Geoarchaeological and paleoenvironmental reconstruction of the Late Quaternary climate- environmental-human nexus in the Kurdistan region of Iraq

<p>During the late Quaternary, Iraqi Kurdistan was the scenario of several fundamental human-related<br>events including the dispersion of Homo in Asia and Europe, the origin of agriculture, the beginning<br>of urbanization, and the formation of the first state entities. We present the initial results of a<br>geoarchaeological investigation in this area, which aims to reconstruct a detailed framework of the<br>relationship between climatic changes, landscape responses, human adaptation, and settlement<br>distribution during the Late Quaternary. Paleoenvironmental and paleoclimatic data were collected<br>from two key areas: the territory of the Navkur and Faideh plains, in northern Kurdistan, and a portion<br>of the Erbil plain, in southern Kurdistan. In the two regions, the Land of Niniveh and MAIPE<br>archaeological missions are operating. Remote sensing, GIS analyses, and geomorphological survey<br>are the tools used for the geomorphological reconstruction of ancient hydrology (fluvial pattern) and<br>the evolution of distinct landforms. Geochemical and geochronological analyses on speleothems from<br>the Zagros piedmont caves of same region provide information on Holocene climatic variability in<br>the area. Whereas environmental settings and human land use are investigated on the basis of<br>sedimentological, palynological, micropaleontological, and geochemical analyses of a fluvio-<br>lacustrine sequences preliminary dated between 40 and 9 ka BP. The lacustrine sequence is composed<br>by clayey and silt-sandy sediments alternating calcareous and organic matter-rich layers.<br>Environmental and geomorphological data have been compared with archaeological information<br>(mostly the chronological distribution of the archaeological sites) to interpret exploitation of natural<br>resources, the settlement dynamics and shift in land use. </p>

Agriculture among the Northern Altaians (reflections on the origin of agriculture among the Turkic peoples of Siberia)

The article is devoted to the analysis of agriculture among the Turkic peoples of Southern Siberia. The North Altai tribes have been engaged in hoe farming since ancient times. Collecting wild herbs was one of the means of food for local tribes. The analysis of the Turkic vocabulary leads to the conclusion about the presence of agricultural terms among the Turkic peoples of Central Asia since ancient times. Moreover, even the northern Türks — Sakha are familiar with common Türkic terms for agriculture and horticulture. The author of the article comes to the conclusion about the presence of agriculture among the ancient Turkic tribes of Altai.

DIFFERENTIAL RESPONSE OF WHEAT GENOTYPES TO HEAT STRESS DURING GRAIN FILLING

SUMMARYClimatic change affects global agriculture and is a severe threat to global food security due to variability of the three factors measuring climate change (CO2, temperature and precipitation) with temperature being the most crucial one. Wheat is severely affected by high temperatures with reproductive and grain-filling phases being most sensitive, impacting grain number, size and weight. Seed size and weight are the key agronomic traits subjected to artificial selection and involved in the domestication process since the origin of agriculture. Three genotypes Banks, EGA Gregory and Fang-60 with the latter known to be heat tolerant were grown under glass house conditions and subjected to heat stress for 3 days during early- (11–14 dpa – days post anthesis) and late- (27–30 dpa) grain filling stages in a mutually exclusive fashion. The impact of heat stress during early- and late- grain filling on the four major grain characteristics, thousand grain weight (TGW), grain length, grain width and grain thickness was assessed. The tolerant genotype Fang-60 exhibited significantly higher TGW during early-grain filling heat stress than the control possibly due to an ability to exploit the accelerated release of fertilizer under high temperature. Banks and EGA Gregory were moderately tolerant to susceptible to heat stress, respectively, at early- and late-grain filling with Fang-60 being tolerant to both early- and late- grain filling heat stress. This study confirms the availability of significant genetic variation in heat stress response in wheat that might be exploited to adapt wheat to higher growth temperatures.

Targeted re-sequencing reveals the genomic signatures of multiple barley domestications

SummaryBarley (Hordeum vulgare L.) is an established model to study domestication of the Fertile Crescent cereals. Recent molecular data suggested that domesticated barley genomes consist of the ancestral blocks descending from multiple wild barley populations. However, the relationship between the mosaic ancestry patterns and the process of domestication itself remained unclear.To address this knowledge gap, we identified candidate domestication genes using selection scans based on targeted resequencing of 433 wild and domesticated barley accessions. We conducted phylogenetic, population structure, and ancestry analyses to investigate the origin of the domesticated barley haplotypes separately at the neutral and candidate domestication loci.We discovered multiple selective sweeps that occurred on all barley chromosomes during domestication in the background of several ancestral wild populations. The ancestry analyses demonstrated that, although the ancestral blocks of the domesticated barley genomes descended from all over the Fertile Crescent, the candidate domestication loci originated specifically in its eastern and western parts.These findings provided first molecular evidence in favor of multiple barley domestications in the Levantine and Zagros clusters of the origin of agriculture.