Amplitude of travelling front as inferred from 14C predicts levels of genetic admixture among European early farmers

Abstract

Large radiocarbon datasets have been analysed statistically to identify, on the one hand, the dynamics and tempo of dispersal processes and, on the other, demographic change. This is particularly true for the spread of farming practices in Neolithic Europe. Here we combine the two approaches and apply them to a new, extensive dataset of 14,535 radiocarbon dates for the Mesolithic and Neolithic periods across the Near East and Europe. The results indicate three distinct demographic regimes: one observed in or around the centre of farming innovation and involving a boost in carrying capacity; a second appearing in regions where Mesolithic populations were well established; and a third corresponding to large-scale migrations into previously essentially unoccupied territories, where the travelling front is readily identified. This spatio-temporal patterning linking demographic change with dispersal dynamics, as displayed in the amplitude of the travelling front, correlates and predicts levels of genetic admixture among European early farmers.

Holocene fire activity during low-natural flammability periods reveals scale-dependent cultural human-fire relationships in Europe

“…BP mirror divergent rates in Neolithisation and agricultural land use, as previously suggested by discrete charcoal data (Robin and Nelle, 2014). CHAR composites allow determination of the spatial spread of human fire usage in prehistoric and historic agrarian land management, which was previously described using archaeological compilations (Feeser and Dörfler, 2015;Poska et al, 2004;Silva and Vander Linden, 2017) and quantitative land cover reconstructions (Marquer et al, 2017;Trondman et al, 2015).…”

“…The degree of intentional forest disturbance and use of forest resources probably varied in space and time (Meadows et al, 2016;Poska and Saarse, 2002;Wacnik et al, 2011;Zvelebil, 2008) and in relation to access to other resources from, e.g., rivers, the sea, or early contacts with sedentary cultures (Krause-Kyora et al, 2013;Silva and Vander Linden, 2017). For example, new analytical approaches in archaeology suggest that Mesolithic forest-based diets were reduced in favor of waterbased diets in the Baltic hinterland (Meadows et al, 2016).…”

Beyond broad strokes: sociocultural insights from the study of ancient genomes

“…A plethora of radiocarbon-dated sites showing early evidence of farming have allowed archaeologists to model how this cultural innovation spread throughout Europe in the Neolithic. Consistently across studies, researchers have observed that the expansion of farming was broadly two-pronged, consisting of two cultural movements which can be broadly associated with the Impressa / Cardial Ware and Linear Pottery archaeological horizons [25][26][27][28][29] . Now, the new abundance of radiocarbon-dated ancient genomes allows us to trace how genetic ancestry spread as a consequence of this cultural transformation 14,30 .…”

Development and testing scenarios for implementing land use and land cover changes during the Holocene in Earth system model experiments

“…Since the distribution of samples is often patchy, geostatistical techniques such as kriging and splines are used to spatially interpolate the information in order to provide quantitative estimates of the timing of spread. Work carried out in Europe (Bocquet-Appel et al, 2009), Asia (Silva et al, 2015), and Africa (Russell et al, 2014) demonstrates that there are different rates of diffusion even within a region, reflecting the possible impact of natural features (e.g. waterways, elevation, ecology) on diffusion rates (Davison et al, 2006;Silva and Steele, 2014).…”