by Karin Bojs
Gamba, C., Jones, E. R., Teasdale, M. D., McLaughlin, R. L., Gonzalez-Fortes, G., Mattiangeli, V., et al. (2014). Genome flux and stasis in a five millennium transect of European prehistory. Nature Communications, 5 (10), 5257. doi:10.1038/ncomms6257
Haak, W., Lazaridis, I., Patterson, N., Rohland, N., Mallick, S., Llamas, B., et al. (2015). Massive migration from the steppe was a source for Indo-European languages in Europe. Nature, 522 (7555), 207–211. doi:10.1038/nature14317
Ingram, C. E., Mulcare, C. A., Itan, Y., Thomas, M. G., & Swallow, D. M. (2009). Lactose digestion and the evolutionary genetics of lactase persistence. Human Genetics, 124 (6), 579. doi:10.1007/s00439-008-0593-6
Itan, Y., Jones, B., Ingram, C., Swallow, D., & Thomas, M. (2010). A worldwide correlation of lactase persistence phenotype and genotypes. BMC Evolutionary Biology, 10 (1), doi:10.1186/1471-2148-10-36
Lazaridis, I., Patterson, N., Mittnik, A., Renaud, G., Mallick, S., Kirsanow, K., et al. (2014). Ancient human genomes suggest three ancestral populations for present-day Europeans. Nature, 513 (7518), 409–413. doi:10.1038/nature13673
Mathiesen, I. (2015). Eight thousand years of natural selection in Europe. bioRxiv preprint, first published online on 14 March 2015.
Olalde, I., Allentoft, M., Sanchez-Quinto, F., Santpere, G., Chiang, C., DeGiorgio, M., et al. (2014). Derived immune and ancestral pigmentation alleles in a 7,000-year-old Mesolithic European. Nature, 507 (7491), 225–228.
Sten, S. (ed.) (2000). Barumkvinnan: nya forskningsrön. Fornvännen, 95 (2000), 73–87.
Ahlström, Torbjörn. Telephone interview, March 2014.
Hallgren, Fredrik. Interview, March 2014.
Sten, Sabine. Telephone interview, March 2014.
Swedish History Museum, Stockholm. Visited several times between 2013 and 2015.
Climate and Forests
Gaffney, V. L., Fitch, S., & Smith, D. N. (2009). Europe’s Lost World: the rediscovery of Doggerland. York: Council for British Archaeology.
Lazaridis, I., Patterson, N., Mittnik, A., Renaud, G., Mallick, S., Kirsanow, K., et al. (2014). Ancient human genomes suggest three ancestral populations for present-day Europeans. Nature, 513 (7518), 409–413. doi:10.1038/nature13673
Olalde, I., Allentoft, M., Sánchez-Quinto, F., Santpere, G., Chiang, C., Degiorgio, M., et al. (2014). Derived immune and ancestral pigmentation alleles in a 7,000-year-old Mesolithic European. Nature, 507, 225–228. doi:10.1038/nature12960
Weninger, B. (2008). The catastrophic final flooding of Doggerland by the Storegga Slide tsunami. Documenta Praehistorica, 35, 1–24.
Björck, Svante. Telephone interview, March 2014.
Gaffney, Vincent. Interview, January 2015.
Wohlfarth, Barbara. Interview, March 2014.
Am I a Sami?
At the very last moment, just before it was time to hand in the manuscript, I decided to take the night train up to the Sami Museum, Ájtte, in Jokkmokk. I am very glad I did. Ájtte is an outstandingly good museum and an important part of Sweden’s history.
Broberg, G. & Tydén, M. (1991). Oönskade i folkhemmet: rashygien och sterilisering i Sverige. Stockholm: Gidlund.
Ingman, M. & Gyllensten, U. (2007). A recent genetic link between Sami and the Volga-Ural region of Russia. European Journal of Human Genetics, 15 (1), 115–120. doi:10.1038/sj.ejhg.5201712
Janson, T. (2013). Germanerna: myten, historien, språken. Stockholm: Norstedts.
Krebs, C. B. (2011). A Most Dangerous Book: Tacitus’s Germania from the Roman Empire to the Third Reich (1st edition). New York: W. W. Norton & Co.
Malyarchuk, B., Derenko, M., Grzybowski, T., Perkova, M., Rogalla, U., Vanecek, T., & Tsybovsky, I. (2010). The peopling of Europe from the mitochondrial haplogroup U5 perspective. PLOS ONE, 5 (4), 1–6. doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0010285
Manker, E. (1947). De svenska fjällapparna. Stockholm: Svenska turistföreningens förlag.
Tambets, K., Rootsi, S., Kivisild, T., Help, H., Serk, P., Loogväli, E.,et al. (2004). The western and eastern roots of the Saami – the story of genetic “outliers” told by mitochondrial DNA and Y chromosomes. The American Journal of Human Genetics, 74, 661–682. doi:10.1086/383203
Aronsson, Kjell-Åke. Interview, December 2014.
Gyllensten, Ulf. Interview, December 2014.
Tambets, Kristiina. Email, December 2014.
Tonnesen, Gail. Email, 2013 and 2014.
Pottery Makes its Appearance
Craig, O., Saul, H., Lucquin, A., Nishida, Y., Taché, K., Clarke, L., et al. (2013). Earliest evidence for the use of pottery. Nature, 496 (7445), 351–354. doi:10.1038/nature12109
Marzurkevich, A. & Dolbunova, E. (2012). The oldest pottery and Neolithisation of Eastern Europe. Fontes Archaeologici Poznaniensis, 48.
Saul, H., Madella, M., Fischer, A., Glykou, A., Hartz, S., & Craig, O. (2013). Phytoliths in pottery reveal the use of spice in European prehistoric cuisine. PLOS ONE, 8 (8), e70583. doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0070583
Swedish National Heritage Board. Contract Archaeology Service (South) (2004). Stone Age Scania: significant places dug and read by contract archaeology (1st edition). Stockholm: Riksantikvarieämbetets förlag.
Wu, X., Zhang, C., Goldberg, P., Cohen, D., Pan, Y., Arpin, T., & Bar-Yosef, O. (2012). Early pottery at 20,000 years ago in Xianrendong Cave, China. Science, 336 (6089), 1696–1700. doi:10.1126/science.1218643
Dolbunova, Ekaterina. Lecture, September 2013. Email, September 2013.
Hallgren, F. Interview, March 2014.
The Farmers Arrive
Burenhult, G. (ed.) (2010). Arkeologi i Norden. 1. Stockholm: Natur & Kultur.
Jennbert, K. (1984). Den produktiva gåvan: tradition och innovation i Sydskandinavien för omkring 5300 år sedan. Diss. Lund: Univ. Bonn.
Lazaridis, I., Patterson, N., Mittnik, A., Renaud, G., Mallick, S., Kirsanow, K., et al. (2014). Ancient human genomes suggest three ancestral populations for present-day Europeans. Nature, 513 (7518), 409–413. doi:10.1038/nature13673
Nordic Museum, Lagersberg Foundation (1998). Det svenska jordbrukets historia. [Bd 1], Jordbrukets första femtusen år: [4000 f. Kr.–1000 e. Kr.]. Stockholm: Natur & Kultur/LT in conjunction with the Nordic Museum, Stockholm, and the Lagersberg Foundation.
Skoglund, P., Malmström, H., Raghavan, M., Storå, J., Hall, P., Willerslev, E., Gilbert, M. T. P., Götherström, A., & Jakobsson, M. (2012). Origins and genetic legacy of Neolithic farmers and hunter-gatherers in Europe. Science, 336, 466–469. doi:10.1126/science.1216304
Sørensen, L. & Karg, S. (2014). The expansion of agrarian societies towards the north – new evidence for agriculture during the Mesolithic/Neolithic transition in Southern Scandinavia. Journal of Archaeological Science, 51, 98–114. doi:10.1016/j.jas.2012.08.042
Gronenborn, Detlef. Interview, September 2013.
Haak, Wolfgang. Email, July 2013.
Jennbert, Kristina. Interview, February 2014.
Price, Douglas. Interview, February 2014.
The Swedish Research Council. Email, December 2013.
Family Tree DNA. Personal analysis, 2013.
Jakobsson, M., Götherström, A., Storå, J., Skoglund, P., Burenhult, G. Press conference in Uppsala, April 2012.
The Swedish Foundation for Humanities and Social Sciences. Press release, October 2013.
University of Stockholm. Press release, October 2013.
University of Uppsala. Press release, October 2013.
Syria
Fernández, E., Pérez-Pérez, A., Gamba, C., Prats, E., Cuesta, P., Anfruns, J., et al. (2014). Ancient DNA analysis of 8000 B.C. Near Eastern farmers supports an Early Neolithic pioneer maritime colonization of mainland Europe through Cyprus and the Aegean Islands. PLOS Genetics, 10 (6), e1004401. doi:10.1371/journal.pgen.1004401
The Boat to Cyprus
Exploring the origins of agriculture in depth could scarcely be made any simpler or more comfortable. Tourism being Cyprus’s main economic activity, there are hotels, restaurants and museum
s galore. You can get around fairly easily using ordinary buses, and where they are lacking there are taxis, cycles for hire and rental cars. The most informative destination as regards early agriculture is the World Heritage Site of Khirokitia, near the A1 national highway a few dozen kilometres west of Larnaca. A regular bus service will take you nearly all the way to the site.
The Cyprus Museum in the capital, Nicosia, is also quite informative about the first farmers. Look at the display cabinets in the first room.
Driscoll, C., Menotti-Raymond, M., Roca, A., Hupe, K., Johnson, W., Geffen, E., & Macdonald, D. (2007). The Near Eastern origin of cat domestication. Science, 317 (5837), 519–523.
Kuijt, I. & Finlayson, B. (2009). Evidence for food storage and predomestication granaries 11,000 years ago in the Jordan Valley. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America, 106 (27), 10966–10970. doi:10.1073/pnas.0812764106
Málek, J. (2006). The Cat in Ancient Egypt. London: British Museum.
Montague, M. J., Gang, L., Gandolfi, B., Khan, R., Aken, B. L., Searle, S. J., et al. (2014). Comparative analysis of the domestic cat genome reveals genetic signatures underlying feline biology and domestication. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America, 111 (48), 17230–17235. doi:10.1073/pnas.1410083111
Van Neer, W., Linseele, V., Friedman, R., & De Cupere, B. (2014). More evidence for cat taming at the Predynastic elite cemetery of Hierakonpolis (Upper Egypt). Journal of Archaeological Science, 45, 103–111. doi:10.1016/j.jas.2014.02.014
Vigne, J., Guilaine, J., Debue, K., Haye, L., & Gérard, P. (2004). Early taming of the cat in Cyprus. Science, 304 (5668), 259.
Vigne, J., Briois, F., Zazzo, A., Willcox, G., Cucchi, T., Thiébault, S., et al. (2012). First wave of cultivators spread to Cyprus at least 10,600 years ago. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America, 109 (22), 8445–8449. doi:10.1073/pnas.1201693109
Häggman, Sofia. Interview, May 2014.
Johansson, Carolin. Email, December 2014.
McCartney, Carole. Interview and field visit, April 2014.
Mühlenbock, Christian. Conversation, May 2015.
Vigne, Jean-Denis. Email, April 2014.
Visit to Cyprus, April 2014.
The First Beer
There are organised tours of Göbekli Tepe for tourists.
Bar-Yosef, O. (2011). Climatic fluctuations and early farming in West and East Asia. Current Anthropology, 52 (S4), doi:10.1086/659784
Colledge, S. & Conolly, J. (2007). The Origins and Spread of Domestic Plants in Southwest Asia and Europe [Electronic resource]. California: Left Coast Press, Inc.
Dietrich, O., Heun, M., Notroff, J., Schmidt, K., Zarnkow, M., & Carver, M. (2012). The role of cult and feasting in the emergence of Neolithic communities. New evidence from Göbekli Tepe, south-eastern Turkey. Antiquity, 86 (333), 674–695.
Heun, M., Schäfer-Pregl, R., Klawan, D., Castagna, R., Accerbi, M., Borghi, B., & Salamini, F. (1997). Site of einkorn wheat domestication identified by DNA fingerprinting. Science, 278 (5341), 1312–1314.
Larson, G., Piperno, D. R., Allaby, R. G., Purugganan, M. D., Andersson, L., Arroyo-Kalin, M., et al. (2014). Current perspectives and the future of domestication studies. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America, 111 (17), 6139–6146. doi:10.1073/pnas.1323964111
Luo, M., Yang, Z., You, F., Kawahara, T., Waines, J., & Dvorak, J. (2007). The structure of wild and domesticated emmer wheat populations, gene flow between them, and the site of emmer domestication. Theoretical and Applied Genetics, 114 (6), 947–959.
Piperno, D., Weiss, E., Holst, I., & Nadel, D. (2004). Processing of wild cereal grains in the Upper Palaeolithic revealed by starch grain analysis. Nature, 430 (7000), 670–673.
Price, T. & Bar-Yosef, O. (2011). The origins of agriculture: new data, new ideas. An Introduction to Supplement 4. Current Anthropology, 52 (S4), doi:10.1086/659964
Vigne, J., Carrère, I., Briois, F., & Guilaine, J. (2011). The early process of mammal domestication in the Near East: new evidence from the Pre-Neolithic and Pre-Pottery Neolithic in Cyprus. Current Anthropology, 52 (S4), doi:10.1086/659306
Vigne, J., Briois, F., Zazzo, A., Willcox, G., Cucchi, T., Thiébault, S., et al. (2012). First wave of cultivators spread to Cyprus at least 10,600 y ago. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America, 109 (22), 8445–8449. doi:10.1073/pnas.1201693109
Weiss, E. & Zohary, D. (2011). The Neolithic Southwest Asian founder crops, their biology and archaeobotany. Current Anthropology, 52 (S4), doi:10.1086/658367
Willcox, G. & Herveux, L. (2013). Late Pleistocene/Early Holocene charred plant remains: preliminary report. In R. F. Mazurowski, Y. Kanjou (eds), Tell Qaramel 1999–2007. Protoneolithic and Early Pre-pottery Neolithic Settlement in Northern Syria. 120/130. Warsaw: PCMA.
Zeder, M. A. (2011). The origins of agriculture in the Near East. Current Anthropology, 52 (S4), doi:10.1086/659307
Dietrich, Oliver. Email, October 2014.
McCartney, Carole. Interview and field visit, March 2014.
Vigne, Jean-Denis. Email, March 2014.
The Farmers’ Westward Voyages
Badro, D. A., Douaihy, B., Haber, M., Youhanna, S. C., Salloum, A., Ghassibe-Sabbagh, M., et al. (2013). Y-chromosome and mtDNA genetics reveal significant contrasts in affinities of modern Middle Eastern populations with European and African populations. PLOS ONE, 8 (1), 1–11. doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0054616
Bengtson, J. D. (2009). Basque and the other Mediterranean languages. Mother Tongue, 14, 157–175.
Huysecoml, E., Rasse, M., Lespez, L., Neumann, K., Fahmy, A., Ballouche, A., et al. (2009). The emergence of pottery in Africa during the tenth millennium cal BC: new evidence from Ounjougou (Mali). Antiquity, 83 (322), 905–917.
Manco, J. (2013). Ancestral Journeys: the peopling of Europe from the first ventures to the Vikings. London: Thames & Hudson.
Rowley-Conwy, P. (2011). Westward Ho! The spread of agriculture from Central Europe to the Atlantic. Current Anthropology, 52 (S4), doi:10.1086/658368
Zeder, M. A. (2008). Domestication and early agriculture in the Mediterranean Basin: origins, diffusion, and impact. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America, 105 (33), 11597–11604. doi:10.1073/pnas.0801317105
Jakobsson, Mattias. Interview, December 2014.
McCartney, Carole. Field visit and interview, March 2014.
Museum of Cyprus, Nicosia. Visited in 2014.
Sotira Teppes. Visited in March 2014.
The Homes Built on the Graves of the Dead
It is possible to visit Çatalhöyük.
Hodder, I. (2006). Çatalhöyük: the Leopard’s tale: revealing the mysteries of Turkey’s ancient ‘town’. London: Thames & Hudson.
Litt, T., Ohlwein, C., Neumann, F. H., Hense, A., & Stein, M. (2012). Holocene climate variability in the Levant from the Dead Sea pollen record. Quaternary Science Reviews, 49, 95–105. doi:10.1016/j.quascirev.2012.06.012
Paschou, P., Drineas, P., Yannaki, E., Razou, A., Kanaki, K., Tsetsos, F., et al. (2014). Maritime route of colonization of Europe. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America, 111 (25), 9211–9216. doi:10.1073/pnas.1320811111
Özdoğan, M. (2011). Archaeological evidence on the westward expansion of farming communities from Eastern Anatolia to the Aegean and the Balkans. Current Anthropology, 52 (S4), S415–S430. doi:10.1086/658895
Berggren, Å. Email, March 2015.
Hodder, Ian. Email, May 2014 and December 2014.
Litt, Thomas. Email, June 2014.
Özdoğan, Mehmet. Email, May 2014.
Clashes in Pilsen and Mainz
Bánffy, E. (2010). Early Neolithic Settlement and Burials at Alsonyek-Bataszek,
Kraców.
Bollongino, R., Nehlich, O., Richards, M., Orschiedt, J., Thomas, M., Sell, C., et al. (2013). 2
000 years of parallel societies in Stone Age Central Europe. Science 342, (6157), 479–481. doi:10.1126/science.1245049
Brandt, G., Haak, W., Adler, C., Roth, C., Szécsényi-Nagy, A., Karimnia, S., et al. (2013). Ancient DNA reveals key stages in the formation of central European mitochondrial genetic diversity. Science, 342 (6155), 257–261. doi:10.1126/science.1241844
Fernández, E., Pérez-Pérez, A., Gamba, C., Prats, E., Cuesta, P., Anfruns, J., et al. (2014). Ancient DNA analysis of 8000 B.C. Near Eastern farmers supports an Early Neolithic pioneer maritime colonization of mainland Europe through Cyprus and the Aegean Islands. PLOS Genetics, 10 (6), 1–16. doi:10.1371/journal.pgen.1004401
Alt, Kurt. Interview, October 2013.
Banffy, Eszter. Email, May 2014.
Brandt, Guido. Interview, October 2013.
Burger, Joachim. Interview, October 2013.
European Association for Archaeology. Annual meeting, September 2013.
Sowing and Sunrise
The State Museum of Prehistory (Landesmuseum für Vorgeschichte) in Halle is one of the best museums of prehistory in the whole of Europe, comparable only with Les-Eyzies-de-Tayac and the Danish National Museum in Copenhagen.
Unfortunately, the city of Halle is not equally agreeable. I recommend staying overnight in Berlin, or, even better, in Leipzig, which is only half an hour’s journey by local train. From there, you can visit the Goseck solar observatory (and the Nebra Ark, described in ‘The Nebra sky disc in Halle’). It is possible to reach Goseck, albeit rather circuitously, by local train and bus, but I hired a car to get there quickly and safely.
To experience the true magic of the solar observatory, you need to try and arrange to be there at sunrise or sunset on a clear day.
Zich, Bernhard. Interview, September 2013.
Archaeological Museum, Cracow. Visited in October 2013.
Goseck. Visited in November 2014.
State Museum of Prehistory (Landesmuseum für Vorgeschichte), Halle. Visited in September 2013 and November 2014.
Farmers Arrive in Skåne
The best place to study the arrival of agriculture in Scandinavia is the Danish National Museum in Copenhagen, the workplace of archaeologist Lasse Sørensen.
