0000000000402248
AUTHOR
Johannes Van Der Plicht
showing 4 related works from this author
New chronology for Ksâr ‘Akil (Lebanon) supports Levantine route of modern human dispersal into Europe
2015
Modern human dispersal into Europe is thought to have occurred with the start of the Upper Paleolithic around 50,000-40,000 y ago. The Levantine corridor hypothesis suggests that modern humans from Africa spread into Europe via the Levant. Ksâr 'Akil (Lebanon), with its deeply stratified Initial (IUP) and Early (EUP) Upper Paleolithic sequence containing modern human remains, has played an important part in the debate. The latest chronology for the site, based on AMS radiocarbon dates of shell ornaments, suggests that the appearance of the Levantine IUP is later than the start of the first Upper Paleolithic in Europe, thus questioning the Levantine corridor hypothesis. Here we report a seri…
Early cave art and ancient DNA record the origin of European bison
2016
The two living species of bison (European and American) are among the few terrestrial megafauna to have survived the late Pleistocene extinctions. Despite the extensive bovid fossil record in Eurasia, the evolutionary history of the European bison (or wisent, Bison bonasus) before the Holocene (<11.7 thousand years ago (kya)) remains a mystery. We use complete ancient mitochondrial genomes and genome-wide nuclear DNA surveys to reveal that the wisent is the product of hybridization between the extinct steppe bison (Bison priscus) and ancestors of modern cattle (aurochs, Bos primigenius) before 120 kya, and contains up to 10% aurochs genomic ancestry. Although undetected within the fossil re…
Reply to Douka et al: Critical evaluation of the Ksâr 'Akil chronologies
2015
Our paper (1) proposes a new chronology for Ksâr 'Akil based on 16 accelerator mass spectrometry (AMS) determinations on shells. To minimize the possibility of dating diagenetically compromised samples, we conducted amino acid racemization analyses on the intracrystalline proteins, oxygen isotope analysis, and geochemical characterization of all dated shells. Our calibrated radiocarbon ages fit well with existing Levantine chronologies, but are up to 4,000 y older than Douka et al.’s (2). Our paper explores several possibilities for this difference, whereas Douka et al. (3) provide alternative explanations. They accept our radiocarbon ages as correct but question our sample selection and Ba…
Palaeogenomics of Upper Palaeolithic to Neolithic European hunter-gatherers
2023
Acknowledgements: The authors thank G. Marciani and O. Jöris for comments on archaeology; C. Jeong, M. Spyrou and K. Prüfer for comments on genetics; M. O’Reilly for graphical support for Fig. 5 and Extended Data Fig. 9; the entire IT and laboratory teams at the Department of Archaeogenetics of MPI-SHH for technical assistance; M. Meyer and S. Nagel for support with single-stranded library preparation; K. Post, P. van Es, J. Glimmerveen, M. Medendorp, M. Sier, S. Dikstra, M. Dikstra, R. van Eerden, D. Duineveld and A. Hoekman for providing access to human specimens from the North Sea (The Netherlands); M. D. Garralda and A. Estalrrich for providing access to human specimens from La Riera (S…