Morphological and mtDNA analysis of Mezzena mandible

 

I've written about late Neandertals becoming more AMH-like, and a new study on an Italian specimen that postdates the arrival of AMH in Europe lends some further support to that idea.
The Mezzena jaw has Neandertal mtDNA and shares a number of morphological traits with other Neandertals, but its overall shape places it within the cluster of modern humans  (triangles; figure on the left). Notice also that Qafzeh 9 (Q9) and Shkul V (SV) are also within the cluster of modern humans, and Spy 1 (a Neandertal) is actually closer to modern humans than to other Neandertals.
From the paper:

The position on the scatter plot of our specimen of interest, Mezzena, has been calculated a posteriori. Unsurprisingly, the Mezzena mandible does not present any particular affinities with mid-Pleistocene specimens. It is most similar to AMHs being positioned within the H. sapiens cloud of points and the DFA classifies the specimen with modern humans (Table S7). Especially its shape is similar to that of Ohalo II and to a lesser extent to the recent modern human specimen China5. However, it should be noted that its position also indicates affinities with some Neanderthal specimens: the late Neanderthal Spy 1 and Saint-Césaire, the Near-East specimens Tabūn II and Amud 1, and to a lesser extent the classic Neanderthals La Ferrassie 1 and Guattari III (Figure 2).

According to the authors:

In this light, we can interpret the position of the Mezzena mandible which stands within the modern human shape space, while presenting strong shape similarities with some Neanderthal specimens. Such a conflicting taxonomical position is not surprising, considering the geological age of the mandible [30]. Indeed, numerous late Neanderthals such as Spy 1, Saint Césaire and the Near-East mandibles Amud 1 and Tabun II possess hints of a chin (i.e. tuber symphyseo) though not a true modern human morphology [37], [51]. Late Neanderthals lived in area where AMHs might have been already present [2], [23], [52], while the Levantine fossils are displaying a less derived Neanderthal morphology [35], [36]. 

Therefore, in our view, this change in morphology of the mandibular chin among the fossils of Mezzena and other late Neanderthals could have been the result of a small degree of interbreeding with AMHs.

It would be interesting to sequence Mezzena to confirm the existence of AMH admixture.
PLoS ONE 8(3): e59781. doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0059781
Possible Interbreeding in Late Italian Neanderthals? New Data from the Mezzena Jaw (Monti Lessini, Verona, Italy)
Silvana Condemi et al.
In this article we examine the mandible of Riparo Mezzena a Middle Paleolithic rockshelter in the Monti Lessini (NE Italy, Verona) found in 1957 in association with Charentian Mousterian lithic assemblages. Mitochondrial DNA analysis performed on this jaw and on other cranial fragments found at the same stratigraphic level has led to the identification of the only genetically typed Neanderthal of the Italian peninsula and has confirmed through direct dating that it belongs to a late Neanderthal. Our aim here is to re-evaluate the taxonomic affinities of the Mezzena mandible in a wide comparative framework using both comparative morphology and geometric morphometrics. The comparative sample includes mid-Pleistocene fossils, Neanderthals and anatomically modern humans. This study of the Mezzena jaw shows that the chin region is similar to that of other late Neanderthals which display a much more modern morphology with an incipient mental trigone (e.g. Spy 1, La Ferrassie, Saint-Césaire). In our view, this change in morphology among late Neanderthals supports the hypothesis of anatomical change of late Neanderthals and the hypothesis of a certain degree of interbreeding with AMHs that, as the dating shows, was already present in the European territory. Our observations on the chin of the Mezzena mandible lead us to support a non abrupt phylogenetic transition for this period in Europe.
Link

Population structure in the Netherlands

 

The three PCs are color-coded in panels b,c,d.
European Journal of Human Genetics , (27 March 2013) | doi:10.1038/ejhg.2013.48
Population structure, migration, and diversifying selection in the Netherlands
Abdel Abdellaoui et al.
Genetic variation in a population can be summarized through principal component analysis (PCA) on genome-wide data. PCs derived from such analyses are valuable for genetic association studies, where they can correct for population stratification. We investigated how to capture the genetic population structure in a well-characterized sample from the Netherlands and in a worldwide data set and examined whether (1) removing long-range linkage disequilibrium (LD) regions and LD-based SNP pruning significantly improves correlations between PCs and geography and (2) whether genetic differentiation may have been influenced by migration and/or selection. In the Netherlands, three PCs showed significant correlations with geography, distinguishing between: (1) North and South; (2) East and West; and (3) the middle-band and the rest of the country. The third PC only emerged with minimized LD, which also significantly increased correlations with geography for the other two PCs. In addition to geography, the Dutch North–South PC showed correlations with genome-wide homozygosity (r=0.245), which may reflect a serial-founder effect due to northwards migration, and also with height (♂: r=0.142, ♀: r=0.153). The divergence between subpopulations identified by PCs is partly driven by selection pressures. The first three PCs showed significant signals for diversifying selection (545 SNPs - the majority within 184 genes). The strongest signal was observed between North and South for the functional SNP in HERC2 that determines human blue/brown eye color. Thus, this study demonstrates how to increase ancestry signals in a relatively homogeneous population and how those signals can reveal evolutionary history.

Link

Revised timescale of human mtDNA evolution (Fu et al. 2013)

 

An important new paper has just appeared in Current Biology. It is very exciting for a couple of reasons:

• The paper uses the idea of branch shortening to infer dates for the mtDNA phylogeny. Briefly, if one counts differences between a present-day sample P and an ancient sample A, one can get a sense of when their most recent common ancestor X, lived. But PX and PA are not equal: PA is shorter, because A has "missed" a few thousand years of evolution (depending on its age). If we know the age of A (and this can be reliably known by direct dating for many samples), then we can infer the time of X.

Looking at the ages of many haplogroups, I don't see any that immediately strike me as inconsistent with recent published age estimates based on modern mtDNA alone, such as those from the Copernican reassessment paper. In any case, this is an exciting new application of an idea that will yield good dates for haplogroup ages in the future. For example, it could be used to date Y-chromosome lineages as well, when high-quality sequences of ancient human Y-chromosomes become available.

• The paper also presents a number of new and exciting ancient DNA samples:

Please note that the "Cro Magnon" sample is actually revealed to be non-ancient in the study; that is another utility of the "branch shortening" idea, since it can demonstrate that purported very old samples are in fact fairly recent.
Note the important new samples from Dolni Vestonice, Oberkassel, Continenza, all of which are Paleolithic Europeans and all of which belong, without exception to subgroups of haplogroup U. It appears that Europe was indeed dominated by this haplogroup down to Mesolithic times, with a sharp discontinuity with early Neolithic Europeans.
The only outlier in the European context is Paglicci Str. 4b which is assigned to haplogroup H1. However:

Using this criterion, we excluded Paglicci Str. 4b from further analysis as the rate of C to T misincorporation at the 50 end was only 8.8%, thus making an ancient origin for the DNA in this sample uncertain [14].

Personally, I doubt there was any mtDNA haplogroup H in pre-Neolithic Europe, as the first author of this paper has also argued for in a previous one.
There is also a new sample from Boshan; it is probably too early to detect a pattern, but it is nonetheless noteworthy that it also belonged to mtDNA haplogroup B like the much earlier sample from Tianyuan.
Finally, the paper also discusses the issue of the mutation rate, noting that the divergence between Eurasian (M+N) and African (L3) mtDNA is much later than that inferred for autosomal DNA using new and "slow" de novo autosomal mutation rates. In my opinion there are two possible interpretations for this: one that there's something wrong with the slow rates, while another is that the earlier divergence using autosomal DNA may be a consequence of inflation due to admixture events in Africa.
Current Biology doi:10.1016/j.cub.2013.02.044
A Revised Timescale for Human Evolution Based on Ancient Mitochondrial Genomes
Qiaomei Fu et al.
Summary
Background
Recent analyses of de novo DNA mutations in modern humans have suggested a nuclear substitution rate that is approximately half that of previous estimates based on fossil calibration. This result has led to suggestions that major events in human evolution occurred far earlier than previously thought.
Results
Here, we use mitochondrial genome sequences from ten securely dated ancient modern humans spanning 40,000 years as calibration points for the mitochondrial clock, thus yielding a direct estimate of the mitochondrial substitution rate. Our clock yields mitochondrial divergence times that are in agreement with earlier estimates based on calibration points derived from either fossils or archaeological material. In particular, our results imply a separation of non-Africans from the most closely related sub-Saharan African mitochondrial DNAs (haplogroup L3) that occurred less than 62–95 kya.
Conclusions
Though single loci like mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA) can only provide biased estimates of population divergence times, they can provide valid upper bounds. Our results exclude most of the older dates for African and non-African population divergences recently suggested by de novo mutation rate estimates in the nuclear genome.
Link

New Neandertal remains from Mani

The age and cave origin of these remains may conceivably make them useful for ancient DNA studies.
Journal of Human Evolution doi:10.1016/j.jhevol.2013.02.002
New Neanderthal remains from Mani peninsula, Southern Greece: The Kalamakia Middle Paleolithic cave site
Katerina Harvati et al.
The Kalamakia cave, a Middle Paleolithic site on the western coast of the Mani peninsula, Greece, was excavated in 1993–2006 by an interdisciplinary team from the Ephoreia of Paleoanthropology and Speleology (Greek Ministry of Culture) and the Muséum national d'Histoire naturelle (Paris). The site is dated to between ca. 100,000 and >39,000 years BP (Before Present) and has yielded Mousterian lithics, a rich fauna, and human remains from several layers. The latter include 10 isolated teeth, a cranial fragment and three postcranial elements. The remains represent at least eight individuals, two of them subadults, and show both carnivore and anthropogenic modifications. They can be identified as Neanderthal on the basis of diagnostic morphology on most specimens. A diet similar to that of Neanderthals from mixed habitat is suggested by our analysis of dental wear (occlusal fingerprint analysis) and microwear (occlusal texture microwear analysis), in agreement with the faunal and palynological analyses of the site. These new fossils significantly expand the Neanderthal sample known from Greece. Together with the human specimens from Lakonis and Apidima, the Kalamakia human remains add to the growing evidence of a strong Neanderthal presence in the Mani region during the Late Pleistocene.
Link

Genomewide structure of populations from European Russia (Khrunin et al. 2013)

Notice:

1. The intermediate position of Estonians between Balts and Finns
2. The intermediate position of some Russian groups between Komi and the main body of Europeans.

PLoS ONE 8(3): e58552. doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0058552
A Genome-Wide Analysis of Populations from European Russia Reveals a New Pole of Genetic Diversity in Northern Europe
Andrey V. Khrunin et al.
Several studies examined the fine-scale structure of human genetic variation in Europe. However, the European sets analyzed represent mainly northern, western, central, and southern Europe. Here, we report an analysis of approximately 166,000 single nucleotide polymorphisms in populations from eastern (northeastern) Europe: four Russian populations from European Russia, and three populations from the northernmost Finno-Ugric ethnicities (Veps and two contrast groups of Komi people). These were compared with several reference European samples, including Finns, Estonians, Latvians, Poles, Czechs, Germans, and Italians. The results obtained demonstrated genetic heterogeneity of populations living in the region studied. Russians from the central part of European Russia (Tver, Murom, and Kursk) exhibited similarities with populations from central–eastern Europe, and were distant from Russian sample from the northern Russia (Mezen district, Archangelsk region). Komi samples, especially Izhemski Komi, were significantly different from all other populations studied. These can be considered as a second pole of genetic diversity in northern Europe (in addition to the pole, occupied by Finns), as they had a distinct ancestry component. Russians from Mezen and the Finnic-speaking Veps were positioned between the two poles, but differed from each other in the proportions of Komi and Finnic ancestries. In general, our data provides a more complete genetic map of Europe accounting for the diversity in its most eastern (northeastern) populations.
Link

Our rabbit-hunting ancestors (Fa et al. 2013)

From the paper:

Relative to other mammal groups, rabbit bone abundance was always significantly higher during the Upper Palaeolithic (76%) and Mesolithic (59%) than during the Middle Palaeolithic (Fig. 4). The difference between the average rabbit remains and that of cervids, the second most abundant prey item, were less than 10% during the Mousterian. In contrast, during the Upper Palaeolithic and Mesolithic, the difference between the rabbit and the second-most important prey items was over 60% and 20%, respectively. After the rabbit, large ungulates (caprids, cervids and equids) were relatively important during the Middle and Upper Palaeolithic, while caprids, cervids and suids took that place during the Mesolithic (Fig. 4).

and:

Our evidence indicates that hominin diets may have changed from one dependent on large mammals during the Middle Palaeolithic to diets dominated by smaller species in the Upper Palaeolithic, in particular by the wild rabbit. The explanation for this transition is either that climate change negatively impacted large mammal populations, forcing prehistoric people to incorporate smaller vertebrate species into their diets, or that people themselves negatively impacted large mammal populations, which in turn forced foragers to add smaller species to their diets.

I am not sure how modern hunter-gatherers hunt rabbits, but I would think that trapping, or some type of slingshot or blowdart would be ideal for this small and fast-moving animal. Did Neandertals simply lack efficient technology to capture rabbit, or is there some other reason why they underutilized the species?
Journal of Human Evolution DOI: 10.1016/j.jhevol.2013.01.002
Rabbits and hominin survival in Iberia
John E. Fa et al.
High dependence on the hunting and consumption of large mammals by some hominins may have limited their survival once their preferred quarry became scarce or disappeared. Adaptation to smaller residual prey would have been essential after the many large-bodied species decreased in numbers. We focus on the use of a superabundant species, the rabbit, to demonstrate the importance of this taxon in Iberia as fundamental to predators. We show that the use of the rabbit over time has increased, and that there could have been differential consumption by Neanderthals and Anatomically Modern Humans (AMH). Analysis of bone remains from excavations throughout Iberia show that this lagomorph was a crucial part of the diet of AMH but was relatively unutilised during the Mousterian, when Neanderthals were present. We first present changes in mammalian biomass and mean body mass of mammals over 50,000 years, to illustrate the dramatic loss of large mammalian fauna and to show how the rabbit may have contributed a consistently high proportion of the available game biomass throughout that period. Unlike the Italian Peninsula and other parts of Europe, in Iberia the rabbit has provided a food resource of great importance for predators including hominins. We suggest that hunters that could shift focus to rabbits and other smaller residual fauna, once larger-bodied species decreased in numbers, would have been able to persist. From the evidence presented here, we postulate that Neanderthals may have been less capable of prey-shifting and hence use the high-biomass prey resource provided by the rabbit, to the extent AMH did.
Link

Ancient mtDNA and gene flow from Siberia to NE Europe

Ancient mtDNA and gene flow from Siberia to NE Europe

I had mentioned the thesis by the lead author, and now a paper from it has been published. If anyone notices any new material in the new paper, feel free to highlight it in the comments.

PLoS Genet 9(2): e1003296. doi:10.1371/journal.pgen.1003296

Ancient DNA Reveals Prehistoric Gene-Flow from Siberia in the Complex Human Population History of North East Europe

Clio Der Sarkissian et al.

North East Europe harbors a high diversity of cultures and languages, suggesting a complex genetic history. Archaeological, anthropological, and genetic research has revealed a series of influences from Western and Eastern Eurasia in the past. While genetic data from modern-day populations is commonly used to make inferences about their origins and past migrations, ancient DNA provides a powerful test of such hypotheses by giving a snapshot of the past genetic diversity. In order to better understand the dynamics that have shaped the gene pool of North East Europeans, we generated and analyzed 34 mitochondrial genotypes from the skeletal remains of three archaeological sites in northwest Russia. These sites were dated to the Mesolithic and the Early Metal Age (7,500 and 3,500 uncalibrated years Before Present). We applied a suite of population genetic analyses (principal component analysis, genetic distance mapping, haplotype sharing analyses) and compared past demographic models through coalescent simulations using Bayesian Serial SimCoal and Approximate Bayesian Computation. Comparisons of genetic data from ancient and modern-day populations revealed significant changes in the mitochondrial makeup of North East Europeans through time. Mesolithic foragers showed high frequencies and diversity of haplogroups U (U2e, U4, U5a), a pattern observed previously in European hunter-gatherers from Iberia to Scandinavia. In contrast, the presence of mitochondrial DNA haplogroups C, D, and Z in Early Metal Age individuals suggested discontinuity with Mesolithic hunter-gatherers and genetic influx from central/eastern Siberia. We identified remarkable genetic dissimilarities between prehistoric and modern-day North East Europeans/Saami, which suggests an important role of post-Mesolithic migrations from Western Europe and subsequent population replacement/extinctions. This work demonstrates how ancient DNA can improve our understanding of human population movements across Eurasia. It contributes to the description of the spatio-temporal distribution of mitochondrial diversity and will be of significance for future reconstructions of the history of Europeans.

Link

Human mobility at the start of Balkan Neolithic

Human mobility at the start of Balkan Neolithic

Link to press release.

PNAS doi: 10.1073/pnas.1211474110

Strontium isotopes document greater human mobility at the start of the Balkan Neolithic

Dušan Borić and T. Douglas Price

Questions about how farming and the Neolithic way of life spread across Europe have been hotly debated topics in archaeology for decades. For a very long time, two models have dominated the discussion: migrations of farming groups from southwestern Asia versus diffusion of domesticates and new ideas through the existing networks of local forager populations. New strontium isotope data from the Danube Gorges in the north-central Balkans, an area characterized by a rich burial record spanning the Mesolithic–Neolithic transition, show a significant increase in nonlocal individuals from ∼6200 calibrated B.C., with several waves of migrants into this region. These results are further enhanced by dietary evidence based on carbon and nitrogen isotopes and an increasingly high chronological resolution obtained on a large sample of directly dated individuals. This dataset provides robust evidence for a brief period of coexistence between indigenous groups and early farmers before farming communities absorbed the foragers completely in the first half of the sixth millennium B.C.

Link

Balanica BH-1: 397-525 thousand years old

Balanica BH-1: 397-525 thousand years old

The occurrence of derived Neandertal traits in Sima vs. their absence in penecontemporaneous samples from  southeastern Europe is fairly interesting. It might suggest that the Neandertal suite of traits first appeared in western Europe.

We tend to think of Old World H. heidelbergensis as a parental species which produced -at least in the western part of the Old World- two descendant species, sapiens and neanderthalensis, but clearly that is not the whole story. Unrelated to the current paper, but perhaps worthy of note is that these two descendant species make their appearance far apart in time, with Neandertaloid traits already in evidence very early in Europe, and modern human ones late in east Africa. We may wonder about what was taking place in the temporal gap between 600 and 200 thousand years ago, and the spatial gap between Europe and Africaa.

PLoS ONE 8(2): e54608. doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0054608

New Radiometric Ages for the BH-1 Hominin from Balanica (Serbia): Implications for Understanding the Role of the Balkans in Middle Pleistocene Human Evolution

William J. Rink et al.

Newly obtained ages, based on electron spin resonance combined with uranium series isotopic analysis, and infrared/post-infrared luminescence dating, provide a minimum age that lies between 397 and 525 ka for the hominin mandible BH-1 from Mala Balanica cave, Serbia. This confirms it as the easternmost hominin specimen in Europe dated to the Middle Pleistocene. Inferences drawn from the morphology of the mandible BH-1 place it outside currently observed variation of European Homo heidelbergensis. The lack of derived Neandertal traits in BH-1 and its contemporary specimens in Southeast Europe, such as Kocabaş, Vasogliano and Ceprano, coupled with Middle Pleistocene synapomorphies, suggests different evolutionary forces acting in the east of the continent where isolation did not play such an important role during glaciations.

Link

Clustering folk tales

Clustering folk tales

Proc. R. Soc. B 7 April 2013 vol. 280 no. 1756
doi: 10.1098/rspb.2012.3065

Population structure and cultural geography of a folktale in Europe 

Robert M. Ross et al.

Despite a burgeoning science of cultural evolution, relatively little work has focused on the population structure of human cultural variation. By contrast, studies in human population genetics use a suite of tools to quantify and analyse spatial and temporal patterns of genetic variation within and between populations. Human genetic diversity can be explained largely as a result of migration and drift giving rise to gradual genetic clines, together with some discontinuities arising from geographical and cultural barriers to gene flow. Here, we adapt theory and methods from population genetics to quantify the influence of geography and ethnolinguistic boundaries on the distribution of 700 variants of a folktale in 31 European ethnolinguistic populations. We find that geographical distance and ethnolinguistic affiliation exert significant independent effects on folktale diversity and that variation between populations supports a clustering concordant with European geography. This pattern of geographical clines and clusters parallels the pattern of human genetic diversity in Europe, although the effects of geographical distance and ethnolinguistic boundaries are stronger for folktales than genes. Our findings highlight the importance of geography and population boundaries in models of human cultural variation and point to key similarities and differences between evolutionary processes operating on human genes and culture.

Link

Late Neandertal survival in Iberia questioned

Late Neandertal survival in Iberia questioned

Neanderthal remains point to earlier extinction

In the latest study1, Higham and his former graduate student Rachel Wood, now at the Australian National University in Canberra, tried to date remains from 11 sites on the Iberian Peninsula using their decontamination methods. Previous efforts put the remains as young as 36,000 years old.

However, Wood and Higham found that just two of the sites — Jarama, outside Madrid, and Cueva del Boquete de Zafarraya, near the southern tip of Spain — contained bones with enough carbon to be dated. Their work suggests that these remains are more than 45,000 years old, with some older than 50,000 years, the practical limit of carbon dating. Wood says that the team’s study calls into question evidence that the last populations of Neanderthals found refuge in the Iberian Peninsula.

PNAS doi: 10.1073/pnas.1207656110

Radiocarbon dating casts doubt on the late chronology of the Middle to Upper Palaeolithic transition in southern Iberia

Rachel E. Wood et al.

It is commonly accepted that some of the latest dates for Neanderthal fossils and Mousterian industries are found south of the Ebro valley in Iberia at ca. 36 ka calBP (calibrated radiocarbon date ranges). In contrast, to the north of the valley the Mousterian disappears shortly before the Proto-Aurignacian appears at ca. 42 ka calBP. The latter is most likely produced by anatomically modern humans. However, two-thirds of dates from the south are radiocarbon dates, a technique that is particularly sensitive to carbon contaminants of a younger age that can be difficult to remove using routine pretreatment protocols. We have attempted to test the reliability of chronologies of 11 southern Iberian Middle and early Upper Paleolithic sites. Only two, Jarama VI and Zafarraya, were found to contain material that could be reliably dated. In both sites, Middle Paleolithic contexts were previously dated by radiocarbon to less than 42 ka calBP. Using ultrafiltration to purify faunal bone collagen before radiocarbon dating, we obtain ages at least 10 ka 14C years older, close to or beyond the limit of the radiocarbon method for the Mousterian at Jarama VI and Neanderthal fossils at Zafarraya. Unless rigorous pretreatment protocols have been used, radiocarbon dates should be assumed to be inaccurate until proven otherwise in this region. Evidence for the late survival of Neanderthals in southern Iberia is limited to one possible site, Cueva Antón, and alternative models of human occupation of the region should be considered.

Link

40,000-year old "Lion Man"

40,000-year old "Lion Man"

Ice Age Lion Man is world’s earliest figurative sculpture

Even more exciting than the discovery of new pieces, the sculpture’s age has been refined using radio-carbon dating of other bones found in the strata. This reveals a date of 40,000 years ago, while until recently it was thought to be 32,000 years old. Once reconstruction is completed, several tiny, unused fragments of the mammoth ivory are likely to be carbon dated, and this is expected to confirm the result.

This revised dating pushes the Lion Man right back to the oldest sculptures, which have been found in two other caves in the Swabian Alps. These rare finds are dated at 35,000 to 40,000 years, but the Lion Man is by far the largest and most complex piece. A few carved items have been found in other regions which are slightly older, but these have simple patterns, not figuration.

What was striking about the sculptor of the Lion Man sculptor is that he or she had a mind capable of imagination rather than simply representing real forms. As Cook says, it is “not necessary to have a brain with a complex pre-frontal cortex to form the mental image of a human or a lion—but it is to make the figure of a lion-man”. The Ulm sculpture therefore sheds further light on the evolution of homo sapiens.

I have sometimes wondered whether therianthropic figures really represent an abstract blending of forms (which would require the mental conception of a non-actual creature), or a stylized depiction of a real man wearing (like Hercules) a lion's head.

It's not inconceivable that Ice Age hunters might "wear their prey on their head", just as later hunters used antlers for the same purpose. This may be a more prosaic explanation (Big Men projecting their power and prowess as a reflection of the dangerous animals they killed) compared to the idea of artists envisioning  an imaginary being.

Y chromosome and mtDNA study of modern Middle Eastern populations (Badro et al. 2013)

Y chromosome and mtDNA study of modern Middle Eastern populations (Badro et al. 2013)

I will just briefly comment on the occurrence of L3* mtDNA in the Near East. This is a critical haplogroup because of its age of ~70ky. If all L3* in the Near East represents African migrants, then only the M and N macrogroups appeared in Eurasia, and a good case can be made for a "late" OoA event.

On the other hand, it is quite possible that some of the L3* in the Near East does not represent recent admixture, but rather native forms of L3 with deep ancestry in the region. If that is the case, then the Near East will emerge as the origin of L3, with M, N representing Out-of-Near East-into-Eurasia founders, and the various L3*(xM, N) representing Out-of-Near East-into-Africa founders.

It is difficult to say at present what will turn out to be the case. Ancient DNA has the potential of resolving this issue, because if L3*(xM, N) in Eurasia is really recent (e.g., associated with Islamic/Arab dispersals spanning Africa and Eurasia), then it ought to be missing from the earliest genetic layers.

Also of interest the geographical distribution of Y-haplogroups; nothing much new here, but still useful as a reference:

PLoS ONE 8(1): e54616. doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0054616

Y-Chromosome and mtDNA Genetics Reveal Significant Contrasts in Affinities of Modern Middle Eastern Populations with European and African Populations 

Danielle A. Badro et al.

The Middle East was a funnel of human expansion out of Africa, a staging area for the Neolithic Agricultural Revolution, and the home to some of the earliest world empires. Post LGM expansions into the region and subsequent population movements created a striking genetic mosaic with distinct sex-based genetic differentiation. While prior studies have examined the mtDNA and Y-chromosome contrast in focal populations in the Middle East, none have undertaken a broad-spectrum survey including North and sub-Saharan Africa, Europe, and Middle Eastern populations. In this study 5,174 mtDNA and 4,658 Y-chromosome samples were investigated using PCA, MDS, mean-linkage clustering, AMOVA, and Fisher exact tests of FST's, RST's, and haplogroup frequencies. Geographic differentiation in affinities of Middle Eastern populations with Africa and Europe showed distinct contrasts between mtDNA and Y-chromosome data. Specifically, Lebanon's mtDNA shows a very strong association to Europe, while Yemen shows very strong affinity with Egypt and North and East Africa. Previous Y-chromosome results showed a Levantine coastal-inland contrast marked by J1 and J2, and a very strong North African component was evident throughout the Middle East. Neither of these patterns were observed in the mtDNA. While J2 has penetrated into Europe, the pattern of Y-chromosome diversity in Lebanon does not show the widespread affinities with Europe indicated by the mtDNA data. Lastly, while each population shows evidence of connections with expansions that now define the Middle East, Africa, and Europe, many of the populations in the Middle East show distinctive mtDNA and Y-haplogroup characteristics that indicate long standing settlement with relatively little impact from and movement into other populations.

Link

Diverse occupants of Hungarian kurgan

Diverse occupants of Hungarian kurgan

Antiquity Volume: 86 Number: 334 Page: 1097–1111

Immigration and transhumance in the Early Bronze Age Carpathian Basin: the occupants of a kurgan

Claudia Gerling

You never know until you look. The authors deconstruct a kurgan burial mound in the Great Hungarian Plain designated to the Yamnaya culture, to find it was actually shared by a number of different peoples. The Yamnaya were an influential immigrant group of the Late Copper Age/Early Bronze Age transition. The burials, already characterised by their grave goods, were radiocarbon dated and further examined using stable isotope analysis on the human teeth. The revealing sequence began with a young person of likely local origin buried around or even before the late fourth millennium BC—a few centuries before the arrival of the Yamnaya. It ended around 500 years later with a group of different immigrants, apparently from the eastern mountains. These are explained as contacts built up between the mountains and the plain through the practice of transhumance.

Link

Genomic history of Denmark

Genomic history of Denmark

An announcement from the GeoGenetics centre:

The Genomic History of Denmark.

The centre has received a 36 mill. DKK grant from Univ. of Copenhagen's dedicated 2016-program. Researchers from GeoGenetics in close cooperation with collegues from the National Museum of Denmark and institutes at the University of Copenhagen will make Denmark the first country in the world to map its evolutionary, demographic and health history - from the earliest settlers through to modern times.

DNA and proteins extracted from a Danish collection of archaeological skeletons from the Older Stone Age (5000-3000 BC) will be analysed in order to learn more about the Danish cultural heritage and health history.

Professor and director of the Centre for GeoGenetics Eske Willerslev is project leader.

Complete mtDNA sequences and the history of Slavs

Complete mtDNA sequences and the history of Slavs

PLoS ONE 8(1): e54360. doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0054360

The History of Slavs Inferred from Complete Mitochondrial Genome Sequences

Marta Mielnik-Sikorska et al.

To shed more light on the processes leading to crystallization of a Slavic identity, we investigated variability of complete mitochondrial genomes belonging to haplogroups H5 and H6 (63 mtDNA genomes) from the populations of Eastern and Western Slavs, including new samples of Poles, Ukrainians and Czechs presented here. Molecular dating implies formation of H5 approximately 11.5–16 thousand years ago (kya) in the areas of southern Europe. Within ancient haplogroup H6, dated at around 15–28 kya, there is a subhaplogroup H6c, which probably survived the last glaciation in Europe and has undergone expansion only 3–4 kya, together with the ancestors of some European groups, including the Slavs, because H6c has been detected in Czechs, Poles and Slovaks. Detailed analysis of complete mtDNAs allowed us to identify a number of lineages that seem specific for Central and Eastern Europe (H5a1f, H5a2, H5a1r, H5a1s, H5b4, H5e1a, H5u1, some subbranches of H5a1a and H6a1a9). Some of them could possibly be traced back to at least ~4 kya, which indicates that some of the ancestors of today's Slavs (Poles, Czechs, Slovaks, Ukrainians and Russians) inhabited areas of Central and Eastern Europe much earlier than it was estimated on the basis of archaeological and historical data. We also sequenced entire mitochondrial genomes of several non-European lineages (A, C, D, G, L) found in contemporary populations of Poland and Ukraine. The analysis of these haplogroups confirms the presence of Siberian (C5c1, A8a1) and Ashkenazi-specific (L2a1l2a) mtDNA lineages in Slavic populations. Moreover, we were able to pinpoint some lineages which could possibly reflect the relatively recent contacts of Slavs with nomadic Altaic peoples (C4a1a, G2a, D5a2a1a1).

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Neandertal origin of Châtelperronian; likely modern human origin of Châtelperronian body ornamentation

Neandertal origin of Châtelperronian; likely modern human origin of Châtelperronian body ornamentation

Related:

• Earliest sapiens remains in Europe
• Rapid onset of Aurignacian in Southwest France
• Redating of the Early Upper Paleolithic site of Riparo Mochi (Italy)
• 43,000-year old Aurignacian in Swabian Jura

PNAS doi: 10.1073/pnas.1212924109

Radiocarbon dates from the Grotte du Renne and Saint-Césaire support a Neandertal origin for the Châtelperronian

Jean-Jacques Hublin et al.

The transition from the Middle Paleolithic (MP) to Upper Paleolithic (UP) is marked by the replacement of late Neandertals by modern humans in Europe between 50,000 and 40,000 y ago. Châtelperronian (CP) artifact assemblages found in central France and northern Spain date to this time period. So far, it is the only such assemblage type that has yielded Neandertal remains directly associated with UP style artifacts. CP assemblages also include body ornaments, otherwise virtually unknown in the Neandertal world. However, it has been argued that instead of the CP being manufactured by Neandertals, site formation processes and layer admixture resulted in the chance association of Neanderthal remains, CP assemblages, and body ornaments. Here, we report a series of accelerator mass spectrometry radiocarbon dates on ultrafiltered bone collagen extracted from 40 well-preserved bone fragments from the late Mousterian, CP, and Protoaurignacian layers at the Grotte du Renne site (at Arcy-sur-Cure, France). Our radiocarbon results are inconsistent with the admixture hypothesis. Further, we report a direct date on the Neandertal CP skeleton from Saint-Césaire (France). This date corroborates the assignment of CP assemblages to the latest Neandertals of western Europe. Importantly, our results establish that the production of body ornaments in the CP postdates the arrival of modern humans in neighboring regions of Europe. This new behavior could therefore have been the result of cultural diffusion from modern to Neandertal groups.

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Earliest sapiens remains in Europe

Earliest sapiens remains in Europe

From the BBC:

They may be yellowed and worn but these ancient teeth and jaw fragment have something very revealing to say about how modern humans conquered the globe.

The specimens, unearthed in Italy and the UK, have just been confirmed as the earliest known remains of Homo sapiens in Europe.

Careful dating suggests they are more than 41,000 years old, and perhaps as much as 45,000 years old in the case of the Italian "baby teeth".
...

The re-assessments have further importance because palaeoanthropologists can now put modern humans in the caves at the same time as the stone and bone tool technologies discovered there.

There has been some doubt over who created the so-called Aurignacian artefacts at Kents Cavern and the slightly older Uluzzian technologies at Grotta del Cavallo. It could have been Neanderthals, but there is now an obvious association in time with Homo sapiens.

From the NY Times:

They had in fact discovered the oldest known skeletal remains of anatomically modern humans in the whole of Europe, two international research teams reported Wednesday.

The scientists who made the discovery and others who study human origins say they expect the findings to reignite debate over the relative capabilities of the immigrant modern humans and the indigenous Neanderthals, their closest hominid relatives; the extent of their interactions; and perhaps the reasons behind the Neanderthal extinction. The findings have already prompted speculation that the Homo sapiens migrations into Europe may have come in at least two separate waves, rather than just one.

I'll add the abstracts later. This certainly seems to be incompatible with substantial Neandertal interbreeding. If humans and Neandertals were genetically compatible species, then why would they maintain very separate morphological populations for ~10ka? We would expect the two populations to quickly merge into one. Moreover, a longer period of interbreeding in West Eurasia would have left an excess of "Neandertal" ancestry in modern West Eurasians, something we simply don't observe.

Press release:

"What the new dates mean", Benazzi summarised, "is that these two teeth from Grotta del Cavallo represent the oldest European modern human fossils currently known. This find confirms that the arrival of our species on the continent – and thus the period of coexistence with Neanderthals – was several thousand years longer than previously thought. Based on this fossil evidence, we have confirmed that modern humans and not Neanderthals are the makers of the Uluzzian culture. This has important implications to our understanding of the development of 'fully modern' human behaviour. Whether the colonisation of the continent occurred in one or more waves of expansion and which routes were followed is still to be established."

Nature (2011) doi:10.1038/nature10484

The earliest evidence for anatomically modern humans in northwestern Europe

Tom Higham et al.

The earliest anatomically modern humans in Europe are thought to have appeared around 43,000-42,000 calendar years before present (43-42 kyr cal BP), by association with Aurignacian sites and lithic assemblages assumed to have been made by modern humans rather than by Neanderthals. However, the actual physical evidence for modern humans is extremely rare, and direct dates reach no farther back than about 41-39 kyr cal BP, leaving a gap. Here we show, using stratigraphic, chronological and archaeological data, that a fragment of human maxilla from the Kent’s Cavern site, UK, dates to the earlier period. The maxilla (KC4), which was excavated in 1927, was initially diagnosed as Upper Palaeolithic modern human1. In 1989, it was directly radiocarbon dated by accelerator mass spectrometry to 36.4-34.7 kyr cal BP2. Using a Bayesian analysis of new ultrafiltered bone collagen dates in an ordered stratigraphic sequence at the site, we show that this date is a considerable underestimate. Instead, KC4 dates to 44.2-41.5 kyr cal BP. This makes it older than any other equivalently dated modern human specimen and directly contemporary with the latest European Neanderthals, thus making its taxonomic attribution crucial. We also show that in 13 dental traits KC4 possesses modern human rather than Neanderthal characteristics; three other traits show Neanderthal affinities and a further seven are ambiguous. KC4 therefore represents the oldest known anatomically modern human fossil in northwestern Europe, fills a key gap between the earliest dated Aurignacian remains and the earliest human skeletal remains, and demonstrates the wide and rapid dispersal of early modern humans across Europe more than 40 kyr ago.

Link

Nature (2011) doi:10.1038/nature10617

Early dispersal of modern humans in Europe and implications for Neanderthal behaviour

Stefano Benazzi et al.


The appearance of anatomically modern humans in Europe and the nature of the transition from the Middle to Upper Palaeolithic are matters of intense debate. Most researchers accept that before the arrival of anatomically modern humans, Neanderthals had adopted several transitional technocomplexes. Two of these, the Uluzzian of southern Europe and the Châtelperronian of western Europe, are key to current interpretations regarding the timing of arrival of anatomically modern humans in the region and their potential interaction with Neanderthal populations. They are also central to current debates regarding the cognitive abilities of Neanderthals and the reasons behind their extinction1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6. However, the actual fossil evidence associated with these assemblages is scant and fragmentary7, 8, 9, 10, and recent work has questioned the attribution of the Châtelperronian to Neanderthals on the basis of taphonomic mixing and lithic analysis11, 12. Here we reanalyse the deciduous molars from the Grotta del Cavallo (southern Italy), associated with the Uluzzian and originally classified as Neanderthal13, 14. Using two independent morphometric methods based on microtomographic data, we show that the Cavallo specimens can be attributed to anatomically modern humans. The secure context of the teeth provides crucial evidence that the makers of the Uluzzian technocomplex were therefore not Neanderthals. In addition, new chronometric data for the Uluzzian layers of Grotta del Cavallo obtained from associated shell beads and included within a Bayesian age model show that the teeth must date to ~45,000-43,000 calendar years before present. The Cavallo human remains are therefore the oldest known European anatomically modern humans, confirming a rapid dispersal of modern humans across the continent before the Aurignacian and the disappearance of Neanderthals.

Link

Rapid onset of Aurignacian in Southwest France

Rapid onset of Aurignacian in Southwest France

Journal of Archaeological Science doi:10.1016/j.jas.2011.09.019

A Radiocarbon chronology for the complete Middle to Upper Palaeolithic transitional sequence of Les Cottés (France)

Sahra Talamo et al.

The Middle to Upper Palaeolithic transition is the key period for our understanding of Neanderthal and modern human interactions in Europe. The site of Les Cottés in south-west France is one of the rare sites with a complete and well defined sequence covering this transition period. We undertook an extensive radiocarbon dating program on mammal bone which allows us to propose a chronological framework of five distinct phases dating from the Mousterian to the Early Aurignacian at this site. We found that the Mousterian and Châtelperronian industries are separated from the overlying Protoaurignacian by a gap of approximately 1000 calendar years. Based on a comparison with Upper Paleolithic sites in Europe we see an overlap in the ages of Châtelperronian industries and Aurignacian lithic assemblages, which are usually associated with Anatomical Modern Humans, which is consistent with an acculturation at distance model for these late Neanderthals. The Proto and Early Aurignacian appear contemporaneous indicating that this transition was rapid in this region. Anatomically Modern Humans are present at the site of Les Cottés at least at 39,500 cal BP roughly coincident with the onset of the cold phase Heinrich 4.

Link

Y chromosomal haplogroup J as a signature of the post-neolithic colonization of Europe

Y chromosomal haplogroup J as a signature of the post-neolithic colonization of Europe

A very important new paper about Y chromosome haplogroup J. I will have more to say once I have finished reading it carefully.

Update:
The main finding of the authors is that haplogroup J was not carried by a single advance from the Middle East into Europe. Rather, at least two expansions can be detected, a "Neolithic" one and a "Greek" one:

In summary, our data are in agreement with a major discontinuity for the peopling of southern Europe. Here, haplogroup J constitutes not only the signature of a single wave-of-advance from the Levant but, to a greater extent, also of the expansion of the Greek world, with an accompanying novel quota of genetic variation produced during its demographic growth. In the analysis by Cavalli-Sforza et al. (1994), the two peopling contributions can be distinguished, as they are caught in the first and the fourth principal component, respectively, but the relevance of the latter may have been underestimated. The two processes, widely spaced in time, are associated with dramatically different travel technologies. This implies that, in the central and west Mediterranean, the entry of J chromosomes may have occurred mainly by sea, i.e., in the south–east of both Spain and Italy.

Human Genetics (online first)

Y chromosomal haplogroup J as a signature of the post-neolithic colonization of Europe
F. Di Giacomo et al.

Abstract In order to attain a finer reconstruction of the peopling of southern and central-eastern Europe from the Levant, we determined the frequencies of eight lineages internal to the Y chromosomal haplogroup J, defined by biallelic markers, in 22 population samples obtained with a fine-grained sampling scheme. Our results partially resolve a major multifurcation of lineages within the haplogroup. Analyses of molecular variance show that the area covered by haplogroup J dispersal is characterized by a significant degree of molecular radiation for unique event polymorphisms within the haplogroup, with a higher incidence of the most derived sub-haplogroups on the northern Mediterranean coast, from Turkey westward; here, J diversity is not simply a subset of that present in the area in which this haplogroup first originated. Dating estimates, based on simple tandem repeat loci (STR) diversity within each lineage, confirmed the presence of a major population structuring at the time of spread of haplogroup J in Europe and a punctuation in the peopling of this continent in the post-Neolithic, compatible with the expansion of the Greek world. We also present here, for the first time, a novel method for comparative dating of lineages, free of assumptions of STR mutation rates.

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