bronze age

I have decided to make this new thread to present and discuss a number of recent, primarily archeometalurgical studies that shed more light on long distance bronze-age trade connections across Europe. This thread is meant to complement, not to replace, related threads, especially on the...

A very interesting new paper by Wilde et al. 2014 tested three genes (HERC2, SLC45A2 and TYR) associated with skin, eye and hair pigmentation in 63 ancient samples from the Pontic-Caspian Steppe (mostly modern Ukraine) dating from the Chalcolithic and Bronze Age. The results are relatively...

Here is a list of the oldest evidence known to archaeology for things that humans did for the first time in prehistory. The purpose is to give a overview of the timeline of technological developments across prehistoric times. - Humans made stone tools at least 2.6 million years ago in Ethiopia...

Bell Beakers were a multicultural phenomenon & trade network, not an ethnic culture I have noticed that Jean Manco mentioned in her new book Ancestral Journeys that the Bell Beaker culture represents the arrival of R1b people into Western Europe. I have explained before why it is extremely...

The North Caucasus has a very unique genetic landscape. The mitochondrial haplogroups found there, especially in the Northwest Caucasus include a lot of rare lineages that aren't found at higher frequencies almost anywhere else. These include haplogroups H2a1, I (mostly the I1, I2 and I4a...

The Sumerian civilization in southern Mesopotamia arose circa 4500 BCE with the foundation of Eridu, the world's first city. Enigmatic speakers of a language isolate, the Sumerians played a leading role in the development of Near Eastern civilizations. They developed the first city-states...

Introduction One of the hottest controversies of the last few years in European prehistory and population genetics has been the origins and dispersal of haplogroup R1b. As recently as 2008 almost everybody thought that R1b had been in Western Europe since the Palaeolithic and re-expanded from...

Brandt et al. analysed 364 ancient mtDNA samples from the Early Neolithic (Linear Pottery culture) to the Early Bronze Age (Unetice culture), mostly around Germany, Bohemia and Poland. I believe that this is the largest study on ancient mtDNA to date. Although the article is behind a paywall...

Dienekes mentions on his blog a recent paper by Konstantine Pitskhelauri on the settlement of the Caucasus by migrants from the Middle East during the Neolithic period. The paper brings additional evidence regarding the origins of the Early Bronze Age Maykop culture in Mesopotamia, confirming...

I have updated the R1b-S28 (U152) history, adding a section about the Villanova culture: The expansion of the Urnfield/Halstatt culture to Italy is evident in the form of the Villanovan culture (c. 1100-700 BCE), which shared striking resemblances with the Urnfield/Hallstatt sites of Bavaria...

Sometimes I wonder how researchers pick and choose the ancient samples that they test for DNA. Very often they don't seem like to be from the most interesting places and periods to further our understanding of European prehistory. Now that Neolithic Y-DNA and autosomal DNA has been...

A new paper on haplogroup G by Rootsi et al. was published two days ago. They compiled a new database of some 1500 members of hg G spread over nearly 100 regions and listed frequencies in all these regions for 17 subclades of G. This is by far the most comprehensive study of hg G so far. I am...