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A study suggests that the first European farmers migrated from modern-day Greece and Turkey. Farming was introduced to Europe from Anatolia in modern-day Turkey. The extent to which this process was mediated by migration of Anatolian farmers versus cultural diffusion has been a subject of debate. Joachim Burger and colleagues obtained DNA sequences from five individuals from early agricultural sites in northwestern Turkey and northern Greece. These sites date from the time of initial spread of farming to Europe, and lie along the proposed route of this spread. The authors observed considerable similarity between the genomes they obtained and those of individuals from early farming societies in central and southern Europe. By modeling ancient and modern genomes as mixtures of DNA from other ancient genomes, the authors could trace most of the ancestry of individuals from ancient farming societies in Germany and Hungary to the ancient Anatolian and Greek genomes. Ancient Greek and Anatolian genomes contributed to all modern day European populations, and are particularly similar to modern Mediterranean populations as well as to Ötzi, the ice mummy from the Alps. According to the authors, the results suggest a continuous chain of ancestry from Europe to Greece and Anatolia, indicative of migration from the latter to the former.

LUND UNIVERSITY—Seven years ago divers discovered the oldest known stationary fish traps in northern Europe off the coast of southern Sweden. Since then, researchers at Lund University in Sweden have uncovered an exceptionally well-preserved Stone Age site. They now believe the location was a lagoon environment where Mesolithic humans lived during parts of the year.

Archaeologists from the Australian National University have unearthed fragments from the edge of the world's oldest-known axe, found in the Kimberley region of Western Australia.

Researchers report* evidence of ancient human symbolic culture in the Wallacea zone of eastern Indonesia. Anatomically modern humans (AMHs) had colonized Wallacea by 47,000 years ago, but evidence of the cultural complexity associated with AMHs from the same period elsewhere in the world has been sparse. Adam Brumm and colleagues describe artifacts recovered from a cave on the Indonesian island of Sulawesi dated from 30,000-22,000 years ago. Some of the artifacts were bones and teeth of endemic animals modified into ornaments, including a bear cuscus bone likely to have been worn as a pendant and previously undocumented disc-shaped beads manufactured from the teeth of babirusas, also known as “pig-deer.” Several stone flakes were incised with various geometric patterns, possibly representing a form of portable art. The authors also found evidence for the use of pigment, such as ochre pieces with traces from scraping and grinding, ochre residues on stone artifacts, and a hollow long bone with traces of red and black pigment that may have been used as a kind of airbrush for creating rock art. According to the authors, the artifacts suggest the existence of a distinct symbolic culture in Wallacea that incorporated animals unique to the region.

UNIVERSITY OF COPENHAGEN – FACULTY OF HUMANITIES—A study from the University of the Basque Country (UPV-EHU) and the University of Copenhagen shows that the process of cultivation and domestication of cereals occurred at different times across southwest Asia. The analyses of plant remains from archaeological sites dated to around 11,600-10,700 years ago suggest that in regions such as Turkey, Iran and Iraq, legumes, fruits and nuts dominated the diet, whereas cereals were the preferred types of plants in Jordan, Syria, Palestine and Israel. This means that Neolithic plant-based subsistence strategies were regionally diverse and that cereals were not staple foods in all regions.