Latest Neolithic Revolution Stories
April Flowers for redOrbit.com - Your Universe Online New analytical techniques are changing long-held, simplistic views about the evolutionary history of humans in Europe. The study, reported in the journal Trends in Genetics, found that many cultural, climatic, and demographic events have shaped genetic variation among modern-day European populations and that the variety of those mechanisms is more diverse than previously thought. Recent advances in paleogenetics, or the study of...
One of the most significant socioeconomic changes in the history of humanity took place around 10,000 years ago, when the Near East went from an economy based on hunting and gathering (Mesolithic) to another kind on agriculture (Neolithic). Farmers rapidly entered the Balkan Peninsula and then advanced gradually throughout the rest of Europe.Various theories have been proposed over recent years to explain this process, and now physicists from the University of Girona (UdG) have for the first...
Agricultural "“ or Neolithic "“ economics replaced the Mesolithic social model of hunter-gathering in the Near East about 10,000 years ago. One of the most important socioeconomic changes in human history, this socioeconomic shift, known as the Neolithic transition, spread gradually across Europe until it slowed down when more northern latitudes were reached.Research published today, Friday, 3 December 2010, in New Journal of Physics (co-owned by the Institute of Physics and the German...
Unraveling the origins of agriculture in different regions around the globe has been a challenge for archeologists. Now researchers writing in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences report finding evidence of early human experiments with grain cultivation in East Asia. They gathered this information from an unlikely source"•dog and pig bones.The dog and pig bones, as well as bones of other animals analyzed in the study, come from an archaeological site in a region of northwest...
Until recently researchers believed the story of the origin of agriculture was one of a relatively sudden appearance of plant cultivation in the Near East around 10,000 years ago spreading quickly into Europe and dovetailing conveniently with ideas about how quickly language and population genes spread from the Near East to Europe. Initially, genetics appeared to support this idea but now cracks are beginning to appear in the evidence underpinning that model.Now a team led by Dr Robin Allaby...
By Prendergast, Kate Our prehistoric ancestors survived rapid climate change and rising temperatures as extreme as those we face today, says Kate Prendergast. What can they tell us about global warming? BETWEEN 18- 20,000 YEARS AGO, average temperatures in Europe probably fell to at least 10[degrees]C below the levels they are today. In the last great Ice Age, glaciers expanded rapidly and covered large areas of northern and central Europe in ice sheets. Much of Europe resembled tundra and...
