Golden Horde era mausoleum found in North Kazakhstan

By: Thomas Schmitt Attorney on November 13, 2019 / comment : 0 Archaeology, Asia, Central Asia, Kazakhstan

An archaeological expedition to the Ualikhanov District of the North Kazakhstan Region, organised by the Margulan Centre of Pavlodar State Pedagogical University, has discovered the ruins of a mausoleum belonging to an elite member of the ruling Genghisid Jochi Khan dynasty dating back to the middle of the second half of the 14th century.

Credit: Ilya Pitalev/RIA Novosti

According to the head of the archaeological expedition Timur Smagulov, "the tomb was 20 metres high and contained the skeleton of a man from the time of the Golden Horde."

"Discovered fragments of the dome with ornaments made of blue glaze show that there were professional architects, builders and artisans in the area 500-600 years ago", Smagulov said.

Credit: Fontanka

"Certainly, the presence of the mausoleum indicates the existence of a previously unknown cultural, political and sacred centre of the nomadic hordes who inhabited the steppes of North Kazakhstan", he added.

"There are strange and interesting signs etched on several of the decorative blocks. It is possible that some of them are the stamps of the craftsmen who made them, while others may have held a religious significance. We still have to figure out what these secret signs and symbols are. It is possible that they are related to the spread of Islam among the nomads in the fourteenth century,” the archaeologist explained.

Credit: Fontanka

The archaeological exploration of the region also revealed numerous traces of ancient dams and irrigation ditches, as well as the fragments of ceramic wheels that served as water-lifting devices.

"This is clearly evidence of developed agricultural economy and points to the existence of unknown medieval settlements and hill forts in the territory of North Kazakhstan," Smagulov emphasized.


Excavations will continue next year, when Kazakhstan will celebrate the 750th anniversary of the Golden Horde.

Source: Fontanka [trsl. TANN, November 13, 2019]

Bronze Age burials discovered in western Kazakhstan

By: Thomas Schmitt Attorney on November 07, 2019 / comment : 0 Archaeology, Asia, Central Asia, Kazakhstan

Archaeologists have carried out rescue excavations of two Bronze Age burials, according to local news sources.

Credit: inform.kz

The burials were discovered by local residents on the left bank of the Irgiz River, 300 metres from the village of Shenbertal in the Aktobe region. Archaeologists led by Nursultan Bairov were called upon to investigate the findings in early October.

"The Schenbertal I burial ground is located in the area of the Stone Age site, which was discovered in the second half of the last century. It occupies an area of 2500 sq. m. and consists of 10 previously discovered burial pits. We excavated two single burials, both of which were significantly damaged", Baibov said.

Credit: inform.kz

A preliminary analysis of the artefacts and adornments found in the graves suggests the deceased are probably female, buried lying on their right side in foetal position, with hands raised to their heads. Two decorated ceramic vessels had been placed at the heads. Bronze bracelets, pendants and a sickle-shaped tool were also found in the graves.

Given the position of the skeletons and the grave goods, the burials are thought to date back to the Bronze Age, during which time the territory of Western Kazakhstan was inhabited by the Andronovo tribes in the 2nd millennium (referred to as the Alakul phase).

Credit: inform.kz

"The burial ground is in a very poor state due to constant weathering and economic activities of the local population. Because of these circumstances, it is necessary to immediately continue the study of the site, and excavations will continue at the end of the month," said Nursultan Bairov.

Source: NewTimes [trsl. TANN, November 07, 2019]

Earliest spread of millet agriculture outside China linked to herding livestock

By: Thomas Schmitt Attorney on September 04, 2019 / comment : 0 Archaeology, Asia, China, East Asia, Genetics, Kazakhstan

Five thousand years before the modern rise of millet as a popular grain, this Chinese crop was spread far and wide by ancient food aficionados, not for their plates but instead for their animals, suggests new research from an international collaboration led by Kiel University (Germany) and Washington University in St. Louis.

A herder leads his sheep and goats across a field in the Dzhungar Mountains of Kazakhstan. New research from Washington University in St. Louis and Kiel University in Germany reveals that sheep and goats domesticated in the Near East had reached eastern Kazakhstan by 2700 BC. High-resolution stable isotope analysis shows these animals were winter foddered with the earliest millets spreading out of China [Credit: Paula Dupuy]

At settlement of Dali, ancient DNA from the skeletal remains of sheep and goats shows that animals first domesticated in the Near East had reached eastern Kazakhstan by 2700 B.C. Stable isotope analysis illustrates that these animals were fed millet spreading westward from its center of domestication in China to help them survive the punishingly cold winters of Inner Asia.

The study draws upon field work and museum collections as part of a longstanding scientific partnership between Washington University, led by Michael Frachetti, professor of archaeology in Arts & Sciences, and the Institute of Archaeology in Almaty, Kazakhstan.

The mountainous site of Dali is located near the crossroads of cultural and genetic change during the Early and Late Bronze Age in a region that Frachetti calls the Inner Asia Mountain Corridor.

“The most important finding for me is the presence of a well-developed pastoralist economy using Chinese millets at 2700 B.C.,” said Taylor Hermes of Kiel University, co-lead author of a new study in Proceedings of the Royal Society B and a 2007 graduate of Washington University. “This is quite an early date for the domesticated animals to be present in the region, and it is also the earliest dated evidence that millets had spread out of China. This suggests that it took domesticated sheep and goats from the Near East to have spread all the way to China before millets began spreading widely.”

The spread of domesticated plants and animals through the vast steppe grasslands of Inner Asia nearly 5,000 years ago marked the beginning of the ancient trade routes, later known as Asia’s Silk Roads. However, the exact timing and circumstances of moving crops through this continental crossroads and the case for actual farming, have remained elusive.

“Our previous research showed archaeobotanical remains of both wheat and millet around 2300 B.C.E. in the highlands of Kazakhstan, but there was little concrete evidence to show whether these were trade items or farmed locally,” Frachetti said. He is a co-author and co-director of the underlying archaeological fieldwork.

“We were left to speculate about the integration of intensive farming among Early Bronze Age herders in the region, and if these grains made it into their diet,” he said.

Evidence of cereal consumption can be traced using isotopes found in human bones, but human skeletal remains dating to the third millennium BC are rare.

As a result, reconstructing the seasonal diets reflected in more abundant animal bones is a key approach to assess agricultural production and the scale of local production, the researchers said.

“The evidence we found of people foddering sheep, goats and cattle with millet at various intensities suggests a huge degree of flexibility in food production,” Hermes said. “It may very well be the case that people who lived at Dali and Begash shifted their herding and farming strategies year-to-year depending on environment or social circumstances.

“For now, we can only tell that people were cultivating millet to support their animals’ welfare in the harsh winters of central Asia.”

This study clearly links the westward dispersal of millets — a key indigenous crop of Chinese civilization — to livestock herding by nomadic pastoralists who used farming to enhance their animal-focused worlds.

Author: Talia Ogliore | Source: Washington University in St. Louis [September 04, 2019]

4,000-year-old burial with facing couple found in Kazakhstan

By: Thomas Schmitt Attorney on August 01, 2019 / comment : 0 Archaeology, Asia, Central Asia, Kazakhstan

The bodies of a man and woman who died 4,000 years ago have been found buried face-to-face in a grave in Kazakhstan.

Credit: Karaganda Regional Government

Archaeologists discovered the burial in an ancient cemetery that has remains of humans and horses, Kazakhstan archaeologists said in a Kazakh-language statement. The man and woman were buried with a variety of grave goods that includes jewelry (some of which is gold), knives, ceramics and beads. The remains of horses were also found near the burial.

While some media reports claim that the archaeologists also found the burial of a priestess nearby, the archaeologists made no mention of this in their statement. While the statement says that the pair is "young" it doesn't give an age range.

It's not clear what killed the man and woman or their exact relationship to each other, including whether they were romantically involved.

Credit: Karaganda Regional Government

Credit: Karaganda Regional Government

The rich burial goods suggest that the man and woman came from wealthy families, archaeologists said in their statement. Archaeological remains found at other sites in Kazakhstan suggest that the pair lived at a time when fighting and conflicts occurred frequently in the region, archaeologists also said.

Excavation of the cemetery and analysis of the remains are ongoing. The archaeological team is led by Igor Kukushkin, an archaeology professor at Saryarka Archaeological Institute at Karaganda State University in Kazakhstan. Live Science was unable to reach Kukushkin at the time this story was published.

Numerous archaeological remains have been uncovered in Kazakhstan. In 2016, a team led by Kukushkin found the remains of a 3,000-year-old, pyramid-shaped mausoleum. In 2014, a different team of archaeologists identified 50 geoglyphs with various shapes and sizes, including a massive swastika, that appear to date as far back as 2,800 years.

Author: Owen Jarus | Source:Live Science [August 01, 2019]

Archaeologists stumble upon hoard of Saka gold jewellery in East Kazakhstan region

By: Thomas Schmitt Attorney on July 20, 2019 / comment : 0 Archaeology, Asia, Central Asia, Kazakhstan

Archaeologists have stumbled upon more than 500 artefacts made of gold, bronze and iron, believed to be from the 8th century BC, during the course of excavations in the Yeleke Sazy burial sites in the Tarbagatai district in East Kazakhstan region.

Credit: Akimat of East Kazakhstan Region

The artefacts were found at a depth of 1.5 metres in the niche of the ruined chamber of the largest kurgan, known locally as the Patsha mound, fused into a single lump in the remains of a leather bag apparently hidden in the stones by ancient looters.

Credit: Akimat of East Kazakhstan Region

It was only after the agglomeration was cleaned by a restorer from the St. Petersburg University, that the unique gold cast figures of leopards, griffins, as well as bracelets and other jewellery items were discovered.

Credit: Akimat of East Kazakhstan Region

Among other findings were small sized nuggets and ingots made of gold of the highest standard, which were used by ancient goldsmiths for the manufacture of sheet gold.

Credit: Akimat of East Kazakhstan Region

Another important find is the 'cult figure' of a golden deer whose horns are made of the finest, interwoven gold wire said to exemplify the highest level of craftsmanship of those centuries.

Credit: Akimat of East Kazakhstan Region

The findings from the Patsha mound are believed to belong to the elites of early Saka society. The fact that the artefacts could equally have belonged to both women's and men's garments suggests that the kurgan burial mounds were used to bury important persons in pairs.

Credit: Akimat of East Kazakhstan Region

According to Doctor of History, Alexander Podushkin, the site is completely unique in terms of its historical, archaeological and cultural value. “We believe that we will uncover more items at this burial site so that we can identify the emergence of the nomadic lifestyle,” he added.

Credit: Akimat of East Kazakhstan Region

Archaeologists believe that there are over 50 ancient burial sites in the Yeleke Sazy area, though almost all seem to have been looted in ancient times.


“These items are just the initial findings", said Doctor of History, Zeinolla Samashev. "We hope to find many more artefacts by the end of the month and we will present them in August.”

Source: Altay News [trsl. TANN, July 20, 2019]

3,000-year-old Saka settlement discovered in Kazakhstan

By: Thomas Schmitt Attorney on June 14, 2019 / comment : 0 Archaeology, Asia, Central Asia, Eurasia, Kazakhstan

At the start of the 2019 archaeological season, Kazakhstani researcher Zeynolla Samashev discovered an ancient Saka settlement of the final Bronze Age and early Iron Age near the historical complex Akbaur, located some two kilometres west of Kazakhstan’s capital Nur-Sultan, local news sources reported.

Credit: YK-News

The Saka were among the Scythian tribes that historically inhabited the territories of Central Asia, South Caucasus, Afghanistan and modern-day India and widely believed to have had an exclusively nomadic economy and social structure.

“In the first layer we discovered numerous artifacts, including millstones for grinding wheat, thousands of ceramic fragments, spindle whorls and bones of horses, sheep and goats, all of which clearly indicate the complex nature of the economy of the people who lived here,” said the Kazakhstani archaeologist Zeynolla Samashev, who led the excavation team.

According to Samashev the finds date to between the 11th and 9th centuries BC, and reveal that the early Saka of the region were sedentary, and had developed agriculture, cattle breeding, metallurgy and crafts.

Credit: YK-News

Nikolai Bokovenko, a senior researcher in the Archaeology Department of the State Institute of the History of Material Culture of the Russian Academy of Sciences from St. Petersburg, agrees with these conclusions.

“A very important scientific discovery has been made at the settlement of Akbaur-1,” he said. "This is the first time that an early Saka settlement has been found in the territory of East Kazakhstan. This is confirmed by the numerous finds of things characteristic of both cattle-breeding and agricultural farms."

The excavations will be continued next year when archaeologists from Turkey and Azerbaijan will join the dig. Scientists will determine the status of various sites located in the area of Akbaur, classify and date them.

Meanwhile The artifacts found will be sent to special laboratories for complex analysis, and then stored in the regional museum.

Source: YK-News [June 14, 2019]

Dramatic change in ancient nomad diets coincides with expansion of networks across Eurasia

By: Thomas Schmitt Attorney on June 10, 2019 / comment : 0 Archaeology, Central Asia, Eurasia, Kazakhstan, Mongolia

A meta-analysis of dietary information recorded in the bones of ancient animals and humans recovered from sites scattered across the Eurasian steppe, from the Caucasus region to Mongolia, demonstrates that pastoralists spread domesticated crops across the steppe through their trade and social networks.

Millet cultivation in Central Asia [Credit: © Spengler 2014]

Researchers from Kiel University sifted through previously published stable isotopic data and applied new quantitative analyses that calibrate human dietary intake against environmental inputs. The results have allowed them to better isolate the timing of the incorporation of agricultural products into the diets of pastoral nomads and, crucially, link burgeoning socio-political networks to this dietary transformation.

Through a big data project that explored over a thousand stable isotope data points, researchers were able to find evidence for an early transition to agriculture - based on dietary intake across Eurasia.

"Our understanding of the pace of crop transmission across the Eurasian steppe has been surprisingly unclear due in part to a focus on the excavation of cemeteries, rather than settlements where people threw out their food," says Alicia Ventresca Miller, lead author, formerly of Kiel University and currently at the Max Planck Institute for the Science of Human History.

"Even when settlement sites are excavated, the preservation of carbonized seed remains is often poor. This is what makes stable isotope analyses of human remains from this region so valuable - it provides direct insights into the dietary dynamics of ancient pastoralists who inhabited diverse environments."

Millet spreads across the Eurasian steppe

Millet, originally domesticated in China, appears to have been occasionally consumed at low levels by pastoralists inhabiting the far-flung regions of Siberia and southeastern Kazakhstan, possibly as early as the late third millennium. This initial uptake of millet coincided with the expansion of trans-regional networks across the steppe, when objects and ideas were first regularly exchanged over long-distances.

Map of millet and wheat/barley consumption over time: a) 1000-500 cal BC, b) 500-200 cal BC, and c) 200 BC-AD 400 [Credit: I. Reese & A. R. Ventresca Miller, 2017]

However, it was not until a thousand years later that millet became a regular feature of pastoralist diets. This timing coincides with the intensification of complex political structures at the transition to the Iron Age. Burgeoning socio-political confederations drove a marked increase in the exchange of costly prestige goods, which strengthened political networks - and facilitated the transfer of cultigens.

Wheat and Barley in the Trans-Urals

Despite taking part in these political networks, groups in the Trans-Urals invested in wheat and barley farming rather than millet. A dietary focus on wheat and barley may have been due to different farming techniques, greater water availability, or a higher value on these cultigens.

"Our research suggests that cultigens were converted from a rare luxury during the Bronze Age to a medium demarcating elite participation in political networks during the Iron Age," states Cheryl Makarewicz of Kiel University.

Regional variation in millet consumption

While herding of livestock was widespread, not all regions adopted millet. In southwest Siberia, dietary intake was focused on pastoral animal products and locally available wild plants and fish. In contrast, the delayed adoption of millet by populations in Mongolia during the Late Iron Age coincides with the rise of the Xiongnu nomadic empire.

"This is particularly interesting because it suggests that communities in Mongolia and Siberia opted out of the transition to millet agriculture, while continuing to engage with neighboring groups," explains Ventresca Miller.

This study shows the great potential of using the available isotope record to provide evidence for human dietary intake in areas where paleobotany is understudied. Further research should clarify the exact type of grains, for example broomcorn or foxtail millet, were fundamental to the shift in dietary intake and how networks of exchange linked different regions.

The findings are published in Scientific Reports.

Source: Kiel University [June 10, 2019]

Exploring the origins of the apple

By: Thomas Schmitt Attorney on May 27, 2019 / comment : 0 Asia, Biology, Central Asia, Evolution, Kazakhstan

Recent archaeological finds of ancient preserved apple seeds across Europe and West Asia combined with historical, paleontological, and recently published genetic data are presenting a fascinating new narrative for one of our most familiar fruits. In this study, Robert Spengler of the Max Planck Institute for the Science of Human History traces the history of the apple from its wild origins, noting that it was originally spread by ancient megafauna and later as a process of trade along the Silk Road. These processes allowed for the development of the varieties that we know today.

The wild apples in the Tien Shan Mountains represent the main ancestral population for our modern apple. These trees produce large fruits, which are often red when ripe and have a varying array of flavors. These  were the ancestors of the trees that people first started to cultivate and spread along the Silk Road [Credit: Martin R. Stuchtey]

The apple is, arguably, the most familiar fruit in the world. It is grown in temperate environments around the globe and its history is deeply intertwined with humanity. Depictions of large red fruits in Classical art demonstrate that domesticated apples were present in southern Europe over two millennia ago, and ancient seeds from archaeological sites attest to the fact that people have been collecting wild apples across Europe and West Asia for more than ten thousand years. While it is clear that people have closely maintained wild apple populations for millennia, the process of domestication, or evolutionary change under human cultivation, in these trees is not clear.

Several recent genetic studies have demonstrated that the modern apple is a hybrid of at least four wild apple populations, and researchers have hypothesized that the Silk Road trade routes were responsible for bringing these fruits together and causing their hybridization. Archaeological remains of apples in the form of preserved seeds have been recovered from sites across Eurasia, and these discoveries support the idea that fruit and nut trees were among the commodities that moved on these early trade routes.

Spengler recently summarized the archaeobotanical and historical evidence for cultivated crops on the Silk Road in a book titled Fruit from the Sands, published with the University of California Press. The apple holds a deep connection with the Silk Road - much of the genetic material for the modern apple originated at the heart of the ancient trade routes in the Tien Shan Mountains of Kazakhstan. Furthermore, the process of exchange caused the hybridization events that gave rise to the large red sweet fruits in our produce markets.

Understanding how and when apple trees evolved to produce larger fruits is an important question for researchers, because fruit trees do not appear to have followed the same path towards domestication as other, better-understood crops, such as cereals or legumes. Many different wild and anthropogenic forces apply selective pressure on the crops in our fields, it is not always easy to reconstruct what pressures caused which evolutionary changes. Therefore, looking at evolutionary processing in modern and fossil plants can help scholars interpret the process of domestication. Fleshy sweet fruits evolve to attract animals to eat then and spread their seeds; large fruits specifically evolve to attract large animals to disperse them.

Large fruits evolved to attract ancient megafauna

While most scholars studying domestication focus on the period when humans first start cultivating a plant, in this study Spengler explores the processes in the wild that set the stage for domestication. Spengler suggests that understanding the process of evolution of large fruits in the wild will help us understand the process of their domestication. "Seeing that fruits are evolutionary adaptations for seed dispersal, the key to understanding fruit evolution rests in understanding what animals were eating the fruits in the past," he explains.

Horses eating wild apples in the Tien Shan Mountains. These domesticated horses demonstrate the process of seed dispersal that wild apple trees evolved to support millions of years ago, when large monogastric mammals such as these were prominent across Eurasia [Credit: Artur Stroscherer]

Many fruiting plants in the apple family (Rosaceae) have small fruits, such as cherries, raspberries, and roses. These small fruits are easily swallowed by birds, which then disperse their seeds. However, certain trees in the family, such as apples, pears, quince, and peaches, evolved in the wild to be too large for a bird to disperse their seeds. Fossil and genetic evidence demonstrate that these large fruits evolved several million years before humans started cultivating them. So who did these large fruits evolve to attract?

The evidence suggests that large fruits are an evolutionary adaptation to attract large animals that can eat the fruits and spread the seeds. Certain large mammals, such as bears and domesticated horses, eat apples and spread the seeds today. However, prior to the end of the last Ice Age, there were many more large mammals on the European landscape, such as wild horses and large deer. Evidence suggests that seed dispersal in the large-fruiting wild relatives of the apple has been weak during the past ten thousand years, since many of these animals went extinct. The fact that wild apple populations appear to map over glacial refugial zones of the Ice Age further suggests that these plants have not been moving over long distances or colonizing new areas in the absence of their original seed-spreaders.

Trade along the Silk Road likely enabled the development of the apple we know today

Wild apple tree populations were isolated after the end of the last Ice Age, until humans started moving the fruits across Eurasia, in particular along the Silk Road. Once humans brought these tree lineages back into contact with each other again, bees and other pollinators did the rest of the work. The resulting hybrid offspring had larger fruits, a common result of hybridization.

Venders in every Central Asian bazaar sell a diverse array of apples. This women in the Bukhara bazaar is selling a variety of small sweet yellow apples, which she locally cultivated in Uzbekistan. Some of the fruits sold in these markets today travel great distances, similar to how they would have during the peak of the Silk Road [Credit: Robert Spengler]

Humans noticed the larger fruiting trees and fixed this trait in place through grafting and by planting cuttings of the most favored trees. Thus, the apples we know today were primarily not developed through a long process of the selection and propagation of seeds from the most favored trees, but rather through hybridization and grafting. This process may have been relatively rapid and parts of it were likely unintentional. The fact that apple trees are hybrids and not "properly" domesticated is why we often end up with a crabapple tree when we plant an apple seed.

This study challenges the definition of "domestication"' and demonstrates that there is no one-shoe-fits-all model to explain plant evolution under human cultivation. For some plants, domestication took millennia of cultivation and human-induced selective pressure - for other plants, hybridization caused rapid morphological change.

"The domestication process is not the same for all plants, and we still do not know much about the process in long-generation trees," notes Spengler. "It is important that we look past annual grasses, such as wheat and rice, when we study plant domestication. There are hundreds of other domesticated plants on the planet, many of which took different pathways toward domestication." Ultimately, the apple in your kitchen appears to owe its existence to extinct megafaunal browsers and Silk Road merchants.

The findings have been published in Frontiers in Plant Science.

Source: Max Planck Institute for the Science of Human History [May 27, 2019]

Details of the history of inner Eurasia revealed by new study

By: Thomas Schmitt Attorney on April 29, 2019 / comment : 0 Archaeology, Eurasia, Genetics, Kazakhstan, Mongolia, Tajikistan, Uzbekistan

An international team of researchers has combined archaeological, historical and linguistic data with genetic information from over 700 newly analyzed individuals to construct a more detailed picture of the history of inner Eurasia than ever before available. In a study published in Nature Ecology & Evolution, they found that the indigenous populations of inner Eurasia are very diverse in their genes, culture and languages, but divide into three groups that stretch across the area in east-west geographic bands.

Children from one of the Tajikistan communities included in the study [Credit: Elena Balanovska]

Inner Eurasia, including areas of modern-day Armenia, Georgia, Kazakhstan, Moldova, Mongolia, Russia, Tajikistan, Ukraine and Uzbekistan, was once the cross-roads connecting Asia and Europe, and a major intersection for the exchange of culture, trade goods and genes in prehistory and historical periods, including the era of the famous Silk Road.

This vast area can also be divided into several distinct ecological regions that stretch in largely east-west bands across Inner Eurasia, consisting of the deserts at the southern edge of the region, the steppe in the central part, taiga forests further north, and tundra towards the Arctic region. The subsistence strategies used by indigenous groups in these regions largely correlate with the ecological zones, for example reindeer herding and hunting in the tundra region and nomadic pastoralism on the steppe.

Despite the long and important history of inner Eurasia, details about past migrations and interactions between groups are not always clear, especially in prehistory. "Inner Eurasia is a perfect place to investigate the relationship between environmental conditions and the pattern of human migration and mixture, as well as changes driven by cultural innovations such as the introduction of dairy pastoralism into the steppe," states Choongwon Jeong of the Max Planck Institute for the Science of Human History, co-first and senior author of the paper.

In order to clarify our understanding of some of the nuances of the history of the region, an international team of researchers undertook an ambitious project to use modern and ancient DNA from a broad geographic range and time period, in concert with archaeological, linguistic and historical information, to clarify the relationships between the different populations. "A few ethnic groups were studied previously," comments Oleg Balanovsky from the Vavilov Institute of General Genetics in Moscow, also co-first author, "but we conducted more than a hundred field trips to study this vast region systematically, and reached communities speaking almost all of the Inner Eurasian languages".

Three distinct east-west groupings

For this study, the researchers analyzed DNA from 763 individuals from across the region as well as reanalyzed the genome-wide data from two ancient individuals from the Botai culture, and compared those results with previously published data from modern and ancient individuals. They found three distinct genetic groupings, which geographically are arranged in east-west bands stretching across the region and correlating generally to ecological zones, where populations within each band share a distinct combination of ancestries in varying proportions.

Geographic locations of the Eneolithic Botai, groups including newly sampled individuals, and nearby groups with published data. The map is overlayed with ecoregional information, divided into 14 biomes downloaded from ecoregions2017.appspot.com/ (credited to Ecoregions 2017 © Resolve) [Credit: Jeong & Balanovsky et. al. 2019]

The northernmost grouping, which they term "forest-tundra", includes Russians, all Uralic language-speakers, which includes Hungarian, Finnish and Estonian, and Yeniseian-language speakers, of which only one remains today and is spoken in central Siberia. The middle grouping, which they term "steppe-forest", includes Turkic- and Mongolic-speaking populations from the Volga and the region around the Altai and Sayan mountains, near to where Russia, China, Mongolia and Kazakhstan meet. The southernmost grouping, "southern-steppe", includes the rest of Turkic- and Mongolic-speaking populations living further south, such as Kazakhs, Kyrgyzs and Uzbeks, as well as Indo-European-speaking Tajiks.

Previously unknown genetic connections revealed

Because the study includes data from a broad time period, it is able to show shifts in ancestry in the past that reveal previously unknown interactions. For example, the researchers found that the southern-steppe populations had a larger genetic component from West and South Asia than the other two groupings. This component is also widespread in the ancient populations of the region since the second half of the first millennium BC, but not found in Central Kazakhstan in earlier periods. This hints at a population movement from the southern-steppe region to the steppe-forest region that was previously unknown.

"Inner Eurasia has functioned as a conduit for human migration and cultural transfer since the first appearance of modern humans in this region. As a result, we observe deep sharing of genes between Western and Eastern Eurasian populations in multiple layers," explains Jeong. "The opportunity to find direct evidence for the hidden old layers of admixture, which is often difficult to appreciate from present-day populations, is very exciting."

"We found not only corridors, but also barriers for migrations," adds Balanovsky. "Some of them separate the historical groups of populations, while others, like the distinct barrier following the Great Caucasus mountain ridge, were obviously shaped by the geographic landscape."

Two ancient individuals resequenced in this study originated from the Botai culture in Kazakhstan where the horse was initially domesticated. Analysis of the Y-chromosome (inherited along the paternal genealogical lines) revealed a genetic lineage which is typical in the Kazakh steppe up to the present day. But analysis of the autosomes, which both parents contribute to their children, show no trace of Botai ancestry left in present-day people, likely due to repeated migrations into the region both from the west and the east since the Bronze Age.

The researchers emphasize that their model of three groupings does not perfectly explain all known populations and that there are examples of both outliers and intermediate groups. "It is important to organize a future study for further sampling of sparsely populated regions between the clines, for example, Central Kazakhstan or East Siberia," states Johannes Krause, also of the Max Planck Institute for the Science of Human History, and senior author of the paper.

Source: Max Planck Institute for the Science of Human History [April 29, 2019]

Declassified U2 spy plane images reveal bygone Middle Eastern archaeological features

By: Thomas Schmitt Attorney on April 08, 2019 / comment : 0 Archaeology, Iran, Iraq, Jordan, Kazakhstan, Middle East, Syria

In the 1950s and early '60s, with the Cold War at its peak, the United States flew U2 spy planes across Europe, the Middle East, and central eastern Asia, taking images of interesting military targets. Though the missions typically connected Point A to Point B, say an air field and an important city, in many cases the camera kept recording between those spots, capturing thousands of photos of the desert, steppes, fields, and villages below.

Desert kites, stone wall structures that date back 5,000 to 8,000 years like those shown above, were used to trap gazelle and other similar animals. The dry desert of eastern Jordan preserved many of them, but agricultural expansion in western Jordan dismantled or destroyed many more [Credit: University of Pennsylvania]

Such a collection can represent a goldmine for landscape archaeologists like Emily Hammer of the University of Pennsylvania and Jason Ur of Harvard University. But for decades, all film and documents from these missions--code-named CHESS by the U.S. government--remained classified. And even when they became public in 1997, they weren't indexed or scanned.

Until now, the majority of this kind of historical aerial documentation came from the CORONA spy satellite program, which the U.S. ran between 1959 and 1972. But only the highest-resolution CORONA images, taken during the program's final five years, are useful for most archaeological purposes. The U2 photos are earlier and a higher resolution than even the best CORONA images, offering the chance to see historical features undecipherable by CORONA or already gone by the time of those missions.

Knowing the potential insight offered by the U2 images, Hammer and Ur began sifting through the materials. By analyzing thousands of high- and low-resolution frames, they discovered many historical and archaeological features, including prehistoric hunting traps, 3,000-year-old irrigation canals, and 60-year-old marsh villages no longer visible today. The work, which they published in the journal Advances in Archaeological Practice, represents the first archaeological use of U2 spy plane imagery--and a new and exciting window into history.

"The photos provide a fascinating look at the Middle East several decades ago, showing, for example, historical Aleppo long before the massive destruction wrought in the ongoing civil war," says Hammer, an assistant professor in Penn's Near Eastern languages and civilizations department. "Plus, the work and the accompanying online resources will allow other researchers to identify and access U2 photos for the first time."

Hammer and Ur have both conducted research in the Middle East for decades, in Turkey, Azerbaijan, Iran, Iraq, and Syria. They've also both used CORONA spy satellite imagery extensively. However, many of those image sets didn't date back as far as Hammer wished they would. "We knew that U2 spy planes must have taken thousands of images across large parts of the Middle East, but there was no easy way to access or reproduce the film negatives," she says.

The canal system above, from northern Iraq, provides insight into how an early empire maintained its power and governed [Credit: University of Pennsylvania]

A chance encounter with Lin Xu, a researcher who had retrieved U2 images of his hometown in China, led Hammer and Ur to press on. "Seeing the amazing quality of those archival photos," Hammer says, "we knew that it would be worth the detective work it would take to build a systematic index of them."

It wasn't an easy process. Ahead of time, they had to select the film rolls they wanted moved from the National Archives' storage center in Kansas to the aerial film section in Maryland. Once there, the researchers unspooled hundreds of feet of film over a light table to identify pertinent frames, then photographed the negatives in pieces using a 100-millimeter macro lens. Later, they stitched together and adjusted each frame, before geo-referencing the photos using GIS software to match up images with coordinates of real-world places.

Despite the tedium of some of the individual tasks, the process excited Hammer. "As you turn the spool of a film roll following the path of the U2 plane, you may not know exactly what you'll see in unfamiliar places, so there's often a sense of exploration and discovery," she says. "Other times, the pilots were flying over regions I knew by heart from travel and study, and I would almost hold my breath, hoping that the plane had veered just a little to the right or left."

The hours of work paid off, revealing many important archaeological features, including prehistoric hunting traps called desert kites in eastern Jordan, an Assyrian canal system in northern Iraq, and marshes in southern Iraq, case studies the researchers highlighted in their paper.

Desert kites, stone-wall structures that date back 5,000 to 8,000 years, were used to trap gazelle and other similar animals. The dry desert of eastern Jordan preserved many of them, but agricultural expansion in western Jordan dismantled or destroyed many more. The satellite images bring them back to life, showcasing a web of diamond-shaped enclosures with what look like long kite tails, offering the best view, to date, of these important hunting tools.

The U2 images of southern Iraq present the layout, size, and environmental position of Marsh Arab communities  in the late 1950s and early 1960s, many of which disappeared after massive hydroelectric dams impounded  the rivers, and after the government of Saddam Hussein deliberately drained the marshes [Credit: University of Pennsylvania]

The second feature, the canal system in northern Iraq, provides insight into how an early empire maintained its power and governed, Hammer explains. "The Assyrians built the first large, long-lasting, multi-cultural empire of the ancient world, so many people are interested in how they organized territory, controlled people, built their huge cities, and managed the land," she says. "The irrigation system fed the royal capitals, made agricultural surplus production possible, and provided water to villages."

Finally, the U2 images of southern Iraq present the layout, size, and environmental position of Marsh Arab communities in the late 1950s and early 1960s, many of which disappeared after massive hydroelectric dams in Turkey, Syria, and Iraq impounded the rivers, and especially after the government of Saddam Hussein deliberately drained the marshes. Before that, "people lived a unique lifestyle there for thousands of years, herding water buffalo, building houses and all manner of things out of reeds, living on floating islands of reeds, planting date palms, and fishing," Hammer says. "Now we can study the spatial organization, demography, and lifestyles of these communities."

Though the three archaeological features represent different historical time scales, going back thousands of years or just decades, they all demonstrate how humans are changing the natural landscape, often in ways visible only from a 70,000-foot view.

Aerial images like those from the U2 spy missions allow archaeologists like Hammer and Ur to travel back in time. "The activities of ancient human communities frequently left large-scale traces on the landscape," Hammer says. "You can't see these patterns when you're standing on top of them, but just like stepping back from the blobs of paint on an Impressionist painting reveals the full picture, aerial and satellite imagery allow the patterns to emerge."

Author: Michele W. Berger | Source: University of Pennsylvania [April 08, 2019]

Fossil fly with an extremely long proboscis sheds light on the insect pollination origin

By: Thomas Schmitt Attorney on April 01, 2019 / comment : 0 Fossils, Kazakhstan, Palaeontology

A long-nosed fly from the Jurassic of Central Asia, reported by Russian paleontologists, provides new evidence that insects have started serving as pollinators long before the emergence of flowering plants. Equipped with a proboscis twice the length of the body, this fly predates the first angiosperms by about 40-45 million years. This suggests that insect pollination began to evolve in association with ancient gymnosperms.The results of the study are published in Gondwana Research.

Late Jurassic acrocerid fly Archocyrtus kovalevi [Credit: Alexander V. Khramov & Elena D. Lukashevich]

Archocyrtus kovalevi is only known as a single compression fossil found in the Late Jurassic rocks in Southern Kazakhstan. The fossil, estimated to be about 160 million years in age, first came into light in 1996, but its original description did not contain any photos. It is no wonder that nobody believed at first that this fly had evolved a proboscis of such proportions so early in time. Despite not having seen the specimen itself, skeptics said that the long structure next to the fly's body was not a genuine proboscis, but must be a piece of plant or other stray object. As a result, a remarkable finding fell into oblivion for more than 20 years.

To dig up the truth about the enigmatic fossil, paleontologists from Borissiak Paleontological Institute (Moscow) reexamined it using modern microscopic techniques and element distribution analysis. This allowed them to confirm the presence of a long proboscis, which has an easily discernible food canal and is identical to mouthparts of living long-proboscid flies in all other respects. Measuring 12 mm long, mouthparts of A. kovalevi is 1.8 times longer than the body. It means that this tiny fly ranks first among all the Mesozoic insects in having the longest proboscis relative to body size.

A. kovalevi is the earliest fossil record of extant family Acroceridae, or small-headed flies. Nowadays, there are a few species of small-headed flies with a proboscis longer than body found in the Americas and South Africa. The present-day members of Acroceridae use their oversized proboscis to draw nectar from long tubular flowers, acting as pollinators in the process. The unusual thing is that A. kovalevi existed at the time when not a single flower was blooming. The first flowering plants emerged much later, in the Early Cretaceous, and at first had small, inconspicuous flowers. So what was the proboscis of A. kovalevi used for?

"There is a well-known story about Charles Darwin, who famously predicted the existence of a pollinating moth with a long proboscis after seeing the deep nectar spur of the Madagascar orchid. We have to argue the other way round and conclude from the ancient long-nosed fly that we see to a plant which it may have pollinated", said Alexander Khramov, the first author of the study and a senior researcher at Borissiak Paleontological Institute.

Luckily, researchers did not need to go too far in their guesses. Dozens of cones of the plant called Williamsoniella karataviensis have been collected from the same strata as the fly. This plant belongs to Bennettitales, an extinct group of the Mesozoic gymnosperms, many of which had showy, flower-like reproductive organs, and on this ground scientists have long suspected them to be insect pollinated. W. karataviensis fits into this picture perfectly. It has bisexual cones consisting of twelve petal-like bracts (modified leaves) arched over the ovules (precursors of seeds). Like modern Gnetales, a relict group of gymnosperms pollinated by insects, including flies, ovules of W. karataviensis could have produced sugary pollination drops.

The depth of the cones of W. karataviensis roughly matches the length of proboscis of A. kovalevi, so the pieces of the puzzle come together: small-headed flies first evolved an extremely long proboscis to get an access to the sugary secretions hidden deep in the cones of ancient gymnosperms. It is highly probable that they did pollination work in return for sweet reward. It follows that the foundation of pollination mutualism between plants and insects had been laid long before the first true flowers adorned the Earth. When the Mesozoic gymnosperms left the stage, Acroceridae and probably some other long-proboscid insects offered their pollinating services to newly emerged flowering plants.

Source: AKSON Russian Science Communication Association [April 01, 2019]