Greece and Asia Minor in the Late Bronze Age: The Historical Background of Homer's Iliad

 

An interesting recent talk by Wolf-Dietrich Niemeier.

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.
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AAPA 2013 abstracts

AAPA 2013 abstracts

The program of the 2013 meeting of the American Association of Physical Anthropologists is now online (pdf). As always, there is plenty of interest here, so I'll just highlight a few titles that caught my eye; feel free to add more in the comments.


Neolithic human mitochondrial haplogroup H genomes and the genetic origins of Europeans.

Haplogroup (hg) H dominates present-day Western European mitochondrial (mt) DNA variability (>40%), yet was less prevalent amongst early Neolithic farmers (~19%) and virtually absent in Mesolithic hunter-gatherers. To investigate this haplogroup’s significance in the maternal population history of Europeans we employed novel techniques such as DNA immortalization and hybridization-enrichment to sequence 39 hg H mt genomes from ancient human remains across a transect through time in Neolithic Central Europe. The results of our population genetic analyses reveal that the current patterns of diversity and distribution of hg H were largely established during the Mid-Neolithic, but with substantial genetic contributions from subsequent pan-European cultures such as the Bell Beakers, which expanded out of Iberia in the Late Neolithic (~2800 BC). Using a strict diachronic approach allowed us to reconcile ‘real-time’ genetic data from the most common European mtDNA hg with cultural changes that took place between the Early Neolithic (~5450 BC) and Bronze Age (~2200 BC) in Central Europe. This revealed the Late Neolithic (2800-2200 BC) as a dynamic period that profoundly shaped the genetic landscape of modern-day Europeans. Furthermore, linking ancient hg H genome sequences to specific points in time by using radiocarbon dates as tip calibrations allowed us to reconstruct a precise lineage history of hg H and to calculate a mutation rate 45% higher than traditional estimates based on the human/chimp split.

Preliminary research on hereditary features of Yinxu Population.

... The 37 individuals sampled in this study have been discovered in middle to small size burials, and therefore constitute a representative sample to study Yinxu commoners’ society. Mitochondrial DNA analysis showed that the Yinxu population included the haplogroups D, G, A, C, Z, M10, M*, B, F and N9a. According to the analysis of molecular variance, the distribution frequency and the rare published data, the Yinxu population shows a closest genetic affinity with the populations of Dadianzi and Zhukaigou early Bronze Age sites (Inner Mongolia), but a more distant relation to the historical period populations. The Yinxu population is also very similar to the modern northern Han Chinese. ... 

Investigating lactase persistence in a Medieval German cemetery: A step towards understanding the rise of the European lactase persistence polymorphism (-3910C/T).

Previous ancient DNA-based studies on the Neolithic found that the incidence of LP falls below detection levels in most regions. Our research shows that between the Neolithic and Medieval periods, the frequency of LP rose from near 0% to over 50%. Also, given that the frequency of LP genotypes in modern-day Germany is estimated at 78.5%, our results indicate that rather than being stable by the Medieval period, the lactase persistent genotype has continued to increase in frequency over the last 1000 years. This new evidence sheds light on the dynamic evolutionary history of the European lactase persistent trait and its global cultural implications.

 New Neanderthal remains from Kalamakia cave, Mani peninsula, Southern Greece.

Peeling back the layers: additional evidence for the date of the Petralona skull (Homo heidelbergensis), Greece.

,.. We conclude that there is no white sinter deposited directly on the skull and therefore the initial date of the skull given by Henning et al. and Grun’s revised date of ca. 200 ka are correct.

Analysis of archaic introgression in Ötzi the Tyrolean Iceman, a 5300 year-old prehistoric modern human.

... We carried out a series of comparisons to address these questions. By examining the Neandertal similarity of individuals from the 1000 Genomes Project, we have substantially expanded the sample of Neandertal-human comparisons. We also examined the genome of the Tyrolean Iceman, a European from approximately 5300 years ago. This is the first comparison of Neandertal genomes to the genome of a prehistoric modern human individual.

A quantitative approach for late Pleistocene hominin brain size.

... The results of our study show that Neanderthals have smaller brains than the Pleistocene AMH despite the fact that the latter are smaller in body mass. However, the Holocene AMH (7 populations) have smaller brain sizes than those of Neanderthals. ...

Re-evaluating the functional and adaptive significance of Neandertal nasofacial anatomy.

... Among Middle and Late Pleistocene Homo, there is evidence that nasal morphology varies with climate, albeit within an archaic architectural nasofacial framework. Neandertal internal nasal dimensions are greater in both height and length than archaic humans from sub-Saharan Africa. Furthermore, while other aspects of the nose are relatively broad, superior internal breadth dimensions in Neandertals are narrowed relative to sub-Saharan archaics. These differences parallel those seen in modern humans, indicating that Neandertals had an increased capacity for nasal heat and moisture exchange over their African counterparts and thus exhibit clear evidence for cold-climate adaptation.

Estimating the date of composition of the Homeric epics

Estimating the date of composition of the Homeric epics

This might be an interesting way of dating literary works for which there are no/conflicting traditions about their date of composition.

Bioessays DOI: 10.1002/bies.201200165

Linguistic evidence supports date for Homeric epics

Eric Lewin Altschuler et al.

The Homeric epics are among the greatest masterpieces of literature, but when they were produced is not known with certainty. Here we apply evolutionary-linguistic phylogenetic statistical methods to differences in Homeric, Modern Greek and ancient Hittite vocabulary items to estimate a date of approximately 710–760 BCE for these great works. Our analysis compared a common set of vocabulary items among the three pairs of languages, recording for each item whether the words in the two languages were cognate – derived from a shared ancestral word – or not. We then used a likelihood-based Markov chain Monte Carlo procedure to estimate the most probable times in years separating these languages given the percentage of words they shared, combined with knowledge of the rates at which different words change. Our date for the epics is in close agreement with historians' and classicists' beliefs derived from historical and archaeological sources.

Link

Warlike Minoans

Warlike Minoans

War was central to Europe's first civilization, contrary to popular belief

Research from the University of Sheffield has discovered that the ancient civilisation of Crete, known as Minoan, had strong martial traditions, contradicting the commonly held view of Minoans as a peace-loving people.

The research, carried out by Dr Barry Molloy of the University of Sheffield's Department of Archaeology, investigated the Bronze Age people of Crete, known by many as the Minoans, who created the very first complex urban civilisation in Europe.

"Their world was uncovered just over a century ago, and was deemed to be a largely peaceful society," explained Molloy. "In time, many took this to be a paradigm of a society that was devoid of war, where warriors and violence were shunned and played no significant role.

"That utopian view has not survived into modern scholarship, but it remains in the background unchallenged and still crops up in modern texts and popular culture with surprising frequency.

Personally, I'm not very surprised about this re-appraisal of the relationship of Minoans with war. There are multiple lines of evidence for Minoan power (e.g., the Thucydidean thalassocracy, the belief in Minos and Rhadamanthys as judges in Hades, the Theseus/Minotaur/Attican tributes legend) that have always suggested to me that the Bronze Age Cretans did not achieve pre-eminence only due to the attractiveness of their culture and/or their trading acumen, but also because they actually projected power by force.

One of the biggest arguments for Minoan pacifism was the lack of fortifications in Minoan sites. But, I've never found that argument convincing, because this lack might actually signify an excess of power (strong nations having no need of fortifications), and we need not forget that other unfortified city called Sparta, which, hopefully, no one could ever mistake as a champion of pacifism.

The Annual of the British School at Athens, 107, pp 87-142doi:10.1017/S0068245412000044

MARTIAL MINOANS? WAR AS SOCIAL PROCESS,PRACTICE AND EVENT IN BRONZE AGE CRETE 

Barry P.C. Molloy

Together with politics, economics and religion, war is one of the fundamental factors that canshape a society and group identities. In the prehistoric world, the sources for the study of war are disparate and their interpretation can be inconsistent and problematic. In the case of Cretein the Bronze Age, a systematic analysis of the evidence will be undertaken for the first time inthis paper, and this opportunity is used to critically evaluate the most effective ways of employing the widely agreed sets of physical correlates for ancient war in the archaeological record. A further objective in exploring the diachronic roles of war in these societies is to movethe discussion from a niche field to a more integrated, and systematic, social analysis. Theexistence and character of a warrior identity is examined, and it is proposed that it oftenconstituted a conspicuous element of male identity. The varying scales and time spans throughwhich war can influence a society are discussed, and a broad framework for understanding war in social process, practices and events is proposed.

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