Oldest forts challenge views of hunter-gatherers.

8000 years ago-long before farming arrived-people in Siberia built defensive structures.

Ancient DNA from the Near East probes a cradle of civilization.

Studies seek clues to origins of farming, early languages.

Ancient Europeans farmed dairy-but couldn't digest milk.

Giant study of ancient pottery and DNA challenges common evolutionary explanation for lactase persistence.

Reconstructing the historical expansion of industrial swine production from Landsat imagery.

In the USA, historical data on the period over which industrial swine farms have operated are usually only available at the county scale and released every 5 years via the USDA Census of Agriculture, leaving the history of the swine industry and its potential legacy effects on the environment poorly understood. We developed a changepoint-based workflow that recreates the construction timelines of swine farms, specifically by identifying the construction years of swine manure lagoons from historical Landsat 5 imagery for the period of 1984 to 2012. The study focused on the Coastal Plain of North Carolina, a major pork-producing state in the USA. The algorithm successfully predicted the year of swine waste lagoon construction (+ /- 1 year) with an accuracy of approximately 94% when applied to the study area. By estimating the year of construction of 3405 swine waste lagoons in NC, we increased the resolution of available information on the expansion of swine production from the county scale to spatially-explicit locations. We further analyzed how the locations of swine waste lagoons changed in proximity to water resources over time, and found a significant increase in swine waste lagoon distances to the nearest water feature across the period of record.

Agricultural intensification was associated with crop diversification in India (1947-2014).

Declines in agricultural biodiversity associated with modern farming practices may negatively affect the sustainability of agro-ecosystems, but formal knowledge of historical variation in spatio-temporal variation of agro-biodiversity is limited. We used time series of national (1947-2014) and district-level (1956-2008) crop distribution data for India to show that despite strong agricultural intensification after 1960, the average crop species diversity at the district level was stable, but increased at the country-level. While there was a decline in diversity in the major rice and wheat producing regions of northwestern India, associated with intensification of the production of these crops, diversity in western and southern India increased due to expansion of oilseeds and horticultural crops that replaced millet and sorghum. These opposite, but related, trends in crop-level diversity at the sub-national level partially canceled each other out at national level, but there nevertheless was a noticeable increase in overall crop diversity in India during this time period. Our results illustrate how patterns of change in crop diversity need to be considered at different levels of aggregation, and how a decrease in diversity associated with intensification and specialization in one area, may be associated with increased diversity elsewhere, and that support for intensive agriculture with relatively low crop diversity in some regions may be associated with an increase in crop diversity in other regions and at a higher level of aggregation.

The formation of human populations in South and Central Asia.

By sequencing 523 ancient humans, we show that the primary source of ancestry in modern South Asians is a prehistoric genetic gradient between people related to early hunter-gatherers of Iran and Southeast Asia. After the Indus Valley Civilization's decline, its people mixed with individuals in the southeast to form one of the two main ancestral populations of South Asia, whose direct descendants live in southern India. Simultaneously, they mixed with descendants of Steppe pastoralists who, starting around 4000 years ago, spread via Central Asia to form the other main ancestral population. The Steppe ancestry in South Asia has the same profile as that in Bronze Age Eastern Europe, tracking a movement of people that affected both regions and that likely spread the distinctive features shared between Indo-Iranian and Balto-Slavic languages.

El recurso didáctico de los huertos y las granjas escolares del Programa Edalnu y sus antecedentes (1958-1972) / The didactic resource of school allotments and farms of the Edalnu Program and its antecedents (1958-1972)

El trabajo analiza el antecedente histórico de los huertos y las granjas escolares que promovió el Servicio de Extensión Agraria en sus actividades formativas y divulgativas en la década de 1950; así como la continuidad que tuvieron como unidades educativas desarrolladas en el Programa de Educación en Alimentación y Nutrición (Edalnu) que se puso en marcha en 1961. Como principales fuentes de estudio se han utilizado el Boletín Informativo de Extensión Agraria, con posterioridad Revista de Extensión Agraria así como las publicaciones y documentos que generó el Programa Edalnu y que estaban relacionados con los huertos y las granjas escolares. La implantación de los huertos y granjas ayudó a fomentar la producción local de alimentos protectores, además de mejorar los hábitos alimentarios a nivel escolar y familiar. La aplicación de la metodología de "aprender haciendo" fomentó tanto el aprendizaje por descubrimiento, como el basado en problemas y el aprendizaje servicio. En línea con la corriente historiográfica del tiempo presente y los usos del pasado, la visión integradora del Programa Edalnu, en el que la escuela, el entorno y la familia estaban interconectados, puede servir de ejemplo para las actuales estrategias de educación en alimentación y nutrición

Here, we analyse the creation of school allotments and farms, promoted by the Agricultural Outreach Service as one of its education and training actions in the 1950s, and their continuing existence as educational units within the Food and Nutrition Education Programme (Spanish acronym: Edalnu) launched in 1961. The main sources used in this study were the Boletín Informativo de Extensión Agraria (agricultural outreach newsletter), subsequently named the Revista de Extensión Agraria (agricultural outreach journal), as well as the publications and documents related to school allotments and farms generated by the Edalnu Programme. The implantation of allotments and farms helped to encourage local production of healthy food, as well as improving eating habits by schools and families. Application of the "learning by doing" methodology fostered discovery learning, problem-solving and service. In respect of the history matters and the uses of the past, the integrative vision of the Edalnu Program, in which the school, the environment and the family were interconnected, can serve as an example for the current education strategies in food and nutrition

Human sound systems are shaped by post-Neolithic changes in bite configuration.

Linguistic diversity, now and in the past, is widely regarded to be independent of biological changes that took place after the emergence of Homo sapiens We show converging evidence from paleoanthropology, speech biomechanics, ethnography, and historical linguistics that labiodental sounds (such as "f" and "v") were innovated after the Neolithic. Changes in diet attributable to food-processing technologies modified the human bite from an edge-to-edge configuration to one that preserves adolescent overbite and overjet into adulthood. This change favored the emergence and maintenance of labiodentals. Our findings suggest that language is shaped not only by the contingencies of its history, but also by culturally induced changes in human biology.

Impact of Farmland Change on Soybean Production Potential in Recent 40 Years: A Case Study in Western Jilin, China.

During the last 40 years, the quantity and spatial patterns of farmland in Western Jilin have changed dramatically, which has had a great impact on soybean production potential. This study used one of the most advanced crop production potential models, the Global Agro-Ecological Zones model, to calculate the soybean production potential in Western Jilin based on meteorological, topography, soil and land use data, and analyzed the impact of farmland change on soybean production potential during 1975⁻2013. The main conclusions were the following: first, the total soybean production potential in Western Jilin in 2013 was 8.92 million tonnes, and the average soybean production potential was 1612 kg/ha. The production potential of eastern area was higher than the other areas of Western Jilin. Second, farmland change led to a growth of 3.30 million tonnes in soybean production potential between 1975 and 2000, and a decrease of 1.03 million tonnes between 2000 and 2013. Third, taking account of two situations of farmland change, the conversion between dryland and other categories, and the change of irrigation percentage led to the total soybean production potential in Western Jilin increased by 2.31 and only 0.28 million tonnes respectively between 1975 and 2000, and increased by 0.12 and 0.29 million tonnes respectively between 2000 and 2013. In general, the increase of soybean potential production was mainly due to grassland and woodland reclamation. The results of this study would be a good guideline for protecting safe baseline of farmland, managing land resources, and ensuring continuity and stability of soybean supply and food security.

China's Land-Use Changes during the Past 300 Years: A Historical Perspective.

Understanding the processes of historical land-use change is crucial to the research of global environmental sustainability. Here we examine and attempt to disentangle the evolutionary interactions between land-use change and its underlying causes through a historical lens. We compiled and synthesized historical land-use change and various biophysical, political, socioeconomic, and technical datasets, from the Qing dynasty to modern China. The analysis reveals a clear transition period between the 1950s and the 1980s. Before the 1950s, cropland expanded while forested land diminished, which was also accompanied by increasing population; after the 1980s land-use change exhibited new characteristics: changes in cropland, and decoupling of forest from population as a result of agricultural intensification and globalization. Chinese political policies also played an important and complex role, especially during the 1950s-1980s transition periods. Overall, climate change plays an indirect but fundamental role in the dynamics of land use via a series of various cascading effects such as shrinking agricultural production proceeding to population collapse and outbreaks of war. The expected continuation of agricultural intensification this century should be able to support increasing domestic demand for richer diets, but may not be compatible with long-term environmental sustainability.