Dairy farming transition ~2,500 years BC in the far north of Europe

Proceedings of the Royal Society B doi: 10.1098/rspb.2014.0819

Neolithic dairy farming at the extreme of agriculture in northern Europe

Lucy J. E. Cramp et al.

The conventional ‘Neolithic package’ comprised animals and plants originally domesticated in the Near East. As farming spread on a generally northwest trajectory across Europe, early pastoralists would have been faced with the challenge of making farming viable in regions in which the organisms were poorly adapted to providing optimal yields or even surviving. Hence, it has long been debated whether Neolithic economies were ever established at the modern limits of agriculture. Here, we examine food residues in pottery, testing a hypothesis that Neolithic farming was practiced beyond the 60th parallel north. Our findings, based on diagnostic biomarker lipids and δ13C values of preserved fatty acids, reveal a transition at ca 2500 BC from the exploitation of aquatic organisms to processing of ruminant products, specifically milk, confirming farming was practiced at high latitudes. Combining this with genetic, environmental and archaeological information, we demonstrate the origins of dairying probably accompanied an incoming, genetically distinct, population successfully establishing this new subsistence ‘package’.

Link

Archaeology: The milk revolution

A couple of interesting quotes from this story:

That next step happened slowly, and it seems to have required the spread of lactase persistence. The LP allele did not become common in the population until some time after it first emerged: Burger has looked for the mutation in samples of ancient human DNA and has found it only as far back as 6,500 years ago in northern Germany. 

 ...

Some of the LeCHE participants are now probing further back in time, as part of a project named BEAN (Bridging the European and Anatolian Neolithic), which is looking at how the first farmers and herders made their way into Europe. Burger, Thomas and their BEAN collaborators will be in Turkey this summer, tracing the origins of the Neolithic using computer models and ancient-DNA analysis in the hope of better understanding who the early farmers were, and when they arrived in Europe.

Evidence for 6th millennium BC cheese

Nature (2012) doi:10.1038/nature11698

Earliest evidence for cheese making in the sixth millennium bc in northern Europe

Mélanie Salque et al.

The introduction of dairying was a critical step in early agriculture, with milk products being rapidly adopted as a major component of the diets of prehistoric farmers and pottery-using late hunter-gatherers1, 2, 3, 4, 5. The processing of milk, particularly the production of cheese, would have been a critical development because it not only allowed the preservation of milk products in a non-perishable and transportable form, but also it made milk a more digestible commodity for early prehistoric farmers6, 7, 8, 9, 10. The finding of abundant milk residues in pottery vessels from seventh millennium sites from north-western Anatolia provided the earliest evidence of milk processing, although the exact practice could not be explicitly defined1. Notably, the discovery of potsherds pierced with small holes appear at early Neolithic sites in temperate Europe in the sixth millennium BC and have been interpreted typologically as ‘cheese-strainers’10, although a direct association with milk processing has not yet been demonstrated. Organic residues preserved in pottery vessels have provided direct evidence for early milk use in the Neolithic period in the Near East and south-eastern Europe, north Africa, Denmark and the British Isles, based on the δ13C and Δ13C values of the major fatty acids in milk1, 2, 3, 4. Here we apply the same approach to investigate the function of sieves/strainer vessels, providing direct chemical evidence for their use in milk processing. The presence of abundant milk fat in these specialized vessels, comparable in form to modern cheese strainers11, provides compelling evidence for the vessels having being used to separate fat-rich milk curds from the lactose-containing whey. This new evidence emphasizes the importance of pottery vessels in processing dairy products, particularly in the manufacture of reduced-lactose milk products among lactose-intolerant prehistoric farming communities6, 7.

Link

Oldest dairying in Sweden from Mälardalen (Funnelbeaker)

Journal of Archaeological Science Available online 5 July 2012

Lipid residue analyses of Early Neolithic funnel-beaker pottery from Skogsmossen, eastern Central Sweden, and the earliest evidence of dairying in Sweden

Sven Isaksson, , Fredrik Hallgren

This study address the question of the use and function of Early Neolithic (4000-3000 cal. BC) funnel-beaker pots from Mälardalen in eastern Central Sweden. The material studied is pottery from a wetland offering at the site Skogsmossen in the province of Västmanland. While deposited under ritual circumstances in a fen, the pots were likely used in a domestic domain on the settlement adjacent to the offering fen, prior to final deposition. The lipid analysis indicate a varied vessel use, there are traces of aquatic resources, plants, terrestrial animals and milk. The identification of milk residue is the oldest so far from Sweden.

Link

Saharan dairying 7,000 years ago

Pottery shards put a date on Africa’s dairying

Yoghurt may have made it on to the menu for North Africans around 7,000 years ago, according to an analysis of pottery shards published today in Nature1.

The fermented dairy product left tell-tale traces of fat on the ceramic fragments, suggesting a way that the region’s inhabitants may have evolved to tolerate milk as adults.

The same team had previously identified the earliest evidence for dairying in potsherds nearly 9,000 years old from Anatolia2. But the findings from 7,000 years ago still predate the emergence and spread of the gene variants needed for the adult population to digest the lactose found in milk, says biomolecular archaeologist Richard Evershed of the University of Bristol, UK, who led the study with archaeological scientist Julie Dunne. He suggests that making yoghurt may have made dairy products more digestible.

Related: Earliest evidence for milk in the Near East and Southeastern Europe

Nature 486, 390–394 (21 June 2012) doi:10.1038/nature11186

First dairying in green Saharan Africa in the fifth millennium bc

Julie Dunne et al.

In the prehistoric green Sahara of Holocene North Africa—in contrast to the Neolithic of Europe and Eurasia—a reliance on cattle, sheep and goats emerged as a stable and widespread way of life, long before the first evidence for domesticated plants or settled village farming communities1, 2, 3. The remarkable rock art found widely across the region depicts cattle herding among early Saharan pastoral groups, and includes rare scenes of milking; however, these images can rarely be reliably dated4. Although the faunal evidence provides further confirmation of the importance of cattle and other domesticates5, the scarcity of cattle bones makes it impossible to ascertain herd structures via kill-off patterns, thereby precluding interpretations of whether dairying was practiced. Because pottery production begins early in northern Africa6 the potential exists to investigate diet and subsistence practices using molecular and isotopic analyses of absorbed food residues7. This approach has been successful in determining the chronology of dairying beginning in the ‘Fertile Crescent’ of the Near East and its spread across Europe8, 9, 10, 11. Here we report the first unequivocal chemical evidence, based on the δ13C and Δ13C values of the major alkanoic acids of milk fat, for the adoption of dairying practices by prehistoric Saharan African people in the fifth millennium BC. Interpretations are supported by a new database of modern ruminant animal fats collected from Africa. These findings confirm the importance of ‘lifetime products’, such as milk, in early Saharan pastoralism, and provide an evolutionary context for the emergence of lactase persistence in Africa.

Link

Iceman stories begin arriving!

The National Geographic has info, a teaser for an October 26 Nova special:

The genetic results add both information and intrigue. From his genes, we now know that the Iceman had brown hair and brown eyes and that he was probably lactose intolerant and thus could not digest milk—somewhat ironic, given theories that he was a shepherd. Not surprisingly, he is more related to people living in southern Europe today than to those in North Africa or the Middle East, with close connections to geographically isolated modern populations in Sardinia, Sicily, and the Iberian Peninsula. The DNA analysis also revealed several genetic variants that placed the Iceman at high risk for hardening of the arteries. ("If he hadn't been shot," Zink remarked, "he probably would have died of a heart attack or stroke in ten years.") Perhaps most surprising, researchers found the genetic footprint of bacteria known as Borrelia burgdorferi in his DNA—making the Iceman the earliest known human infected by the bug that causes Lyme disease.

It seems that my prediction that the Iceman will turn out to be Mediterranean in terms of his autosomal genetic components was right!

I don't get, however, how lactose intolerance is incompatible with being a shepherd, since milk is widely used in southern Europe both as a raw product and for its cheese. I lack the lactose tolerance gene myself, but that doesn't keep me from having a glass of milk nearly every day. Lactose tolerance makes it possible for people to drink lots of milk; lactose intolerance does not make it impossible for them to drink any, or to enjoy its secondary products (such as cheese and butter).

Known lactase persistence (LP) genotypes don't explain LP in much of the world

A nice paper that should serve as a cautionary tale against generalizing genotype-phenotype interactions discovered into some populations into new ones.

The reason for this is simple: the known LP-related genotypes may be nullified/enhanced/otherwise affected by the general genomic background of the individual. While they do act -to a large extent, that's why they were discovered!- as on/off switches of lactase persistence in certain human populations, they do not do so generally across much of mankind.

While these results indicate (e.g. for clinicians) that an assessment of lactase peristence from genotype is iffy for certain contemporary human populations, they also cast doubt into certain archaeological correlations of lactase persistence.

Using both contemporary genotype frequencies, the few but increasing ancient DNA genotypes, as well as archaeological remains (e.g., milk residues in bowls), scientists are trying to determine when and how lactase persistence spread. But, this becomes more difficult, both because (a) the LP genotype can't really tell us whether a particular individual was LP or not - and hence lived in a heavily milk-reliant culture, and (b) we do not really know how LP interacted with the genomic backgrounds of individuals living during the Neolithic.

Map of LP frequency

Map of estimated LP based on genotype:

Related:

• Demography and selection in the spread of Lactase persistence in Europe (Gerbault et al. 2009)
• Lactase persistence in Greece and Italy

BMC Evolutionary Biology doi:10.1186/1471-2148-10-36

A worldwide correlation of lactase persistence phenotype and genotypes

Yuval Itan et al.

Abstract (provisional)

Background
The ability of adult humans to digest the milk sugar lactose - lactase persistence - is a dominant Mendelian trait that has been a subject of extensive genetic, medical and evolutionary research. Lactase persistence is common in people of European ancestry as well as some African, Middle Eastern and Southern Asian groups, but is rare or absent elsewhere in the world. The recent identification of independent nucleotide changes that are strongly associated with lactase persistence in different populations worldwide has led to the possibility of genetic tests for the trait. However, it is highly unlikely that all lactase persistence-associated variants are known. Using an extensive database of lactase persistence phenotype frequencies, together with information on how those data were collected and data on the frequencies of lactase persistence variants, we present a global summary of the extent to which current genetic knowledge can explain lactase persistence phenotype frequency.

Results
We used surface interpolation of Old World lactase persistence genotype and phenotype frequency estimates obtained from all available literature and perform a comparison between predicted and observed trait frequencies in continuous space. By accommodating additional data on sample numbers and known false negative and false positive rates for the various lactase persistence phenotype tests (blood glucose and breath hydrogen), we also apply a Monte Carlo method to estimate the probability that known lactase persistence-associated allele frequencies can explain observed trait frequencies in different regions.

Conclusion
Lactase persistence genotype data is currently insufficient to explain lactase persistence phenotype frequency in much of western and southern Africa, southeastern Europe, the Middle East and parts of central and southern Asia. We suggest that further studies of genetic variation in these regions should reveal additional nucleotide variants that are associated with lactase persistence.

Link

Artificial selection in dairy cattle

PLoS ONE 4(8): e6595. doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0006595

The Genome Response to Artificial Selection: A Case Study in Dairy Cattle

Laurence Flori et al.

Abstract

Dairy cattle breeds have been subjected over the last fifty years to intense artificial selection towards improvement of milk production traits. In this study, we performed a whole genome scan for differentiation using 42,486 SNPs in the three major French dairy cattle breeds (Holstein, Normande and Montbéliarde) to identify the main physiological pathways and regions which were affected by this selection. After analyzing the population structure, we estimated FST within and across the three breeds for each SNP under a pure drift model. We further considered two different strategies to evaluate the effect of selection at the genome level. First, smoothing FST values over each chromosome with a local variable bandwidth kernel estimator allowed identifying 13 highly significant regions subjected to strong and/or recent positive selection. Some of them contained genes within which causal variants with strong effect on milk production traits (GHR) or coloration (MC1R) have already been reported. To go further in the interpretation of the observed signatures of selection we subsequently concentrated on the annotation of differentiated genes defined according to the FST value of SNPs localized close or within them. To that end we performed a comprehensive network analysis which suggested a central role of somatotropic and gonadotropic axes in the response to selection. Altogether, these observations shed light on the antagonism, at the genome level, between milk production and reproduction traits in highly producing dairy cows.

Link

Demography and selection in the spread of Lactase persistence in Europe (Gerbault et al. 2009)

Simply put, the frequency of the Lactase Persistence (LP) allele in most of southern Europe can be explained by demography alone, as the result of genetic drift during the Neolithic diffusion from the Near East. In Europe itself, there is a very strong correlation of this allele with latitude, and it is in Northwestern populations where the allele finds its higher frequency. This is more compatible with the calcium assimilation hypothesis, since lactase persistence is beneficial in low sunshine (high latitude) regions than with the gene-cultural co-evolution hypothesis, according to which pastoralists become LP because of their need to rely on animal milk.

These results can of course be improved by sampling more populations and micro-sampling communities that have traditionally practiced pastoralism vs. agricultural ones, where available, e.g., in the Balkans. However, they do suggest that the hypothesis of LP spreading during the Neolithic, and being selected at higher latitudes (south-to-north) is more attractive than its spread by pastoralists who were genetically adapted to consume milk in adulthood, as is the case in Africa.

PLoS ONE doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0006369

Impact of Selection and Demography on the Diffusion of Lactase Persistence

Pascale Gerbault et al.

Abstract

Background

The lactase enzyme allows lactose digestion in fresh milk. Its activity strongly decreases after the weaning phase in most humans, but persists at a high frequency in Europe and some nomadic populations. Two hypotheses are usually proposed to explain the particular distribution of the lactase persistence phenotype. The gene-culture coevolution hypothesis supposes a nutritional advantage of lactose digestion in pastoral populations. The calcium assimilation hypothesis suggests that carriers of the lactase persistence allele(s) (LCT*P) are favoured in high-latitude regions, where sunshine is insufficient to allow accurate vitamin-D synthesis. In this work, we test the validity of these two hypotheses on a large worldwide dataset of lactase persistence frequencies by using several complementary approaches.

Methodology

We first analyse the distribution of lactase persistence in various continents in relation to geographic variation, pastoralism levels, and the genetic patterns observed for other independent polymorphisms. Then we use computer simulations and a large database of archaeological dates for the introduction of domestication to explore the evolution of these frequencies in Europe according to different demographic scenarios and selection intensities.

Conclusions

Our results show that gene-culture coevolution is a likely hypothesis in Africa as high LCT*P frequencies are preferentially found in pastoral populations. In Europe, we show that population history played an important role in the diffusion of lactase persistence over the continent. Moreover, selection pressure on lactase persistence has been very high in the North-western part of the continent, by contrast to the South-eastern part where genetic drift alone can explain the observed frequencies. This selection pressure increasing with latitude is highly compatible with the calcium assimilation hypothesis while the gene-culture coevolution hypothesis cannot be ruled out if a positively selected lactase gene was carried at the front of the expansion wave during the Neolithic transition in Europe.

Link

Earliest horse domestication in Kazakhstan

I had previously blogged about the Botai culture. From the news release:

The researchers have traced the origins of horse domestication back to the Botai Culture of Kazakhstan circa 5,500 years ago. This is about 1,000 years earlier than thought and about 2,000 years earlier than domestic horses are known to have been in Europe. Their findings strongly suggest that horses were originally domesticated, not just for riding, but also to provide food, including milk.

Science doi:10.1126/science.1168594

The Earliest Horse Harnessing and Milking

Alan K. Outram et al.

Abstract

Horse domestication revolutionized transport, communications, and warfare in prehistory, yet the identification of early domestication processes has been problematic. Here, we present three independent lines of evidence demonstrating domestication in the Eneolithic Botai Culture of Kazakhstan, dating to about 3500 B.C.E. Metrical analysis of horse metacarpals shows that Botai horses resemble Bronze Age domestic horses rather than Paleolithic wild horses from the same region. Pathological characteristics indicate that some Botai horses were bridled, perhaps ridden. Organic residue analysis, using ¹³C and D values of fatty acids, reveals processing of mare's milk and carcass products in ceramics, indicating a developed domestic economy encompassing secondary products.

Link

Milk and culture

Significance Of Milk In Development Of Culture To Be Studied:

ScienceDaily (Sep. 4, 2008) — The capacity to drink and tolerate milk may have been of tremendous importance for the cultural development of Europe. In a major EU project, being launched today and coordinated by Uppsala University in Sweden, researchers will now study when and where this capacity emerged and what it entailed.

...

“The oldest pottery shards shown to contain milk were found in southeastern Europe, more precisely in what today is northeastern Greece. We believe that the mutation once grew common there and then became fundamental to the development of agrarian culture,” says Anders Götherstam, who will be coordinating the project.

See also the recent post on Earliest evidence for milk. In Northern Greece, milk has been detected in Stavroupoli (5.7ky BC) and Makriyalos (5.2ky BC)

Via Gene Expression

Earliest evidence for milk in the Near East and Southeastern Europe

From the paper:

Reported here are results from analyses of organic residues from sherds of pottery vessels from fifth- to seventh-millennium BC sites in southeastern Europe, Anatolia and the Levant. Vessels most likely to have been used for food preparation were selected to test where milk use started, and whether the use of milk products first began in the region where farming was pioneered, namely within the Fertile Crescent, or whether it was an innovation of other regions.

...

The most striking feature of the data obtained is the emphatic evidence for extensive processing of dairy products in the pottery from all the sites of northwestern Anatolia (Fig. 3a) dating from about 6500–5000 BC, around the Sea of Marmara. Of the,700 sherds analysed from the six sites considered in this region—As¸ag˘ı Pınar (5500–5000 BC), Toptepe (5500–5000), Yarımburgaz (6000–5500), Fikir Tepe (6000–5500), Hoca C¸ esme (6500–5500) and Pendik (6500–6000)—about 100 (,15%) yielded appreciable animal fat residues, of which 70% contained predominantly dairy fat residues. Thus, the milking of ruminant animals was clearly practised intensively in the sixth and seventh millennia BC in northwestern Anatolia.

Nature doi:10.1038/nature07180

Earliest date for milk use in the Near East and southeastern Europe linked to cattle herding

Richard P. Evershed et al.

The domestication of cattle, sheep and goats had already taken place in the Near East by the eighth millennium bc. Although there would have been considerable economic and nutritional gains from using these animals for their milk and other products from living animals—that is, traction and wool—the first clear evidence for these appears much later, from the late fifth and fourth millennia bc. Hence, the timing and region in which milking was first practised remain unknown. Organic residues preserved in archaeological pottery have provided direct evidence for the use of milk in the fourth millennium in Britain, and in the sixth millennium in eastern Europe, based on the δ13C values of the major fatty acids of milk fat. Here we apply this approach to more than 2,200 pottery vessels from sites in the Near East and southeastern Europe dating from the fifth to the seventh millennia bc. We show that milk was in use by the seventh millennium; this is the earliest direct evidence to date. Milking was particularly important in northwestern Anatolia, pointing to regional differences linked with conditions more favourable to cattle compared to other regions, where sheep and goats were relatively common and milk use less important. The latter is supported by correlations between the fat type and animal bone evidence.

Link

Dairying in Neolithic Central Europe

Isotopes Environ Health Stud. 2008 Jun;44(2):189-200.

Direct evidence for the existence of dairying farms in prehistoric Central Europe (4th millennium BC).

Spangenberg JE, Matuschik I, Jacomet S, Schibler J.

The molecular and isotopic chemistry of organic residues from archaeological potsherds was used to obtain further insight into the dietary trends and economies at the Constance lake-shore Neolithic settlements. The archaeological organic residues from the Early Late Neolithic (3922-3902 BC) site Hornstaad-Hornle IA/Germany are, at present, the oldest archaeological samples analysed at the Institute of Mineralogy and Geochemistry of the University of Lausanne. The approach includes (13)C/(12)C and (15)N/(14)N ratios of the bulk organic residues, fatty acids distribution and (13)C/(12)C ratios of individual fatty acids. The results are compared with those obtained from the over 500 years younger Neolithic (3384-3370 BC) settlement of Arbon Bleiche 3/Switzerland and with samples of modern vegetable oils and fat of animals that have been fed exclusively on C(3) forage grasses. The overall fatty acid composition (C(9) to C(24) range, maximizing at C(14) and C(16)), the bulk (13)C/(12)C and (15)N/(14)N ratios (delta(13)C, delta(15)N) and the (13)C/(12)C ratios of palmitic (C(16:0)), stearic (C(18:0)) and oleic acids (C(18:1)) of the organic residues indicate that most of the studied samples (25 from 47 samples and 5 from 41 in the delta(13)C(18:0) vs. delta(13)C(16:0) and delta(13)C(18:0) vs. delta(13)C(18:1) diagrams, respectively) from Hornstaad-Hornle IA and Arbon Bleiche 3 sherds contain fat residues of pre-industrial ruminant milk, and young suckling calf/lamb adipose. These data provide direct proof of milk and meat (mainly from young suckling calves) consumption and farming practices for a sustainable dairying in Neolithic villages in central Europe around 4000 BC

Link

Early Europeans unable to digest milk

This is the EurekAlert release; I did not see the PNAS article online yet.

The first direct evidence that early Europeans were unable to digest milk has been found by scientists at UCL (University College London) and Mainz University.

In a study, published in the journal 'PNAS', the team shows that the gene that controls our ability to digest milk was missing from Neolithic skeletons dating to between 5840 and 5000 BC. However, through exposure to milk, lactose tolerance evolved extremely rapidly, in evolutionary terms. Today, it is present in over ninety per cent of the population of northern Europe and is also found in some African and Middle Eastern populations but is missing from the majority of the adult population globally.

Dr Mark Thomas, UCL Biology, said: "The ability to drink milk is the most advantageous trait that's evolved in Europeans in the recent past. Without the enzyme lactase, drinking milk in adulthood causes bloating and diarrhoea. Although the benefits of milk tolerance are not fully understood yet, they probably include: the continuous supply of milk compared to the boom and bust of seasonal crops; its nourishing qualities; and the fact that it's uncontaminated by parasites, unlike stream water, making it a safer drink. All in all, the ability to drink milk gave some early Europeans a big survival advantage."

The team carried out DNA tests on Neolithic skeletons from some of the earliest organised farming communities in Europe. Their aim was to find out whether these early Europeans from various sites in central, northeast and southeast Europe, carried a version of the lactase gene that controls our ability to produce the essential enzyme lactase into adulthood. The team found that it was absent from their ancient bone DNA. This led the researchers to conclude that the consumption and tolerance of milk would have been very rare or absent at the time.

Scientists have known for decades that at some point in the past all humans were lactose intolerant. What was not known was just how recently lactose tolerance evolved.

Dr Thomas said: "To go from lactose tolerance being rare or absent seven to eight thousand years ago to the commonality we see today in central and northern Europeans just cannot be explained by anything except strong natural selection. Our study confirms that the variant of the lactase gene appeared very recently in evolutionary terms and that it became common because it gave its carriers a massive survival advantage. Scientists have inferred this already through analysis of genes in today's population but we've confirmed it by going back and looking at ancient DNA."

This study challenges the theory that certain groups of Europeans were lactose tolerant and that this inborn ability led the community to pursue dairy farming. Instead, they actually evolved their tolerance of milk within the last 8000 years due to exposure to milk.

Dr Thomas said: "There were two theories out there: one that lactose tolerance led to dairy farming and another that exposure to milk led to the evolution of lactose tolerance. This is a simple chicken or egg question but one that is very important to archaeologists, anthropologists and evolutionary biologists. We found that the lactose tolerance variant of the lactase gene only became common after dairy farming, which started around 9 thousand years ago in Europe.

"This is just one part of the picture researchers are gathering about lactose tolerance and the origins of Europeans. Next on the list is why there is such disparity in lactose tolerance between populations. It's striking, for example, that today around eighty per cent of southern Europeans cannot tolerate lactose even though the first dairy farmers in Europe probably lived in those areas. Through computer simulations and DNA testing we are beginning to get glimpses of the bigger early European picture."

UPDATE: abstract (1 March)

Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. USA, 10.1073/pnas.0607187104

bsence of the lactase-persistence-associated allele in early Neolithic Europeans

J. Burger et al.

Lactase persistence (LP), the dominant Mendelian trait conferring the ability to digest the milk sugar lactose in adults, has risen to high frequency in central and northern Europeans in the last 20,000 years. This trait is likely to have conferred a selective advantage in individuals who consume appreciable amounts of unfermented milk. Some have argued for the "culture-historical hypothesis," whereby LP alleles were rare until the advent of dairying early in the Neolithic but then rose rapidly in frequency under natural selection. Others favor the "reverse cause hypothesis," whereby dairying was adopted in populations with preadaptive high LP allele frequencies. Analysis based on the conservation of lactase gene haplotypes indicates a recent origin and high selection coefficients for LP, although it has not been possible to say whether early Neolithic European populations were lactase persistent at appreciable frequencies. We developed a stepwise strategy for obtaining reliable nuclear ancient DNA from ancient skeletons, based on (i) the selection of skeletons from archaeological sites that showed excellent biomolecular preservation, (ii) obtaining highly reproducible human mitochondrial DNA sequences, and (iii) reliable short tandem repeat (STR) genotypes from the same specimens. By applying this experimental strategy, we have obtained high-confidence LP-associated genotypes from eight Neolithic and one Mesolithic human remains, using a range of strict criteria for ancient DNA work. We did not observe the allele most commonly associated with LP in Europeans, thus providing evidence for the culture-historical hypothesis, and indicating that LP was rare in early European farmers.

Link

Horse domestication news from Kazakhstan

See also Botai and Horse Domestication.

New evidence of early horse domestication

Soil from a Copper Age site in northern Kazakhstan has yielded new evidence for domesticated horses up to 5,600 years ago. The discovery, consisting of phosphorus-enriched soils inside what appear to be the remains of horse corrals beside pit houses, matches what would be expected from Earth once enriched by horse manure. The Krasnyi Yar site was inhabited by people of the Botai culture of the Eurasian Steppe, who relied heavily on horses for food, tools, and transport.

"There's very little direct evidence of horse domestication," says Sandra Olsen, an archaeologist and horse domestication researcher at the Carnegie Museum of Natural History in Pittsburgh, PA. That's because 5,600 years ago there were no saddles or metal bits to leave behind. Equipment like bridles, leads, and hobbles would have been made from thongs of horse hide, and would have rotted away long ago. Likewise horses themselves have not changed much physically as a result of domestication, unlike dogs or cattle. So ancient horse bones don't easily reveal the secrets of domestication.

With research funding from the National Science Foundation, Olsen's team took a different tack. They looked for circumstantial evidence that people were keeping horses. One approach was to survey the Krasnyi Yar site with instruments to map out subtle electrical and magnetic irregularities in the soils. With this they were able to identify the locations of 54 pit houses and dozens of post moulds where vertical posts once stood. Some of the post moulds were arranged circularly, as would be most practical for a corral.

Next, geologist Michael Rosenmeier from the University of Pittsburgh collected soil samples from inside the fenced area and outside the settlement. The samples were analyzed for nitrogen, phosphorus, potassium, and sodium concentrations by Rosemary Capo, University of Pittsburgh geochemist, and her students. Modern horse manure is rich in phosphorous, potassium, and especially nitrogen, compared to undisturbed soils. But because nitrogen is mobile in soils, it can be lost to groundwater or transferred to the atmosphere by organic and inorganic processes. Phosphorus, on the other hand, can be locked into place by calcium and iron and is more likely to be preserved in the soils for millennia.

As it turned out, the soil from inside the alleged corral had up to ten times the phosphorus concentration as the soils from outside the settlement. Lots of phosphorus can also indicate a hearth, said Capo, but that phosphorus is usually accompanied by a lot of potassium, which is not the case in the corral at Krasnyi Yar.

The corral soils also had low nitrogen concentrations, says Capo, reducing the likelihood that the phosphorus came from more recent manure. "That's good, actually," she said of the recently completed nitrogen analyses. "It suggests we've got old stuff."

Even more compelling will be if we find long-lived molecules of fat, or lipids, directly attributed to horse manure in the soils, says Olsen.

The latest results from Krasnyi Yar site will be on display Monday morning, 23 October, at the Annual Meeting of the Geological Society of America in Philadelphia.

Early as the Botai were, they were probably not the first to domesticate horses, says Olsen. "The very first horse domestication was probably a bit earlier in Ukraine or western Russia," she said. "Then some horse-herders migrated east to Kazakhstan."

Horses allowed the Botai to build large perennial villages with, in one case, hundreds of homes. They did so without the benefit of agriculture, Olsen explained, as theirs was a horse economy.

The Botai were able to stay put year-round because horses are very well adapted to cold winters, she said. "Horses can survive ice storms and don't need heated barns or winter fodder," Olsen said. They are, in fact, some of the last remaining large, Ice Age, Pleistocene mammals living in one of the last places on Earth where Pleistocene vegetation survives.

Because they were domesticated, the horses supplied meat year-round and vitamin-rich mare's milk from spring through fall. "No one in their right mind would try to milk a wild mare," said Olsen.

There is also evidence that the Botai were carrying a lot of heavy material, like rocks and large skulls, over long distances. That is a lot more practical and explicable if they used pack horses.

Later people of the same region adopted shepherding and cattle raising, said Olsen. That created a more nomadic culture, since sheep and cattle are not well suited for sub-zero climates and therefore needed to be taken south in winter. The tradeoff, she says, was that cows and sheep give far fattier milk year round, which can be made into yogurt and cheese. Sheep also provide wool.

Kazakh people today still eat horsemeat. They were forced to abandon their nomadic lifestyle during the Soviet era and have returned to small village pastoralism, Olsen says.

Dairying among European farmers

See also Neolithic Europeans Made Cheese, Yogurt. Exerpt:

Dirty cooking pots dating to nearly 8,000 years ago reveal that some of Europe's earliest farming communities produced dairy products, such as cheese and yogurt.

Two separate studies indicate that Neolithic dairying took place in what are now Romania, Hungary and Switzerland.

The discoveries suggest people in these regions might have originally learned how to process milk-based foods from Asian farmers.

"From a diffusionist perspective, these findings lend support to the idea that the antiquity of dairying lies with the origins of animal domestication in southwest Asia some two millennia earlier, prior to its transmission to Europe in the seventh millennia B.C., rather than it being a later and entirely European innovation," wrote Oliver Craig, a scientist at Tor Vergata University in Rome, and colleagues in the first study published in the journal Antiquity.

Antiquity 79(306): 882-894

Did the first farmers of central and eastern Europe produce dairy foods?

Oliver E. Craig et al.

Although the origins of domestic animals have been well-documented, it is unclear when livestock were first exploited for secondary products, such as milk. The analysis of remnant fats preserved in ceramic vessels from two agricultural sites in central and eastern Europe dating to the Early Neolithic (5900-5500 cal BC) are best explained by the presence of milk residues. On this basis, the authors suggest that dairying featured in early European farming economies. The evidence is evaluated in the light of analysis of faunal remains from this region to determine the scale of dairying. It is suggested that dairying — perhaps of sheep or goats — was initially practised on a small scale and was part of a broad mixed economy.

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Journal of Archaeological Science
Volume 33, Issue 1 , January 2006, Pages 1-13

Chemical analyses of organic residues in archaeological pottery from Arbon Bleiche 3, Switzerland – evidence for dairying in the late Neolithic

Jorge E. Spangenberg et al.

Fatty acids distribution and stable isotope ratios (bulk δ13C, δ15N and δ13C of individual fatty acids) of organic residues from 30 potsherds have been used to get further insights into the diet at the Late Neolithic (3384–3370 BC) site of Arbon Bleiche 3, Switzerland. The results are compared with modern equivalents of animal and vegetable fats, which may have been consumed in a mixed ecology community having agrarian, breeding, shepherd, gathering, hunting, and fishing activities. The used combined chemical and isotopic approach provides valuable information to complement archaeological indirect evidence about the dietary trends obtained from the analysis of faunal and plant remains. The small variations of the δ13C and δ15N values within the range expected for degraded animal and plant tissues, is consistent with the archaeological evidence of animals, whose subsistence was mainly based on C3 plants. The overall fatty acid composition and the stable carbon isotopic compositions of palmitic, stearic and oleic acids of the organic residues indicate that the studied Arbon Bleiche 3 sherds contain fat residues of plant and animal origin, most likely ruminant (bovine and ovine). In several vessels the presence of milk residues provides direct evidence for dairying during the late Neolithic in central Europe.

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Lactose malabsorption, climate, and cattle disease

It is well known that some people are able to digest milk while others aren't, and this ability seems to be concentrated in some populations and lacking in others. The usual explanation for this is that in cultures where milk is used regularly, the population has evolved the ability to process it. But, why do some cultures use milk in the first place? A new paper shows that extreme climate conditions are associated with lactose malabsorption (LM), since it may be impossible to maintain cattle at such conditions. More importantly, LM seems to be associated with the presence of several dangerous cattle diseases. Therefore, in those parts of the world where it was not possible to raise cattle safely and efficiently, humans avoided doing so, and hence they did not develop the necessary mechanism for absorbing lactose.

Evolution and Human Behavior
Volume 26, Issue 4 , July 2005, Pages 301-312

Dairying barriers affect the distribution of lactose malabsorption

Gabrielle Bloom and Paul W. Sherman

Abstract

Most mammals stop drinking milk at weaning, which is also the time when they cease producing lactase, the digestive enzyme that hydrolyzes lactose. Cessation of lactase production and milk drinking also characterize most human populations, especially those of African and Asian descent. However, a genetic mutation that maintains the functionality of lactase production into adulthood occurs commonly among populations from northern Europe, where dairying is practiced routinely. Indeed, the ability to absorb lactose is nutritionally beneficial for adults only if milk consistently is available. What determines the distribution of dairying? We hypothesized that specific environmental circumstances affect where milk-producing ungulates can be raised safely and economically, thus influencing the geographical occurrence of dairying and lactase persistence. To evaluate this hypothesis, we compiled data on adult lactose absorption (LA) and malabsorption (LM) frequencies in 270 indigenous African and Eurasian populations (Appendix A). Partial correlation analyses revealed that, as predicted, adult LM is associated with extreme climates (at high and low latitudes) and, more significantly, with the historical (pre-1900) geographical occurrence of nine deadly, communicable diseases of cattle. These results suggest that areas where adult LM predominates are those where it is impossible or dangerous to maintain dairy herds.

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Lactose tolerance gene supports a Eurasian origin of Berber populations

A new study lends further support in the Eurasian origin of the Berbers. This further explains their Caucasoid racial character and argues against some theories of Afrocentrist scholars that Berbers are simply adapted supra-Saharan Africans. An excerpt:

The data presented here are consistent with a scenario in which proto-Berber-speaking ovicaprid pastoralists introduced the –13910T allele, and thereby lactose tolerance, into North Africa. This scenario implies a genetic input from migrating pastoralists from the Middle East and suggests that contemporary Berber populations share a Middle Eastern dairying origin with other Eurasian populations.

See also A Predominantly Neolithic Origin for Y-Chromosomal DNA Variation in North Africa and Lactase Persistence in Africans and Back-Migration from Eurasia.

Human Genetics (Online Early)

Genetic evidence in support of a shared Eurasian-North African dairying origin

Sean Myles

Abstract The process by which pastoralism and agriculture spread from the Fertile Crescent over the past 10,000 years has been the subject of intense investigation by geneticists, linguists and archaeologists. However, no consensus has been reached as to whether this Neolithic transition is best characterized by a demic diffusion (with a significant genetic input from migrating farmers) or a cultural diffusion (without substantial migration of farmers). Milk consumption and thus lactose tolerance are assumed to have spread with pastoralism and we propose that by looking at the relevant mutations in and around the lactase gene in human populations, we can gain insight into the origin(s) and spread of dairying. We genotyped the putatively causal allele for lactose tolerance (–13910T) and constructed haplotypes from several polymorphisms in and around the lactase gene (LCT) in three North African Berber populations and compared our results with previously published data. We found that the frequency of the –13910T allele predicts the frequency of lactose tolerance in several Eurasian and North African Berber populations but not in most sub-Saharan African populations. Our analyses suggest that contemporary Berber populations possess the genetic signature of a past migration of pastoralists from the Middle East and that they share a dairying origin with Europeans and Asians, but not with sub-Saharan Africans.

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