Beyond bones & stones
About 12,000 years ago in the Near East, the emergency of farming, animal domestication and subsequent changes to prehistoric human lifestyles emerged. This is known as the Neolithic revolution. This culture spread through Europe, along the Danube and the Mediterranean coasts by 5,000 to 4,500 years ago. Little was known about how the carriers of... Continue Reading →
In this week's journal Science Advances, University of Cambridge researchers compared the bones of women. Their sample included Central European women living in the first 5,000 years (or about 7,400-7,000 years ago) of agriculture those those of typical college students and college athletes including those that row in crew. As you know bone is a living... Continue Reading →
A new paper in PNAS reports on an interesting find from a 12,000-year-old Natufian burial complex in the Hilazon Tachtit cave site in Israel -- a shaman, which is unlike any other Natufian burial known to date. Before I get into the details of the paper, let me first introduce the Natufian culture and the... Continue Reading →
Last week, I shared with you all some research on the Neolithic/agricultural revolution in Iran and Turkey, specifically on barley and cattle domestication. Since then, PNAS has published a related paper, "Domestication and early agriculture in the Mediterranean Basin: Origins, diffusion, and impact," by Melinda Zeder. Zeder believes that the domestication of sheep and goat... Continue Reading →
