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The Mesolithic in Eastern Europe was the last time that hunter-gatherer economies thrived there before the spread of agriculture in the second half of the seventh millennium BC. But the period, and the interactions between foragers and the first farmers, are poorly understood in the Carpathian Basin and surrounding areas because few sites are known, and even fewer have been excavated and published. How did site location differ between Mesolithic and Early Neolithic settlers? And where should we look for rare Mesolithic sites? Proximity analysis is seldom used for predictive modeling for hunter-gatherer sites at large scales, but in this paper, we argue that it can serve as an important starting point for prospection for rare and poorly understood sites. This study uses proximity analysis to provide quantitative landscape associations of known Mesolithic and Early Neolithic sites in the Carpathian Basin to show how Mesolithic people chose attributes of the landscape for camps, and how they differed from the farmers who later settled. We use elevation and slope, rivers, wetlands prior to the twentieth century, and the distribution of lithic raw materials foragers and farmers used for toolmaking to identify key proxies for preferred locations. We then build predictive models for the Mesolithic and Early Neolithic in the Pannonian region to highlight parts of the landscape that have relatively higher probabilities of having Mesolithic sites still undiscovered and contrast them with the settlement patterns of the first farmers in the area. We find that large parts of Pannonia conform to landforms preferred by Mesolithic foragers, but these areas have not been subject to investigation.

Despite the promising research trends of the last decades, it is striking that traces of Mesolithic settlements have only rarely come to light in the Carpathian Basin so far. The area of Transdanubia is not an exception. With the cooperation of three institutes, a research program was launched in 2003 with the aim of discovering new find places of the period, as well as re-evaluating finds that had been taken to museums earlier and classified as Mesolithic. The field surveys revealed Early Holocene sites in the South-East Transdanubian region in the valley of the Kapos and Koppány Rivers, mainly in the outskirts of Kaposhomok and Regöly. The sites mainly came to light on the island-like reliefs elevating only a few meters from the present-day floodplain. The dating of the surface finds, especially chipped stone artefacts, was primarily based on the geometric microliths, which contain asymmetric triangles, segments, and trapezes. We could even reveal Mesolithic finds within stratigraphic position at the site of Regöly 2, where the remains of a domestic structure also came to light.

Az utóbbi évtizedek biztató kutatási tendenciái ellenére feltűnő jelenség, hogy mezolitikus települések nyomai mindeddig csak nagyon ritkán kerültek elő a Kárpát-medencében. Ez alól a Dunántúl területe sem kivétel. A 2003. év során három intézmény együttműködésével kutatási program indult a korszak lelőhelyeinek vizsgálatára, amely a régebben múzeumokba került és mezolitikusnak tartott leletanyagok újraértékelése mellett új lelőhelyek felfedezését is céljául tűzte ki. A terepi kutatásoknak köszönhetően kora holocén korú lelőhelyek váltak ismertté a délkelet-dunántúli térségben, a Kapos és a Koppány folyók völgyében, elsősorban Kaposhomok és Regöly határában. A lelőhelyek rendszerint a jelenlegi ártéri területekből legfeljebb néhány méterrel kiemelkedő, szigetszerű térszíneken fordulnak elő. A felszíni leletek, főként pattintott kőeszközök korhatározása elsősorban a geometrikus mikrolit típusok alapján történt, amelyek között aszimmetrikus háromszögek, szegmensek, valamint trapézok is szerepelnek. A mezolitikus leletek rétegtani helyzetben is előkerültek Regöly 2 lelőhelyen, ahol egy lakóépítmény nyomai is napvilágot láttak.

Stable isotope signatures of domesticates found on archaeology sites provide information about past human behaviour, such as the evolution and adaptation of husbandry strategies. A dynamic phase in cattle husbandry evolution is during the 6th millennium BCE, where the first cattle herders of central Europe spread rapidly through diverse forested ecological niches, where little is known about pasturing strategies. Here we investigate cattle pasturing and foddering practices using a multi-regional dataset of stable isotope values (δ13C and δ18O; compound-specific stable isotopic analysis δ15N-amino acids and δ13C-dairy fats) measured from cattle bone and teeth, and pottery residues from early farming contexts, and palaeoenvironmental information. Our analysis reveals that farmers practiced different pasturing strategies with the intensive use of forested ecosystems in some areas for both graze and seasonal forage. We propose that the diversity of strategies is related to the adaptation of herding to new environments, which had a positive impact on cattle breeding and milk availability for human consumption.

Agro-ecosystem services are the various benefits (e.g., crop yield) that people freely obtain from the properly functioning agricultural lands. The estimated changes in climatic conditions including increasing temperature, with particular attention to the summer means, together with the expected changes in the temporal precipitation distribution pose enormous challenge to the agriculture. Currently, dynamic system models are most frequently used tools that are capable of estimating the prospective effects of climate change on agro-ecosystems. A deterministic biogeochemical model is presented that is developed by Hungarian scientists within the framework of the AgroMo project. The main goal of the AgroMo project is to develop climate-smart strategies in order to mitigate the effect of potential future hazards in the context of climate change by 1) creating a complex, state-of-the-art experimental platform; 2) producing ten new, 0.1° spatial resolution climate scenarios based on the RCP (Representative Concentration Pathway) 4.5 and RCP8.5 scenarios; 3) developing an integrated assessment and modeling framework that is capable of simulating every major land use types; 4) analyzing/simulating a great number of adaptation strategies that can be used to support decision makers. Based on the preliminary simulation results, climate change will most likely expose significant negative impact on the spring sown crops in Hungary. Although, the yield losses could be avoided with irrigation or could be mitigated with earlier sowing, the role of winter crops is likely to become more significant in Hungary in the future.

In European and many African, Middle Eastern and southern Asian populations, lactase persistence (LP) is the most strongly selected monogenic trait to have evolved over the past 10,000 years1. Although the selection of LP and the consumption of prehistoric milk must be linked, considerable uncertainty remains concerning their spatiotemporal configuration and specific interactions2,3. Here we provide detailed distributions of milk exploitation across Europe over the past 9,000 years using around 7,000 pottery fat residues from more than 550 archaeological sites. European milk use was widespread from the Neolithic period onwards but varied spatially and temporally in intensity. Notably, LP selection varying with levels of prehistoric milk exploitation is no better at explaining LP allele frequency trajectories than uniform selection since the Neolithic period. In the UK Biobank4,5 cohort of 500,000 contemporary Europeans, LP genotype was only weakly associated with milk consumption and did not show consistent associations with improved fitness or health indicators. This suggests that other reasons for the beneficial effects of LP should be considered for its rapid frequency increase. We propose that lactase non-persistent individuals consumed milk when it became available but, under conditions of famine and/or increased pathogen exposure, this was disadvantageous, driving LP selection in prehistoric Europe. Comparison of model likelihoods indicates that population fluctuations, settlement density and wild animal exploitation—proxies for these drivers—provide better explanations of LP selection than the extent of milk exploitation. These findings offer new perspectives on prehistoric milk exploitation and LP evolution.

The pivotal role of the western Carpathian basin in the transmission of key inventions of food production towards central Europe is an accepted fact in Neolithic research. Southern Transdanubia in western Hungary may serve as a unique ‘laboratory’ for targeted investigations, as north Balkan and central European characteristics overlap in the region. Site-based studies of recently excavated late 6th millennium cal BC Neolithic settlements provide insights into possible patterns in the development of longhouse architecture and settlement layout, different combinations of material culture and their alterations, and technology transfer on a regional scale. In order to gain a more complex view of these themes, three micro-regions have been selected around key sites for further study of different vantage points between Lake Balaton and the Drava/Drava river. The southernmost one is located in the Southern Baranya Hills, the second along the Danube on the northern fringes of the Tolna Sarkoz and in the adjacent section of the Sarviz valley, while the third lies in the central section of the southern shore of Lake Balaton. Field surveys including the systematic collection of surface finds complemented by geomagnetic prospections can contribute significantly to the reconstruction of settlement clusters. Absolute chronology has become an important research focus due to larger sets of radiocarbon dates interpreted within a Bayesian framework. The two dominant scenarios for the start of the westward expansion of the LBK are hard to harmonise with each other. An approach that estimates the beginning of the process around 5500 cal BC at the latest gains support from a west-central European perspective. In contrast, recent radiocarbon dating programmes with formal modelling of AMS series within a Bayesian framework estimate the appearance of the LBK west of the Carpathian basin hardly before 5350–5300 cal BC. The latter view provides the potential of harmonising the Neolithisation of central Europe with the emergence of the Vinca culture, at least in its northernmost region. Beyond this debate, ancient DNA analyses have enriched the discussions on migration, demic diffusion and the scale of hunter-gatherer contribution to the process with fresh arguments.

International audience

International audience; In early Neolithic Europe, where mobility is a structural component of farming communities, interpreting ceramic technological change detected in the archae- ological record can be particularly challenging. Change in technical practices can correspond to local innovation or to arrivals of individuals implementing their own inherited technical traditions. To bring new lines of thoughts on this issue, we discuss here, from the perspective of ceramic forming processes, a period of major cultural change in the European Neolithic: the transition in the Carpathian Basin from the Balkan early Neolithic (Starčevo and Körös) to the Linear Pottery. The analysis of four ceramic assemblages from settlements located in this culturally contrasted area suggests that this zone of cultural mutation constitutes an area of interaction between different communities of practice, whose technical traditions can be traced over the long term. In this context, the changes perceived in ceramic forming processes do not appear to result from innovation processes. Rather, they seem associated with complex social dynamics, implying populations moving over the long term and long distances with their own inherited technical traditions. Our study serves as an example of the power of ceramic technology to act as a high spatial and temporal resolution proxy for human dynamics and trajectories, enabling to address complex social mechanisms.

We aim to predict Hungarian corn yields for the period of 2020&ndash, 2100. The purpose of the study was to mutually consider the environmental impact of climate change and the potential human impact indicators towards sustaining corn yield development in the future. Panel data regression methods were elaborated on historic observations (1970&ndash, 2018) to impose statistical inferences with simulated weather events (2020&ndash, 2100) and to consider developing human impact for sustainable intensification. The within-between random effect model was performed with three generic specifications to address time constant indicators as well. Our analysis on a gridded Hungarian database confirms that rising temperature and decreasing precipitation will negatively affect corn yields unless human impact dissolves the climate-induced challenges. We addressed the effect of elevated carbon dioxide (CO2) as an important factor of diverse human impact. By superposing the human impact on the projected future yields, we confirm that the negative prospects of climate change can be defeated.

In European Neolithic populations, the arrival of farmers prompted admixture with local hunter-gatherers over many centuries, resulting in distinct signatures in each region due to a complex series of interactions. David Reich and colleagues analyse genome-wide data from 180 individuals from the Neolithic and Chalcolithic periods of Hungary, Germany and Spain to study the population dynamics of Neolithization in European prehistory. They examine how gene flow reshaped European populations during the Neolithic period, including pervasive admixture—the interbreeding between previously isolated populations—between groups with different ancestry profiles. In each region, they find that the arrival of farmers prompted admixture with local hunter-gatherers, over the course of 3,000 years. Ancient DNA studies have established that Neolithic European populations were descended from Anatolian migrants1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8 who received a limited amount of admixture from resident hunter-gatherers3,4,5,9. Many open questions remain, however, about the spatial and temporal dynamics of population interactions and admixture during the Neolithic period. Here we investigate the population dynamics of Neolithization across Europe using a high-resolution genome-wide ancient DNA dataset with a total of 180 samples, of which 130 are newly reported here, from the Neolithic and Chalcolithic periods of Hungary (6000–2900 bc, n = 100), Germany (5500–3000 bc, n = 42) and Spain (5500–2200 bc, n = 38). We find that genetic diversity was shaped predominantly by local processes, with varied sources and proportions of hunter-gatherer ancestry among the three regions and through time. Admixture between groups with different ancestry profiles was pervasive and resulted in observable population transformation across almost all cultural transitions. Our results shed new light on the ways in which gene flow reshaped European populations throughout the Neolithic period and demonstrate the potential of time-series-based sampling and modelling approaches to elucidate multiple dimensions of historical population interactions.

Farming was established in Central Europe by the Linearbandkeramik culture (LBK), a well-investigated archaeological horizon, which emerged in the Carpathian Basin, in today's Hungary. However, the genetic background of the LBK genesis has not been revealed yet. Here we present 9 Y chromosomal and 84 mitochondrial DNA profiles from Mesolithic, Neolithic Starčevo and LBK sites (7th/6th millennium BC) from the Carpathian Basin and south-eastern Europe. We detect genetic continuity of both maternal and paternal elements during the initial spread of agriculture, and confirm the substantial genetic impact of early farming south-eastern European and Carpathian Basin cultures on Central European populations of the 6th-4th millennium BC. Our comprehensive Y chromosomal and mitochondrial DNA population genetic analyses demonstrate a clear affinity of the early farmers to the modern Near East and Caucasus, tracing the expansion from that region through south-eastern Europe and the Carpathian Basin into Central Europe. Our results also reveal contrasting patterns for male and female genetic diversity in the European Neolithic, suggesting patrilineal descent system and patrilocal residential rules among the early farmers.

Die Verfasser arbeiteten mit Hilfe von stomatologischem Alginat-Abdruckmaterial eine Methode zur Herstellung von Negativen aus, die die Haut nicht reizen, in einigen Minuten erstarren und elastisch bleiben. Von den Negativen sind Gipspositive in beliebiger Anzahl abzugiesen. Die Anfertigung des Negativs von 70–100 μ “Auflosungsfahigkeit” und des Gipspositivs dauert 15–20 Minuten. Die Verfasser halten ihr Verfahren fur geeignet, in die Reihe der dermatologischen Dokumentationsverfahren aufgenommen zu werden.

International audience; One of the most salient traits of a major milestone in European history, the shift to a Neolithic life-style in Central Europe and the associated social changes, was the emergence of pottery production. The main goal of the research project described here is the study of Neolithic pottery production from a complex perspec- tive and the addressing of the associated distinctive social activity types and potential range of meanings during the period from the late Starčevo to the appearance of the Lengyel culture (5500–4900 cal BC). The springboard for our project was the series of intensely investigated sites in southern Transdanubia, a region that acted as a contact zone between the Neolithic communities of Central Europe and the northern Balkans, and thus played a key role in the neolithisation of Central Europe. The research findings from this region are complemented and compared with the data from various sites along the Danube. Aside from our academic colleagues, our research results can be of interest to the broader public too, and our reconstruc- tions of various artefacts and the documentation of our archaeological experiments can be later used as illustrations to museum exhibits. The expected results can be fitted into the broad picture outlined by other research conducted on these sites and offer an exceptionally detailed picture of how the region’s settlements developed during the second half of the 6th millennium BC.