciences, California Polytechnic State University San Luis Obispo, CA 93407

Abstract:

Global patterns of ethnolinguistic diversity vary tremendously. Some regions show very little variation even across vast expanses, whereas others exhibit dense mosaics of different languages spoken alongside one another. Compared with the rest of Native North America, prehistoric California exemplified the latter. Decades of linguistic, genetic, and archaeological research have produced detailed accounts of the migrations that aggregated to build California’s diverse ethnolinguistic mosaic, but there have been few have attempts to explain the process underpinning these migrations and why such a mosaic did not develop elsewhere. Here we show that environmental productivity predicts both the order of migration events and the population density recorded at contact. The earliest colonizers occupied the most suitable habitats along the coast, whereas subsequent Mid–Late Holocene migrants settled in more marginal habitats. Other Late Holocene patterns diverge from this trend, reflecting altered dynamics linked to food storage and increased sedentism. Through repeated migration events, incoming populations replaced resident populations occurring at lower densities in lower-productivity habitats, thereby resulting in the fragmentation of earlier groups and the development of one of the most diverse ethnolinguistic patterns in the Americas. Such a process may account for the distribution of ethnolinguistic diversity worldwide.