A prehistoric thoroughfare between the Ganges and the Himalayas

The greater Himalayan region, including the Tibetan plateau in the north and the Gangetic plain in the south, served as the principal prehistoric thoroughfare for the peopling of East and Southeast Asia. The descendants of ancient migrants through this region ultimately settled lands as far away as New Zealand, Madagascar and the Americas. Several of the keys to understanding the ethnogenesis of human diversity in Asia include the Father Tongue correlation, possible refugia during the Last Glacial Maximum and the hypothesis that language families may have arisen as the result of demographic bottlenecks in prehistory. Ethnolinguistically informed inferences based on Asian Y chromosomal phylogeography permit a reconstruction of episodes of ethnolinguistic prehistory which lie beyond the linguistic event horizon, i.e. beyond the time depth empirically accessible to historical linguistics. The origins of the language families which make up the hypothetical Uralo-Siberian and East Asian linguistic phyla are argued to have lain in the northeastern corner of the Indian subcontinent. Several other Asian language families are shown to be tied to the subcontinent. The Centripetal Migration model, which assumes that migrations in quest of a better life unfolded in both centrifugal and centripetal directions with respect to technologically more advanced centres of civilisation, is opposed to the Farming Language Dispersal theory, which assumes that all linguistic dispersals were driven by agricultural centrifugal migration.

UNESCO World Heritage „Prehistoric pile-dwellings around the Alps“: Chances and Challenges for Management and Research of Cultural Heritage Under Water

Research in prehistoric sites of lakes and bogs around the Alps started more than 150 years ago. In 2004 Switzerland took the initiative to propose an international UNESCO world heritage nomination, which was successful in 2011. Six countries – Austria, France, Germany, Italy, Slovenia and Switzerland – joined forces to obtain the precious label for an invisible cultural heritage of outstanding universal value. Archaeological sites under water or in bogs are of special importance because objects made of organic material like wood, bark, plant fibres and others survive in this milieu for hundred or thousands of years. The alpine pile-dwelling sites offer a highly precise dating possibility by using dendrochronology. All in all these sites have a high scientific potential but run also risks of long term conservation. Beside the scientific chances there are risks to consider: public access is difficult and a major challenge. New ideas are demanded to keep alive public interest.

Prehistoric genomes reveal the genetic foundation and cost of horse domestication

The domestication of the horse revolutionized warfare, trade, and the exchange of people and ideas. This at least 5,500-y-long process, which ultimately transformed wild horses into the hundreds of breeds living today, is difficult to reconstruct from archeological data and modern genetics alone. We therefore sequenced two complete horse genomes, predating domestication by thousands of years, to characterize the genetic footprint of domestication. These ancient genomes reveal predomestic population structure and a significant fraction of genetic variation shared with the domestic breeds but absent from Przewalski’s horses. We find positive selection on genes involved in various aspects of locomotion, physiology, and cognition. Finally, we show that modern horse genomes contain an excess of deleterious mutations, likely representing the genetic cost of domestication.

Palaeohydrology, fires and vegetation succession in the southern Baltic during the last 7500 years reconstructed from a raised bog based on multi-proxy data

We present the first 7500 yr long multi-proxy record from a raised bog located at the southern Baltic coast, Poland. Testate amoebae, plant macrofossils, pollen and microscopic charcoal were used to reconstruct environmental changes in Pomerania (northern Poland, Kaszuby Lakeland) from a 7-m thick peat archive of Stążki bog dated 5500 BC–AD 1250. We obtained a record of proxies representing different spatial scales: regional vegetation changed simultaneously with local vegetation, and testate amoebae showed a pattern of change similar to that of pollen and plant macrofossils. On the basis of the combined proxies, we distinguished three hydroclimatic stages: moist conditions 5500–3450 BC, drier conditions with regionally increased fires up to 600 BC, and again moist conditions from 600 BC onward. During the drier interval, a first climatic shift to wetter conditions at 1700 BC is indicated by regional pollen as the replacement of Corylus by Carpinus, and locally by, e.g., the increase of Hyalosphenia elegans and mire plants such as Sphagnum sec. Cuspidata. Furthermore, we observed a correlation since 600 BC among the re-expansion of Carpinus (after a sudden decline ca. 950 BC), increased peat accumulation, increase of Hyalosphenia species, and fewer fires, suggesting lower evapotranspiration and a stable high water table in the bog. Fagus started to expand after AD 810 gradually replacing Carpinus, which was possibly due to a gradually more oceanic climate, though we cannot exclude human impact on the forests. Peat accumulation, determined by radiocarbon dating, varied with bog surface wetness. The hydroclimatic phases found in Stążki peatland are similar to moisture changes recorded in other sites from Poland and Europe. This is the first detailed record of hydroclimatic change during the Holocene in the southern Baltic region, so it forms a reference site for further studies on other southern Baltic bogs that are in progress.

Archaeological Discoveries on Schnidejoch and at Other Ice Sites in the European Alps

Only a few sites in the Alps have produced archaeological finds from melting ice. To date, prehistoric finds from four sites dating from the Neolithic period, the Bronze Age, and the Iron Age have been recovered from small ice patches (Schnidejoch, Lötschenpass, Tisenjoch, and Gemsbichl/Rieserferner). Glaciers, on the other hand, have yielded historic finds and frozen human remains that are not more than a few hundred years old (three glacier mummies from the 16th to the 19th century and military finds from World Wars I and II). Between 2003 and 2010, numerous archaeological finds were recovered from a melting ice patch on the Schnidejoch in the Bernese Alps (Cantons of Berne and Valais, Switzerland). These finds date from the Neolithic period, the Early Bronze Age, the Iron Age, Roman times, and the Middle Ages, spanning a period of 6000 years. The Schnidejoch, at an altitude of 2756 m asl, is a pass in the Wildhorn region of the western Bernese Alps. It has yielded some of the earliest evidence of Neolithic human activity at high altitude in the Alps. The abundant assemblage of finds contains a number of unique artifacts, mainly from organic materials like leather, wood, bark, and fibers. The site clearly proves access to high-mountain areas as early as the 5th millennium BC, and the chronological distribution of the finds indicates that the Schnidejoch pass was used mainly during periods when glaciers were retreating.