genomes Archives - New Historian

Answered: Who First Domesticated Horses? A new study claims that horses were first domesticated by descendants of hunter-gatherer groups in Kazakhstan. Exactly when, where and who first domesticated horses is shrouded in mystery. A popular theory is that it was the Yamnaya culture (3300 BC–2600 BCE), yet the new research is dispelling this idea. “The successful spread of the Indo-European languages across Eurasia has puzzled researchers for a century. It was thought that speakers of this language family played a key role in the domestication of the horse, and that this, in combination with the development of wheeled vehicles, allowed them to spread across Eurasia from the Yamnaya culture,” explained Dr. Guus Kroonen, historical linguist at University of Copenhagen, in a press release. In the new study, published in the journal Science, it is shown that in fact horses were already being used by the Botai people 5,500 years ago, and much further east in Central Asia, completely independent of the Yamnaya pastoralists. An inter-disciplinary team analysed ancient and modern DNA samples from humans and compared the results – the 74 ancient whole-genome sequences studied by the group were up to 11,000 years old and were from Inner Asia and Turkey. The results found no genetic link between the Yamnaya and Botai. Intriguingly, the Botai were eventually pushed out of the central steppe region by migrations from the west. The Botai horses were also replaced, suggesting domestication of horses had already occurred elsewhere. “We now know that the people who first domesticated the horse in Central Asia were the descendants of ice age hunters, who went on to become the earliest pastoralists in the region,” stated Professor Alan Outram from the Department of Archaeology at the University of Exeter “Despite their local innovations, these peoples were overrun and replaced by European steppe pastoralists in the middle and later Bronze Age, and their horses were replaced too.” [caption id="attachment_8613" align="alignnone" width="1440"] Skeletal remains showing evidence of leprosy from the Odense St. Jørgen cemetery in Denmark, which was established in 1270 and existed until 1560.
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Dorthe Dangvard Pedersen[/caption] Did Leprosy Originate in Europe? Leprosy may have originated in Europe, innovative new research is claiming. The study by the Max Planck Institute for the Science of Human History, the University of Tübingen, EPFL Lausanne and the University of Zurich sequenced 10 new ancient genomes from the leprosy causing bacterium Mycobacterium leprae. This included the oldest leprosy genome sequenced to date, from around 400CE in the UK. The results have shown there was much more diversity in Medieval European strains of leprosy than previously thought. 90 sets of remains with skeletal deformations characteristic of leprosy from across Europe were studied, dating from 400CE to 1400CE. Previous research on the bacterium suggested that it clusters into several strains, only two of which had been present in Medieval Europe. However, the scientists found strains from Medieval Europe that are traditionally associated with locations such as Africa, Asia and the Americas. At the same time, multiple strains were also often detected in a single cemetery, giving an insight into the diversity of the disease. “We found much more genetic diversity in ancient Europe than expected,” explains Johannes Krause, senior author of the study and a director at the Max Planck Institute for the Science of Human History. “Additionally, we found that all known strains of leprosy are present in Medieval Europe, suggesting that leprosy may already have been widespread throughout Asia and Europe in antiquity or that it might have originated western Eurasia.” Interestingly, the results add growing support to the idea that the squirrel fur trade played a role in the spread of leprosy. The oldest leprosy genome sequenced in the study, from Great Chesterford, England, is the same strain found in modern day red squirrels. “The dynamics of M. leprae transmission throughout human history are not fully resolved. Characterisation and geographic association of the most ancestral strains are crucial for deciphering leprosy’s exact origin” states lead author Verena Schuenemann of the University of Zurich. “While we have some written records of leprosy cases that predate the Common Era, none of these have yet been confirmed on a molecular level.” The research has been published in the journal PLOS Pathogens. Image credit: Pottok [GFDL (http://www.gnu.org/copyleft/fdl.html) or CC-BY-SA-3.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/)], via Wikimedia Commons ]]>

Fake News! Story of Bunny Domestication Needs to be Rewritten A widely cited account says that rabbits were domesticated by monks in 600 CE, after Pope Gregory issued a decree that it was acceptable to eat foetal rabbits (laurices) during Lent. Now, a ground breaking new study has revealed that this account is false. The shock discovery was made accidentally by Evan Irving-Pease and Greger Larson from Oxford University. The two archaeologists were trying to test how well the molecular clock method works for genetically dating domestication. By comparing the genomes of a domesticated and a wild animal, the molecular clock method can pinpoint how long it took for the two species to diverge. Much to Larson and Irving-Pease’s surprise, this method suggested that rabbit domestication took place in the last Ice Age. Quickly, the Pope Gregory story started to unravel. “I had cited it [the Pope Gregory story}, colleagues of mine had cited it, it’s all over Wikipedia, it’s all over the web… but it turns out that the modern story is a complete house of cards,” Larson says. “What was really interesting to me then was why nobody’s really thought about it or been critical about it.” In a paper published in the journal Trends in Ecology and Evolution, Irving-Pease, Larson and colleagues argue that the domestication of rabbits was in fact a long and complicated process. For Larson, the untested endurance of the Pope Gregory story is indicative of certain human traits. “We really have trouble appreciating slow, continuous change over long periods of time. Our narrative structures work much better if you have a eureka moment,” he said in a press release “Domestication that happens at a specific moment in time, due to a concrete series of events, makes intuitive sense to us.” Irving explained that this belief in ‘eureka’ moments is misleading. “For the vast majority of human existence, no one said, ‘I am going to grab this wild organism and bring it into captivity and, voila, I will create a domestic one, If you want to divide the continuum into a dichotomy of wild and domestic, you can do that, but you have to know that it’s necessarily going to be arbitrary.” Irving-Pease and Larson are now setting their sights on investigating and challenging the history of domestication of other plants and animals. “We have been slightly arrogant,” said Irving-Pease. “We know a hell of a lot less about the origins of the things that matter most to us than we think we do.” Remarkable Statues Found in Saudi Arabia Archaeologists have discovered a remarkable set of life sized camel sculptures in Saudi-Arabia. Shedding new light on the evolution of rock art in the Arabian Peninsula, the statues are thought to date back to sometime between the first century BCE and the first century CE. An article detailing the findings has been published in the journal Antiquity. An international research team, including archaeologists from CNRS and the Saudi Commission for Tourism and Natural Heritage, made the remarkable discovery in excavations between 2016 and 2017. The sculptures, some of which are incomplete, are on three rocky spurs. Despite erosion damaging the sculptures, researchers have identified around a dozen reliefs depicting horses and camels. One of the images depicts both a dromedary and a donkey. The researchers say this is unprecedented in rock art from the region. The sculptures are also technically very different from other cave art found in the area. The site has proven a challenge to accurately date, and the researchers have based their estimates on similar reliefs found at Petra, Jordan. The site appears ill-suited for a permanent settlement. However, it is situated close to a number of known caravan routes, leading the team to speculate it could have been either a place of worship or a stop over for travellers. Images of the sculptures can be seen here Featured image courtesy of Airwolfhound via Wikimedia Commons ]]>

A Third of English Ancestors Were Anglo-Saxon Immigrants