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Post by Admin on Jun 14, 2022 20:10:18 GMT
The member of the Únětice culture was buried with a unique amber necklace, but her DNA is the real treasure when it comes to recreating her appearance. You can now see what a woman who lived near the Czech city of Pardubice in the Bronze Age looked like. This image is not an artistic guess. New forms of DNA analysis plus unusually well-preserved personal items allow us to now make a highly accurate picture. The woman, estimated to have died at around age 35, came from the upper social strata. Her grave in Mikulovice in Eastern Bohemia is one of the richest in Europe from her era. She had fair skin, brown hair, widely spaced brown eyes, a prominent chin, and a petite figure adorned with bronze and gold jewelry and a beautiful amber necklace. Bringing her back to what she looked like took the combined efforts of experts in several fields. The model was completed by anthropologist Eva Vaníčková and sculptor Ondřej Bílek from the Laboratory of Anthropological Reconstruction of the Moravian Museum (MZM) in cooperation with archaeologist Michal Ernée from the Institute of Archaeology of the Czech Academy of Science (AVČR) in Prague. Her grave is the richest one for a woman Únětice culture, a group that lived in Central Europe from about 2300 to 1600 B.C. The culture is named for the village of Únětice, near Prague. A large burial site was found there in 1879. Other sites have now been found across Central Europe. Radiocarbon dating places the Mikulovice tomb between 1880 and 1750 BC. The woman was buried with five bronze bracelets, three bronze pins, two golden earrings, and a three-row amber necklace with over 400 beads and at least five spreaders.
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Post by Admin on Jun 15, 2022 18:18:39 GMT
Researchers have reconstructed the face of a petite, dark-haired woman who was among the richest residents of Bronze-Age Bohemia. The woman was buried with five bronze bracelets, two gold earrings and a three-strand necklace of more than 400 amber beads. Also entombed with her were three bronze sewing needles. She was part of the Únětice culture, a group of peoples from early Bronze Age Central Europe known for their metal artifacts, including ax-heads, daggers, bracelets and twisted-metal necklaces called torcs. While it's unclear who the woman was, she was very wealthy, said archaeologist Michal Ernée of the Institute of Archeology of the Academy of Sciences of the Czech Republic. The woman lived between 1880 B.C. and 1750 B.C., according to radiocarbon dating of the cemetery where her bones were found. The graveyard is near the village of Mikulovice in the northern Czech Republic, in the northern Czech Republic. This area and the surrounding regions are known as Bohemia because they comprised a kingdom of that name prior to World War I. The 27 graves in the cemetery proved to be a remarkable treasure trove of artifacts, including about 900 amber objects. "We have amber in 40% of all female graves," Ernée said. There is more amber in this single cemetery than in all of the Únětic graves in Germany, he said. "We have two neighboring regions of one archaeological culture, but the social system s were probably not the same," he said. This amber likely hailed from the Baltic, indicating that the Únětice people were part of a far-reaching trade network in Europe at the time. The bronze objects made by contemporary Europeans also show the sophistication of Bronze Age trade, Ernée added: Bronze objects are found across the continent, but the raw materials for bronze, tin and copper came from only a few regions.
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Post by Admin on Jun 15, 2022 20:02:44 GMT
Of the skeletal remains found in the cemetery near Mikulovice, the amber-wearing woman had the best-preserved skull. It was a fortunate coincidence that the richest grave also had skeletal remains that could provide the basis for a reconstruction, Ernée said. Also fortunate was that the bones were well preserved enough to still contain pieces of the woman's DNA. These genetic sequences enabled the researchers to discover that her eyes and hair were brown and her skin was fair. Anthropologist Eva Vaníčková of the Moravian Museum in Brno and sculptor Ondřej Bílek collaborated to make the torso-up model of the woman. The woman, estimated to have died at around age 35, came from the upper social strata. Her grave in Mikulovice in Eastern Bohemia is the richest one for a woman Únětice culture. Radiocarbon dating places the Mikulovice tomb between 1880 and 1750 BC. The woman had fair skin, brown hair, widely spaced brown eyes, a prominent chin, and a petite figure. She was buried with five bronze bracelets, three bronze pins, two golden earrings, and a three-row amber necklace with over 400 beads and at least five spreaders. The woman's recreated clothing and accessories were based in science, as well. Ludmila Barčáková of the Institute of Archaeology of the Academy of Sciences made the amber necklace and gold earrings, metalworker Radek Lukůvka recreated the bronze bracelets and needles, and Kristýna Urbanová, an archaeologist specializing in textiles, fashioned the woman's clothing. Ancient DNA was salvageable from other bones in the cemetery, so researchers are now working to find out how the individuals buried there were related, Ernée said. The cemetery could also provide new clues into regional differences in early Bronze Age Central Europe. In neighboring regions of Bohemia, Ernée said, the rich graves that are found all belong to men. It's unclear if women had a different status in the region near modern-day Mikulovice, he said. It's possible that the women did individually control more wealth than women in nearby regions, but it's also possible that they were buried with riches to show off the wealth of their male relatives. Editor's note: This article has been updated to indicate that in neighboring regions of Bohemia the wealthiest graves belonged to men.
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Post by Admin on Jun 16, 2022 18:35:00 GMT
Dynamic changes in genomic and social structures in third millennium BCE central Europe
Abstract Europe’s prehistory oversaw dynamic and complex interactions of diverse societies, hitherto unexplored at detailed regional scales. Studying 271 human genomes dated ~4900 to 1600 BCE from the European heartland, Bohemia, we reveal unprecedented genetic changes and social processes. Major migrations preceded the arrival of “steppe” ancestry, and at ~2800 BCE, three genetically and culturally differentiated groups coexisted. Corded Ware appeared by 2900 BCE, were initially genetically diverse, did not derive all steppe ancestry from known Yamnaya, and assimilated females of diverse backgrounds. Both Corded Ware and Bell Beaker groups underwent dynamic changes, involving sharp reductions and complete replacements of Y-chromosomal diversity at ~2600 and ~2400 BCE, respectively, the latter accompanied by increased Neolithic-like ancestry. The Bronze Age saw new social organization emerge amid a ≥40% population turnover.
INTRODUCTION Archaeogenetics has revealed two major population turnovers in Europe within the past 10,000 years (1–5). The first, beginning in the seventh millennium BCE, was associated with expanding Neolithic farming communities from Anatolia (6, 7). European Early Neolithic farmers were initially genetically distinct from preceding hunter-gatherers (HG) and almost indistinguishable from Anatolian farmers (8–10), however incorporated HG ancestry into their gene pools over ensuing millennia (3, 11–13). The second major turnover occurred in the early third millennium BCE with individuals of the Corded Ware (CW) culture (3, 4, 8). Of note, in what follows, we use the co-occurrence of human skeletal remains and markers of archaeological cultures (e.g., grave goods and body orientation) to denote an association between individuals and an archaeological culture (e.g., “CW individuals”), although this may not reflect a unified social entity. The CW represents a major cultural shift in central, northern, and northeastern Europe, bringing changes in economy, ideology, and mortuary practices (14–22). CW individuals were shown to be genetically distinct from culturally pre-CW people, having ~75% of their ancestry similar to Yamnaya individuals from the Pontic-Caspian steppe (3, 4, 23–27). This Yamnaya-like “steppe” ancestry then spread rapidly throughout Europe, reaching Britain, Ireland, the Iberian Peninsula, the Balearic Islands, Sardinia, and Sicily before the end of the third millennium BCE (5, 28–32). Despite the importance of the third millennium BCE, our genetic understanding is mainly built upon studies with pan-European sampling strategies, with little emphasis on regional, high-resolution temporal transects (3–5, 8). Consequently, many temporal and geographic sampling gaps remain, resulting in limited knowledge about the processes at the level of the societies and communities and how cultural groups interacted, influenced, and gave rise to one another. In addition, the use of small sample sizes to represent supra-regional archaeological phenomena, as well as the resulting oversimplified culture-historical interpretations, has drawn criticisms from archaeologists (21, 33–40). Unresolved questions concern the genetic and geographic origins of CW and Bell Beaker (BB) individuals, their relationship to one another and to Yamnaya individuals, as well as the origin of Early Bronze Age (EBA) Únětice individuals. Although it has been proposed that CW formed from a male-biased westward migration of genetically Yamnaya-like people (23, 41–44), no overlap in Y-chromosomal lineages (with the exception of a few nondiagnostic I2) has been found between the predominantly R1a-carrying CW and mainly R1b-Z2103–carrying Yamnaya males. Steppe ancestry is also present in BB individuals (5); however, they predominantly carry R1b-P312, a Y-lineage not yet found among CW or Yamnaya males. Therefore, despite their sharing of steppe ancestry (3, 4) and substantial chronological overlap (45), it is currently not possible to directly link Yamnaya, CW, and BB groups as paternal genealogical sources for one another, particularly noteworthy in light of steppe ancestry’s suggested male-driven spread (23, 41–43) and the proposed patrilocal/patriarchal social kinship systems of these three societies (46–48). Crucial to understanding the cultural, social, and genetic transitions in third millennium BCE Europe are densely settled regions that attest to the (co)existence of societies attributed to pre-CW [Baden and Globular Amphora (GAC)], CW, BB, and EBA Únětice. Currently, no such region has been systematically studied from the archaeogenetic perspective. Situated in the heart of Europe and tightly nestled around the important Elbe river, the fertile lowlands of Bohemia, the western part of today’s Czech Republic, witnessed many major supra-regional archaeological phenomena (table S1, Fig. 1, fig. S1, and the Supplementary Materials). Dense agrarian settlement of Bohemia began after ~5400 BCE (49, 50) with the arrival of early Neolithic farmers (Linearbandkeramik-LBK, later Stichbandkeramik-STK, and Lengyel). They were succeeded by manifold societies of the Eneolithic (~4400 to 2200 BCE), associated with more than a dozen archaeological cultural groups including Jordanów, Michelsberg, Funnelbeaker, Baden, Řivnáč, GAC, Early and Late CW, and BB (table S1) (50). The Eneolithic witnessed important innovations (metallurgy, the wheel, wagon and plough, fortified hillforts, and burial mounds) (51–53) and was succeeded by the globalized EBA Únětice culture, geographically centered around Bohemia.
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Post by Admin on Jun 17, 2022 17:39:54 GMT
Fig. 1. Temporal and geographic distribution of studied Neolithic, Eneolithic, and EBA individuals from Bohemia. (A) Map of Bohemia showing the locations of sampled sites (red, new; blue, previously published; table S2 and figs. S1 to S5). (B) Mean age of newly reported (n = 206) and published (n = 65) individuals from Bohemia. (C) Local chronology of archaeological cultures and time periods. Black triangles indicate external influences visible in the material culture. Red lines indicate qualitative degree of change in material culture. In addition to material and technological developments, ideological changes, as manifested through mortuary behavior, are also evident (54). Although relatively common during the Funnelbeaker period (~3800 to 3400 BCE, n = ~100 known graves in Bohemia) (55), regular graves almost disappear from the succeeding Baden, Řivnáč, and GAC periods (Middle Eneolithic, ~3500 to 2800 BCE, n = ~20 in Bohemia) (56). Single graves, but now with strict gender differentiation in body position and grave goods, reappeared in abundance with CW from ~2900 BCE (n = ~1500 in Bohemia) (50, 57) and continued with BB (n = ~600 in Bohemia) from ~2500 BCE (58), who developed and maintained important differences from the preceding CW. The EBA Únětice culture (59, 60) continued with single graves (n = ~4000 to 5000 in Bohemia), but now again without gender differentiation in body position. To better understand these transitions, we analyzed a high-resolution archaeogenetic time transect of 271 (206 newly reported and 65 previously published) individuals (Fig. 1, fig. S1, tables S2 to S4, and the Supplementary Materials) from the northern part of Bohemia. Through dense genetic sampling from geographically and temporally overlapping archaeological cultures, we aim to (i) address whether cultural changes in the Eneolithic and EBA of central Europe were driven by an influx of nonlocals, (ii) characterize the central European genetic diversity immediately prior the appearance of CW, (iii) date when individuals with Yamnaya-like steppe ancestry first appeared in central Europe and understand their genetic origin and social structure, (iv) characterize the nature and extent of biological exchange between the “locals” and “migrants” after the appearance of CW, and (v) identify social transformations linked to genetic and archaeological changes.
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