The Avars from Asia Steppes and European farmers co-existed in segregated communities in the early Middle Ages in Austria for at least six generations.
Researchers carried out an archeogenetic study of human remains from more than 700 individuals from the Early Middle Ages. Two large burial sites, Modling and Leobersdorf, have been genetically analyzed in their entirety. The surprising result was that the individuals from Leobersdorf were mostly of East Asian origin, while those buried in Modling mostly had European ancestry. Both communities lived next to each other for at least six generations. . . .
[The result] emerged from a genetic study of burial grounds from the Avar period in the 8th century CE. The Avars had arrived in the 6th century from the East Asian Steppes and settled in East Central Europe among a mixed population.
From Science Direct. The article quoted above is based upon the academic paper whose abstract and citation are provided below:
After a long-distance migration, Avars with Eastern Asian ancestry arrived in Eastern Central Europe in 567 to 568 CE and encountered groups with very different European ancestry.
We used ancient genome-wide data of 722 individuals and fine-grained interdisciplinary analysis of large seventh- to eighth-century ce neighbouring cemeteries south of Vienna (Austria) to address the centuries-long impact of this encounter. We found that even 200 years after immigration, the ancestry at one site (Leobersdorf) remained dominantly East Asian-like, whereas the other site (Mödling) shows local, European-like ancestry. These two nearby sites show little biological relatedness, despite sharing a distinctive late-Avar culture.
We reconstructed six-generation pedigrees at both sites including up to 450 closely related individuals, allowing per-generation demographic profiling of the communities. Despite different ancestry, these pedigrees together with large networks of distant relatedness show absence of consanguinity, patrilineal pattern with female exogamy, multiple reproductive partnerships (for example, levirate) and direct correlation of biological connectivity with archaeological markers of social status. The generation-long genetic barrier was maintained by systematically choosing partners with similar ancestry from other sites in the Avar realm. Leobersdorf had more biological connections with the Avar heartlands than with Mödling, which is instead linked to another site from the Vienna Basin with European-like ancestry. Mobility between sites was mostly due to female exogamy pointing to different marriage networks as the main driver of the maintenance of the genetic barrier.
Ke Wang, et al., "Ancient DNA reveals reproductive barrier despite shared Avar-period culture." Nature (January 15, 2025) DOI: 10.1038/s41586-024-08418-5 (open access).
arXiv:2501.17043 (gr-qc)
ReplyDelete[Submitted on 28 Jan 2025]
Entanglement and squeezing of gravitational waves
Thiago Guerreiro
We show that the self-interactions present in the effective field theory formulation of general relativity can couple gravitational wave modes and generate nonclassical states. The output of gravitational nonlinear processes can also be sensitive to quantum features of the input states, indicating that nonlinearities can act both as sources and detectors of quantum features of gravitational waves. Due to gauge and quantization issues in strongly curved spacetimes, we work in the geometric optics limit of gravitational radiation, but we expect the key ideas extend to situations of astrophysical interest. This offers a new direction for probing the quantum nature of gravity, analogous to how the quantumness of electrodynamics was established through quantum optics.
Published: 20 January 2025
ReplyDeleteHominin presence in Eurasia by at least 1.95 million years ago
Sabrina C. Curran, Virgil Drăgușin,
Abstract
The timing of the initial dispersal of hominins into Eurasia is unclear. Current evidence indicates hominins were present at Dmanisi, Georgia by 1.8 million years ago (Ma), but other ephemeral traces of hominins across Eurasia predate Dmanisi. However, no hominin remains have been definitively described from Europe until ~1.4 Ma. Here we present evidence of hominin activity at the site of Grăunceanu, Romania in the form of multiple cut-marked bones. Biostratigraphic and high-resolution U-Pb age estimates suggest Grăunceanu is > 1.95 Ma, making this site one of the best-dated early hominin localities in Europe. Environmental reconstructions based on isotopic analyzes of horse dentition suggest Grăunceanu would have been relatively temperate and seasonal, demonstrating a wide habitat tolerance in even the earliest hominins in Eurasia. Our results, presented along with multiple other lines of evidence, point to a widespread, though perhaps intermittent, presence of hominins across Eurasia by at least 2.0 Ma.
@neo Two interesting papers. Thanks for the heads up.
ReplyDelete