0000000001274904
AUTHOR
Sahra Talamo
Reconstructing the deep population history of Central and South America
We report genome-wide ancient DNA from 49 individuals forming four parallel time transects in Belize, Brazil, the Central Andes, and the Southern Cone, each dating to at least ∼9,000 years ago. The common ancestral population radiated rapidly from just one of the two early branches that contributed to Native Americans today. We document two previously unappreciated streams of gene flow between North and South America. One affected the Central Andes by ∼4,200 years ago, while the other explains an affinity between the oldest North American genome associated with the Clovis culture and the oldest Central and South Americans from Chile, Brazil, and Belize. However, this was not the primary sou…
Isotope evidence for the use of marine resources in the Eastern Iberian Mesolithic
There are relatively few coastal Mesolithic sites in the Iberian Mediterranean region, probably due to a number of factors including sea level changes and the disappearance of sites due to agriculture and urbanisation. However, recent excavations have uncovered inland sites that have marine faunal remains (i.e. molluscs and fish) and lithics from the coastal area, which both indicate interactions between the coast and the upland valleys. These inland sites are located at a distance of 30-50km from today's coastline and are at altitudes higher than 1000m. We report on additional information on the links between the coast and these inland sites through the use of dietary isotope analysis (car…
Earliest evidence of Neolithic collective burials from Eastern Iberia: Radiocarbon dating at the archaeolgoical site of Les Llometes (Alicante, Spain)
AbstractIn the Valencia region of Spain, the dominant use of natural caves for collective burials during the Late Neolithic and Chalcolithic periods has been documented. Collective burials are central to the hypothesis about social relationships in Copper Age societies from Iberia, and key to interpreting kinship-based societies. Les Llometes (Alcoi, Alicante) is one of the biggest collective burial sites existing in eastern Iberia. This article presents the direct14C dates on 25 skeletal remains at the site. The results indicate that the site was used as a burial place from the end of the 5th millennium cal BC until the end of the 4th millennium cal BC, and is a first milestone for future …
Microwear and isotopic analyses on cave bear remains from Toll Cave reveal both short-term and long-term dietary habits
Dietary habits of the extinct Ursus spelaeus have always been a controversial topic in paleontological studies. In this work, we investigate carbon and nitrogen values in the bone collagen and dental microwear of U. spelaeus specimens recovered in Level 4 from Toll Cave (Moia, Catalonia, NE Iberian Peninsula). These remains have been dated to > 49,000 C-14 BP. The ability of both proxies to provide data on the diet of U. spelaeus at different times in the life-history (isotopes: average diet of life; microwear: last days/weeks before death), allows us to generate high-resolution and complementary data. Our results show lower values (delta C-13 & delta N-15) in cave bears than in strict herb…
Palaeogenomics of Upper Palaeolithic to Neolithic European hunter-gatherers
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…
The genomic history of Southern Europe
Farming was first introduced to southeastern Europe in the mid-7th millennium BCE - brought by migrants from Anatolia who settled in the region before spreading throughout Europe. However, the dynamics of the interaction between the first farmers and the indigenous hunter-gatherers remain poorly understood because of the near absence of ancient DNA from the region. We report new genome-wide ancient DNA data from 204 individuals-65 Paleolithic and Mesolithic, 93 Neolithic, and 46 Copper, Bronze and Iron Age-who lived in southeastern Europe and surrounding regions between about 12,000 and 500 BCE. We document that the hunter-gatherer populations of southeastern Europe, the Baltic, and the Nor…
A Common Genetic Origin for Early Farmers from Mediterranean Cardial and Central European LBK Cultures
Olalde, Iñigo et al.
The Oldest Case of Decapitation in the New World (Lapa do Santo, East-Central Brazil)
We present here evidence for an early Holocene case of decapitation in the New World (Burial 26), found in the rock shelter of Lapa do Santo in 2007. Lapa do Santo is an archaeological site located in the Lagoa Santa karst in east-central Brazil with evidence of human occupation dating as far back as 11.712.7 cal kyBP (95.4% interval). An ultra-filtered AMS age determination on a fragment of the sphenoid provided an age range of 9.19.4 cal kyBP (95.4% interval) for Burial 26. The interment was composed of an articulated cranium, mandible and first six cervical vertebrae. Cut marks with a v-shaped profile were observed in the mandible and sixth cervical vertebra. The right hand was amputated…