Unique sled dogs helped the inuit thrive in the North American Arctic

By: Thomas Schmitt Attorney on November 27, 2019 / comment : 0 Archaeology, Arctic, Genetics, Indigenous Cultures, North America, Ticker

A unique group of dogs helped the Inuit conquer the tough terrain of the North American Arctic, major new analysis of the remains of hundreds of animals shows.

A team of Greenland sled dogs working in Greenland’s Disko Bay  [Credit: Tatiana Feuerborn]

The study shows that the Inuit brought specialised dogs with them when they migrated from Alaska and Siberia instead of adopting local dogs they would have come across during their migration. They instead maintained their own dogs, suggesting they were keen to enhance or keep the special features they had. By analysing the shape of elements from 391 dogs, the study shows that the Inuit had larger dogs with a proportionally narrower cranium to these earlier dogs. The Inuit dogs are the direct ancestors of modern Arctic sledge dogs, although their appearance has continued to change over time.

Experts had thought the Inuit used dogs to pull sledges, and this is the first study which shows they introduced a new dog population to the region to do this. These dogs then spread across the North American Arctic alongside Inuit migrants.

Dr Carly Ameen, an archaeologist from the University of Exeter who led the study, said: "Dogs have lived in North America for as long as humans, but we show here that the Inuit brought new dogs to the region which were genetically distinct and physically different from earlier dogs.

"Thousands of years ago there was not the huge number of dog breeds as we know them today. Through analysing the DNA and morphology of the remains of hundreds of dogs we've found that the dogs used by the Inuit had distinctive skull and teeth shapes, and would have likely looked different in life to dogs already in the Arctic."

The ancestors of these dogs arrived with the Inuit to the North American Arctic [Credit: Tatiana Feuerborn]

Experts also examined the DNA from 921 dogs and wolves who lived during the last 4,500 years. This analysis of the DNA, and the locations and time periods in which they were found, shows dogs from Inuit sites occupied from around 2,000 years ago were genetically different from the dogs already in the region.

Study co-lead author Tatiana Feuerborn, from the Globe Institute in Denmark and the Centre for Palaeogenetics in Sweden, said: "Archaeological evidence has shown us that before the Inuit arrived in North America dog sledging was a rarity. Our analysis of the DNA suggests dogs brought by the Inuit were distinct from the earlier dogs of the North American Arctic to fill specialist role in helping communities thrive in this hostile environment by aiding with transportation and hunting. The genetic legacy of these Inuit dogs can still be seen today in Arctic sledge dogs."

The Inuit were specialised sea mammal hunters, and were more mobile than other groups living in the Arctic, migrating huge distances across the region over 1,000 years ago, with the help of dog sledges and water craft. Today, sledge dogs whose origins can be traced back to the Inuit period continue to be an important part of Arctic communities.

The article is published in the journal Proceedings of the Royal Society B.

Source: University of Exeter [November 27, 2019]

Melting Mongolian ice patches may threaten reindeer pastoralism, archaeological artefacts

By: Thomas Schmitt Attorney on November 20, 2019 / comment : 0 Climate Change, Ecosystems, Heritage, Indigenous Cultures, Mongolia, Natural Heritage

Northern Mongolian "eternal ice" is melting for the first time in memory, threatening the traditional reindeer-herding lifestyle and exposing fragile cultural artifacts to the elements, according to a study published in the open-access journal PLOS ONE by William Taylor from the Max Planck Institute, Germany, and the University of Colorado-Boulder, USA, and colleagues.

This is a domestic reindeer saddled for riding outside a Tsaatan summer camp in Khuvsgul province,  northern Mongolia [Credit: Julia Clark]

The mountainous tundra of the northern Mongolian steppes features "munkh mus" or "eternal ice", ice patches which remain intact even in the summer. For the reindeer-herding Tsaatan people, they provide a place for heat-stressed reindeer to cool down, as well as fresh water, useful plants, and a reprieve from summer insects for herders and reindeer alike.

The authors of the present study visited the Ulaan Taiga Special Protected Area of Mongolia to investigate the potential for cultural artifacts in the ice. They conducted an archaeological survey on foot and on horseback, and also held ethnographic interviews with eight local families over 2018.

(Left): Image of a persistent snow and ice patch in Mengebulag taken in 2006, showing domestic reindeer using the  patch, and (right): the same patch in 2018, which local residents indicated had melted for the very first time [Credit: Taylor et al, 2019]

The families interviewed described how many ice patches had melted for the first time in memory between 2016 and 2018, while stressing the importance of eternal ice for reindeer and herding families alike. Many herders complained that recent declines in pasture quality had led to reindeer sickness and death.

The archaeological survey revealed a number of wooden artifacts at one melted ice patch site which dated from the 1960s, when herders moved into the area - the first discovered artifacts from this region. Organic materials are preserved in ice but degrade rapidly upon exposure to the elements, meaning that melting ice could affect the archaeological record.

A domesticated reindeer from northern Mongolia [Credit: O. Batchuluun]

As Mongolia continues to warm at a higher rate than the global average, the authors note that the eternal ice appears to be melting due to the increasing summer temperatures--and stress this puts both cultural heritage and traditional reindeer herding at extreme risk in the years to come.

The authors add: "This study shows us that global climate change is an urgent threat in Inner Asia - melting ice is threatening both reindeer herding as a way of life, and the region's cultural heritage."

Source: Public Library of Science [November 20, 2019]

Modern Melanesians harbour beneficial DNA from archaic hominins

By: Thomas Schmitt Attorney on October 17, 2019 / comment : 0 Anthropology, Early Humans, Genetics, Human Evolution, Indigenous Cultures, Melanesia

Modern Melanesians harbour beneficial genetic variants that they inherited from archaic Neanderthal and Denisovan hominins, according to a new study published in Science. These genes are not found in many other human populations, the study adds.

The magnifying glasses highlight structural differences between the archaic (top) and reference (bottom) genomes. Neanderthal (red) and Denisovan (blue) haplotypes encompassing large CNVs occur at high frequencies in Melanesians  (44 and 79%, respectively) but are absent (black) in all non-Melanesians. These CNVs create positively selected genes (TNFRSF10D1, TNFRSF10D2, and NPIPB16) that are absent from the reference genome [Credit: PingHsun Hsieh et al. 2019]

The results suggest that large structural variants introgressed from our archaic ancestors may have played an important role in the adaptation of early modern human populations and that they may represent an under-appreciated source of the genetic variation that remains to be characterized in our modern genomes.

As populations of our ancestors migrated out of Africa and into the vast Eurasian continent, they were required to adapt to the wide range of environments they encountered. They also interbred with the archaic hominin ancestors they encountered.

However, the role of genetic exchange between archaic hominin and anatomically modern human populations in adaption and human evolution remains elusive. Genetic surveys with single-nucleotide variants (SNVs) have suggested their involvement in archaic introgression and adaptation.

However, compared to SNVs, copy number variants (CNVs), a larger form of structural variant, are far more likely to be associated with genotype expression and are subject to stronger selective pressure.

Despite this, the adaptive role of introgressed CNVs in human evolution and the genetic variation of modern humans remains unexplored. PingHsun Hsieh performed a genome-wide search for evidence of selective and archaic introgressed CNVs among Melanesian genomes.

The Islanders of Melanesia harbor some of the greatest amounts of archaic human ancestry known. Hsieh et al. discovered hominin-shared, stratified CNVs associated with positive selection in the modern Melanesian genomes.

Furthermore, the results revealed evidence for adaptive CNVs introgression at chromosomes 16p11.2 and 8p21.3, which were derived from Denisovans and Neanderthals, respectively. The results tentatively suggest that CNV introgression from ancestral hominins may have allowed modern humans to adapt to new environments by providing a source of beneficial genetic variation.

Source: American Association for the Advancement of Science [October 17, 2019]

Early hunter-gatherers of North America interacted much sooner than previously believed

By: Thomas Schmitt Attorney on October 07, 2019 / comment : 0 Americas, Archaeology, Indigenous Cultures, North America

A nearly 4,000-year-old burial site found off the coast of Georgia hints at ties between hunter-gatherers on opposite sides of North America, according to research led by faculty at Binghamton University, State University of New York.

A research team examines a burial site on St. Catherines Island, Georgia [Credit: Matthew C. Sanger, 2017]

A research team led by Matthew Sanger, assistant professor of anthropology at Binghamton University, analyzed human remains, stone tools and a copper band found in an ancient burial pit in the McQueen shell ring on St. Catherine's Island, Georgia. The burial at the shell ring closely resembles similar graves found in the Great Lakes region, suggesting an exchange network between the Great Lakes and the coastal southeast United States. Similarities in mortuary practices suggest that the movement of objects between these two regions was more direct and unmediated than archaeologists previously assumed.

"Our excavations revealed remarkable parallels between the shell ring in the coastal Southeast and in broadly contemporaneous sites in the Great Lakes including: the use of cremation to handle the dead, cremating the dead in an area separate from where the bones were eventually buried, the use of copper as a burial item, the burial of multiple people at the same time, and the use of ocher in the burial," said Sanger.

The source of this copper band, found among the remains of seven cremated individuals on an island off the coast of Georgia, has been traced to the Great Lakes region [Credit: Matthew C. Sanger, 2017]

"Not only are these practices very similar, our analyses clearly show that the copper found at the shell ring originated in the Great Lakes and was therefore traded between the two regions. Notably, all of these practices are rare, or entirely absent, from the regions between the Great Lakes and the southeast, which suggests that there was not some sort of general diffusion of traditions, but rather a direct "transplant."

According to the researchers, these findings challenge prevalent notions that view preagricultural Native American communities as relatively isolated from one another and suggest instead that wide social networks spanned much of North America thousands of years before the advent of domestication.

Projectile points: (Top-a-f) St. Catherines Shell Ring; (Bottom-g-k) McQueen Shell Ring [Credit: Matthew C. Sanger, 2017]

"These findings strongly suggest that Native Americans living in the Eastern Woodlands more than 3,000 years ago were far more interconnected than we have ever thought," said Sanger. "Rather than living in small groups with limited contacts, Native American communities were cosmopolitan; they traded with distant peoples, they engaged in complex social and economic relationships, and they had direct and indirect knowledge spanning hundreds if not thousands of kilometers. Amazingly, all of this occurred thousands of years before Native Americans invented agricultural practices - the point at which "social complexity" is thought to emerge by many archaeologists."

The discovery of long-distance exchange of prestige goods among Archaic period communities living in the U.S. Southeast challenges traditional notions of hunter-gatherers as living in relative isolation and instead suggests nonagrarian groups created and maintained vast social networks thousands of years earlier than typically assumed.


"Traditionally, archaeologists have thought that agriculture played a key role in the creation of long-distance interactions as domesticated food sources can produce massive surpluses, which can then be used to establish more complex social and political power structures and relations," said Sanger.

"Increasingly though, archaeologists from around the world are finding that non-agricultural people engaged in activities long thought reserved for farmers. Our findings at the shell ring are part of a much broader revolution in archaeology where non-agricultural people are viewed as living far more complex, interconnected and interesting lives than previously assumed.

The study is published in American Antiquity.

Source: Binghamton University [October 07, 2019]

Archaeologist unearths history in Mississippi River Valley

By: Thomas Schmitt Attorney on August 29, 2019 / comment : 0 Americas, Archaeology, Indigenous Cultures, North America, USA

In the farmlands of the Mississippi River Valley, earth is continuously cleared and leveled—a result of the region's booming agriculture industry. But beneath the soil lies an important piece of American history, one a Florida State University anthropology professor is working to piece together.

Excavations at the Carson site [Credit: FSU]

In 2007, a planned farming operation at what's known as the Carson site uncovered evidence of a once large Native American village and monumental center located in the Yazoo Basin of northwestern Mississippi. FSU Assistant Professor of Anthropology Jayur Madhussudan Mehta has spent years investigating the site and teasing out details of Native American life in the 13th century.

In a new paper published in North American Archaeologist, Mehta, who worked for the State of Mississippi when the site was first discovered, lays out how large earthen mounds found in old villages like the one at the Carson site played a central role in Native American societies in what is now the southeastern United States.

"I propose that people came together as communities to build mounds and monuments, and that was a way of making a community," Mehta said. "When that collective work becomes appropriated, or taken over by someone or a small, elite group of people, this monument no longer represents community, or an egalitarian ethos. Rather, it represents a hierarchal relationship between elites and commoners, between people who have control over this monument and live on top of it, and those who live below it."

The Carson site is about one mile long and was first occupied by Native Americans from the St. Louis region who migrated downriver and established a settlement. Over the following centuries, the site's occupants built earthen mounds, constructed a village and began harvesting corn. Today, the surrounding region is largely used for agricultural purposes. A farming endeavor initially planned for the Carson site ultimately prompted the research excavation.

"The farming operation, through the course of moving 3 to 4 feet of soil off the surface, uncovered a village with houses and burials," Mehta said. "I became involved as a representative of the state of Mississippi to consult with Native American groups, remove disturbed burials, and to work with the Natural Resources Conservation Service, the University of Mississippi, the University of Alabama and other universities to study the site."

Mehta's research offers insight into the purpose of Mound D, the Carson site's largest mound by volume. The building of Mound D by non-elites may have provided social and ideological benefits, as well as protection from raiding, warfare, and subsistence buffers through organized food storage. The elevation of the landform also protected the site from flooding.

He believes the actual construction process of the large earthen mounds and their role in social and political relationships explain a lot about societal hierarchies and communities formed in early settlements.

In the 1800s, for example, it was common for people—especially the wealthy—to build homes atop the mounds. The landscape in the area was otherwise flat and people were aware of what they were building on. However, settlers at the time widely ignored the historical significance of Native American artifacts.

"Early settlers in the Mississippi River Valley did not think of Native American villages as a part of their collective history," Mehta said. "They were thinking about colonization, owning their own land by displacing indigenous people and building their own empires and states."

As part of the Carson Mounds Archaeological Project, excavations were conducted from 2012 to 2015, and researchers used ground-penetrating radar and a gradiometer to look for remains of ancient buildings. At "Mound D," where Mehta's research was focused, the use of this technology was met with little success. A subsequent decision to remove large amounts of poison ivy from the mound site ultimately led to discovery of the first artifacts.

Further excavations uncovered several buildings, some superimposed on each other. Teams took more than 80 sediment cores across the Carson landscape, excavated several trenches and used radiocarbon dating to analyze the approximate age of the samples.

Mehta hopes research such as this helps shift people's mindset when they hear the term American history and understand the need to preserve Native American heritage sites and artifacts that are part of the nation's collective cultural past.

"American history begins 15,000 years ago when the first Native Americans crossed over from Siberia into the New World," Mehta said. "These places deserve our attention, our efforts and preservation, just as much as we would strive to preserve colonial Williamsburg or Jamestown."

Author: Amy Robinson | Source: Florida State University [August 29, 2019]

How humans and chimpanzees travel towards a goal in rainforests

By: Thomas Schmitt Attorney on July 30, 2019 / comment : 0 Africa, Anthropology, Indigenous Cultures, Rainforests

The human ranging style is unique among hominoids. The Mbendjele BaYaka people move from camp to camp every few months, and thus have a large lifetime range of approximately 800 square meters. Human foragers collect food and take it back to their camp to process and share. Furthermore, the Mbendjele BaYaka have created a trail system and walk mostly on trails. In contrast, one of our closest living relatives, chimpanzees, live in a relatively smaller area (25 square meters) and spend most of their adult lives within the same home range.

Mbendjele woman inspecting a tree during a foraging trip with other women in the tropical rainforest of the Republic of Congo [Credit: Karline Janmaat]

Chimpanzees consume food as they encounter it and make sleeping nests at variable locations within their home range. In addition, chimpanzees (especially, the chimpanzees living in the Tai National Park, Ivory Coast, where this research was conducted) rarely use the same paths when travelling on the ground. These different ranging styles between humans and chimpanzees might shape their different spatial experience and thus the way they travel through the forest to find food in their natural habitats.

Haneul Jang and her colleagues from the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology set out to study how human foragers and chimpanzees compare in their spatial movement patterns in similar rainforest environments. To this aim, the researchers measured travel linearity and speed of five Mbendjele BaYaka women from the Republic of Congo and five female chimpanzees from Tai forest when they travelled off-trail areas to out-of-sight food locations during their daily search for food in the rainforest.

Jang and her colleagues found that both the Mbendjele BaYaka people and Tai chimpanzees had, on average, similarly high levels of linearity when they travelled towards out-of-sight locations. However, the Mbendjele BaYaka and Tai chimpanzees clearly differed in the manner in which their travel linearity and speed changed with group size and familiarity with a foraging area. The Mbendjele BaYaka travelled with higher linearity in familiar areas compared to less familiar areas. This pattern was reversed in Tai chimpanzees - they moved with higher linearity and speed in less familiar areas compared to familiar areas.

Chimpanzee inspecting a tree during a foraging trip on her own in the tropical rainforest of Tai National Park, Ivory Coast [Credit: Karline Janmaat]

"One possible explanation of these differences can be their different ranging style. The Mbendjele BaYaka people stay in several seasonal camps in their lifetime range, and walk 90 percent of their travel distance on human-made trails during their foraging trips in the forest. They may therefore have less experience in less familiar off-trail areas. Hence, when the Mbendjele BaYaka people forage in these areas, their travel linearity decreases due to their searching effort", says Haneul Jang, lead author of the study. On the contrary, chimpanzees decreased travel linearity and speed in more familiar areas. "Since chimpanzee groups can be highly hostile towards each other, they might need to travel more efficiently and faster in less familiar areas, where they are more likely to encounter other chimpanzee groups", says Jang.

In addition, Jang and her colleagues found that travel linearity increased in the Mbendjele BaYaka people and decreased in Tai chimpanzees when they travelled in a larger as compared to a smaller foraging group. "When I followed the chimpanzees, I often saw them wait for each other and have apparent disagreements about where to go", says Karline Janmaat, the main supervisor of the study. "With more individuals joining the group, disagreement seemed to increase. It is therefore perhaps not surprising that when group size increased, their travel became less linear. For the Mbendjele BaYaka people we found the opposite pattern. This can have many reasons, but I like to think that it is because humans can discuss, evaluate and eventually agree about where the best food sources are, by using language, and that this helped them to travel more efficiently."

According to the authors, this study is the first necessary step needed to compare long-range spatial movement patterns of human and chimpanzee populations in their natural habitats. "Our study provides insights into how two closely related species living in similar environments can differ in their spatial movement patterns, which possibly results from their different ranging styles", says Jang. "We hope our study can contribute to expanding comparative research on spatial movement patterns to a wide range of primate species and populations, including humans, in natural environments."

The study is published in Scientific Reports.

Source: Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology [July 30, 2019]

First Australians may have arrived in large groups using complex technologies

By: Thomas Schmitt Attorney on June 20, 2019 / comment : 0 Anthropology, Australasia, Australia, Early Humans, Indigenous Cultures, Papua New Guinea

New insights into how people first arrived in Australia have been revealed by a group of experts brought together to investigate the continent's deep history.

The emergent picture of regional Pleistocene complexity from genomes, fossils and material culture [Credit: Corey J. A. Bradshaw et al. 2019]

They used sophisticated modelling to determine not only the likely routes travelled by Aboriginal people tens of thousands of years ago, but also the sizes of groups required for the population to survive in harsh conditions.

The research, published today in two companion papers (one in Scientific Reports and the other in Nature Ecology and Evolution), confirms the theory that people arrived in several large and deliberate migrations by island-hopping to reach New Guinea more than 50,000 years ago.

While many Aboriginal cultures believe people have always been here, others have strong oral histories of ancestral beings arriving from the north.

"We know that Aboriginal people have lived here for more than 50,000 years. This research offers a greater understanding of how migration events took place and further evidence of the marine and navigation capabilities used to make these deliberate journeys," said Professor Michael Bird, from the Australian Research Council Centre of Excellence for Australian Biodiversity and Heritage (CABAH) and James Cook University.

The team of multidisciplinary researchers from CABAH and the CSRIO set out to establish the most likely route travelled to reach the ancient mega-continent, known as Sahul (New Guinea, Australia and Tasmania joined at times of low sea level).

Arrival of First Australians infographic [Credit: Australian Research Council Centre of Excellence for Australian Biodiversity and Heritage (CABAH)]

"We developed demographic models to determine which island-hopping route ancient people most likely took," said CABAH's Professor Corey Bradshaw, from Flinders University.

"A northern route connecting the islands of Mangoli, Buru, and Seram into West Papua New Guinea would probably have been easiest to navigate and survive. This route was easiest when compared to the southern route from Timor that leads to the now-drowned Sahul Shelf in the modern-day Kimberley region."

The researchers also used complex mathematical modelling -- considering factors including fertility, longevity, past climate conditions, and other ecological principles -- to calculate the numbers of people required for the population as a whole to survive.

The simulations indicate that at least 1300 people arrived in either a single migration event or smaller, successive waves averaging at least 130 people every 70 years or so, over the course of about 700 years.

"This suggests planned and well-organised maritime migration, rather than accidental arrival" Professor Bradshaw added.


The studies confirm the ancestors of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people possessed sophisticated technology and knowledge to build watercraft. This research also showcases the remarkable ability at that time to plan, navigate, and make multiple complicated, open-ocean voyages to directly transport large numbers of people.

"Both studies are unique because they relied on past environmental information and did not use any genetic data. We are very excited to see how further archaeological and genetics studies in CABAH can contribute to this story," says Dr Laura Weyrich, a CABAH investigator at the University of Adelaide.

The papers Early human settlement of Sahul was not an accident and Minimum founding populations for the first peopling of Sahul, were co-authored by scientists from around Australia, including Flinders University, James Cook University, University of Wollongong, University of New South Wales, University of Adelaide, Australian National University, and the CSIRO.

CABAH brings together expertise from diverse academic disciplines to answer fundamental questions about the natural and human history of our region, including how and when people first came to Australia.

Source: Flinders University [June 20, 2019]

Human migration in Oceania recreated through paper mulberry genetics

By: Thomas Schmitt Attorney on June 19, 2019 / comment : 0 Anthropology, Genetics, Indigenous Cultures, Oceania

The migration and interaction routes of prehistoric humans throughout the islands of Oceania can be retraced using genetic differences between paper mulberry plants, a tree native to Asia cultivated for fibers to make paper and introduced into the Pacific in prehistoric times to make barkcloth. Daniela Seelenfreund of the University of Chile and Andrea Seelenfreund of the Academia de Humanismo Cristiano University, Chile report on prehistoric human movements based on the genetic analysis of this plant in a new paper published in the open-access journal PLOS ONE.

Paper Mulberry - Broussonetia papyrifera [Credit: Didier Descouens/WikiCommons]

The colonization of the remote, long-uninhabited Pacific islands has fascinated early European explorers, current scientists and members of Pacific Island communities today. One way to study this migration, which occurred over the last 3,000 years, is to track the plants and animals that humans carried with them.

One such plant is the paper mulberry. Native to Asia, it was transported by humans in their colonizing voyages across Oceania, and planted from New Guinea to Fiji, and to the remote islands to the east, such as Hawaii and Rapa Nui (Easter Island). In the current study, researchers analyzed 313 modern-day plant samples and 67 preserved specimens from herbariums with various genetic tools.

The analysis demonstrates the existence of a clear genetic structure in paper mulberry populations in Oceania, in spite of having been introduced only 3000 years ago into the region. The researchers also found that current plant populations have less genetic diversity than herbarium samples collected in the nineteenth and early twentieth century.

Map of the Pacific showing prehistoric and historical dispersal of paper mulberry in Oceania [Credit: Seelenfreund et al, 2019]

The observed genetic structure reveals a general tendency of dispersion of the plant from west to east in agreement with archaeological, linguistic and other genetic data that indicates that the region was colonized and settled in this general direction. They also detected three centers of dispersion and interaction: one that includes the Tonga and Fiji archipelago, another between the islands of Samoa, Wallis and New Caledonia and finally a center of dispersion and interaction that includes all the islands and archipelagos of the east of the Polynesian triangle , that is, between Tahiti, Hawaii, Marquesas Islands, Austral Islands and Rapanui. The results obtained from this study allow inferring dispersion patterns that reflect the interactions between past human populations that inhabited the different island groups.

The genetic connections between modern and herbarium samples of paper mulberry detected in the study provide the most comprehensive picture to date of prehistoric human movements across Oceania. The genetic connections detected in contemporary and herbarium samples from paper mulberry reflect prehistoric human movements between multiple islands in Remote Oceania and, to date, provide a more comprehensive picture than other model species.

Making barkcloth from paper mulberry bark in Buda village, Viti Levu, Fiji [Credit: A. Seelenfreund]

A. Seelenfreund adds: "This is the first study of a commensal species to show genetic structuring within Remote Oceania. Our data, based on the combined analysis of extant and herbarium paper mulberry samples from Oceania, is the result of a comprehensive sampling of 33 islands of Remote Oceania, and compared to samples from New Guinea, the Solomon Islands and Asia. Our data detect a complex structure of three central dispersal hubs linking West Remote Oceania with East Remote Oceania. despite its vegetative propagation and short timespan since its introduction into the region by prehistoric Austronesian speaking colonists."

Source: Public Library of Science [June 19, 2019]

700-year-old Native American canoe found in Maine

By: Thomas Schmitt Attorney on June 15, 2019 / comment : 0 Americas, Archaeology, Indigenous Cultures, North America, USA

Archaeologists have recovered the oldest, and only pre-European contact, dugout canoe ever found in Maine. They pulled the Native American vessel, which is estimated to be between 700 and 800 years old, from the mud off Cape Porpoise last week.

Archaeologist, students and volunteers prepare to lift an 800-year-old dugout canoe out of the the mud and into a wooden box near the shore in Cape Porpoise last week [Credit: Kennebunkport Conservation Trust via BDN]

Only three other dugout canoes have ever been located in Maine and they were all made after Europeans arrived.

“This one carbon dates between 1200 and 1300 A.D., give or take a few years,” said archaeologist Tim Spahr, of the Cape Porpoise Archaeological Alliance.

Europeans didn’t start trying to settle Maine until the 1600s.

The canoe, made from a single yellow birch log, is further proof of a booming, semi-permanent Native American settlement in Cape Porpoise. It’s also a reminder that American history doesn’t start with Columbus in 1492. It stretches back thousands of years before European contact and recorded history, Spahr said.

The Archaeological Alliance is a joint effort between the Kennebunkport Conservation Trust and Brick Store Museum in Kennebunk. It was formed in 2017 to study the intertidal zone along Cape Porpoise and the islands just off the coast.

That’s just where Spahr located the canoe last November, in the mud between Redin Island, Stage Island and the shore. He’d been out doing his regular survey of the mud flats at low tide and was hustling back, trying to beat the incoming tide.

“All of a sudden, I just came across two lines [of wood] and they looked like boat gunnels,” Spahr said.

He’d surveyed the area before, but intertidal archaeology is different from the land-based variety. You have to constantly survey the same ground, over and over again.

“What you’re going to find on land is going to be found in your first survey,” Spahr said. “But that’s not the case in intertidal archaeology.”

Archaeologists (above left) prepare to remove the canoe from the mud last week. Tim Spahr (above right) pours  a fresh water cleaning bath over the canoe this week [Credit: Kennebunkport Conservation Trust and Troy R. Bennett/BDN]

Intertidal archaeology examines the constantly eroding and shifting landscape of low-tide mud and sand. It’s always changing, alternately concealing and revealing new objects and information.

It’s rare to find wooden artifacts this old in Maine, said archaeologist Gemma Hudgell, a stone tool expert consulting on the project. That’s due to Maine’s acidic soil. In this case, it was the mud itself that preserved the canoe.

“Up here, everything just rots away,” Hudgell said. “It’s not everyday you pull out a 700-year-old canoe.”

This past winter, the ocean continued to wash the mud away, revealing more of the canoe. This spring, to keep it from being destroyed by the sea or carted away by vandals, the decision was made to remove the canoe.

It was a delicate operation. Currently, the wooden canoe has the sponge-like consistency of wet peat moss.

Spahr, other scientists and volunteers from the University of New England and the University of New Brunswick, dug passages under the canoe, passing wide straps around it. Then, they raised the 10-foot boat, placed in a custom wooden box resembling a coffin and took it to a Kennebunkport Conservation Trust building.

The dugout canoe now sits in the box, covered in fresh water. That’s the first step in cleaning and preserving the ancient boat. If allowed to dry out, it would fall apart.

“It would just turn to dust, peel away and disintegrate,” Spahr said.

For now, Spahr is gently soaking and cleaning the canoe, removing centuries of accumulated grime and bacteria with a soft paintbrush. He’s changing the water once a week and expects the process to take about a year.

Archaeologist Tim Spahr (right) and volunteer Geena Baber begin cleaning a dugout canoe found off Cape Porpoise with fresh water and paint brushes. The vessel, made by Native Americans before European contact, is the oldest ever found in Maine [Credit: Troy R. Bennett/BDN]

Once it’s clean, the canoe will be structurally stabilized with special chemicals and someday go on display in a museum

“That’s going to be a number of years down the road,” Spahr said.

Looking at the canoe now, Spahr can see evidence of how it was made by Algonquin-speaking Native Americans 700 years ago.

The shaping process likely began by setting fire to the top of the log. The char was chopped out of the center using some sort of stone tool. Native Americans in the area didn’t use metal tools until after European contact.

“I’d imagine it was something like a grooved ax,” Hudgell said. “Something pretty rugged to give them a really good chop.”

The bottom may have been flattened as well, making the vessel more stable.

Spahr said through other objects located in the area, archaeologists believe Native Americans spent summers in Cape Porpoise digging clams and catching fish in weirs. They also grew corn and squash. At the end of the season, they probably migrated south, to what’s now Massachusetts.

Now, they also know they made canoes. Unlike a birch bark canoe, which indigenous Maine people made in later times, dugout canoes were heavy. It would have been made somewhere close to where it was found, Spahr said.

This dugout canoe might have been used to tend wiers and bring the catch ashore for drying.

Archaeologist Tim Spahr (right) and volunteer Geena Baber gently clean a 700-year-old dugout canoe recovered from the mud off Cape Porpoise last week [Credit: Troy R. Bennett/BDN]

Anthony Sutton, a PhD candidate at the University of Maine, who is also Passamaquoddy, studies Wabanaki food and communities. Sutton agrees that the sheltered harbor behind the island’s at Cape Porpoise was probably a thriving seasonal indigenous settlement.

“There are not many places along the eastern seaboard sheltered like that,” he said. “The islands had hardwood trees as well as fresh water.”

In addition to its utilitarian fish hauling, Spahr thinks the canoe was used as basic transportation.

“Who knows, maybe someone lived on one island and had a girlfriend on another and would sneak out in the dugout,” said Spahr. “I think they were used just like we’d use any mode of transportation today.”

The people who made the canoe had likely never seen a European person, Spahr said. The Portugese mapped Maine’s coast in 1525. France’s first colony was founded in 1604 and the British got one in 1607. That’s 300-400 years after the canoe was made.

Spahr said it’s important to remember that American history goes back further than European first contact. It’s older than colonial times, the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution.

“There were people on this continent 13,000 years ago and we have to look at that as an important aspect of our own history and culture,” he said.

Spahr is sure the Cape Porpoise mud flats have more secrets to reveal about that history, so he’ll keep looking in the mud.

“We [archaeologists] don’t like to think of it as finding things,” he said. “We want to understand cultures of the past. We’re not there to get the arrowhead. We’re there to study the arrowhead and understand the people that owned it. ”

Author: Troy R. Bennett | Source: BDN [June 15, 2019]

Ancient DNA sheds light on Arctic hunter-gatherer migration to North America ~5,000 years ago

By: Thomas Schmitt Attorney on June 05, 2019 / comment : 0 Alaska, Anthropology, Canada, Genetics, Indigenous Cultures, North America

The first humans in North America arrived from Asia some time before 14,500 years ago. The next major stream of gene flow came about 5000 years ago, and is known to archaeologists as Paleo-Eskimos. About 800 years ago, the ancestors of the present-day Inuit and Yup'ik people replaced this population across the Arctic. By about 700 years ago, the archaeological evidence for the Paleo-Eskimo culture disappeared. Their genetic legacy in living populations has been contentious, with several genetic studies arguing that they made little contribution to later North Americans.

An ancient population of Arctic hunter-gatherers, known as Paleo-Eskimos, made a significant genetic contribution to populations living in Arctic North America today [Credit: Kerttu Majander, Design by Michelle O'Reilly]

In the current study, researchers generated genome-wide data from 48 ancient individuals and 93 modern individuals from Siberia, Alaska, the Aleutian Islands and Canada, and compared this with previously published data. The researchers used novel analysis methods to create a comprehensive model of population history that included many ancient and modern groups to determine how they might be related to each other.

"Our study is unique, not only in that it greatly expands the number of ancient genomes from this region, but because it is the first study to comprehensively describe all of these populations in one single coherent model," states Stephan Schiffels of the Max Planck Institute for the Science of Human History.

The researchers were able to show that a substantial proportion of the genetic heritage of all ancient and modern American Arctic and Chukotkan populations comes from Paleo-Eskimos. This includes people speaking Eskimo-Aleut languages, such as the Yup'ik, Inuit and Aleuts, and groups speaking Na-Dene languages, such as Athabaskan and Tlingit speakers, in Canada, Alaska, and the lower 48 states of the United States.

The excavation of the Middle Dorset individual from the Buchanan site on southeastern Victoria Island, Nunavut, Central Canadian Arctic [Credit: T. Max Friesen]

Based on the researchers' analysis, Paleo-Eskimos interbred with people with ancestry similar to more southern Native peoples shortly after their arrival to Alaska, between 5,000 and 4,000 years ago. The ancestors of Aleutian Islanders and Athabaskans derive their genetic heritage directly from the ancient mixture between these two groups.

The researchers also found that the ancestors of the Inuit and Yup'ik people crossed the Bering Strait at least three times: first as Paleo-Eskimos to Alaska, second as predecessors of the Old Bering Sea archaeological culture back to Chukotka, and third to Alaska again as bearers of the Thule culture. During their stay in Chukotka that likely lasted for more than 1000 years, Yupik and Inuit ancestors also admixed with local groups related to present-day Chukchi and local peoples from Kamchatka.

Paleo-Eskimo ancestry is particularly widespread today in Na-Dene language speakers, which includes Athabaskan and Tlingit communities from Alaska and northern Canada, the West Coast of the United States, and the southwest United States.

Attu Island, Aleutian Islands, Alaska [Credit: Jason Rogers]

"For the last seven years, there has been a debate about whether Paleo-Eskimos contributed genetically to people living in North America today; our study resolves this debate and furthermore supports the theory that Paleo-Eskimos spread Na-Dene languages," explains David Reich of Harvard Medical School and the Howard Hughes Medical Institute.

"One of the most striking case examples from our study is the ancient DNA we generated from the ancient Athabaskan site of Tochak McGrath in interior Alaska, where we worked in consultation with the local community to obtain data from three approximately seven hundred year old individuals. We found that these individuals, who lived after the time when the Paleo-Eskimo archaeological culture disappeared across North America, are well modeled as a mixture of the same two ancestry components as those found in Athabaskans today, and derived more than 40% of their ancestry from Paleo-Eskimos.

The researchers hope that the paper will provide an example of the value of genetic data, in the context of archaeological knowledge, to resolve long-standing questions.

"Determining what happened to this population was not possible from the archaeological record alone," explains Pavel Flegontov of the University of Ostrava. "By analyzing genetic data in concert with the archaeological data, we can meaningfully improve our understanding of the prehistory of peoples of this region. We faced challenging analytical problems due to the complex sequence of gene flows that have shaped ancestries of peoples on both sides of the Bering Strait. Reconstructing this sequence of events required new modelling approaches that we hope may be useful for solving similar problems in other regions of the world."

The study is published in the journal Nature.

Source: Max Planck Institute for the Science of Human History [June 05, 2019]

Ancestral Puebloan pottery-making wasn't 'women's work'

By: Thomas Schmitt Attorney on June 04, 2019 / comment : 0 Americas, Archaeology, Indigenous Cultures, North America, USA

New research from Dr. John Kantner, a University of North Florida professor specializing in anthropological archaeology, suggests that pottery making wasn't a primarily female activity in ancient Puebloan society, as had long been assumed based on historical evidence that women produced pottery for each household.

The sprawling 650-room complex of Pueblo Bonito in New Mexico was at the center of the Chaco Canyon community between 800 and 1200 AD [Credit: Phil Schermeister/National Geographic]

Kanter, also associate vice president of research at UNF, is the principal investigator and lead author of this study published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

His research team and co-authors are comprised of Michele Pierson and Shaza Wester, former UNF undergraduates, and David McKinney, formerly a graduate student at Georgia State University.

"An understanding of the division of labor in different societies, and especially how it evolved in the human species, is fundamental to most analyses of social, political and economic systems," said Kantner, a Southside Jacksonville resident.

Researchers analyzed the breadth of ridges in fingerprints left on the ceramics by potters; the ridges on men's fingerprints are generally wider than women's [Credit: University of North Florida]

The findings, he notes, reconstruct the division of labor between men and women in an ancient society and indicate that labor wasn't strictly divided upon gender lines, despite the conventional wisdom that men and women engaged in separate domestic tasks.

Instead, the researchers found that the proportion of males and females involved in pottery-making was seemingly unconstrained by considerations of gender, with, in some households, more males making pottery while in others, equal numbers of both sexes were involved.

Kantner's team used an innovative method for identifying the sex of potters through the analysis of fingerprint impressions. They recorded fingerprints on pottery from around the 10th to 11th century CE, measuring the width of fingerprint ridges—the patterns on the tip of each finger—to distinguish between male and female prints.

The pottery was found during excavations of ancient households in Chaco Canyon [Credit: University of North Florida]

Analysis of over 980 ceramic shards from a 1,000-year-old Ancestral Puebloan community in modern-day New Mexico's Chaco Canyon revealed representation of both male and female prints.

The time frame of the pottery production was marked by the development of Chaco Canyon as a highly influential political and religious center. This development coincided with a shift toward gender equity in pottery-making, the authors write, suggesting that high demand for pottery in Chaco Canyon may have spurred more people of both genders to produce pottery.

"The results challenge previous assumptions about gendered divisions of labor in ancient societies and suggest a complex approach to gender roles throughout time," noted Kantner.

Source: University of North Florida [June 04, 2019]

Ancient DNA tells the story of the first herders and farmers in east Africa

By: Thomas Schmitt Attorney on May 30, 2019 / comment : 0 Africa, Anthropology, Genetics, Indigenous Cultures, Kenya, Tanzania

A collaborative study led by archaeologists, geneticists and museum curators is providing answers to previously unsolved questions about life in sub-Saharan Africa thousands of years ago. The results were published online in the journal Science.

Herders move goats through the Engaruka Basin in northern Tanzania's Rift Valley. Ancient DNA shows that this way of life spread to East Africa through multiple population movements [Credit: Katherine Grillo]

Researchers from North American, European and African institutions analyzed ancient DNA from 41 human skeletons curated in the National Museums of Kenya and Tanzania, and the Livingstone Museum in Zambia.

"The origins of food producers in East Africa have remained elusive because of gaps in the archaeological record," said co-first author Mary Prendergast, Ph.D., professor of anthropology and chair of humanities at Saint Louis University's campus in Madrid, Spain. "This study uses DNA to answer previously unresolvable questions about how people were moving and interacting," added Prendergast.

The research provides a look at the origins and movements of early African food producers. The first form of food production to spread through most of Africa was the herding of cattle, sheep and goats. This way of life continues to support millions of people living on the arid grasslands that cover much of sub-Saharan Africa.

Co-first author Mary Prendergast, Ph.D., is a professor of anthropology and chair of humanities at Saint Louis University's campus in Madrid, Spain [Credit: Mary Prendergast]

"Today, East Africa is one of the most genetically, linguistically, and culturally diverse places in the world," explains Elizabeth Sawchuk, Ph.D., a bioarchaeologist at Stony Brook University and co-first author of the study. "Our findings trace the roots of this mosaic back several millennia. Distinct peoples have coexisted in the Rift Valley for a very long time."

Previous archaeological research shows that the Great Rift Valley of Kenya and Tanzania was a key site for the transition from foraging to herding. Herders of livestock first appeared in northern Kenya around 5000 years ago, associated with elaborate monumental cemeteries, and then spread south into the Rift Valley, where Pastoral Neolithic cultures developed.

The new genetic results reveal that this spread of herding into Kenya and Tanzania involved groups with ancestry derived from northeast Africa, who appeared in East Africa and mixed with local foragers there between about 4500-3500 years ago. Previously, the origins and timing of these population shifts were unclear, and some archaeologists hypothesized that domestic animals spread through exchange networks, rather than by movement of people.

Cattle graze along Lake Manyara in the Rift Valley of Tanzania. Ancient DNA is shedding light on the earliest herders in East Africa [Credit: Mary Prendergast]

After around 3500 years ago, herders and foragers became genetically isolated in East Africa, even though they continued to live side by side. Archaeologists have hypothesized substantial interaction among foraging and herding groups, but the new results reveal that there were strong and persistent social barriers that lasted long after the initial encounters.

Another major genetic shift occurred during the Iron Age around 1200 years ago, with movement into the region of additional peoples from both northeastern and western Africa. These groups contributed to ancient ancestry profiles similar to those of many East Africans today. This genetic shift parallels two major cultural changes: farming and iron-working.

The study provided insight into the history of East Africa as an independent center of evolution of lactase persistence, which enables people to digest milk into adulthood. This genetic adaptation is found in high proportions among Kenyan and Tanzanian herders today.

Prendergast and Sawchuk published a companion piece on their work in The Conversation.

Author: Jeanette Grider | Source: Saint Louis University [May 30, 2019]

Eastern US forests shaped more by Native Americans' burning than climate change

By: Thomas Schmitt Attorney on May 21, 2019 / comment : 0 Climate Change, Ecosystems, Environment, Indigenous Cultures, Natural Heritage, North America

Native Americans' use of fire to manage vegetation in what is now the Eastern United States was more profound than previously believed, according to a Penn State researcher who determined that forest composition change in the region was caused more by land use than climate change.

Low numbers of Native Americans were capable of burning large areas of the eastern U.S. and did so repeatedly, according to the researcher. Native Americans, he says, knew that to regenerate plant species that they wanted  for food, and to feed game animals they relied on, they needed to burn the forest understory regularly [Credit: © Getty Images/William Sherman]

"I believe Native Americans were excellent vegetation managers and we can learn a lot from them about how to best manage forests of the U.S.," said Marc Abrams, professor of forest ecology and physiology in the College of Agricultural Sciences. "Native Americans knew that to regenerate plant species that they wanted for food, and to feed game animals they relied on, they needed to burn the forest understory regularly."

Over the last 2,000 years at least, according to Abrams -- who for three decades has been studying past and present qualities of eastern U.S. forests -- frequent and widespread human-caused fire resulted in the predominance of fire-adapted tree species. And in the time since burning has been curtailed, forests are changing, with species such as oak, hickory and pine losing ground.

"The debate about whether forest composition has been largely determined by land use or climate continues, but a new study strongly suggests anthropogenic fire has been the major driver of forest change in the East," said Abrams. "That is important to know because climate change is taking on an ever larger proportion of scientific endeavour."

But this phenomenon does not apply to other regions, Abrams noted. In the western U.S., for example, climate change has been much more pronounced than in the East. That region has received much more warming and much more drought, he explained.

"Here in the East, we have had a slight increase in precipitation that has ameliorated the warming," said Abrams.

Pollen and tree survey map [Credit: Marc Abrams, Penn State]

To learn the drivers of forest change, researchers used a novel approach, analyzing both pollen and charcoal fossil records along with tree-census studies to compare historic and modern tree composition in the forests of eastern North America. They looked at seven forest types in the north and central regions of the eastern United States. Those forest types encompass two distinct floristic zones -- conifer-northern hardwood and sub-boreal to the north, and oak-pine to the south.

The researchers found that in the northernmost forests, present-day pollen and tree-survey data revealed significant declines in beech, pine, hemlock and larches, and increases in maple, poplar, ash, oak and fir. In forests to the south, both witness tree and pollen records pointed to historic oak and pine domination, with declines in oak and chestnut and increases in maple and birch, based on present-day data.

"Modern forests are dominated by tree species that are increasingly cool-adapted, shade-tolerant, drought-intolerant pyrophobes -- trees that are reduced when exposed to repeated forest burning," Abrams said. "Species such as oak are largely promoted by low-to moderate-level forest fires. Furthermore, this change in forest composition is making eastern forests more vulnerable to future fire and drought."

Researchers also included human population data for the region, going back 2,000 years, to bolster their findings, which recently were published in the Annals of Forest Science. After hundreds of years of fairly stable levels of fire caused by relatively low numbers of Native Americans in the region, they report, the most significant escalation in burning followed the dramatic increase in human population associated with European settlement prior to the early 20th century. Moreover, it appears that low numbers of Native Americans were capable of burning large areas of the eastern U.S. and did so repeatedly.

After 1940, they found, fire suppression was an ecologically transformative event in all forests.

"Our analysis identifies multiple instances in which fire and vegetation changes were likely driven by shifts in human population and land use beyond those expected from climate alone," Abrams said. "After Smokey Bear came on the scene, fire was mostly shut down throughout the U.S. and we have been paying a big price for that in terms of forest change. We went from a moderate amount of fire to too much fire to near zero fire -- and we need to get back to that middle ground in terms of our vegetation management."

Author: Jeff Mulhollem | Source: Pennsylvania State University [May 21, 2019]