Insights into Modern Human Prehistory Using Ancient Genomes

Neanderthal's checkered past adds an element of mystery to the pathways that were charted. Your insights add to the histories of what adds a passion and excitement that feeds our curiosity.
 
Thanks for opening the doorway to this opportunity to learn and know a little more about the way things were and how they evolved.
The challenge of this thread is action packed. "Neanderthal Man" is back with more questions which always seems to lead back to a deeper look inside of the "Publishing of the Genome." Svante Paabo always helps to reconstruct what the process was and how to get started.
 
An insightful comment from Eren at Eurogenes: http://eurogenes.blogspot.com/2018/01/unadmixed-basal-eurasians-lived.html

Eren said...
Always interesting to read about Basal Eurasians, even if it's just a review article.

In the context of the above discussion regarding north-to-south vs south-to-north movements, the fossil record of the Levant (or Israel to be more specific) seems to rather support a south-to-north movement of Basal Eurasians. Fossils from the late Upper Paleolithic time period (27-19 ky BP) seem to be of the Cro Magnon type. The youngest of those remains is from the site of Ohalo, which includes a complete male skeleton (Ohalo H1). Here is a picture of his skull (the one at the bottom): https://static.cambridge.org/resourc...046fig68_2.png

I'd bet we are looking at a representative of the so called "UHG" here. The skull at the top is from Nahal Ein Gev I (27-25 ky BP), a female specimen from the same anthropological cluster.

"From the anthropological perspective, therefore, there is no clear association between the late Mousterian/Initial Upper Palaeolithic periods (Manot) human populations and later (<30 ka) Upper Palaeolithic populations in the Levant (e.g. Qafzeh). The former is associated with early Upper Palaeolithic central European populations (e.g. Mladec) bearing many archaic traits, whereas the later are more of the Cro-Magnon type. This may imply population movements in and out of the southern Levant from/to western Asia, Europe, and Africa during the Upper Palaeolithic."
(Hershkovitz & Arensburg 2017: 612-613)

Starting with the Kebaran the divergent Natufian type emerges in the fossil record. These specimen are rather heterogenous, with some showing more continuity with the Cro Magnon types (e.g. Eynan) and other much more archaic (e.g. Hayonim cave). A skull comparison here: https://static.cambridge.org/resourc...046fig68_3.png

Eynan specimens were also taller: "average male stature at Eynan was 174 cm tall and females 162 cm, whereas in other Natufian sites (Hayonim Cave, Nahal Oren, el-Wad), males were <170 cm tall and females <160 cm." (Hershkovitz & Arensburg 2017: 616)

Seems to me that Basal Eurasian admixture into the Levant is not older than the Kebaran, which is also why Natufians show such heterogeneity. Similar, but less significant morphological differences are observed in the Iran Hotu specimens. A mixture of cold and warm adapted people, some leaning more towards the one or the other. Admixture events that hadn't had the time to produce homogenous blends at that point in time.
 
The above comment has convinced me, prior to the emergence of the Kebaran culture, groups related to European hunter-gatherers lived in the Levant, because the fossils were of a "Cro Magnon" type. The same in Europe.

Starting with the Kebaran the divergent Natufian type emerges in the fossil record. These specimens are rather heterogeneous, with some showing more continuity with the Cro Magnon types (e.g. Eynan) and other much more archaic (e.g. Hayonim cave).

The Kebaran culture I believe documents the appearance of Basal Eurasians in the Levant, Archaeologists believe they were ancestral to the succeeding Natufians, whom we know had Basal Eurasian. and we recently know Iberomaurusians carried Natufian like ancestry before the Natufians themselves, that would point to the Kebarans.

The Kebarans brought with them a new stone technology, geometric microliths, its spread I think is associated with Basal Eurasians, and it maybe the secret to their success, prior to the farming revolution.

The Kebaran culture, with its use of microliths, is associated with the use of the bow and arrow and the domestication of the dog.

There is another culture in the Near East that shares these innovations and appeared roughly at the same time, the Zarzian culture in Iran. That I believe is Basal Eurasian in Iran.

Who's a fan of the Nostratic hypothesis ? could Basal Eurasians be the proto-Nostratians ?

Urheimat and differentiation

Looking at the cultural assemblages of this period, two sequences in particular stand out as possible archeological correlates of the earliest Nostratians or their immediate precursors. Both hypotheses place Proto-Nostratic within the Fertile Crescent at around the end of the last glacial period.

The first of these is focused on the Levant. The Kebaran culture (20,000–17,000 BP)[26] not only introduced the microlithic assemblage into the region, it also has African affinity specifically with the Ouchtata retouch technique associated with the microlithic Halfan culture of Egypt (20,000–17,000 BP)[27] The Kebarans in their turn were directly ancestral to the succeeding Natufian culture (10,500–8500 BCE), which has enormous significance for prehistorians as the clearest evidence of hunters and gatherers in actual transition to Neolithic food production. Both cultures extended their influence outside the region into southern Anatolia. For example, in Cilicia the Belbaşı culture (13,000–10,000 BC) shows Kebaran influence, while the Beldibi culture (10,000–8500 BC) shows clear Natufian influence.

The second possibility as a culture associated with the Nostratic family is the Zarzian (12,400–8500 BC) culture of the Zagros mountains, stretching northwards into Kohistan in the Caucasus and eastwards into Iran. In western Iran, the M'lefatian culture (10,500–9000 BC) was ancestral to the assemblages of Ali Tappah (9000–5000 BC) and Jeitun (6000–4000 BC). Still further east, the Hissar culture has been seen as the Mesolithic precursor to the Keltiminar culture (5500–3500 BC) of the Kyrgyz steppe.

It has been proposed that the broad spectrum revolution of Kent Flannery (1969), associated with microliths, the use of the bow and arrow, and the domestication of the dog, all of which are associated with these cultures, might have been the cultural "motor" that led to their expansion. Certainly cultures which appeared at Franchthi Cave in the Aegean and Lepenski Vir in the Balkans, and the Murzak-Koba (9100–8000 BC) and Grebenki (8500–7000 BC) cultures of the Ukrainian steppe, all displayed these adaptations.

According to some scholarly opinion the Kebaran is derived from the Levantine Upper Palaeolithic in which the microlithic component originated, although microlithic cultures were earlier found in Africa.
 
The above comment has convinced me, prior to the emergence of the Kebaran culture, groups related to European hunter-gatherers lived in the Levant, because the fossils were of a "Cro Magnon" type. The same in Europe.



The Kebaran culture I believe documents the appearance of Basal Eurasians in the Levant, Archaeologists believe they were ancestral to the succeeding Natufians, whom we know had Basal Eurasian. and we recently know Iberomaurusians carried Natufian like ancestry before the Natufians themselves, that would point to the Kebarans.

The Kebarans brought with them a new stone technology, geometric microliths, its spread I think is associated with Basal Eurasians, and it maybe the secret to their success, prior to the farming revolution.



There is another culture in the Near East that shares these innovations and appeared roughly at the same time, the Zarzian culture in Iran. That I believe is Basal Eurasian in Iran.

Who's a fan of the Nostratic hypothesis ? could Basal Eurasians be the proto-Nostratians ?

IIRC Bar-Yosef stresses the Egyptian influence in the Late Upper Paloelithic Levantine, which becomes very marked in the Mushabian culture (i.e. before the Natufian and after the Kebaran) which seems be a culture of arid-zone specialist hunter-gatherers who also collected grain & grass and perhaps also introduced the bow to Eurasia (though the Kebarans might have already been familiar with bows). The culture encompasses the entire passage from Sinai -> Negev -> Jordan/Palestina/Syria. Wouldn't Egypt be a more likely location for the origin of the heat-adapted 'Mediterranean' type than Iran? I think even today groups from the Sahara have those features in their most extreme form.

I've also thought about the Nostratic = Basal Eurasian connection btw.
 

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