Two recent stories in the popular press may be of interest:
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Stone age man invented beer before making bread, says expert
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Experts says Stone Age man invented beer before he made bread.
Archaeologists have found that man first discovered alcohol in 9000 BC, more
than 5,000 years earlier than previously thought.
According to The Sun they reckon pottery was invented because man needed a
mug to hold his beer.
Until now researchers have assumed the first human settlements, which
appeared in the Middle East, were built around farming and growing corn for
food.
But archaeologist Merryn Dinely, of Manchester University, told the paper
that corn was turned into malt, the main ingredient for making beer.
Dr Dinely found that almost all ancient villages had homes with smooth,
carefully-made floors which appear to have been used for malting.
There was also evidence that ovens and grinding stones found at ancient sites
formed the foundations of a brewery. Heat-proof baskets lined with bitumen
were used for fermenting and storing beer.
Dr Dinely told a conference at Leicester University: "The most likely
scenario seems to be that humans discovered how to turn grain into malt,
which is sweet and nutritious.
"Then by accident they found out that when malt is mixed with water it turns
into alcohol."
Dr Dinely said drawings showed women did the brewing while men collected the
raw materials.
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http://www.ananova.com/news/story/sm_670546.html%5d
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Overlapping Genetic And Archaeological Evidence Suggests Neolithic Migration
Source:
Stanford University Medical Center (
http://www-med.stanford.edu/school/)
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STANFORD, Calif. - For the first time, Stanford researchers have compared
genetic patterns with archeological findings to discover that genetics can
help predict with a high degree of accuracy the presence of certain
artifacts.
And they say the strength of this link adds credence to theories that
prehistoric people migrated from the Middle East to Europe, taking both their
ideas and their way of life with them. "The recovery of history is really a
jigsaw puzzle," said Peter Underhill, PhD, senior research scientist in the
department of genetics and one of the study's authors.
"You have to look at genetics, material culture (archeological findings),
linguistics and other areas to find different lines of evidence that
reinforce each other."
The researchers' mathematical analysis showed that a pair of mutations on the
Y chromosome, called Eu9, predicted the presence of certain figurines from
the Neolithic period with 88 percent accuracy and the presence of painted
pottery with 80 percent accuracy. The study is published in the September
issue of Antiquity.
"The strength of the association is very surprising," said Roy King, MD, PhD,
associate professor of psychiatry and behavioral sciences at Stanford who
co-authored the study. "The genetic measures are very precise, and archaeolog
y is pretty precise - either a figurine is there or it isn't. The strength of
the correlation is driven by the strength of our measures."
It is known that agriculture spread from the Middle East to Europe during the
Neolithic period about 12,000 years ago, but for many years archeologists
have debated how this occurred. Was it due to the movement of people or to
the movement of ideas? Previous genetic analysis of people living today
suggests a migration - that the people moved - but critics have questioned
this view. The latest study reinforces evidence of a migration in which
people brought their ideas and lifestyle with them.
Genetics can answer the question in a roundabout way. Human DNA sequences
today may shed light on our ancestors because some portions of the human
genome change very slowly. One of these is the Y chromosome. Women carry two
X chromosomes, while men have one X and one Y. The X and Y cannot exchange
DNA like the 22 pairs of non-sex chromosomes in humans or the paired X
chromosomes in women. As a result, a man should have a carbon copy of the Y
chromosome of his father, grandfather and so on. But sometimes a harmless mut
ation, a misspelling in the genetic code, occurs. The mutation will be passed
on to all the man's male descendants. If millions of men have the same
mutation, then they all share a distant paternal ancestor.
Underhill studies pairs of mutations on the Y chromosome in current
populations. He combines data about the geographic distribution of the
mutations with information about when the mutations arose to trace historical
migrations.
While reading a previous paper on Y-chromosome mutations in Science that
Underhill co-authored, King thought the geographic distribution of some pairs
of mutations paralleled that of Neolithic decorative ceramics. King, a
psychiatrist with a PhD in mathematics and a deep interest in art history,
called Underhill and suggested they compare the two sets of data.
Critics argue that the contemporary gene pool does not reflect what happened
thousands of years ago because people have moved around too much since then.
Many also see genetics as an entirely separate line of investigation from
archaeological work.
Researchers had compared genetic studies to language evolution, but no one
had attempted to link genetics and material culture. Underhill agreed to
undertake the analysis with King.
The Science paper Underhill co-authored described the Y chromosomes of more
than 1,000 men in 25 different Middle Eastern and European geographic
regions. They found that the frequency of four pairs of mutations was highest
in the Middle East but also significant in eastern and southern Europe. While
it is likely that all the mutations studied originated prior to the Neolithic
period, the distribution suggested a westward migration.
The researchers took the distribution of the four pairs of Y-chromosome
mutations found to originate in the Middle East and compared it to the
regions where certain decorated ceramics have been found in Neolithic sites.
They focused on figurines and pottery with painted geometric and abstract
designs. Most of the figurines are female; researchers have speculated that
they were used for magic or religious purposes, as amulets or charms, or even
as dolls for children, King said.
The researchers found a strong correlation in their study between the
Y-chromosome mutations and the presence of certain artifacts. Nonetheless,
Underhill remains cautious. "No gene on the Y chromosome is going to program
you to make pottery," he said. Instead, the Y-chromosome mutation pairs used
in the study are simply population markers that in this case were compared to
ceramics. The same mutations could be compared to many different types of
artifacts.
King and Underhill hope that archaeologists will follow them in trying to
blend these two lines of historical evidence. They are continuing to gather
genetic data from areas in Greece near Neolithic archaeological sites and in
western Turkey, which researchers believe to be the jumping-off point for
Neolithic migration.
Stanford University Medical Center integrates research, medical education and
patient care at its three institutions - Stanford University School of
Medicine, Stanford Hospital & Clinics and Lucile Packard Children's Hospital
at Stanford....
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http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2002/09/020911072622.htm%5d