Search results for "Politic"

The paramount power of selection: From Darwin to Kauffman

1995

For approximately two decades now, the Darwinian interpretation of evolution has now been challenged in many ways. Modern criticisms make it difficult, even for the staunchest Darwinians, not to take a distance from Darwin’s bold phrases on the “power” of natural selection. Let me remind you of some famous declarations of Darwin on the subject: “It may be said that natural selection is daily and hourly scrutinising, throughout the world, every variation, even the slightest; rejecting that which is bad, preserving and adding up all that is good; silently and insensibly working, whenever and wherever opportunity offers, at the improvement of each organic being in relation to its organic and i…

A technological crossroads: Exploring diversity in the pressure blade technology of Mesolithic Latvia

2018

Palaeoenvironmental evidence for the impact of the crusades on the local and regional environment of medieval (13th–16th century) northern Latvia, ea…

2015

This paper evaluates the impact of the crusades on the landscape and environment of northern Latvia between the 13th–16th centuries (medieval Livonia). The crusades replaced tribal societies in the eastern Baltic with a religious state (Ordenstaat) run by the military orders and their allies, accompanied by significant social, cultural and economic developments. These changes have previously received little consideration in palaeoenvironmental studies of past land use in the eastern Baltic region, but are fundamental to understanding the development and expansion of a European Christian identity. Sediment cores from Lake Trikāta, located adjacent to a medieval castle and settlement, were s…

Ivory Craftsmanship, Trade and Social Significance in the Southern Iberian Copper Age: The Evidence from the PP4-Montelirio Sector of Valencina de la…

2013

Because of its great potential to provide data on contacts and overseas trade, ivory has aroused a great deal of interest since the very start of research into Iberian late prehistory. Research recently undertaken by the German Archaeological Institute in Madrid in collaboration with a number of other institutions has provided valuable contributions to the study of ivory in the Iberian Copper Age and Early Bronze Age. One of the archaeological sites that is contributing the most data for analysing ivory from the Copper Age in southern Iberia is Valencina de la Concepción (Seville), which is currently the focus of several debates on the development of social complexity. This article contribu…

The influence of religious identity and socio-economic status on diet over time, an example from medieval France

2019

International audience; In Southern France as in other parts of Europe, significant changes occurred in settlement patterns between the end of Antiquity and the beginning of the Middle Ages. Small communities gathered to form, by the tenth century, villages organized around a church. This development was the result of a new social and agrarian organization. Its impact on lifestyles and, more precisely, on diet is still poorly understood. The analysis of carbon and nitrogen isotopes in bone collagen from the inhabitants of the well-preserved medieval rural site Missignac-Saint Gilles le Vieux (fifth to thirteenth centuries, Gard, France) provides insight into their dietary practices and enab…

Cultural evolution and environmental change in Central Europe between 40 and 15 ka

2020

The role of environmental change in the evolution of cultural traits is a topic of long-standing scientific debate with strongly contrasting views. Major obstacles for assessing environmental impacts on the evolution of material culture are the fragmentary nature of archaeological and – to a somewhat lesser extent – geoscientific archives and the insufficient chronological resolution of these archives and related proxy data. Together these aspects are causing difficulties in data synchronization. By no means does this paper attempt to solve these issues, but rather aims at shifting the focus from demonstrating strict chains of causes and events to describing roughly contemporaneous developm…

The genomic history of the Iberian Peninsula over the past 8000 years

2019

We assembled genome-wide data from 271 ancient Iberians, of whom 176 are from the largely unsampled period after 2000 BCE, thereby providing a high-resolution time transect of the Iberian Peninsula. We document high genetic substructure between northwestern and southeastern hunter-gatherers before the spread of farming. We reveal sporadic contacts between Iberia and North Africa by ~2500 BCE and, by ~2000 BCE, the replacement of 40% of Iberia's ancestry and nearly 100% of its Y-chromosomes by people with Steppe ancestry. We show that, in the Iron Age, Steppe ancestry had spread not only into Indo-European-speaking regions but also into non-Indo-European-speaking ones, and we reveal that pre…

Comments on: A review of the evolution, biostratigraphy, provincialism and diversity of Middle and early Late Triassic conodonts

2016

Genomic transformation and social organization during the Copper Age–Bronze Age transition in southern Iberia

2021

Description

The space-time relationship of taxonomic diversity and morphological disparity in the Middle Jurassic ammonite radiation.

2007

14 pages; International audience; The Middle Jurassic ammonite radiation (from the late Aalenian to the end of the mid-Bathonian) is traced using combined analyses of morphological disparity and taxonomic diversity. The global signals of disparity and diversity are compared. These signals are then broken down by paleogeographical provinces to detect any heterogeneity in the radiation. An examination of the global signals reveals three biodiversity crises (discordances between signals) where morphological disparity grows while taxonomic diversity declines. The subdivision of the signals indicates the radiation was heterogeneous between provinces: the global signal is an aggregate of signals …