scholarly journals Genetic contributions to variation in human stature in prehistoric Europe

2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Samantha L. Cox ◽  
Christopher B. Ruff ◽  
Robert M. Maier ◽  
Iain Mathieson
Keyword(s):  
Bronze Age ◽  
Geographic Variation ◽  
Ancient Dna ◽  
Bending Strength ◽  
Skeletal Remains ◽  
Upper Paleolithic ◽  
Mineral Density ◽  
The Past ◽  
Relative Contribution ◽  
Over Time

AbstractThe relative contributions of genetics and environment to temporal and geographic variation in human height remain largely unknown. Ancient DNA has identified changes in genetic ancestry over time, but it is not clear whether those changes in ancestry are associated with changes in height. Here, we directly test whether changes over the past 38,000 years in European height predicted using DNA from 1071 ancient individuals are consistent with changes observed in 1159 skeletal remains from comparable populations. We show that the observed decrease in height between the Early Upper Paleolithic and the Mesolithic is qualitatively predicted by genetics. Similarly, both skeletal and genetic height remained constant between the Mesolithic and Neolithic and increased between the Neolithic and Bronze Age. Sitting height changes much less than standing height–consistent with genetic predictions–although genetics predicts a small Bronze Age increase that is not observed in skeletal remains. Geographic variation in stature is also qualitatively consistent with genetic predictions, particularly with respect to latitude. Finally, we hypothesize that an observed decrease in genetic heel bone mineral density in the Neolithic reflects adaptation to the decreased mobility indicated by decreased femoral bending strength. This study provides a model for interpreting phenotypic changes predicted from ancient DNA and demonstrates how they can be combined with phenotypic measurements to understand the relative contribution of genetic and developmentally plastic responses to environmental change.SignificanceMeasurements of prehistoric human skeletal remains provide a record of changes in height and other anthropometric traits, over time. Often, these changes are interpreted in terms of plastic developmental response to shifts in diet, climate or other environmental factors. These changes can also be genetic in origin but, until recently, it has been impossible to separate the effects of genetics and environment. Here we use ancient DNA to directly estimate genetic changes in phenotypes and to identify changes driven not by genetics, but by environment. We show that changes over the past 35,000 years are largely predicted by genetics, but also identify specific shifts that are more likely to be environmentally driven.

scholarly journals Genetic contributions to variation in human stature in prehistoric Europe

2019 ◽  
Vol 116 (43) ◽  
pp. 21484-21492 ◽  
Author(s):  
Samantha L. Cox ◽  
Christopher B. Ruff ◽  
Robert M. Maier ◽  
Iain Mathieson
Keyword(s):  
Bronze Age ◽  
Geographic Variation ◽  
Ancient Dna ◽  
Bending Strength ◽  
Skeletal Remains ◽  
Upper Paleolithic ◽  
Mineral Density ◽  
Relative Contribution ◽  
Heel Bone ◽  
Genetic Contributions

The relative contributions of genetics and environment to temporal and geographic variation in human height remain largely unknown. Ancient DNA has identified changes in genetic ancestry over time, but it is not clear whether those changes in ancestry are associated with changes in height. Here, we directly test whether changes over the past 38,000 y in European height predicted using DNA from 1,071 ancient individuals are consistent with changes observed in 1,159 skeletal remains from comparable populations. We show that the observed decrease in height between the Early Upper Paleolithic and the Mesolithic is qualitatively predicted by genetics. Similarly, both skeletal and genetic height remained constant between the Mesolithic and Neolithic and increased between the Neolithic and Bronze Age. Sitting height changes much less than standing height—consistent with genetic predictions—although genetics predicts a small post-Neolithic increase that is not observed in skeletal remains. Geographic variation in stature is also qualitatively consistent with genetic predictions, particularly with respect to latitude. Finally, we hypothesize that an observed decrease in genetic heel bone mineral density in the Neolithic reflects adaptation to the decreased mobility indicated by decreased femoral bending strength. This study provides a model for interpreting phenotypic changes predicted from ancient DNA and demonstrates how they can be combined with phenotypic measurements to understand the relative contribution of genetic and developmentally plastic responses to environmental change.

scholarly journals Genome‐wide SNP typing of ancient DNA: Determination of hair and eye color of Bronze Age humans from their skeletal remains

2020 ◽  
Vol 172 (1) ◽  
pp. 99-109 ◽  
Author(s):  
Nicole Schmidt ◽  
Katharina Schücker ◽  
Ina Krause ◽  
Thilo Dörk ◽  
Michael Klintschar ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Bronze Age ◽  
Ancient Dna ◽  
Skeletal Remains ◽  
Eye Color ◽  
Snp Typing ◽  
Genome Wide

Palaeopathology of osteoarthritis

2016 ◽  
Author(s):  
Juliet Rogers ◽  
Paul Dieppe
Keyword(s):  
Bone Formation ◽  
Skeletal Remains ◽  
Human Populations ◽  
New Bone Formation ◽  
Osteophyte Formation ◽  
The Past ◽  
High Prevalence ◽  
Different Types ◽  
Source Of Information ◽  
Over Time

Palaeopathology is the study of disease in the past. Various different types of data can be used, including literature, paintings, and sculpture. In addition, for the rheumatic diseases, skeletal remains offer a particularly rich source of information for the palaeopathologist. This chapter only discusses the skeletal palaeopathology of osteoarthritis (OA). OA leaves characteristic imprints on the skeleton, such as osteophytes and bony sclerosis, which survive death, burial, and the recovery of skeletons. This has allowed researchers to compare the prevalence and distribution of OA within and between joints in skeletal collections obtained from different ancient populations in various countries. The data have shown that while OA has been common in all human populations studied, the nature, prevalence, and intra-articular distribution of the disease in different joints have probably changed over time. A high prevalence of elbow OA has been observed in many collections of human skeletons, suggesting that this joint may be more prone to the disease than generally thought, but that it might remain asymptomatic in the majority of people affected. In addition, skeletal palaeopathologists have found an association between osteophyte formation and enthesophytes, suggesting that some people may have a predisposition to osteoarticular changes characterized by new bone formation. OA has also been described and studied in different primate and other animal skeletons, providing further fascinating insights into the condition.

scholarly journals Recently excavated Iron Age burials from the Western Isles

2018 ◽  
Vol 40 (1) ◽  
pp. 55-82 ◽  
Author(s):  
Martin Cook
Keyword(s):  
Bronze Age ◽  
Iron Age ◽  
Coastal Erosion ◽  
Skeletal Remains ◽  
The Body ◽  
Human Skeletal Remains ◽  
The Past ◽  
Burial Practice ◽  
The Common ◽  
New Evidence

Between 2004 and 2008, AOC Archaeology Group undertook the excavation of four separate Iron Age burials. These remains had been exposed by coastal erosion, and were excavated under the terms of the Historic Scotland Call-Off Contract for Human Remains; the four inhumations were fully excavated and radiocarbon dated. The excavations provide new evidence for Iron Age burial practice in the Western Isles and, more generally, Scotland. The examples discussed here from Scarista, Vallay, Griminish and Drimsdale were all unaccompanied burials, which by the position of the body in the grave and/or the grave setting, may have, in the past, been interpreted as possible Bronze Age or Early Historic graves in the absence of direct dates obtained from the human skeletal remains. These recent discoveries emphasise the necessity for the application of radiocarbon techniques (in the common absence of grave goods) to classify burials chronologically.

Introduction

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Telesca Giuseppe
Keyword(s):  
Structural Analysis ◽  
Institutional Change ◽  
Cultural Context ◽  
The Past ◽  
Final Goal ◽  
Social Structural ◽  
Country Analysis ◽  
Cross Country ◽  
Over Time

The ambition of this book is to combine different bodies of scholarship that in the past have been interested in (1) providing social/structural analysis of financial elites, (2) measuring their influence, or (3) exploring their degree of persistence/circulation. The final goal of the volume is to investigate the adjustment of financial elites to institutional change, and to assess financial elites’ contribution to institutional change. To reach this goal, the nine chapters of the book introduced here look at financial elites’ role in different European societies and markets over time, and provide historical comparisons and country and cross-country analysis of their adaptation and contribution to the transformation of the national and international regulatory/cultural context in the wake of a crisis or in a longer term perspective.

Newman's Early Roman Catholic Legacy, 1845-1854

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
C. Michael Shea
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Catholic Church ◽  
Roman Catholic ◽  
Roman Catholic Church ◽  
John Henry Newman ◽  
Christian Doctrine ◽  
European Continent ◽  
The Past ◽  
Immaculate Conception ◽  
Over Time

For the past several decades, scholars have stressed that the genius of John Henry Newman remained underappreciated among his Roman Catholic contemporaries, and in order to find the true impact of his work, one must look to the century after his death. This book takes direct aim at that assumption. Examining a host of overlooked evidence from England and the European continent, Newman’s Early Legacy tracks letters, recorded conversations, and obscure and unpublished theological exchanges to show how Newman’s 1845 Essay on the Development of Christian Doctrine influenced a cadre of Catholic teachers, writers, and Church authorities in nineteenth-century Rome. The book explores how these individuals then employed Newman’s theory of development to argue for the definability of the new dogma of the Immaculate Conception of Mary during the years preceding the doctrine’s promulgation in 1854. Through numerous twists and turns, the narrative traces how the theory of development became a factor in determining the very language that the Roman Catholic Church would use in referring to doctrinal change over time. In this way, Newman’s Early Legacy uncovers a key dimension of Newman’s significance in modern religious history.

Introduction

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Stephanie Downes ◽  
Sally Holloway ◽  
Sarah Randles
Keyword(s):  
Material World ◽  
The Past ◽  
Over Time

This book is about the ways in which humans have been bound affectively to the material world in and over time; how they have made, commissioned, and used objects to facilitate their emotional lives; how they felt about their things; and the ways certain things from the past continue to make people feel today. The temporal and geographical focus of ...

Anti-corruption in History

2017 ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Financial Institutions ◽  
Global Media ◽  
Policy Makers ◽  
The Past ◽  
Human Wellbeing ◽  
Modern Period ◽  
Legitimate Power ◽  
Wide Range ◽  
Scant Attention ◽  
Over Time

Anticorruption in History is the first major collection of case studies on how past societies and polities, in and beyond Europe, defined legitimate power in terms of fighting corruption and designed specific mechanisms to pursue that agenda. It is a timely book: corruption is widely seen today as a major problem, undermining trust in government, financial institutions, economic efficiency, the principle of equality before the law and human wellbeing in general. Corruption, in short, is a major hurdle on the “path to Denmark”—a feted blueprint for stable and successful statebuilding. The resonance of this view explains why efforts to promote anticorruption policies have proliferated in recent years. But while the subjects of corruption and anticorruption have captured the attention of politicians, scholars, NGOs and the global media, scant attention has been paid to the link between corruption and the change of anticorruption policies over time and place. Such a historical approach could help explain major moments of change in the past as well as reasons for the success and failure of specific anticorruption policies and their relation to a country’s image (of itself or as construed from outside) as being more or less corrupt. It is precisely this scholarly lacuna that the present volume intends to begin to fill. A wide range of historical contexts are addressed, ranging from the ancient to the modern period, with specific insights for policy makers offered throughout.

scholarly journals Conceptualizing histories of multispecies entanglements: Ancient pathogen genomics and the case of Borrelia recurrentis

2021 ◽  
pp. 146960532199394
Author(s):  
Venla Oikkonen
Keyword(s):  
East Africa ◽  
Ancient Dna ◽  
Relapsing Fever ◽  
Borrelia Recurrentis ◽  
The Past ◽  
Cultural Implications ◽  
Past Millennium

This article explores the conceptual and cultural implications of using pathogen ancient DNA (aDNA) collected in archaeological contexts to understand the past. More specifically, it examines ancient pathogen genomics as a way of conceptualizing multispecies entanglements. The analysis focuses on the 2018 sequencing of Borrelia recurrentis bacteria retrieved from a medieval graveyard in Oslo, Norway. B. recurrentis is associated with louse-borne relapsing fever (LBRF), known to have killed several million people in Europe during the past millennium, and it is still encountered in parts of East Africa. The article demonstrates that while aDNA research often foregrounds multispecies entanglements, its epistemic tools cannot easily address the ontological blurriness of pathogens and their embeddedness in vibrant material processes. The article draws on feminist posthumanities work on microbes and materiality to highlight conceptual openings that a theorization of ancient pathogens could engender.

scholarly journals 8,000 years of climate, vegetation, fire and land-use dynamics in the thermo-mediterranean vegetation belt of northern Sardinia (Italy)

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Tiziana Pedrotta ◽  
Erika Gobet ◽  
Christoph Schwörer ◽  
Giorgia Beffa ◽  
Christoph Butz ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Land Use ◽  
Bronze Age ◽  
Fire History ◽  
Vegetation History ◽  
Juglans Regia ◽  
Fire Disturbance ◽  
Lake Productivity ◽  
The Past ◽  
Evergreen Oak ◽  
The Bronze Age

AbstractKnowledge about the vegetation history of Sardinia, the second largest island of the Mediterranean, is scanty. Here, we present a new sedimentary record covering the past ~ 8,000 years from Lago di Baratz, north-west Sardinia. Vegetation and fire history are reconstructed by pollen, spores, macrofossils and charcoal analyses and environmental dynamics by high-resolution element geochemistry together with pigment analyses. During the period 8,100–7,500 cal bp, when seasonality was high and fire and erosion were frequent, Erica arborea and E. scoparia woodlands dominated the coastal landscape. Subsequently, between 7,500 and 5,500 cal bp, seasonality gradually declined and thermo-mediterranean woodlands with Pistacia and Quercus ilex partially replaced Erica communities under diminished incidence of fire. After 5,500 cal bp, evergreen oak forests expanded markedly, erosion declined and lake levels increased, likely in response to increasing (summer) moisture availability. Increased anthropogenic fire disturbance triggered shrubland expansions (e.g. Tamarix and Pistacia) around 5,000–4,500 cal bp. Subsequently around 4,000–3,500 cal bp evergreen oak-olive forests expanded massively when fire activity declined and lake productivity and anoxia reached Holocene maxima. Land-use activities during the past 4,000 years (since the Bronze Age) gradually disrupted coastal forests, but relict stands persisted under rather stable environmental conditions until ca. 200 cal bp, when agricultural activities intensified and Pinus and Eucalyptus were planted to stabilize the sand dunes. Pervasive prehistoric land-use activities since at least the Bronze Age Nuraghi period included the cultivation of Prunus, Olea europaea and Juglans regia after 3,500–3,300 cal bp, and Quercus suber after 2,500 cal bp. We conclude that restoring less flammable native Q. ilex and O. europaea forest communities would markedly reduce fire risk and erodibility compared to recent forest plantations with flammable non-native trees (e.g. Pinus, Eucalyptus) and xerophytic shrubland (e.g. Cistus, Erica).

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