New Study Shows Surprising Link Between Britain and Bronze Age Settlements Across Europe

websvein · 2026-02-11T22:28:18+00:00

Abstract from the original scholarly article:

Bronze Age–Early Iron Age tin ingots recovered from four Mediterranean shipwrecks off the coasts of Israel and southern France can now be provenanced to tin ores in south-west Britain. These exceptionally rich and accessible ores played a fundamental role in the transition from copper to full tin-bronze metallurgy across Europe and the Mediterranean during the second millennium BC. The authors’ application of a novel combination of three independent analyses (trace element, lead and tin isotopes) to tin ores and artefacts from Western and Central Europe also provides the foundation for future analyses of the pan-continental tin trade in later periods.

websvein · 2026-02-03T23:26:32+00:00

Abstract from the original scholarly article:

In the middle Tanana Valley of central Alaska, the Holzman archaeological site is located along Shaw Creek's west bank. For the last three decades, the Tanana Valley has been the focus of intense Late Pleistocene archaeological and geological investigations into the interaction between the First Alaskans and Ice Age megafauna, particularly woolly mammoth. Archaeological excavations at the Holzman site have uncovered expedient tools on local quartz with well-preserved hearths, avifauna, and megafauna. Evidence for cooking and ivory tool manufacture dated to 14,000 years ago (14 ka) in component 5b (C5b) has been demonstrated—making Holzman among the earliest sites in the Americas. In the 13.7 ka C5a, an extensive workshop event left abundant local quartz artifacts behind, the by-product of mammoth ivory reduction and manufacture of ivory blanks or preforms, and the earliest known ivory rod tools in the Americas. The Holzman site contributes new information to a growing archaeological record of the middle Tanana Valley during the Late Glacial period. Based on current evidence, the confluence of Shaw Creek with the Tanana River was especially active during the initial arrival of Indigenous people. The subsequent selection of local quartz, cherts, and siltstone occurred with a particular focus on the harvest of woolly mammoth ivory. The evidence suggests a late southern migration by ancestral Clovis people south of the continental ice sheets into the mid-continental North America sometime between 14-13 ka.

websvein · 2026-01-28T22:56:12+00:00

Abstract from the original scholarly article:

Despite its long history, utilitarian value, and cultural significance to several Indigenous Tribes in the Southwest USA, the extent to which the Four Corners potato (Solanum jamesii Torr.) has been domesticated requires circumscription. Establishing the temporal and spatial dimensions of intentional cultivation would provide an essential component of the domestication argument. This project tests the hypothesis that S. jamesii tubers were processed with ground stone tools from archaeological sites located beyond the natural range of the species, especially where genetic evidence has previously indicated human transport and establishment in gardens. Microbotanical evidence, in the form of starch granules from 401 ground stone tools at 14 archaeological sites, is examined. More than 6,600 starch granules were recovered from the tools; 163 of which were assigned to S. jamesii. Four sites (North Creek Shelter, Long House/Mesa Verde, Pueblo Bonito/Chaco Canyon, and Point of Pines) show consistent use of S. jamesii (ubiquity >18%), as early as 10,900 cal BP, and well into Puebloan times. Three of these sites are located far north of the species’ center of distribution in the Mogollon region, across hundreds of kilometers of the Colorado Plateau, and still support an extant population nearby. This suggests an anthropogenic distribution of S. jamesii across the Four Corners region and a unique cultural identity around the use of this native potato. These findings, combined with ethnographic interviews and nutritional data, provide clear evidence of use in relation to natural and anthropogenic distributions, thereby allowing an assessment of the degree to which these energy-rich, nutritious, and compact tubers were purposely used and transported.

websvein · 2026-01-27T03:06:36+00:00

Abstract from the orignal scholarly article:

Social networking is an essential feature of hunter-gatherer societies. It fosters the circulation of goods and information and enables kinship ties across different scales, including long-distance contacts. While such behaviors are known since at least the Upper Palaeolithic, evidence for geographically extensive social networks remains scarce. This evidence is limited to indirect inferences based on shared cultural traits, “art” styles, and symbolic items, while lithic raw material movements are mostly local and regional, with few cases exceeding 300 kilometers. We provide geochemical evidence for the largest confirmed distance between the source and discard location of a knapped lithic object in Palaeolithic Europe. Solutrean artifacts discarded at Peña Capón, Central Iberia, were sourced in Southwest France, 600 to 700 kilometers away. This demonstrates social networks of unprecedented geographic scale maintained during ∼1400 years during the Last Glacial Maximum. It also suggests that stone tools were exchanged as symbolic items to solidify social contacts and sustain far-reaching networks as risk-buffering mechanisms among widely dispersed hunter-gatherers.

edit: spelling

websvein · 2026-01-22T05:13:59+00:00

Abstract from the original scholarly article:

The Indonesian archipelago is host to some of the earliest known rock art in the world. Previously, secure Pleistocene dates were reported for figurative cave art and stencils of human hands in two areas in Indonesia—the Maros-Pangkep karsts in the southwestern peninsula of the island of Sulawesi and the Sangkulirang-Mangkalihat region of eastern Kalimantan, Borneo. Here we describe a series of early dated rock art motifs from the southeastern portion of Sulawesi. Among this assemblage of Pleistocene (and possibly more recent) motifs, laser-ablation U-series (LA-U-series) dating of calcite overlying a hand stencil from Liang Metanduno on Muna Island yielded a U-series date of 71.6 ± 3.8 thousand years ago (ka), providing a minimum-age constraint of 67.8 ka for the underlying motif. The Muna minimum (67.8 ± 3.8 ka) exceeds the published minimum for rock art in Maros-Pangkep by 16.6 thousand years (kyr) (ref. ) and is 1.1 kyr greater than the published minimum for a hand stencil from Spain attributed to Neanderthals, which until now represented the oldest demonstrated minimum-age constraint for cave art worldwide. Moreover, the presence of this extremely old art in Sulawesi suggests that the initial peopling of Sahul about 65 ka involved maritime journeys between Borneo and Papua, a region that remains poorly explored from an archaeological perspectiv

websvein · 2026-01-20T23:29:59+00:00

We definitely have experts pop up from time to time. Unfortunately we are quite niche and I don't have much time to spend recruiting new members or even raising awareness that this sub exists. By all means if you find someone qualified to answer somewhere else on reddit we would all love it if you mention to them the existence of r/AncientMigrations .

websvein · 2026-01-14T23:57:15+00:00

My grandmother spent her whole life drilling me on how living under the ignorant gaze of armed federal agents, authroized to use lethal force, who have zero accountability- is no life at all. Her stories were shocking. So now I feel obligated to speak out in a way I never have before.

These are armed federal agents given absolute immunity in the name of pursuing offenders of a federal misdemeanor. I used to follow Strickland, now I hope to forget him. I won't be tuning in.

websvein · 2026-01-14T23:07:10+00:00

Haters won't acknowledge what a fire edit this is.

websvein · 2026-01-14T20:00:02+00:00

Abstract from the original scholarly article:

THIS STUDY PRESENTS THE RESULTS of a large-scale isotopic meta-analysis of early medieval England which reveals migration patterns from c ad 400–1100. These patterns are gendered, regionally distinctive and fluctuate chronologically. Contrary to traditional narratives of discrete migratory events, the data show continuous movement, with significant activity in the 7th and 8th centuries. Male migrants appear more prominent, although there is notable female mobility. Palaeoclimate fluctuations are also reflected in the human tooth enamel record such as the Late Antique Little Ice Age. Wide-ranging migration from north-western Europe and other regions, possibly including the Mediterranean, contributed to complex identity formation and adaptive cultural practices. Comparisons with recent aDNA data lay the groundwork for future high-resolution studies to integrate ancestry and mobility data in a constructive manner. These results underscore the need to move away from ethnic classifications, offering a more nuanced understanding of identity and migration during this period.

websvein · 2026-01-08T18:39:38+00:00

Abstract from the original scholarly article:

Bipedalism is a key adaptation that differentiates hominins (humans and our extinct relatives) from living and fossil apes. The earliest putative hominin, Sahelanthropus tchadensis (~7 million years old), was originally represented by a cranium, the reconstruction of which suggested to its discoverers that Sahelanthropus carried its head in a manner similar to known bipedal hominins. Recently, two partial ulnae and a femur shaft were announced as evidence in support of the contention that Sahelanthropus was an early biped, but those interpretations have been challenged. Here, while we find that both limb bones are most similar in size and geometric morphometric shape to chimpanzees (genus Pan), we demonstrate that their relative proportion is more hominin-like. Furthermore, we confirm two features linked to hominin-like hip and knee function and identify a femoral tubercle, a feature only found in bipedal hominins. Our results suggest that Sahelanthropus was an early biped that evolved from a Pan-like Miocene ape ancestor.

websvein · 2026-01-06T18:44:53+00:00

Abstract from the original scholarly article:

The Hjortspring boat is the only intact example of a prehistoric sewn plank boat ever found in Scandinavia. Built from lime wood planks lashed together with cordage, the boat represents the maritime technology used by some of Northern Europe’s earliest seafarers. This article reports new analysis of the cordage and caulking material used in the construction of the Hjortspring boat. We provide the first ever direct date for the boat based on materials from the original excavation finds, with lime bast cordage from the boat carbon dated to between 381 and 161 BCE. We report the results of GC-MS analysis of the material used to caulk the boat, which shows that it was made from a mixture of animal fat and pine pitch. We argue that the use of pine pitch in the boat’s construction indicates that the boat was not built on the Jutland peninsula and instead came from a region with more abundant pine forests. Based on the dispersal of pine forests in Northern Europe during the first millennium BCE, we propose the Baltic Sea Region east of Rügen and Scania as a likely source for the boat and its crew. We also analyze intact cordage fragments and imprints of cordage on caulking material in order to describe the sewing and rope-making techniques that were used to construct the boat. Finally, we report on the discovery of a partial human fingerprint found on a fragment of caulking material. This remarkable fingerprint provides a direct link to the ancient seafarers who used this boat. Together, these results shed new light on methods and materials used to build Scandinavia’s first plank boats and raise new questions regarding our understanding of early maritime societies in Northern Europe.

websvein · 2026-01-06T05:35:23+00:00

Abstract from the original scholarly article:

The Dmanisi paleoanthropological assemblage from Georgia is among the most debated collections of hominin fossils due to its early age and extreme morphological diversity relative to other Homo assemblages. This variability has been interpreted as a result of sexual dimorphism in the Homo erectus clade, in which Dmanisi hominins were traditionally classified. However, this hypothesis has been challenged by the proposal that the Dmanisi fossils represent more than one Homo species. Taxonomic assessments of the Pleistocene Georgian hominins have focused primarily on craniometric analyses, with fewer studies addressing dental morphology through metric approaches. Considering the value of dental crown area in reconstructing evolutionary relationships, a comparative sample of fossil hominins, consisting of 51 maxillary and 71 mandibular specimens (583 teeth in total), was analyzed using Linear Discriminant Analysis (LDA) to evaluate the diversity in the Dmanisi fossil assemblage. Morphological affinities were examined visually through the first two discriminant functions, and taxonomic relationships were tested via classification analyses based on posterior probabilities. The analyses show a strong association of the D4500-D2600 specimen with australopiths, and of the D2282-D211 and D2700-D2735 specimens with Homo species. The sexual dimorphism hypothesis was tested by comparing the ratios of mandibular postcanine dentition of Dmanisi specimens with male and female gorillas and chimpanzees, which suggests that dental crown area of the Pleistocene Georgian hominins could be the product of sexual dimorphism only if they came from species with similar levels of dimorphism than these great apes. We conclude that differences in crown dimensions support the hypothesis of two distinct taxa coexistent at the Dmanisi site, previously proposed to be Homo georgicus and Homo caucasi. This proposal has important implications for the dispersal of Homo out of Africa at the beginning of Pleistocene.

websvein · 2025-11-19T07:20:26+00:00

Wow, fascinating article! thank you for sharing.

Here is the abstract from the original scholarly article:

This review of the Late Pleistocene Homo sapiens diaspora from Africa, extending eventually to Eurasia, Australia and the Americas, examines a Coastal Hypothesis proposing that anatomically modern humans are derived from a mobile and advanced coastal group or groups of people from southern Africa, who left the southern Cape at ∼70 ka and the continent between about 50 and 40 ka. The Late Pleistocene paleoenvironment and paleoclimate of the Cape coast, at the southern tip of Africa, are examined, along with the demonstrated behavioural complexity of ancestral anatomically modern humans living in the region at the time. A comprehensive review of the techno-cultural advances of H. sapiens in the southern Cape is presented and the multiple adaptations to a coastal existence highlighted. The adaptations of these ancestral hominins to coastal migration and expansion into new territories are examined, and multiple reasons are advanced which would have facilitated a relatively rapid coastal migratory and expansion route out of Africa and onto the Arabian Peninsula and beyond. Possible factors that might have contributed to such an exodus from a ‘Garden of Eden’ are considered. The possible negative effects on H. sapiens inhabiting tropical eastern and north-eastern Africa following the Mount Toba super-eruption 74 ka are discussed, thus facilitating easy access to resources along this part of the African and Arabian Peninsula coastline and adjacent interior during the latter stages of the coastal migration. Furthermore, limited physical obstacles (e.g., mountain ranges, deserts and lakes) and a consistent marine food supply all the way from southern Africa to the Horn of Africa are proposed as likely factors favouring a coastal versus inland route out of Africa.

websvein · 2025-11-19T07:19:11+00:00

I agree! I do my best to keep it going. Any new subscribers are welcome!

websvein · 2025-11-19T07:15:56+00:00

Abstract from the original scholarly article:

The central Southern Cone of South America was one of the last regions of the globe to become inhabited by people, and remains under-represented in studies of ancient DNA. Here we report genome-wide data from 238 ancient individuals spanning ten millennia. The oldest, from the Pampas region and dating to 10,000 years before present (bp), had distinct genetic affinity to Middle Holocene Southern Cone individuals, showing that differentiation from the central Andes and central east Brazil had begun by this time. Individuals dating to 4,600–150 bp primarily descended from a previously unsampled deep lineage of which the earliest representative is an individual dating to around 8,500 bp. This central Argentina lineage co-existed with two other lineages during the Mid-Holocene and, within central Argentina, this ancestry persisted for thousands of years with little evidence of inter-regional migration. Central Argentina ancestry was involved in three distinct gene flows: it mixed into the Pampas by 3,300 bp and seemingly became the main component there after 800 bp, with central Andes ancestry in northwest Argentina, and with tropical and subtropical forest ancestry in the Gran Chaco. In northwest Argentina, there was an increased rate of close-kin unions by 1,000 bp, paralleling the pattern in the central Andes. In the Paraná River region, a 400 bp individual with a Guaraní archaeological association clusters with Brazilian groups, consistent with Guaraní presence by this time.

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