"This article offers the examples from Sintashta SM and Kamennyj Ambar-5, along with Bayesian modelling of radiocarbon dates from KA-5's kurgan burials, as new information for debate over both the timing of the introduction of light vehicles on the Eurasian Steppe and, more generally, technological innovations across Eurasia."
"We focus specifically on the ongoing debates relating to (1) the independent invention and innovation of different metals and metal production techniques; (2) the analysis and interpretation of early metallurgical production cores and peripheries, and their collapses; and (3) the relationships between metals, metallurgy and society."
"Here we employ a sample of ancient Near Eastern cities dated between about 6000 BC and AD 1000 using settled area as a proxy for city population and relate this to estimates of regional population and prevailing climate to examine their long-term relationship."
"Our study demonstrates a direct genetic link between Mediterranean and Central European early farmers and those of Greece and Anatolia, extending the European Neolithic migratory chain all the way back to southwestern Asia."
"We analyzed a comprehensive autosomal and Y-chromosome dataset of Eurasian and African populations identifying genetic signals of regional LGP population isolation, and contrasted expansion time estimates and dispersal routes in the region with archaeological, palaeontological, palaeobotanical, and climate data."
🇩🇰 "We propose that the interdependent relationships between mobility, pastoralism and barrow-building in the third millennium BC produced a cosmological complex which endured as the social backbone of the Nordic Bronze Age (c. 1700–500 BC) in western Jutland."
The Kashihara shrine (橿原神宮) area of Nara is a cradle of Japanese civilization formerly known as Yamato. I especially didn't want to miss the archaeological museum, so a couple of its treasures are included here. The shrine is dedicated to the legendary first Emperor Jimmu (神武天皇). The Buddhist temple Kumedera (久米寺) near Kashihara Jingū is a Shingon temple, but it predates the founder Kūkai. It was where Kūkai found the indecipherable Mahāvairocana Sūtra (大日経) that justified his precious voyage to Chang'an, as I alluded recently in the journal paper "Translation Issues in the Rapid Transmission of Esoteric Buddhism from India to China to Japan" at https://www.researchgate.net/publication/371965557
🇮🇪 "The Neolithic and Bronze Age transitions were profound cultural shifts catalyzed in parts of Europe by migrations, first of early farmers from the Near East and then Bronze Age herders from the Pontic Steppe. However, a decades-long, unresolved controversy is whether population change or cultural adoption occurred at the Atlantic edge, within the British Isles."