Latest news with #RonPinhasi
Yahoo
18-03-2025
- Science
- Yahoo
European hunter-gatherers boated to North Africa during Stone Age, ancient DNA suggests
When you buy through links on our articles, Future and its syndication partners may earn a commission. Ancient hunter-gatherers from Europe may have voyaged across the Mediterranean to Northern Africa around 8,500 years ago, new research suggests. Ancient DNA collected from the remains of Stone Age individuals from the eastern Maghreb region, which spans Tunisia and northeastern Algeria, revealed that they may have descended, in part, from European hunter-gatherers, according to a paper published March 12 in the journal Nature. The remains of one of the ancient humans found at a Tunisia site named Djebba was found to have about 6% of his DNA originating from European hunter-gatherer ancestry. These results represent the first clear genetic evidence of contact between early European and North African populations, indicating that Stone Age European hunter-gatherers and North Africans may have interacted more than we initially thought. "Several decades ago, some biological anthropologists proposed that European and North African hunter-gatherers had made contact, based on morphological analyses of skeletal traits," study co-author Ron Pinhasi, an evolutionary anthropologist at the University of Vienna, said in a statement. "At the time, this theory appeared overly speculative," he added. "However, 30 years later, our new genomic data has validated these early hypotheses. This is really exciting." Related: 7,000-year-old canoes from Italy are the oldest ever found in the Mediterranean The Stone Age began with the use of stone tools about 3 million years ago (before modern humans existed) and ended about 5,000 years ago in parts of North Africa and Europe with the rise of metal tools and early civilizations. During the Stone Age, humans in Europe and North Africa mostly lived as hunter-gatherers, gradually transitioning to farming and more complex societies during the Neolithic, or New Stone Age, which occurred between roughly 10,000 and 2,000 B.C. Image 1 of 3 A map of the eastern Maghreb in North Africa, including (1) Afalou Bou Rhummel; (2) Djebba; (3) Doukanet el Khoutifa; and (4) Hergla. Image 2 of 3 The eastern Maghreb archaeological dig site at Doukanet el Khoutifa, Tunisia. Image 3 of 3 The archaeological site at Hergla, Tunisia Before now, archaeologists didn't know much about the transition to farming in North Africa, with most genomic data coming from sites in the far western Maghreb (modern-day Morocco). "There's not been much of a North African story," study co-author David Reich, a population geneticist at Harvard Medical School, told Nature News. "It was a huge hole." Previous research in the western Maghreb found that people in this area had high levels of European farmer ancestry — genetically distinct from hunter-gatherers — reaching up to 80% in some populations due to the movement of farmers via the Gibraltar Strait around 7,000 years ago. Image 1 of 2 A researcher excavates human remains at Doukanet el Khoutifa, Tunisia Image 2 of 2 Scientists process samples from the North African archaeological sites at Harvard Medical School. The new study reveals that the eastern Maghreb people had comparatively little European farmer ancestry, instead remaining quite genetically isolated — with the surprising exception of some earlier European hunter-gatherer influences. The archaeologists analyzed the DNA from bones and teeth of nine people who lived between 6,000 and 10,000 years ago in the eastern Maghreb. The DNA showed that one of the ancient humans, who lived about 8,500 years ago, shared about 6% of his DNA with European hunter-gatherers. This suggests that the hunter-gatherers may have boated across the Mediterranean, possibly aboard long wooden canoes. RELATED STORIES —Who were the first farmers? —7 extraordinary African kingdoms from ancient times to centuries ago —Why did Europe's hunter-gatherers disappear? Traces of volcanic glass or obsidian from Pantelleria, an island in the Strait of Sicily, was also found at one of the sites, indicating that these hunter-gatherers may have stopped off at several islands on their journey across the sea. This DNA also revealed that there was very little European farmer ancestry in this region, only reaching around 20%. This suggests that the eastern Maghreb was very genetically and culturally resilient compared to the western Maghreb, which is supported by previous archaeological discoveries that farming was only fully adopted in the eastern Maghreb after about 1000 B.C.
The Independent
06-02-2025
- Science
- The Independent
DNA study cracks centuries-old mystery over origin of languages spoken by half the world
Indo-European languages spoken by nearly half of the world today originated from an ancient population that lived in the North Caucasus mountains and the Lower Volga, according to a new DNA study. These language families, including Germanic, Indo-Iranian and Celtic, evolved from a common tongue called the Proto-Indo-European, whose origin has been a mystery. In the new study, researchers at Vienna University analysed DNA samples of 435 people from archaeological sites across Eurasia dating to between 6400BC and 2000BC and found that a newly recognised ancient population inhabiting the steppe grasslands of the Caucasus and the Lower Volga was connected to all modern populations speaking Indo-European languages. The ancient population, now called CLV, lived between 4500BC and 3500BC, according to the study published in the journal Nature on Wednesday. Previous studies have shown that the Yamnaya culture which thrived in the Pontic- Caspian steppes north of the Black and Caspian Seas expanded into Europe and Central Asia beginning about 3100BC. Their migration accounted for the appearance of "steppe ancestry" in populations across Eurasia between 3100BC and 1500BC, having the largest effect on European human genomes of any demographic event in the last 5,000 years. The movement of the Yamnaya people in this direction is widely regarded as the chief vector for the spread of Indo-European languages. However, one group of Indo-European languages – the Anatolian – does not exhibit any steppe ancestry. Anatolian languages, including Hittite, are the oldest branch of the Indo-European tongues to split away, uniquely preserving some of the linguistic archaisms lost in all other branches. This group of languages descended from a people that had not been adequately described before, researchers found. The new study traced this language group to an ancient population that lived in the steppes between the North Caucasus mountains and the Lower Volga between 4500BC and 3500BC. The DNA analysis revealed that the Yamnaya people derived about 80 per cent of their ancestry from the population group, which was also linked to a tenth of the ancestry of Bronze Age central Anatolian speakers of Hittite. "The CLV group therefore can be connected to all Indo-European-speaking populations and is the best candidate for the population that spoke Indo-Anatolian, the ancestor of both Hittite and all later Indo-European languages," Ron Pinhasi, a study co-author from Vienna University, said. The study also found that the integration of the Proto-Indo-Anatolian language – shared by Anatolian and Indo-European peoples – reached its height among the CLV communities between 4400BC and 4000BC. "The discovery of the CLV population as the missing link in the Indo-European story marks a turning point in the 200-years-old quest to reconstruct the origins of the Indo-Europeans and the routes by which these people spread across Europe and parts of Asia," Dr Pinhasi said.
