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Tuesday, September 13, 2016

Brachycephalization on the western steppe after the Mesolithic


Interesting stuff from the ADNABIOARC team at Scientific Reports today:

Abstract: The Neolithic transition brought about fundamental social, dietary and behavioural changes in human populations, which, in turn, impacted skeletal morphology. Crania are shaped through diverse genetic, ontogenetic and environmental factors, reflecting various elements of an individual’s life. To determine the transition’s effect on cranial morphology, we investigated its potential impact on the face and vault, two elements potentially responding to different influences. Three datasets from geographically distant regions (Ukraine, Iberia, and the Levant plus Anatolia) were analysed. Craniometric measurements were used to compare the morphology of pre-transition populations with that of agricultural populations. The Neolithic transition corresponds to a statistically significant increase only in cranial breadth of the Ukrainian vaults, while facial morphology shows no consistent transformations, despite expected changes related to the modification of masticatory behaviour. The broadening of Ukrainian vaults may be attributable to dietary and/or social changes. However, the lack of change observed in the other geographical regions and the lack of consistent change in facial morphology are surprising. Although the transition from foraging to farming is a process that took place repeatedly across the globe, different characteristics of transitions seem responsible for idiosyncratic responses in cranial morphology.

Cheronet et al., Morphological change in cranial shape following the transition to agriculture across western Eurasia, Scientific Reports, Published online: 13 September 2016, doi:10.1038/srep33316

See also..

Modeling Steppe_EMBA


30 comments:

Chad said...

This looks like the same one I saw at the conference last year.

Karl_K said...

This looks like the same one Chad saw at the conference last year.

Davidski said...

I was thinking the same thing just now.

Nirjhar007 said...

Can't wait to see the Balkan , Ukrainian and Majkop aDNA . The first is coming soon . The second seems quite on and this paper is an indirect view of what to expect . The last one, well its mysteriously not out yet .

Davidski said...

The samples are listed in this datasheet.

http://www.nature.com/article-assets/npg/srep/2016/160913/srep33316/extref/srep33316-s2.csv

They've got lots of samples from various Ukrainian Mesolithic sites, Dnieper-Donets, Tripolye, Pit-Graves, and Catacomb.

No reason why these can't be genotyped.

Samuel Andrews said...

Why does this supposedly tell us?

Davidski said...

It shows that EHG were not round headed, so round headed Bell Beakers, like the man with the very flat occiput, didn't get that way because of EHG ancestry, but rather due to some as yet unexplained reason, or a variety of reasons.

http://eurogenes.blogspot.com.au/2016/06/the-man-with-flat-occiput.html

But since steppe populations started becoming round headed after the Mesolithic, then round headed Bell Beakers may indeed have got this trait from the steppe, because they did have a lot of steppe ancestry.

Olympus Mons said...

@Davidski,
Cool aid.

What it means that Steppe population got run down, overrun, overturned by a brachycephalic people. Hey, lol and behold. 4500bc?? Well i know of a population from southern Caucasus that lived in the CHG homeland, were Brachycephalic and vanished from there! since I don't believe tens of thousands or even over 100,000 people don't just lay down and die, well here you have a rock solid explanation how the steppe not only got Brachy, but got the CHG component as well.

occam razor baby, occam razor!

Davidski said...

occam razor baby, occam razor!

Yamnaya is a mixture of males derived from native steppe foragers and females derived from Caucasus foragers and maybe Balkan/Caucasus farmers.

There's no sign of the steppe getting overrun by anyone at this time.

Olympus Mons said...

... Alternativly, One can just wait to see how those balkan farmers EHG really look like and if they were Brachy.
Because by 4000 BC cucuteni-T and varna people sure were moving east werent they?
anyway, Steppe is starting to look pretty meaningless in the grand schema of things.

Davidski said...

Steppe is starting to look pretty meaningless in the grand schema of things.

Bahahaha...

Olympus Mons said...

@Davidsky,
Steppe got Run over, down or up by the event of agriculture and Sheep, goats and Pigs pastoral lifestyle. Now we know that those traits got attached to Brachy People arriving to Steppe. - Are going to be that guy?

And leave bell beakers out of it.
Read this from my thesis:

"...Consequently, these were the groups coming out trough Gibraltar and mixing locally. Men were 1,60m tall and women 1,50m tall (average). Guys south the Tagus River (again the Sorraia Horse & Brachiocephalic region) seemed to be a bit taller going roughly 170m for male and 160 for female. Actually the exact height given by Hoffman to Merimde people (5,6ft and 5.2ft).
Only 50% of them reach 30 years old and 20% of them got to be old age. But it surely must have beat the life expectancy and harshness of the one left behind.
About 8% were Hiper- dolichocephalic, 34% Dolichocephalic, 46% mesencephalic, 8% Brachycephalic and 4% ultra- Brachycephalic (*333). So majority were Mesencephalic but found in environments that if Brachycephalic Shulaveri were an elite and higher hierarchical layer that led to Bell beaker folks, mostly because of the influences they had from the brewing of the emerging cultural evolutions of the Levant and now Caucasus, they essentially would not really be found at (since they would tend to be on larger settlements). But the key point is there were a lot of brachycephalic people, at least 15%, much more than, for instance, is found today in Iberia in an average of 5% . And MD Garralda has found a lot more Brachycephalic in Iberia Chalcolithic in other localities and sites than the ones I have mentioned. So the existence of such a large number of these type is actually the contrast we can establish between the current outlook of North Africa which was disappearing and the fresh and newbies arriving to Iberia and the follow up mixture and admixture combinations...""

Olympus Mons said...

@davidsky

"Bahahaha..."

Man up. ;)

Olympus Mons said...

hey, weren't CWC Brachys?

Davidski said...

You'll have to dump your thesis and write a new one.

Just deal with it already and stop dragging this on with the bullshit here.

rozenblatt said...

Lots of interesting abstracts in the booklet about ISBA7 conference in Oxford: http://palaeobarn.com/sites/default/files/documents/ISBA7%20-%20handbook%20120916%20-%20final%20for%20repro.pdf

Olympus Mons said...

@Davidsky.
You are becoming small. Be carefull with your next comments because it really can diminish you to a Boy.

I do not usually bring my thesis here (text of). So, cut the crap and stay in the game.

Olympus Mons said...

So,
there were two groups overrunning steppe. Probably the better word would be to COLONIZE it.

And its not innocent the choices. Dnieper-Donets II (not I, II. It has a meaning) and Tripolye.

DDII is linked to Nalchik and Khvalynsk, so linked to Kuban river and to fleeing Shulaveri (south Caucasus).

Then they choose as a second group tripolye, which were contrastingly different from the first group and coming from the balkan group.

So, in the paper, which of the two yields the better Brachy?

Davidski said...

Enough with the butthurt, start working on a new thesis. But learn something about DNA and ancient DNA before you do.

Rob said...

Stop personalising the past ;)
It is what it is. Strap in and enjoy the ride

Olympus Mons said...

@Rob,
Oh its personal alright. At least to Davidsky and some red herring "capos" here. See how all are having fun in the next post. "Nothing to see here, move along, nothing to see".

And, Rob, what is your take. Which of the two (Tripolye or DDII) is the most responsible for the "Brachylization" of the Steppe?

Those Balkan samples are becoming increasingly important...

Rob said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
Lukasz said...

But anybody checked CI (cranial index) of those samples?

I calculated individual and then means for specific cultures. Yes mesolithic was extremaly dolichocephalic (mean 70.39) but later Dneper-Donec was 73.48. Tripolye is higher 75.43 (but still in doli range). Tripolye3 is lower 73.94. And later cultures were in 74-75 range till Scythian period (78.20) but after that there was another drop.
So no brachycephaly for any culture /populations. There were some brachy individuals but not important among whole groups.

There is sheet with calculated CI. http://antropologia-fizyczna.pl/files/ci.csv

Davidski said...

You're measuring skulls though. I have no idea how that translates to CI for living people.

Lukasz said...

Sorry, http://antropologia-fizyczna.pl/files/ci.xls

Lukasz said...

CI for living people is about 1 point higher. Co cranial index for Pit-Graves (Yamnaya) 74,9648130521 is about 76 for living counterpart with such skull.

Lukasz said...

Highest Scythian 78,20 cranial index would be in living cephalic index 79. This is meso still.

Lukasz said...

There are brachycephalic individuals in some samples representing different Urkainian cultures but they never predominate and doli and mesocranial skulls are in majority.

In article they also use other vault breadths (biasterionic and biauricular) than those used to caclulating cranial index (maxium cranial breadth). They were wider throught time but if we talk about skull / head shape in classic sense brachycephaly didn't predominate in Ukraine.

Lukasz said...

Also I calculated Upper Facial Index for Ukrainians cultures separately (of course only for those with two measurements avaialbale). There is no clear pattern. For example Dneper-Donec is significantly lower faced than Mesolithic samples. After we have some sinusoide (higher / lower and again). There is no substantial correlation with CI changes.

http://antropologia-fizyczna.pl/files/ufi.csv

Rob said...

@LM
Thanks. Very interesting