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The article focuses on the discovery of the world's oldest known fortresses in central Siberia, built 8000 years ago by hunter-gatherers. Topics discussed include the forts' sophisticated architecture, their early construction predating monumental structures in the Middle East, and the broader implications for understanding the complexity of societies without relying on agriculture.

The article informs that ancient genome-wide DNA from France highlights the complexity of interactions between Mesolithic hunter-gatherers and Neolithic farmers. Topics discussed include genomes from early European farmers have shown a clear Near Eastern/Anatolian genetic affinity with limited contribution from hunter-gatherers; and data highlight the complexity of the biological interactions during the Neolithic expansion by revealing major regional variations.

A recent study challenges the idea that complex societies and permanent settlements could only arise after the advent of agriculture. In central Siberia, hunter-gatherers built the world's oldest known fortresses 8,000 years ago, complete with elaborate defenses and dwellings sunk deep into the ground for warmth. These fortresses were built thousands of years before agriculture reached some parts of Europe and Asia, suggesting that alternate pathways to complexity exist. The findings in Siberia, along with other archaeological evidence, are prompting a re-evaluation of how complex societies developed and challenging the traditional view that agriculture was the primary driver of cultural complexity. [Extracted from the article]

Environmentally transformative human use of land accelerated with the emergence of agriculture, but the extent, trajectory, and implications of these early changes are not well understood. An empirical global assessment of land use from 10,000 years before the present (yr B.P.) to 1850 CE reveals a planet largely transformed by hunter-gatherers, farmers, and pastoralists by 3000 years ago, considerably earlier than the dates in the land-use reconstructions commonly used by Earth scientists. Synthesis of knowledge contributed by more than 250 archaeologists highlighted gaps in archaeological expertise and data quality, which peaked for 2000 yr B.P. and in traditionally studied and wealthier regions. Archaeological reconstruction of global land-use history illuminates the deep roots of EarthÕs transformation and challenges the emerging Anthropocene paradigm that large-scale anthropogenic global environmental change is mostly a recent phenomenon. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We assembled genome-wide data from 271 ancient Iberians, of whom 176 are from the largely unsampled period after 2000 BCE, thereby providing a high-resolution time transect of the Iberian Peninsula. We document high genetic substructure between northwestern and southeastern hunter-gatherers before the spread of farming. We reveal sporadic contacts between Iberia and North Africa by ~2500 BCE and, by ~2000 BCE, the replacement of 40% of Iberia’s ancestry and nearly 100% of its Y-chromosomes by people with Steppe ancestry. We show that, in the Iron Age, Steppe ancestry had spread not only into Indo-European–speaking regions but also into non-Indo-European–speaking ones, and we reveal that present-day Basques are best described as a typical Iron Age population without the admixture events that later affected the rest of Iberia. Additionally, we document how, beginning at least in the Roman period, the ancestry of the peninsula was transformed by gene flow from North Africa and the eastern Mediterranean. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The study provides evidence that hunter-gatherers were far more sophisticated than archaeologists once assumed, argues co-author Henny Piezonka, an archaeologist at Christian-Albrecht University of Kiel. "Hunter-gatherer pottery existed all along northern Eurasia for 10,000 years", Piezonka says, "but the evidence was mostly published in Russian, and European archaeologists just didn't know about it." Early Europeans didn't simply adopt revolutionary technology from farmers, study finds Broken, charred and still crusted with nearly 8000-year-old food, the remnants of ancient pottery found across northern Eurasia wouldn't be mistaken for fine china. [Extracted from the article]

We sequenced Early Neolithic genomes from the Zagros region of Iran (eastern Fertile Crescent), where some of the earliest evidence for farming is found, and identify a previously uncharacterized population that is neither ancestral to the first European farmers nor has contributed substantially to the ancestry of modern Europeans. These people are estimated to have separated from Early Neolithic farmers in Anatolia some 46,000 to 77,000 years ago and show affinities to modern-day Pakistani and Afghan populations, but particularly to Iranian Zoroastrians. We conclude that multiple, genetically differentiated hunter-gatherer populations adopted farming in southwestern Asia, that components of pre-Neolithic population structure were preserved as farming spread into neighboring regions, and that the Zagros region was the cradle of eastward expansion. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article focuses on increased contacts with isolated tribes from Peru's rainforests. It comments that sightings and raids against villages along the rainforests in Peru and Brazil have increased. It mentions efforts by anthropologists and officials to minimize the impact disease pathogens will have on native people and suggests that intertribal conflicts, food shortages, and illegal loggers are forcing isolated tribes from the depths of the rainforests.

The article discusses the prehistoric origins of economic inequality through archaeological and ethnographic research, arguing that inequality arose before farming among hunter-gatherer societies. Topics include the egalitarian nature of traditional societies in existence as of 2014, the potential for elite hunter-gatherers to control small areas with rich resources, and evidence of inequality in ornamentation of the dead.

Prehistoric population structure associated with the transition to an agricultural lifestyle in Europe remains a contentious idea. Population-genomic data from 11 Scandinavian Stone Age human remains suggest that hunter-gatherers had lower genetic diversity than that of farmers. Despite their close geographical proximity, the genetic differentiation between the two Stone Age groups was greater than that observed among extant European populations. Additionally, the Scandinavian Neolithic farmers exhibited a greater degree of hunter-gatherer-related admixture than that of the Tyrolean Iceman, who also originated from a farming context. In contrast, Scandinavian hunter-gatherers displayed no significant evidence of introgression from farmers. Our findings suggest that Stone Age foraging groups were historically in low numbers, likely owing to oscillating living conditions or restricted carrying capacity, and that they were partially incorporated into expanding farming groups. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Shara Bailey, a paleoanthropologist at New York University, says she wasn't particularly surprised by the paper's findings, because she and others have long suspected the "meat made us human" hypothesis was overly simplistic. Barr and colleagues ran the numbers for these sites and found that evidence for meat eating remained essentially constant between 2.6 million and 1.2 million years ago, they report today in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. Did a taste for blood help humans grow big brains?. [Extracted from the article]

It has been argued that warfare evolved as a component of early human behavior within foraging band societies. We investigated lethal aggression in a sample of 21 mobile forager band societies (MFBS) derived systematically from the standard cross-cultural sample. We hypothesized, on the basis of mobile forager ethnography, that most lethal events would stem from personal disputes rather than coalitionary aggression against other groups (war). More than half of the lethal aggression events were perpetrated by lone individuals, and almost two-thirds resulted from accidents, interfamilial disputes, within-group executions, or interpersonal motives such as competition over a particular woman. Overall, the findings suggest that most incidents of lethal aggression among MFBS may be classified as homicides, a few others as feuds, and a minority as war. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The invention of pottery introduced fundamental shifts in human subsistence practices and sociosymbolic behaviors. Here, we describe the dating of the early pottery from Xianrendong Cave, Jiangxi Province, China, and the micromorphology of the stratigraphic contexts of the pottery sherds and radiocarbon samples. The radiocarbon ages of the archaeological contexts of the earliest sherds are 20,000 to 19,000 calendar years before the present, 2000 to 3000 years older than other pottery found in East Asia and elsewhere. The occupations in the cave demonstrate that pottery was produced by mobile foragers who hunted and gathered during the Late Glacial Maximum. These vessels may have served as cooking devices. The early date shows that pottery was first made and used 10 millennia or more before the emergence of agriculture. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Contemporary humans exhibit spectacular biological success derived from cumulative culture and cooperation. The origins of these traits may be related to our ancestral group structure. Because humans lived as foragers for 95% of our species' history, we analyzed co-residence patterns among 32 present-day foraging societies (total n = 5067 individuals, mean experienced band size = 28.2 adults). We found that hunter-gatherers display a unique social structure where (i) either sex may disperse or remain in their natal group, (ii) adult brothers and sisters often co-reside, and (iii) most individuals in residential groups are genetically unrelated. These patterns produce large interaction networks of unrelated adults and suggest that inclusive fitness cannot explain extensive cooperation in hunter-gatherer bands. However, large social networks may help to explain why humans evolved capacities for social learning that resulted in cumulative culture. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Small-scale human societies range from foraging bands with a strong egalitarian ethos to more economically stratified agrarian and pastoral societies. We explain this variation in inequality using a dynamic model in which a population's long-run steady-state level of inequality depends on the extent to which its most important forms of wealth are transmitted within families across generations. We estimate the degree of intergenerational transmission of three different types of wealth (material, embodied, and relational, as well as the extent of wealth inequality in 21 historical and contemporary populations. We show that intergenerational transmission of wealth and wealth inequality are substantial among pastoral and small-scale agricultural societies (on a par with or even exceeding the most unequal modern industrial economies) but are limited among horticultural and foraging peoples (equivalent to the most egalitarian of modern industrial populations). Differences in the technology by which a people derive their livelihood and in the institutions and norms making up the economic system jointly contribute to this pattern. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

After the domestication of animals and crops in the Near East some 11,000 years ago, farming had reached much of central Europe by 7500 years before the present. The extent to which these early European farmers were immigrants or descendants of resident hunter-gatherers who had adopted farming has been widely debated, We compared new mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA) sequences from late European hunter-gatherer skeletons with those from early farmers and from modern Europeans. We find large genetic differences between all three groups that cannot be explained by population continuity alone. Most (82%) of the ancient hunter-gatherers share mtDNA types that are relatively rare in central Europeans today. Together, these analyses provide persuasive evidence that the first farmers were not the descendants of local hunter-gatherers but immigrated into central Europe at the onset of the Neolithic. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The largest movements and replacements of human populations since the end of the Ice Ages resulted from the geographically uneven rise of food production around the world. The first farming societies thereby gained great advantages over hunter-gatherer societies. But most of those resulting shifts of populations and languages are complex, controversial, or both. We discuss the main complications and specific examples involving 15 language families. Further progress will depend on interdisciplinary research that combines archaeology, crop and livestock studies, physical anthropology, genetics, and linguistics. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The social organization of mobile hunter-gatherers has several derived features, including low within-camp relatedness and fluid meta-groups. Although these features have been proposed to have provided the selective context for the evolution of human hypercooperation and cumulative culture, how such a distinctive social system may have emerged remains unclear. We present an agent-based model suggesting that, even if all individuals in a community seek to live with as many kin as possible, within-camp relatedness is reduced if men and women have equal influence in selecting camp members. Our model closely approximates observed patterns of co-residence among Agta and Mbendjele BaYaka hunter-gatherers. Our results suggest that pair-bonding and increased sex egalitarianism in human evolutionary history may have had a transformative effect on human social organization. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article reports on a study published in a May 2021 issue of "Cell," which showed that the DNA of ancient hunter-gatherers in the north China Plain signified a population turnover in Asia about 19,000 years ago.

The article discusses London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine graduate student Jeff Leach's research on the immune systems and gastrointestinal (gut) microbes of the Hadza tribe of African hunter-gatherers as of 2014, focusing on the claim that the Hadza people suffer far less from "modern" diseases such as diabetes, cancer, and cardiovascular disorders. According to the article, Leach plans to spend two years sampling the microbial diversity in the Hadza people and their environment.

Debate on the ancestry of Europeans centers on the interplay between Mesolithic foragers and Neolithic farmers. Foragers are generally believed to have disappeared shortly after the arrival of agriculture. To investigate the relation between foragers and farmers, we examined Mesolithic and Neolithic samples from the Blätterhöhle site. Mesolithic mitochondrial DNA sequences were typical of European foragers, whereas the Neolithic sample included additional lineages that are associated with early farmers. However, isotope analyses separate the Neolithic sample into two groups: one with an agriculturalist diet and one with a forager and freshwater fish diet, the latter carrying mitochondrial DNA sequences typical of Mesolithic hunter-gatherers. This indicates that the descendants of Mesolithic people maintained a foraging lifestyle in Central Europe for more than 2000 years after the arrival of farming societies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article discusses Natufians and their activities when the climate became warmer about 14,500 years ago. Archaeologist Philip Edwards and zooarchaeologist Natalie Munro are cited regarding Natufians and human settlement history that preceded farming and the Neolithic epoch. The possible role of a subsequent 1,300-year cold period called the Younger Dryas in changing Natufian hunter-gatherer habits to those of agriculture is discussed. A fall 2009 meeting of archaeologists raised challenges to the notion that Natufians or climate change were driving forces for agriculture. Archaeologist Lisa Maher and geoarchaeologist Arlene Rosen are cited in this regard.

To find out whether this problem was more widespread, archaeologist Hans Peter Blankholm of the Arctic University of Norway and colleagues focused on Stone Age humans living on the shores of the Norwegian Arctic, in an area known as Varanger. The scientists may soon be able to shine a light on some of these outstanding questions: They have now acquired the remains of eight individual Stone Age humans from the Varanger region and can explore the potential effects of heavy metals on their health and lifespans. Even if the cod and seal were contaminated by heavy metals, Twiss says, such meat would surely have also been a good source of protein and other key nutrients. [Extracted from the article]

Discusses new evidence for a pre-Clovis culture in the New World, products of a migration up to 40,000 years ago, with a simple hunter-gatherer society. The Greenberg hypothesis, postulating three waves of migration, is also discussed. Problems with Greenberg hypothesis; Development of hypothesis; Linguistic refutation; Deeper archeological findings. INSET: The big picture, by V.M..

Highlights from the article: "Stature gene" may reveal why these hunter-gatherers are among the world's smallest humans Once called "Pygmies" by outsiders, African rainforest hunter-gatherers live in densely forested environments across Central Africa. What they found surpassed their expectations: All the hunter-gatherer populations showed a strong signal of selection within a short stretch of DNA on chromosome 8, and all the agriculturalists lacked this signal.

The article discusses research which indicates that farming culture changes can alter human beings' smiles and speech, and it mentions how a soft food diet led some human beings to develop jaw-related overbites and variations in smiles and speech. The impact of chewing on a person's teeth is addressed, along with newly favored consonants known as labiodentals and information about languages in farmer and hunter-gatherer societies.

The article reports on findings suggesting that the Botai hunter-gatherers who traveled the area of modern-day Kazakhstan roughly 3700 to 3100 B.C.E. may be responsible for the domestication of horses, not the Yamnaya, Bronze Age pastoralists of the Asian steppes as previously asserted. Topics include genetic testing of ceramic shard, genomic testing of Yamnaya and Botai indicating the groups did not intermingle, and the archaeological steppe hypothesis.

The article focuses on a study, previously published in 2012 issue of the periodical reagrding Hadza hunter-gatherers and Paleo diet. It mentions the impact of Paleo diet on cavities due to high sugar and starch in diet, and states that biological anthropologist Alyssa Crittenden of the University of Nevada researched on oral health of the people. It also presents the views of bioarchaeologist Jim Watson of the University of Arizona on the same.

The article discusses the egalitarian structure of hunter-gatherer societies as they exist in 2014 and are theorized to have existed for most of human history, focusing on research into groups such as Native American and the Ju /’hoansi/!Kung. Topics include such societies' emphasis on sharing of everything from food to territory, rules against self-promoting behavior, and other methods of preventing hierarchies such as cooperative hunting.

The article looks at genetic research on the evolution of bacterial colonization of human teeth. A report published in "Nature Genetics" by molecular evolutionist Alan Cooper and bioarchaeologist Keith Dobney focused on sequencing of bacterial DNA in prehistoric human fossil teeth. They found that that bacteria species composition changed as hunter-gathering gave way to agriculture, noting the increased prevalence of tooth decay and periodontal disease bacteria in farmers. A study published in "Molecular Biology and Evolution" by geneticists Omar Cornejo and Carlos Bustamante looked at variation in cavity-causing Streptococcus mutans and suggested that the species began colonizing humans about 10,000 years ago at the onset of agriculture and its starch- and sugar-related dietary changes.

The article provides perspective on research reported by Hill et al. elsewhere in the issue on the social structure of hunter-gatherer societies. The team's research approach involving comparisons of human hunter-gatherer societies and nonhuman primate societies is described. Inferences regarding the unique aspects of human society are discussed.

The article introduces research reported in the issue, noting topics that include kinetic analysis of the assembly of macromolecular machines called spliceosomes, prehistoric hunter-gatherer groups and their composition of genetically unrelated individuals, and polymorphisms found in the AHR2 gene of Hudson River tomcod fish that have developed resistance to the toxic effects associated with polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs).

The article discusses a report within the issue regarding the earliest documented human occupation of Sahul, which is a land mass that joined Australia and Papua New Guinea (PNG) between 43-49 thousand years ago. According to the researchers, the discovery of stone tools and plant remains is an indication that human beings living in PNG's Ivane Valley were exploiting plants for food and altering their environment by felling trees. An overview of the environmental challenges early human hunter-foragers living in the Ivane Valley would have faced, such as restricted technologies, is presented.

In this article the authors discuss how ancient hunter-gatherers influenced coastal environments. They note the debate among anthropologists regarding the extent to which hunter-gatherers altered their environments, such as through the spread and development of agriculture, pastoralism, and reductions in shellfish populations. Also discussed is how ancient exploitation of keystone species, such as cod, affected near-shore coastal ecosystems and created trophic cascades.

The article discusses studies conducted on human social evolution, one of which investigated the origins of altruism toward one’s own social group and another that examined the emergence of cultural complexity. Drawing upon modeling and empirical evidence, both suggest that the demographic structure of ancestral human populations determined the progression of social evolution. The former study looked at the demographic structure of hunter-gatherer populations and how they allowed for the evolution of genetic traits. The latter addressed human behaviors that are obvious in archaeological evidence, such as the creation of abstract art, improvements in tools, and the manufacture of musical instruments.

The article offers information on the hours of sleep that hunter-gatherers had, referencing the journal "Current Biology," the percentage of U.S. citizens who believe in climate science and Americans' attitudes on the conflict between religion and science, referencing a Pew Research Center survey.

This article presents information regarding micropygmy population that survived until about 18,000 years ago on the Indonesian island of Flores. These creatures were barely 3 feet tall, and had an estimated body weight of 20 kg and a brain size of 380 cm³. What counts is the island's total productivity rather than its productivity per hectare, an isolated population of 100 full-sized human hunter-gatherers on Flores would have been at a much higher risk of extinction than an isolated population of 700 micropygmies. Some recent sapiens populations on those land-bridge islands were descended from ancestors who walked to the island during land-bridge times, lacked watercraft, and thus became completely isolated when the land bridge was severed.

Cites a study that closely integrates paleoecological and archaeological analysis to study the long-term interaction between hunter-gatherers and changing environments over the last 15,000 years in the Atacama desert of northern Chile. Examination of the occurrence of initial human occupation 2000 years later in the region; Possible reason for the variation in human presence in several regions of Chile.

The authors reflect on protection of isolated societies in South America. They state government policies of Brazil and Peru, along with support by the United Nations, is to leave isolated societies alone and comments on problems with this strategy due to intermittent interaction with the outside world introducing diseases to the tribes. They recommend controlled contact with isolated tribes and the importance of sustained around-the-clock medical treatment and food.

The article briefly discusses research by anthropologist Mark Dyble and colleagues, reported in the current issue, analyzing the possible role of gender relations in the practice of non-kin living together in hunter-gatherer societies in apparent contradiction to evolutionary theories of behavior.

The article focuses on research into the domestication of dogs and what led wolves to become domesticated. It comments on the theory that wolves domesticated themselves with wolves that were bold enough to eat discarded carcasses near human campsites breeding to produce more human-friendly animals until they evolved into dogs. It mentions animal behaviorist Takefumi Kikusui and colleagues found both dogs and humans experience a rise on oxytocin when they gaze into each other's eyes.

Describes the controversy surrounding an ancient burial site found at the bottom of Lake Victoria, New South Wales, Australia. Numbers and dating of burial site; Largest hunter-gatherer cemetery in the world; Plans to refill lake; Lake in traditional mythology; Importance of region's Aboriginal cemeteries; Dwelling place of Maraura-Barkindji tribes; Lake's unique features; Priority of maintaining Aboriginal graves. INSET: Science squeezed out of debate, by E. F..

The article discusses archaeology research that suggests European hunter-gathers, called the Ertebolle, either traded with farmers from the Linienbandkeramik (LBK) farming culture, or captured escaped domestic pigs. Topics include interaction between hunter-gatherers and farmers, research by molecular biologist Almut Nebel of Christian-Albrechts University in Kiel, Germany that suggests the Ertebolle ate domestic pigs, and the Ertebolle's adoption of farming behavior.