#archaeogenetics

Source: https://www.universiteitleiden.nl/en/news/2026/02/dna-study-reveals-remarkable-stability-in-prehistoric-low-countries-populations

In much of Europe, the hunter-gatherer populations, which modern humans coexisted with Neanderthals and came to Europe through the Levant and Balkans about 60,000-40,000 years ago, were rapidly replaced with agrarian settlers who came through Central Europe between 8500-4000 BCE, leading to rapid genetic shift with those farmers becoming dominant within just a few centuries. This trend, however, didn't hold up in the Low Countries, modern day Netherlands, Belgium, and northwestern Germany. In the Low Countries, it took about 2,000 years for this change over to happen.

Researchers looked at the remains of a farming settlement dating to about 5500 BCE in Zuid-Limburg, the southern most province in the Netherlands. They examined the DNA of 112 individuals who were buried in the region between 10,500-3,700 years ago and found they had relatively limited contact with those who were further north of them. Those to the north lived as hunter-gatherers for much longer than the settlement.

The delta of the Rhine-Meuse created a land that was rich with food resources, both animals and plants, so that '[p]eople could successfully gather their food' there. The rivers also allowed people to travel and 'remain connected…[i]deas could spread without entire populations needing to relocate'. The difference between the settled societies and the hunter-gatherer cultures became more obvious as those in agrarian cultures started practicing individual burials rather than communal burial tombs.

Pottery became another item that highlighted the difference between those that lived agrarian lives versus those who did not as pottery is much heavier than basketry or netting, so it wouldn't have been used by those who were nomadic as much. In the western part of the Rhine-Meuse region, pottery was adopted with other customs, but the people remained genetically separated from those around them, showing that 'cultural innovation was not automatically the result of mass migration…[l]arge-scale DNA research is now making it possible to distinguish between cultural and genetic change'. When there were genetic changes, it was women who moved into new areas, leading the researchers to say '[t]his period is often viewed through a male lens, but DNA evidence now shows that it was probably women who introduced critical agricultural knowledge into societies'.

related to the mother-fucking

CHEDDAR MAN cool?!?!

The 9000-year-old grave of a shaman in Saxony-Anhalt, Germany has so far posed many mysteries. Now a team of experts has gained new insights into this. "The shaman's grave is a key find that provides deep insights into the beginnings of spirituality and religion and shows the central role women played in prehistory," says state archaeologist Harald Meller, who coordinates the project. "Thanks to the detective work of many scientists, we can reconstruct the fate and appearance of a unique woman."

He presents the results in the book "The Riddle of the Shaman. A Journey to Our Archaeological Beginnings", written together with the historian Kai Michel. The grave in Bad Durrenberg (Saalekreis) was accidentally discovered in 1934 during sewer works. The woman was around 30 to 35 years old. In her arms she held an infant. A headdress made of deer antlers and numerous animal teeth is interpreted as part of a shamanic costume.

What archaeogenetics can achieve today

Bones were found during the 2019 excavations, which made it possible to determine the identity of the child. "Thanks to the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology in Leipzig, we now know it was a boy," says Meller. "But he wasn't her son." The case is an impressive example of what archaeogenetics can do today. "Their founder, Svante Pääbo, rightly received the Nobel Prize for medicine," says the state archaeologist.

The shaman comes from a time when dense primeval forests covered Europe after the Ice Age. "The living environment, which was radically changed by the climate, presented people with enormous challenges," explains Michel. "The shaman was a spiritual specialist who used the spirits to help people and heal others." She was so successful that people made pilgrimages to her from far and wide.

Hunter-gatherers from Mongolia and the Amur River Basin have ancestry shared by individuals who speak Mongolic and Tungusic languages, but do not carry ancestry characteristic of farmers from the West Liao River region (around 3000 BC), which contradicts theories that the expansion of these farmers spread the Mongolic and Tungusic proto-languages.

Farmers from the Yellow River Basin (around 3000 BC) probably spread Sino-Tibetan languages, as their ancestry dispersed both to Tibet—where it forms approximately 84% of the gene pool in some groups—and to the Central Plain, where it has contributed around 59–84% to modern Han Chinese groups.

People from Taiwan from around 1300 BC to AD 800 derived approximately 75% of their ancestry from a lineage that is widespread in modern individuals who speak Austronesian, Tai–Kadai and Austroasiatic languages, and that we hypothesize derives from farmers of the Yangtze River Valley. Ancient people from Taiwan also derived about 25% of their ancestry from a northern lineage that is related to, but different from, farmers of the Yellow River Basin, which suggests an additional north-to-south expansion.

Ancestry from Yamnaya Steppe pastoralists arrived in western Mongolia after around 3000 BC but was displaced by previously established lineages even while it persisted in western China, as would be expected if this ancestry was associated with the spread of proto-Tocharian Indo-European languages. Two later gene flows affected western Mongolia: migrants after around 2000 BC with Yamnaya and European farmer ancestry, and episodic influences of later groups with ancestry from Turan.

IN addition to its vast patchwork of languages, cultures and religions, the Indian Subcontinent also harbours huge genetic diversity. Where did its peoples originate? This is an area of huge controversy among scholars and scientists. A University of Huddersfield PhD student is lead author of an article that tries to answer the question using genetic evidence.

A problem confronting archaeogenetic research into the origins of Indian populations is that there is a dearth of sources, such as preserved skeletal remains that can provide ancient DNA samples. Marina Silva and her co-authors have instead focused on people alive in the Subcontinent today.

By Mariana Ruiz Villarreal LadyofHats - the diagram i made myself using adobe illustrator. Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=6195050

Mitochondria are known as the 'powerhouse of the cell', creating adenosine triphosphate (ATP) through aerobic respiration, a chemical that the rest of the cell uses for energy, but also are pivotal in such tasks as cellular communication, known as cell signaling, determining what a stem cell will become, known as cellular differentiation, the timing of the cellular life cycle, from growth to division to death. Current theory is uncertain if mitochondria were endosymbiotic, that is an independent prokaryotic, a cell without a separate nucleus, was captured by a eukaryotic cell, one with a nucleus, and was able to more efficiently perform the task of using oxygen to create energy and they became reliant on each other, or if some DNA separated in the eukaryotic cell and wrapped itself in a dual layer membrane. DNA within the mitochondria form circles, unlike nuclear DNA that forms X-shaped threads. Very few cells within multicellular organisms that don't have mitochondria, such as mature red blood cells in mammals.

By C. Rottensteiner - TiGen, CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=18624647

Because sperm cells do not carry any mitochondria, all mitochondria are inherited only from the egg cell, leading to the ability to trace matrilineal family line. By comparing genetic differences in humans from a wide range of locations against the known rate of mutation, known as the mitochondrial molecular clock, which researchers found to be 'unexpectedly fast, at 0.02 substitutions per base (1%) in a million years, which is 5-10 times faster than nuclear DNA', though some research pushes that rate to up to 20 times the nuclear rate. Researchers found there was more variation in mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA) in Sub Saharan Africa than the rest of the world, indicating that a relatively small group moved out of Africa between about 90-55 thousand years ago. It's estimated that the matrilineal most recent common ancestor, or 'Mitochondrial Eve' as this person has become colloquially known, is approximately 200-140 thousand years ago in central East Africa. It's also been determined that she had 'at least two daughters who have unbroken female lineages that have survived to the present day'.

By Pdeitiker - Own work, Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=8741380

Y chromosomes of prehistoric people along the Yangtze River (2007) by Hui Li et al.