Anthro Links

I am a subscriber to Anthropology.net. Some links are behind a paywall, others are free.  I get half-a-dozen short articles per week. Here are a few of the best.

"The Scythians were a prominent Iron Age people of the Eurasian Steppe, and their distinctive funerary practices were well-documented in ancient texts. Greek historian Herodotus described their customs, though often portraying them as barbaric. Recent archaeological evidence, however, provides insight that goes beyond these ancient descriptions." 

Underwater caves. "Despite Sicily’s proximity to mainland Italy, the migration of early human groups to the island posed significant challenges. The narrow stretch of water separating Sicily from Italy might seem a minor barrier today, but it represented a substantial obstacle for early human populations. Scholars have debated whether early humans arrived by sea or over a possible land bridge, and what pathways they may have taken to reach the island."

 "Our results suggest that between the Yayoi and Kofun periods, the majority of immigrants to the Japanese Archipelago originated primarily from the Korean Peninsula.” 

The heat from fire made starchy foods more digestible, and extra amylase genes likely offered a survival advantage.

There had been a lot of evidence of population collapse in Scandinavia over 5,000 y/a, and recently there has been evidence that it was plague brought by the Indo-Europeans, rather than their extreme violence, that did in the mostly Pitted-Ware Scandis of the day.  I think it looks like first one and then the other, myself, and I suspect that is the more common view. The full article is behind the paywall, but you should at least know that the evidence for all this is increasing.

Ancient Aurochs as ancestors of modern cattle.  Who doesn't want to know about aurochs, eh? There weren't that many lineages early on in the domestication 10,000 y/a, which is unsurprisingly attributed to the fact that they were large, and wild. Catching one was a project.