Origins of Cannabis sativa in Ireland and the Concept of Celtic Hemp: An Interdisciplinary Review.

Introduction: Ireland's agriculture has been shaped by Celts, Romano-British Christians, Norse-Vikings, Anglo-Normans, and subsequent migrants. Who introduced hemp (Cannabis sativa) to Hibernia? We addressed this question using historical linguistics, fossil pollen studies (FPSs), archaeological data, and written records. Methods: Data gathering utilized digital resources coupled with citation tracking. Linguistic methods separated cognates (words with shared etymological origins) from loanwords (borrowed from other languages). Cannabis pollen in FPSs was identified using the "ecological proxy" method. Archaeological reports were ranked on a "robustness" scale. Results: Words for "hemp" in Celtic languages are loanwords, not cognates. The Irish word cnáib is first attested in texts written 1060 and 1127-1134 CE. Old Breton coarcholion, corrected to coarch, is attested in a text from the 9th century. Pollen consistent with cultivated Cannabis appears in the Middle Ages, ca. 700 CE, at sites in the vicinity of monasteries. Archaeological finds (hemp seeds and fiber) date to later Norse-Viking and Anglo-Norman sites. Discussion: People of the Hallstatt Culture in Central Europe have long been considered speakers of the "Proto-Celtic" language. The lack of "hemp" cognates means a Proto-Celtic word cannot be reconstructed, which implies that Hallstatt people (with robust archaeological evidence of hemp) did not speak Proto-Celtic. Cnáib is absent in Old Irish glossaries, epics, and mythologies (600-900 CE). FPS data suggest that the onset of hemp cultivation correlated-chronologically and spatially-with the founding of Romano-British monasteries. Irish cnáib was likely borrowed from Clerical Latin canapis or canabus.

Paleodemographic analysis of age at death for a population of Black Sea Scythians: An exploration by using Bayesian methods.

OBJECTIVES: Studies of the demography of past populations involving deterministic life tables can be criticized for ignoring the errors of estimation. Bayesian methods offer an alternative, by focusing on the uncertainty of the estimates, although their results are often sensitive to the choice of prior distributions. The aim of this study is to explore a range of Bayesian methods for estimating age at death for a population of nomadic warriors-Scythians from the Black Sea region. MATERIALS AND METHODS: In total, skeletons of 312 individuals (93 children and 219 adults) from Glinoe (Moldova), dated to the 5th-2nd century BCE, were examined. We unified the age categories corresponding to different aging methods, allowing an application of a probabilistic assessment of the age categorization. A hierarchical Bayesian multinomial-Dirichlet-Dirichlet model was applied, with a hypothetical, subjective reference population, a real reference population, and no reference. RESULTS: Stationary-population life expectancy was estimated as 27.7 years (95% CI: 25.1-30.3) for a newborn (e0 ), and 16.4 years (14.0-19.0) for 20-year-olds (e20 ), although with high uncertainty, and sensitive to the model specification. Slight differences in longevity between different social strata and between the Classical and Late chronological periods were found, although with high estimation errors. A more robust finding, confirming earlier studies, was a high probability of death in young adulthood, which could depend on Scythian lifestyle (conflicts, wars). DISCUSSION: Our study shows a way to overcome some limitations of broad age categorization by using the Bayesian approach with alternative model specifications, allowing to assess the impact of reference populations.

Shifts in the Genetic Landscape of the Western Eurasian Steppe Associated with the Beginning and End of the Scythian Dominance.

The Early Iron Age nomadic Scythians have been described as a confederation of tribes of different origins, based on ancient DNA evidence [1-3]. It is still unclear how much of the Scythian dominance in the Eurasian Steppe was due to movements of people and how much reflected cultural diffusion and elite dominance. We present new whole-genome sequences of 31 ancient Western and Eastern Steppe individuals, including Scythians as well as samples pre- and postdating them, allowing us to set the Scythians in a temporal context (in the Western, i.e., Ponto-Caspian Steppe). We detect an increase of eastern (Altaian) affinity along with a decrease in eastern hunter-gatherer (EHG) ancestry in the Early Iron Age Ponto-Caspian gene pool at the start of the Scythian dominance. On the other hand, samples of the Chernyakhiv culture postdating the Scythians in Ukraine have a significantly higher proportion of Near Eastern ancestry than other samples of this study. Our results agree with the Gothic source of the Chernyakhiv culture and support the hypothesis that the Scythian dominance did involve a demic component.

Nonmetric cranial trait variation and the origins of the Scythians.

OBJECTIVES: Within the fields of archaeology and anthropology, there is a long history of disputes concerning the origin of the northern Black Sea Scythians. One of the main points of contention is whether the Scythian gene pool was derived from the preceding local Bronze Age population or whether their population history can be connected to invaders from Central Asia. To test these hypotheses, we investigated Late Scythian populations from the northern Black Sea region and compared them to Bronze Age groups from Eastern Europe and Central Asia. MATERIALS AND METHODS: We studied a cranial series of five Late Scythian populations from the northern Black Sea region (N = 323), as well as local Bronze Age groups (N = 109), Central Asian Bronze Age groups (N = 79), and Sarmatians (N = 110). Biological diversity was analyzed by the mean measure of divergence (MMD). RESULTS: The Late Scythian population considered in this study proved to be genetically homogeneous, although some connections with the Sarmatians were found. We also revealed similarities between the Scythian groups and the local Bronze Age population of the Srubnaya culture, as well as, to a lesser extent, a group representative of the Central Asian Bronze Age Okunevo culture. DISCUSSION: The similarities between Late Scythians and various Sarmatian groups could be the result of genetic contacts between the groups, as well as shared genetic origins. The gene pool of the Scythian population likely comprises both local and Central Asian genetic components, though the exact origins and proportion of the eastern component currently remains unknown.