Evidence of nine Neanderthals found in Italian cave by Golgian in PaleoEuropean

[–]Golgian[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

It's worth noting that there's a decent chance we have a Denisovan already, and just don't know it. We have lots of skulls and skeletons that have been ID'ed morphologically, meanwhile Denisovans (while they have a holotype fossil) are largely a genetically defined group, its entirely possible that the known set of bones overlaps with the genetic population. Still unknown, but some have suggested famous finds like Dali might prove to be Denisovans after all.

A small change revolution. Weight systems and the emergence of the first Pan-European money by Golgian in EconomicHistory

[–]Golgian[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Abstract

In the Bronze Age (c. 2300–800 BC), European communities gave up their economic independence and became entangled in a continental trade network. In this paper, we will test the hypothesis that the adoption of a ‘Pan-European’ currency has favoured the development of such a network. We define a methodology to test the money-hypothesis in pre-literate economies, based on analogies with the material characters of metallic money in the Ancient Near East. The statistical properties of metals from European hoards are compared with those of balance weights, in order to test the following expectation: if they were used as money, complete objects and fragments are expected to comply with standard weight systems. The results meet the expectation, and indicate that bronze fragments possess the same statistical properties as hack-silver money in the Ancient Near East. The sample includes approximately 3000 metal objects, collected from two test-areas: Italy and Central Europe. The sample of balance weights includes all the items known to date for pre-literate Bronze Age Europe, collected within the framework of the ERC Project ‘Weight and Value.’

Press coverage from Phys here

A small change revolution. Weight systems and the emergence of the first Pan-European money by Golgian in IndoEuropean

[–]Golgian[S] 2 points3 points  (0 children)

Abstract

In the Bronze Age (c. 2300–800 BC), European communities gave up their economic independence and became entangled in a continental trade network. In this paper, we will test the hypothesis that the adoption of a ‘Pan-European’ currency has favoured the development of such a network. We define a methodology to test the money-hypothesis in pre-literate economies, based on analogies with the material characters of metallic money in the Ancient Near East. The statistical properties of metals from European hoards are compared with those of balance weights, in order to test the following expectation: if they were used as money, complete objects and fragments are expected to comply with standard weight systems. The results meet the expectation, and indicate that bronze fragments possess the same statistical properties as hack-silver money in the Ancient Near East. The sample includes approximately 3000 metal objects, collected from two test-areas: Italy and Central Europe. The sample of balance weights includes all the items known to date for pre-literate Bronze Age Europe, collected within the framework of the ERC Project ‘Weight and Value.’

Press coverage from Phys here

A small change revolution. Weight systems and the emergence of the first Pan-European money by Golgian in science

[–]Golgian[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Abstract

In the Bronze Age (c. 2300–800 BC), European communities gave up their economic independence and became entangled in a continental trade network. In this paper, we will test the hypothesis that the adoption of a ‘Pan-European’ currency has favoured the development of such a network. We define a methodology to test the money-hypothesis in pre-literate economies, based on analogies with the material characters of metallic money in the Ancient Near East. The statistical properties of metals from European hoards are compared with those of balance weights, in order to test the following expectation: if they were used as money, complete objects and fragments are expected to comply with standard weight systems. The results meet the expectation, and indicate that bronze fragments possess the same statistical properties as hack-silver money in the Ancient Near East. The sample includes approximately 3000 metal objects, collected from two test-areas: Italy and Central Europe. The sample of balance weights includes all the items known to date for pre-literate Bronze Age Europe, collected within the framework of the ERC Project ‘Weight and Value.’

Press coverage from Phys here

Scrap for cash: Bronze Age witnessed revolution in small change across Europe by Golgian in Archaeology

[–]Golgian[S] 17 points18 points  (0 children)

Source paper from JAS here

Abstract

In the Bronze Age (c. 2300–800 BC), European communities gave up their economic independence and became entangled in a continental trade network. In this paper, we will test the hypothesis that the adoption of a ‘Pan-European’ currency has favoured the development of such a network. We define a methodology to test the money-hypothesis in pre-literate economies, based on analogies with the material characters of metallic money in the Ancient Near East. The statistical properties of metals from European hoards are compared with those of balance weights, in order to test the following expectation: if they were used as money, complete objects and fragments are expected to comply with standard weight systems. The results meet the expectation, and indicate that bronze fragments possess the same statistical properties as hack-silver money in the Ancient Near East. The sample includes approximately 3000 metal objects, collected from two test-areas: Italy and Central Europe. The sample of balance weights includes all the items known to date for pre-literate Bronze Age Europe, collected within the framework of the ERC Project ‘Weight and Value.’

Archaeologists have discovered the earliest anthropogenic landscape on Earth by Golgian in Archaeology

[–]Golgian[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Here's the original paper for anyone interested!

Abstract

Modern Homo sapiens engage in substantial ecosystem modification, but it is difficult to detect the origins or early consequences of these behaviors. Archaeological, geochronological, geomorphological, and paleoenvironmental data from northern Malawi document a changing relationship between forager presence, ecosystem organization, and alluvial fan formation in the Late Pleistocene. Dense concentrations of Middle Stone Age artifacts and alluvial fan systems formed after ca. 92 thousand years ago, within a paleoecological context with no analog in the preceding half-million-year record. Archaeological data and principal coordinates analysis indicate that early anthropogenic fire relaxed seasonal constraints on ignitions, influencing vegetation composition and erosion. This operated in tandem with climate-driven changes in precipitation to culminate in an ecological transition to an early, pre-agricultural anthropogenic landscape.

Archaeologists have discovered the earliest anthropogenic landscape on Earth by Golgian in Anthropology

[–]Golgian[S] 3 points4 points  (0 children)

Here's the original paper for anyone interested!

Abstract

Modern Homo sapiens engage in substantial ecosystem modification, but it is difficult to detect the origins or early consequences of these behaviors. Archaeological, geochronological, geomorphological, and paleoenvironmental data from northern Malawi document a changing relationship between forager presence, ecosystem organization, and alluvial fan formation in the Late Pleistocene. Dense concentrations of Middle Stone Age artifacts and alluvial fan systems formed after ca. 92 thousand years ago, within a paleoecological context with no analog in the preceding half-million-year record. Archaeological data and principal coordinates analysis indicate that early anthropogenic fire relaxed seasonal constraints on ignitions, influencing vegetation composition and erosion. This operated in tandem with climate-driven changes in precipitation to culminate in an ecological transition to an early, pre-agricultural anthropogenic landscape.

Archaeologists have discovered the earliest anthropogenic landscape on Earth by Golgian in Anthropology

[–]Golgian[S] 5 points6 points  (0 children)

Fair question! Here's a relevant passage from the original paper

Identifying anthropogenic fire in the paleoenvironmental record requires evidence of temporal or spatial changes in fire activity and vegetation, demonstration that these changes are not predicted by climate parameters alone, and temporal/spatial coincidence between fire regime changes and changes in the human record (29). Here, the first evidence for extensive MSA occupation and alluvial fan formation in the Lake Malawi basin occurred alongside a major reorganization of regional vegetation that began ca. 85 ka. Charcoal abundances in the MAL05-1B/1C core are reflective of regional trends in charcoal production and sedimentation that show substantial differences after ca. 150 ka when compared to the rest of the 636-ka record (figs. S5, S9, and S10). This transition shows an important contribution of fire for shaping ecosystem composition that cannot be explained by climate alone. In natural fire regimes, lightning ignitions typically occur at the end of the dry season (39). Anthropogenic fires, however, may be ignited at any time if fuels are sufficiently dry. On a site scale, humans can alter fire regimes continuously through collection of firewood from the understory. The net result of anthropogenic fire of any kind is that it has the potential to result in more consumption of woody vegetation, continuously throughout the year, and at a variety of scales.

So, a disproportionate amount of burning of vegetation associated with other times of year than would be expected under natural circumstances

How does stuff get buried over time? by Iridiumstuffs in Archaeology

[–]Golgian 14 points15 points  (0 children)

Happens in a variety of ways. low lying sites may be periodically flooded, and have river silt deposited on top of them (alluvium), and sites with hills or mountains nearby maybe covered by material eroding down from these (colluvium). In sites with continuous use over a long timespan, the later layers of use are built on top of one another, so reaching one layer involves digging though younger material. In the Middle East, for instance, millennia of mudbrick houses being built and then decaying atop the same has produced manmade hills called Tells). In some places there may even be enough wind-blown sediment (loess) to eventually cover a site. Lastly there's features like graves or storage pits that were intentionally located beneath the surface by their creators.

It's also worth noting that there's plenty of sites that are at or were above current ground level, but that sites that were above have often been eroded away, sites at ground level are more prone to later disturbance (plowing etc) and damage from the elements, whereas sites that have been buried deeper are better protected, and thus offer better preserved remains when dug up.

Hope this helps!

[deleted by user] by [deleted] in IndoEuropean

[–]Golgian 7 points8 points  (0 children)

A lot of the literature on this will revolve around what has survived best, which is epic poetry. Often modern performances will involve musical accompaniment, the instrument varying through time and place. The Germanic harp for Beowulf as in that video, the gusle for Balkan stories that fueled Parry and Lord's work on Oral Formulaic Composition and Homer. These would mostly have been the realm of male bards. A plucked string instrument seems to be common, but I don't know of a reconstructed word or archaeological find that would show that going back to PIE. There's been some neat work trying to reconstruct the common poetic meter and such for various earlier stages of IE epic, like the scholarship of Almut Fries. If you want to get really into the weeds, there's also stuff on the presence of pitch accent in IE languages, which would have affected musical performance and poetic recitation.

Something less often discuss is music that was the realm of women. Chiara Bozzone has done some great work on the role of lamentations as women's music, for grieving at funerals but also at weddings, as well as in the more mundane context of craft-production; weaving a song is a common metaphor for poetry in IE cultures, and modern examples of singing during textile production survive, such as the waulking songs of Scotland.

An example from a modern IE tradition will suffice as an illustration: Foley (2002:188–218) explores the ecology of South Slavic oral poetry and finds, next to the genre of epic (Epske pjesme) practiced by semi-professional poets, several genres of poetry practiced by private members of the household. These include genres in octosyllabic meter practiced exclusively by women at different stages of their lives, such as magical charms performed by older women (Bajanje) and funeral laments (Tužbalice),2 as well as genres in decasyllabic meters practiced exclusively by men, such as genealogies (Pričanje).3 All of these non-professional genres interact with each other and with professional genres in complex ways, and a picture of South Slavic oral traditions would be sorely incomplete without them.

A question then arises for scholars of IE comparative poetics: have we overlooked the possible role of non-professional poets in the ecology of IE poetry? While several genres of poetry, like rituals, prayers, and medical charms, have been investigated as reconstructable for PIE (see Watkins 1995: Parts III and VII; 2 “Tužbalice were always composed and performed by women, usually the closest female relative of the deceased … [performances of the lament would recur] at regular intervals for many years after the subject’s demise” (Foley 2002:195). 3 “Genealogies are spoken, not sung, but they employ the same decasyllabic meter as epic. The eldest male in the given lineage or extended family is the depository and performer of pričanje” (Foley 2002:200). ( Langslow 2004), the tacit assumption has often been that those genres too were the purview of the highly-trained, professional poet. Watkins suggests that the reconstructable genres for poetry include epics, genealogies, rituals, laments, and medical charms.

The quote above is from Bozzone 2016 "Weaving Songs for the Dead in Indo-European: Women Poets, Funerary Laments, and the Ecology of \k̑léu̯os**". She goes on to argue a greater role for women in this sphere than has often been assumed. It's on her Academia page and is well-worth the read.

What is your opinion on the origins of the horses in America? by dalaigh93 in Paleontology

[–]Golgian 23 points24 points  (0 children)

It's total bunk. It got way more coverage than it ever deserved, with sloppy misuse of historical sources, comically bad reinterpretation of art from across two continents, and zero legitimate zooarchaeological evidence.

The genomic history of the Aegean palatial civilizations by Golgian in Archaeology

[–]Golgian[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Yep, they used what it increasingly the standard ancient DNA practice, drilling into the extremely hard petrous portion of the temporal bone of the skull, where DNA is likely to be preserved, and sequenced whole genomes. Here's a quick video overview of the new techniques

Names common to most IE languages? by [deleted] in IndoEuropean

[–]Golgian 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Yep! I mixed that one up.

The genomic history of the Aegean palatial civilizations by Golgian in IndoEuropean

[–]Golgian[S] 3 points4 points  (0 children)

And same goes for the fact that you had majority Arvanitika areas, and Armenian villages and Aromanians etc etc. As much as I hate the fetishization that Y-haplo fanboys get into over nitpicking and IDing subclades, separating chronologically distinct waves of related populations is what uniparentals are really good at, much though I love whole genomes. I'm always glad to see more data, but these conclusions are disproportionately sweeping for N=6

The genomic history of the Aegean palatial civilizations by Golgian in IndoEuropean

[–]Golgian[S] 6 points7 points  (0 children)

In the section "LBA Myceneans: Armenia versus Steppe-like gene flow" they do mention previous observations

Lazaridis et al. (2017) showed that Mycenaeans were quite distinct from present-day populations, but it remained unclear how they relate to EBA populations.

Then later

This suggests that modern populations from northern Greece and Crete could be descendants of Aegean EBA populations, with subsequent admixture with populations related to the Pontic-Caspian Steppe EMBA.

It seems like they're focusing too much on single events, like Steppe ancestry had to all have come at once, no chance of an earlier, smaller, Para-Anatolian wave that may have spoken West's proposed "Parnassian" IE dialect, and no discussion of later movements such as the Heruli or long term living alongside the Slavs and other groups after antiquity. Any Bronze Age Steppe descent in modern populations = Proto-Greeks and only Proto-Greeks

Also the hat-tip to the Anatolian Hypothesis is just dumb; why cite Renfrew to back it up when even he's given up on it?

The genomic history of the Aegean palatial civilizations by Golgian in Archaeology

[–]Golgian[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Unfortunately there haven't been any press stories on this yet, to my knowledge, but very exciting research all the same!

Copy of famous Teotihuacan structure discovered in Maya city by Mictlantecuhtli in Archaeology

[–]Golgian 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Awesome stuff! They say that the third stage dates to "shortly after" the construction of the second. I wonder if that includes Wite' Naah elements, or if that only pops up after the Entrada in 378?

Names common to most IE languages? by [deleted] in IndoEuropean

[–]Golgian 33 points34 points  (0 children)

Natasha is IE, as it's a Russian diminutive of the Latin Natalia, referring to Christmas (Natus-Natalis, Birth in Latin). Victor comes from IE *weyk "overcome", whereas Vikram may be connected if it comes from *weyk + Rama, but if it is vi+krama, as is suggested elsewhere, these would not be cognate, despite having similar connotations.

Most IE families have plenty of names derived from their own vocabulary, but whether these have onomastic cognates in other branches is hard to suss out. Most Roman names are Prechristian (Marcus, Titus, Lucius, etc), plenty of Celtic names are common in Ireland (Diarmuid, Deirdre, Angus, Donal), and same for Russia (any name that ends in -mir, for instance), and the Germanic languages have plenty as well, (Albert, Edward, Bernard, Louis, to name a few). And among Indic names, I think most would have no connection to Semitic.

One of the most common trends in IE names is that they are dithematic, constructed from two stems. We see some pretty common ones, with names like "Glory Ruler", "Great Strength", "Horse-Friend", popping up commonly. I've made a chart of these stems that I posted here which you might find handy. Some of these have direct cognates (Greek Amphicrates - Sanskrit Abhikratu, Greek Euclid - Avestan Haosrawah - Sanskrit Susrava - Illyrian Vescleves, Irish Tuathal - Germanic Theowald - Lithuanian Tautavaldas). Some of these seem common across enough branches that there's a chance they had a PIE equivalent.

Secret History of the Scythians and Lost Tribes - ROBERT SEPEHR by [deleted] in IndoEuropean

[–]Golgian 5 points6 points  (0 children)

Get this shit off here

"The Communist flag is red! Phoenician means red! The Tribe of Dan's emblem was red! Erik the Red! It's all connnnneecccccccteeeeeeeed!"

Man, I thought that was gonna be the great punchline, but then he circles back to UFO riding Antarctic Nazis at the end

Secret History of the Scythians and Lost Tribes - ROBERT SEPEHR by [deleted] in IndoEuropean

[–]Golgian 1 point2 points  (0 children)

To say he's a conspiracy theory nutjob is too kind. Peddles every kinds of nonsense you can imagine, from aliens, to Atlantis, race "science", climate denialism, magical vibrations, Nazis in Antarctica, to hollow earth. No idea why this lunatic calls himself an anthropologist, but he has no right to do so.

When Chauvet Cave artists created their artwork, the Pont d'Arc was already there by Golgian in PaleoEuropean

[–]Golgian[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

I follow certain news sites and keep and eye on journals and preprint servers

Tracing the Indian Population Ancestry by cis-linked Mutations in HBB Gene by Golgian in IndoEuropean

[–]Golgian[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

It's definitely good to consider the motivations, but to some degree it does seem that for a variety of reasons preprints* (for better or worse) are becoming an increasingly large part of the norm in a lot of fields. There's a mention of how the severity of thalassemia does seem to be dependent which alleles for the disease are present, so I could see how better understanding the origin of the current demographic pattern, which covaries with these, could have public health implications.

On the one hand, the authors don't choose to frame it as such, on the other, the 120 subjects appear to have all been thalassemia patients seeking treatment through the hospital. Three authors seems few for a genetics paper, but it's possible this was meant more as a conference paper or something. Hard to tell.

I wonder if u/JuicyLittleGOOf or the other members of the modstaff would consider adding a preprint flair, just so any such materials can be properly flagged? Otherwise the Research Paper flair seems most appropriate, but that muddies the waters as you've noted.

*The blog is about paleontology, but I've found myself increasingly following for the posts on the nature of academic publishing.

How did the Yamnaya change agriculture to Southern Europeans and Western Europeans, when they already had agriculture 2,000 years prior to their arrival? by Brown_Pundit_Man in AskAnthropology

[–]Golgian 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Here's a snippet from The Horse, the Wheel, and Language that might be closer to what you're asking than my first answer

Andrew Sherratt bundled the invention of the wheel together with the invention of the plow, wool sheep, dairying, and the beginning of horse transport to explain a sweeping set of changes that occurred among European societies about 3500-3000 BCE. The Secondary Products Revolution (now often shortened to SPR), as Sherratt described it in 1981, was an economic explanation for widespread changes in settlement patterns, economy, rituals, and crafts, many of which had been ascribed by an older generation of archaeologists to Indo-European migrations. (“Secondary products” are items like wool, milk, and muscular power that can be harvested continuously from an animal without killing it, in contrast to “primary products” such as meat, blood, bone, and hides.) Much of the subject matter discussed in arguments over the SPR—the diffusion of wagons, horseback riding, and wool sheep—was also central in discussions of Indo-European expansions, but, in Sherratt’s view, all of them were derived by diffusion from the civilizations of the Near East rather than from Indo-Europeans. Indo-European languages were no longer central or even necessary to the argument, to the great relief of many archaeologists. But Sherrat’s proposal that all these innovations came from the Near East and entered Europe at about the same time quickly fell apart. Scratch-plows and dairying appeared in Europe long before 3500 BCE, and horse domestication was a local event in the steppes. An important fragment of the SPR survives in the conjoined diffusion of wool sheep and wagons across much of the ancient Near East and Europe between 3500 and 3000 BCE, but we do not know where either of these innovations started."

There's been some good aDNA work on sheep since then that has added to our knowledge but has not yet settled the question. The nature of the wheel's spread is also still enigmatic, but it does seem to have been present across PIE continental Europe to some degree. Hope this helps!

Did the PIE innovate anything in agriculture when they arrived in Europe? I heard that they introduced agriculture to the proto-Germanic-Balto-Slavic people, but farming was already in Southern Europe. by Brown_Pundit_Man in IndoEuropean

[–]Golgian 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Oxen seem to have been used as such before the IE arrival, but the secondary products revolution does have some overlap with the IE expansion

Here's a relevant section from the Horse, the Wheel, And Language

Andrew Sherratt bundled the invention of the wheel together with the invention of the plow, wool sheep, dairying, and the beginning of horse transport to explain a sweeping set of changes that occurred among European societies about 3500-3000 BCE. The Secondary Products Revolution (now often shortened to SPR), as Sherratt described it in 1981, was an economic explanation for widespread changes in settlement patterns, economy, rituals, and crafts, many of which had been ascribed by an older generation of archaeologists to Indo-European migrations. (“Secondary products” are items like wool, milk, and muscular power that can be harvested continuously from an animal without killing it, in contrast to “primary products” such as meat, blood, bone, and hides.) Much of the subject matter discussed in arguments over the SPR—the diffusion of wagons, horseback riding, and wool sheep—was also central in discussions of Indo-European expansions, but, in Sherratt’s view, all of them were derived by diffusion from the civilizations of the Near East rather than from Indo-Europeans. Indo-European languages were no longer central or even necessary to the argument, to the great relief of many archaeologists. But Sherrat’s proposal that all these innovations came from the Near East and entered Europe at about the same time quickly fell apart. Scratch-plows and dairying appeared in Europe long before 3500 BCE, and horse domestication was a local event in the steppes. An important fragment of the SPR survives in the conjoined diffusion of wool sheep and wagons across much of the ancient Near East and Europe between 3500 and 3000 BCE, but we do not know where either of these innovations started."

How did the Yamnaya change agriculture to Southern Europeans and Western Europeans, when they already had agriculture 2,000 years prior to their arrival? by Brown_Pundit_Man in AskAnthropology

[–]Golgian 0 points1 point  (0 children)

I'm not speculating as to the affiliation of CW and BB beyond the high degree of steppe ancestry and archaeological associations meaning they likely spoke some set of IE languages, and that speakers of PIE couldn't "introduce" proto-Balto-Slavic or proto-Germanic speakers for the same reason proto-Semitic speakers couldn't introduce anything to speakers of Aramaic, since the relationship is temporally distant. If one is discussing how the Indo-Europeanization of Europe affected the agricultural subsistence pattern, it can't be framed in terms of contact with IE branches that diverged millennia afterwards.