Eurasia Groups
Early evidence for beer drinking in a 9000-year-old platform mound in southern China
Jiajing Wang, Leping Jiang & Hanlong Sun
PLOS ONE, August 2021
Abstract:
Alcoholic beverages played an essential role in rituals in ancient societies. Here we report the first evidence for beer drinking in the context of burial ritual in early Holocene southern China. Recent archaeological investigations at Qiaotou (9,000–8,700 cal. BP) have revealed a platform mound containing human burials and high concentrations of painted pottery, encircled by a human-made ditch. By applying microfossil (starch, phytolith, and fungi) residue analysis on the pottery vessels, we found that some of the pots held beer made of rice (Oryza sp.), Job’s tears (Coix lacryma-jobi), and USOs. We also discovered the earliest evidence for using mold saccharification-fermentation starter in beer making, predating written records by 8,000 years. The beer at Qiaotou was likely served in rituals to commemorate the burial of the dead. Ritualized drinking probably played an integrative role in maintaining social relationships, paving the way for the rise of complex farming societies four millennia later.
Radiocarbon-dating an early minting site: The emergence of standardised coinage in China
Hao Zhao et al.
Antiquity, forthcoming
Abstract:
The origins of metal coinage and the monetisation of ancient economies have long been a research focus in both archaeology and economic history. Recent excavations of an Eastern Zhou period (c. 770–220 BC) bronze foundry at Guanzhuang in Henan Province, China, have yielded clay moulds for casting spade coins. The technical characteristics of the moulds demonstrate that the site functioned as a mint for producing standardised coins. Systematic AMS radiocarbon-dating indicates that well-organised minting developed c. 640–550 BC, making Guanzhuang the world's oldest-known, securely dated minting site. This discovery provides important new data for exploring the origin of monetisation in ancient China.
The Confucian Clan as a Risk-Sharing Institution: How Pre-Industrial China Became the Most Populous Nation
Zhiwu Chen & Chicheng Ma
University of Hong Kong Working Paper, June 2021
Abstract:
We hypothesize that besides technology and resource expansion, risk-mitigation improvements pushed the Malthusian limits to population growth in pre-industrial societies. During 976-1850 CE, China’s population increased by elevenfold while the Confucian clan emerged as the key risk-sharing institution for members. To test our hypothesis using historical data from 269 prefectures, we measure each region’s clan strength by its number of genealogy books compiled. Our results show that prefectures with stronger clans had significantly higher population density due to better resilience during natural disasters and fewer premature deaths of children. Confucian clans enabled pre-industrial China to sustain explosive population growth.
Exploring correlations in genetic and cultural variation across language families in northeast Asia
Hiromi Matsumae et al.
Science Advances, August 2021
Abstract:
Culture evolves in ways that are analogous to, but distinct from, genomes. Previous studies examined similarities between cultural variation and genetic variation (population history) at small scales within language families, but few studies have empirically investigated these parallels across language families using diverse cultural data. We report an analysis comparing culture and genomes from in and around northeast Asia spanning 11 language families. We extract and summarize the variation in language (grammar, phonology, lexicon), music (song structure, performance style), and genomes (genome-wide SNPs) and test for correlations. We find that grammatical structure correlates with population history (genetic history). Recent contact and shared descent fail to explain the signal, suggesting relationships that arose before the formation of current families. Our results suggest that grammar might be a cultural indicator of population history while also demonstrating differences among cultural and genetic relationships that highlight the complex nature of human history.
Reconstructing genetic histories and social organisation in Neolithic and Bronze Age Croatia
Suzanne Freilich et al.
Scientific Reports, August 2021
Abstract:
Ancient DNA studies have revealed how human migrations from the Neolithic to the Bronze Age transformed the social and genetic structure of European societies. Present-day Croatia lies at the heart of ancient migration routes through Europe, yet our knowledge about social and genetic processes here remains sparse. To shed light on these questions, we report new whole-genome data for 28 individuals dated to between ~ 4700 BCE–400 CE from two sites in present-day eastern Croatia. In the Middle Neolithic we evidence first cousin mating practices and strong genetic continuity from the Early Neolithic. In the Middle Bronze Age community that we studied, we find multiple closely related males suggesting a patrilocal social organisation. We also find in that community an unexpected genetic ancestry profile distinct from individuals found at contemporaneous sites in the region, due to the addition of hunter-gatherer-related ancestry. These findings support archaeological evidence for contacts with communities further north in the Carpathian Basin. Finally, an individual dated to Roman times exhibits an ancestry profile that is broadly present in the region today, adding an important data point to the substantial shift in ancestry that occurred in the region between the Bronze Age and today.
Early Cypriot Prehistory: On the Traces of the Last Hunters and Gatherers on the Island -- Preliminary Results of Luminescence Dating
Evangelos Tsakalos et al.
Current Anthropology, forthcoming
Abstract:
Archaeological investigations at the Late Epipaleolithic/Pre-Neolithic campsite of Roudias, Cyprus, have revealed that this location was repeatedly visited by hunter-gatherer groups during the beginning of the Holocene. Despite the placement of the deeper lithic assemblages of the site within the Late Epipaleolithic tradition, the main obstacle of the site has been its lack of absolute ages. Previous attempts to date bone samples recovered from the site using radiocarbon were unsuccessful since the samples did not contain enough collagen to return reliable dates. The absolute chronology of the site within early Cypriot developments -- Late Pleistocene or Early Holocene -- has been eagerly awaited by researchers who try to document the arrival of the first human groups to the island. This study places the campsite of Roudias in its temporal setting using optically stimulated luminescence dating. Absolute ages (ranging from 7.2 ± 1.3 to 12.8 ± 1.6 ka) provide evidence for the duration of the occupation of the Roudias site from the Late Epipaleolithic (or even earlier) to the Late Aceramic Neolithic, but more importantly, they push back the time of the first colonization of Cyprus and the onset of seagoing practices in the southeastern Mediterranean.
Philippine Ayta possess the highest level of Denisovan ancestry in the world
Maximilian Larena et al.
Current Biology, forthcoming
Abstract:
Multiple lines of evidence show that modern humans interbred with archaic Denisovans. Here, we report an account of shared demographic history between Australasians and Denisovans distinctively in Island Southeast Asia. Our analyses are based on ∼2.3 million genotypes from 118 ethnic groups of the Philippines, including 25 diverse self-identified Negrito populations, along with high-coverage genomes of Australopapuans and Ayta Magbukon Negritos. We show that Ayta Magbukon possess the highest level of Denisovan ancestry in the world -- ∼30%–40% greater than that of Australians and Papuans -- consistent with an independent admixture event into Negritos from Denisovans. Together with the recently described Homo luzonensis, we suggest that there were multiple archaic species that inhabited the Philippines prior to the arrival of modern humans and that these archaic groups may have been genetically related. Altogether, our findings unveil a complex intertwined history of modern and archaic humans in the Asia-Pacific region, where distinct Islander Denisovan populations differentially admixed with incoming Australasians across multiple locations and at various points in time.