Activity induced worsening of a tuberculous process in the vertebral column of a Late Bronze Age female from Liushui, Xinjiang (China)?

The partial skeleton of a 22-24-year old female from Liushui, Southern Silk Road, Xinjiang (China) was analyzed using morphological and biochemical methods. The most striking finding in this individual of a Late Bronze Age mounted nomadic population was the complete ossification of the caudal vertebral column including parts of the ligaments of this region due to chronic tuberculosis (Pott's disease). The morphological diagnosis is definitely confirmed by the results of the proteomic analysis. The bacterial protein Ag85 and, for the first time in archaeological skeletal remains, also ESAT-6 was detected, which are typical for Mycobacterium tuberculosis. Extremely intense physical stress aggravated the pathological kyphosis primarily caused by the tuberculous process and promoted dislocation of the caudal thoracic versus the lumbar vertebrae. The fate of this young female suffering from tuberculosis and the consequences of this extreme physical stress characterize the harsh living conditions of typical prehistoric population of mounted nomadic pastoralists.

Radiocarbon dating from Yuzhniy Oleniy Ostrov cemetery reveals complex human responses to socio-ecological stress during the 8.2 ka cooling event.

Yuzhniy Oleniy Ostrov in Karelia, northwest Russia, is one of the largest Early Holocene cemeteries in northern Eurasia, with 177 burials recovered in excavations in the 1930s; originally, more than 400 graves may have been present. A new radiocarbon dating programme, taking into account a correction for freshwater reservoir effects, suggests that the main use of the cemetery spanned only some 100-300 years, centring on ca. 8250 to 8000 cal BP. This coincides remarkably closely with the 8.2 ka cooling event, the most dramatic climatic downturn in the Holocene in the northern hemisphere, inviting an interpretation in terms of human response to a climate-driven environmental change. Rather than suggesting a simple deterministic relationship, we draw on a body of anthropological and archaeological theory to argue that the burial of the dead at this location served to demarcate and negotiate rights of access to a favoured locality with particularly rich and resilient fish and game stocks during a period of regional resource depression. This resulted in increased social stress in human communities that exceeded and subverted the 'normal' commitment of many hunter-gatherers to egalitarianism and widespread resource sharing, and gave rise to greater mortuary complexity. However, this seems to have lasted only for the duration of the climate downturn. Our results have implications for understanding the context of the emergence-and dissolution-of socio-economic inequality and territoriality under conditions of socio-ecological stress.

Identification and quantification of cannabinol as a biomarker for local hemp retting in an ancient sedimentary record by HPTLC-ESI-MS.

Cannabis products have been used in various fields of everyday life for many centuries, and applications in folk medicine and textile production have been well-known for many centuries. For traditional textile production, hemp fibers were extracted from the stems by water retting in stagnant or slow-moving waters. During this procedure, parts of the plant material' among them phytocannabinoids' are released into the water. Cannabinol (CBN) is an important degradation product of the predominant phytocannabinoids found in Cannabis species. Thus, it is an excellent indicator for present as well as ancient hemp water retting. In this study, we developed and validated a simple and fast method for the determination of CBN in sediment samples using high-performance thin-layer chromatography (HPTLC) combined with electrospray ionization mass spectrometry (ESI-MS), thereby testing different extraction and cleanup procedures' as well as various sorbents and solvents for planar chromatography. This method shows a satisfactory overall analytical performance with an average recovery rate of 73%. Our protocol enabled qualitative and quantitative analyses of CBN in samples of a bottom sediment core' having been obtained from a small lake in Northern India, where intense local retting of hemp was suggested in the past. The analyses showed a maximum CBN content in pollen zone 4 covering a depth range of 262-209 cm, dating from approximately 480 BCE to 1050 CE. These findings correlate with existing records of Cannabis-type pollen. Thus, the method we propose is a helpful tool to track ancient hemp retting activities. Graphical Abstract.

Past and future global transformation of terrestrial ecosystems under climate change.

Impacts of global climate change on terrestrial ecosystems are imperfectly constrained by ecosystem models and direct observations. Pervasive ecosystem transformations occurred in response to warming and associated climatic changes during the last glacial-to-interglacial transition, which was comparable in magnitude to warming projected for the next century under high-emission scenarios. We reviewed 594 published paleoecological records to examine compositional and structural changes in terrestrial vegetation since the last glacial period and to project the magnitudes of ecosystem transformations under alternative future emission scenarios. Our results indicate that terrestrial ecosystems are highly sensitive to temperature change and suggest that, without major reductions in greenhouse gas emissions to the atmosphere, terrestrial ecosystems worldwide are at risk of major transformation, with accompanying disruption of ecosystem services and impacts on biodiversity.

Publisher Correction: The early history of wheat in China from 14C dating and Bayesian chronological modelling.

In the version of this Article originally published, the x and y axis labels in Fig. 1 were switched over; the correct labels are: 'Longitude (° N)' on the x axis, and 'Latitude (° E)' on the y axis. This figure has now been amended in all versions of the Article.

The early history of wheat in China from 14C dating and Bayesian chronological modelling.

Wheat is regarded as one of the most important West Asian domesticates that were introduced into Late Neolithic/Early Bronze Age China. Despite a growing body of archaeological data, the timing and routes of its dispersal remain controversial. New radiocarbon (14C) dating evidence from six archaeological sites in the Shandong and Liaoning Peninsulas and Bayesian modelling of available 14C data from China suggest that wheat appeared in the lower Yellow River around 2600 Before Common Era (BCE), followed by Gansu and Xinjiang around 1900 BCE and finally occurred in the middle Yellow River and Tibet regions by 1600 BCE. These results neither support long-standing hypotheses of a progressive spread of wheat agriculture from Xinjiang or Gansu to eastern China nor suggest a nearly synchronous appearance in this vast zone, but corroborate transmission to lower Yellow River elites as an exotic good through cultural interactions with the Eurasian steppe along north-south routes.

Evidence for a bi-partition of the Younger Dryas Stadial in East Asia associated with inversed climate characteristics compared to Europe.

The Younger Dryas Stadial (YDS) was an episode of northern hemispheric cooling which occurred within the Last Glacial Interglacial Transition (LGIT). A major driver for the YDS climate was a weakening of the Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation (AMOC). It has been inferred that the AMOC began to strengthen mid-YDS, producing a bipartite structure of the YDS in records from continental Europe. These records imply that the polar front and westerlies shifted northward, producing a warmer second phase of the YDS in Europe. Here we present multi-proxy data from the sediments of Lake Suigetsu (Japan), as evidence that a related bi-partition of the YDS also occurred in East Asia. Besides showing for the first time that the bi-partition was not limited to the North Atlantic/European region, the data also imply a climatic dipole between Europe and East Asia since the cold-warm characteristics are reversed at Lake Suigetsu. We suggest that changes in eastward moisture transport from the North Atlantic are the primary mechanism by which the teleconnection can be explained.

Barley (Hordeum vulgare) in the Okhotsk culture (5th-10th century AD) of northern Japan and the role of cultivated plants in hunter-gatherer economies.

This paper discusses archaeobotanical remains of naked barley recovered from the Okhotsk cultural layers of the Hamanaka 2 archaeological site on Rebun Island, northern Japan. Calibrated ages (68% confidence interval) of the directly dated barley remains suggest that the crop was used at the site ca. 440-890 cal yr AD. Together with the finds from the Oumu site (north-eastern Hokkaido Island), the recovered seed assemblage marks the oldest well-documented evidence for the use of barley in the Hokkaido Region. The archaeobotanical data together with the results of a detailed pollen analysis of contemporaneous sediment layers from the bottom of nearby Lake Kushu point to low-level food production, including cultivation of barley and possible management of wild plants that complemented a wide range of foods derived from hunting, fishing, and gathering. This qualifies the people of the Okhotsk culture as one element of the long-term and spatially broader Holocene hunter-gatherer cultural complex (including also Jomon, Epi-Jomon, Satsumon, and Ainu cultures) of the Japanese archipelago, which may be placed somewhere between the traditionally accepted boundaries between foraging and agriculture. To our knowledge, the archaeobotanical assemblages from the Hokkaido Okhotsk culture sites highlight the north-eastern limit of prehistoric barley dispersal. Seed morphological characteristics identify two different barley phenotypes in the Hokkaido Region. One compact type (naked barley) associated with the Okhotsk culture and a less compact type (hulled barley) associated with Early-Middle Satsumon culture sites. This supports earlier suggestions that the "Satsumon type" barley was likely propagated by the expansion of the Yayoi culture via south-western Japan, while the "Okhotsk type" spread from the continental Russian Far East region, across the Sea of Japan. After the two phenotypes were independently introduced to Hokkaido, the boundary between both barley domains possibly existed ca. 600-1000 cal yr AD across the island region. Despite a large body of studies and numerous theoretical and conceptual debates, the question of how to differentiate between hunter-gatherer and farming economies persists reflecting the wide range of dynamic subsistence strategies used by humans through the Holocene. Our current study contributes to the ongoing discussion of this important issue.

Pliocene warmth, polar amplification, and stepped Pleistocene cooling recorded in NE Arctic Russia.

Understanding the evolution of Arctic polar climate from the protracted warmth of the middle Pliocene into the earliest glacial cycles in the Northern Hemisphere has been hindered by the lack of continuous, highly resolved Arctic time series. Evidence from Lake El'gygytgyn, in northeast (NE) Arctic Russia, shows that 3.6 to 3.4 million years ago, summer temperatures were ~8°C warmer than today, when the partial pressure of CO2 was ~400 parts per million. Multiproxy evidence suggests extreme warmth and polar amplification during the middle Pliocene, sudden stepped cooling events during the Pliocene-Pleistocene transition, and warmer than present Arctic summers until ~2.2 million years ago, after the onset of Northern Hemispheric glaciation. Our data are consistent with sea-level records and other proxies indicating that Arctic cooling was insufficient to support large-scale ice sheets until the early Pleistocene.

A complete terrestrial radiocarbon record for 11.2 to 52.8 kyr B.P.

Radiocarbon ((14)C) provides a way to date material that contains carbon with an age up to ~50,000 years and is also an important tracer of the global carbon cycle. However, the lack of a comprehensive record reflecting atmospheric (14)C prior to 12.5 thousand years before the present (kyr B.P.) has limited the application of radiocarbon dating of samples from the Last Glacial period. Here, we report (14)C results from Lake Suigetsu, Japan (35°35'N, 135°53'E), which provide a comprehensive record of terrestrial radiocarbon to the present limit of the (14)C method. The time scale we present in this work allows direct comparison of Lake Suigetsu paleoclimatic data with other terrestrial climatic records and gives information on the connection between global atmospheric and regional marine radiocarbon levels.

2.8 million years of Arctic climate change from Lake El'gygytgyn, NE Russia.

The reliability of Arctic climate predictions is currently hampered by insufficient knowledge of natural climate variability in the past. A sediment core from Lake El'gygytgyn in northeastern (NE) Russia provides a continuous, high-resolution record from the Arctic, spanning the past 2.8 million years. This core reveals numerous "super interglacials" during the Quaternary; for marine benthic isotope stages (MIS) 11c and 31, maximum summer temperatures and annual precipitation values are ~4° to 5°C and ~300 millimeters higher than those of MIS 1 and 5e. Climate simulations show that these extreme warm conditions are difficult to explain with greenhouse gas and astronomical forcing alone, implying the importance of amplifying feedbacks and far field influences. The timing of Arctic warming relative to West Antarctic Ice Sheet retreats implies strong interhemispheric climate connectivity.

Radiocarbon-dated archaeological record of early first millennium B.C. mounted pastoralists in the Kunlun Mountains, China.

Pastoral nomadism, as a successful economic and social system drawing on mobile herding, long-distance trade, and cavalry warfare, affected all polities of the Eurasian continent. The role that arid Inner Asia, particularly the areas of northwestern China, Kazakhstan, and Mongolia, played in the emergence of this phenomenon remains a fundamental and still challenging question in prehistoric archaeology of the Eurasian steppes. The cemetery of Liushiu (Xinjiang, China) reveals burial features, bronze bridle bits, weaponry, adornment, horse skulls, and sheep/goat bones, which, together with paleopathological changes in human skeletons, indicate the presence of mobile pastoralists and their flocks at summer pastures in the Kunlun Mountains, ∼2,850 m above sea level. Radiocarbon dates place the onset of the burial activity between 1108 and 893 B.C. (95% probability range) or most likely between 1017 and 926 B.C. (68%). These data from the Kunlun Mountains show a wider frontier within the diversity of mobile pastoral economies of Inner Asia and support the concept of multiregional transitions toward Iron Age complex pastoralism and mounted warfare.

Asynchronous climate changes in the North Atlantic and Japan during the last termination.

Pollen records from the annually laminated sediment sequence in Lake Suigetsu, Japan, suggest a sequence of climate changes during the Last Termination that resembles that of the North Atlantic region but with noticeable differences in timing. An interstadial interval commenced a few centuries earlier [approximately 15,000 years before the present (yr B.P.)] than the North Atlantic GI-1 (Bölling) event. Conversely, the onset of a Younger Dryas (YD)-like cold reversal (12,300 to 11,250 yr B.P.) postdated the North Atlantic GS-1 (YD) event by a few centuries. Climate in the Far East during the Last Termination reflected solar insolation changes as much as Atlantic influences.