26 March 2023 The Future is the Product of the Past

First European farmers’ heights did not meet expectations

A combined study of genetics and skeletal remains shows that the switch from primarily hunting, gathering and foraging to farming about 12,000 years ago in Europe may have had negative health effects as indicated by shorter than expected heights in the earliest farmers, according to an international team of researchers.

“Recent studies tried to characterize the contribution of DNA to height,” said Stephanie Marciniak, assistant research professor, Penn State. “We started thinking about the longstanding questions around the shift from hunting, gathering and foraging to sedentary farming and decided to look at the health effect with height as a proxy.”

Working with George H. Perry, associate professor of anthropology and biology, Penn State, and more than 40 international researchers, Marciniak looked at the heights of individuals who lived before the Neolithic, and in the Neolithic, Copper, Bronze and Iron ages. The researchers measured the long bones of skeletal remains that were also being sampled or had already been sampled for ancient DNA testing by other researchers.

The researchers created a model that used adult height, indicators of stress seen in the bones and ancient DNA. They also looked at genetic indications of ancestry. The researchers reported their results in a recent issue of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

“Our approach is unique in that we used height measurements and ancient DNA taken from the same individuals,” said Marciniak.

The switch from a hunting, gathering and foraging lifestyle to a settled agricultural lifestyle did not occur across Europe simultaneously, but in different places at different times.

Drawings of skeletal indicators of nonspecific stress evaluated in the study. Credit: Katharine Thompson
Drawings of skeletal indicators of nonspecific stress were evaluated in the study. Credit: Katharine Thompson

The researchers studied 167 individuals who lived from 38,000 to 2,400 years ago. This included preagricultural individuals, the earliest farmers, and subsequent farmers. They found that individuals from the Neolithic, taking into account their genetically indicated potential heights, were an average of 1.5 inches shorter than previous individuals and 0.87 inches shorter than subsequent individuals. They also found that heights steadily increased through the Copper — 0.77 inches, the Bronze — 1.06 inches, and the Iron — 1.29 inches with respect to Neolithic heights.

“Right now, what we know is that 80% of height is from genetic makeup and 20% is from the environment,” said Marciniak. “Researchers haven’t yet identified all the genetic variants associated with for height.”

The switch from hunting, gathering and foraging to agriculture did not always result in a height loss, although it did in some parts of Europe, according to Marciniak.

Marciniak and her team also looked at genetic ancestry in their study.

“There was movement of people, generally from east to west, ” she said. “We wanted to account for that migration that perhaps brought different proportions of height-associated genetic variants.”

When the team incorporated ancestral information, they found that for the Neolithic, the height decrease is reduced a bit so that it is not as extreme.

“This research requires more study with larger datasets,” said Marciniak. “Our work represents a snapshot of something that is very dynamic and very nuanced. We need to do more to see what is the cause of the decrease in achieved height versus predicted genetic height during the shift to farming.”

The researchers said they believe that their approach is adaptable to studies of past human health and could be applied in other contexts.

The Wenner-Gren Foundation, National Institutes of Health, Czech Science Foundation, Croatian Science Fund, Ministry of Culture of the Czech Republic, a Marie Sklodowska-Curie grant, and the Hungarian Research, Development and Innovation Office supported this work.

Penn State University

Cover Photo: Drawing of a scientist working with human skeletal remains and ancient DNA. Credit: Marija Stojkovic

Banner
Related Post

Stone reliefs describing the Persian-Greek wars were found in the ancient city of Daskyleion in northwestern Turkey

16 August 2021

16 August 2021

A relief depicting a fifth-century BC battle between the Greeks and Persians was discovered in the ancient city of Dascylium...

Archaeologists discover secondary gate of old Bazira city in Pakistan

26 March 2022

26 March 2022

Archaeologists claimed to have discovered the secondary gate of the city of Bazira during new excavations at Barikot in Pakistan’s...

New evidence for the use of lions during executions in Roman Britain

9 August 2021

9 August 2021

Archaeologists have discovered an elaborate key as proof that wild animals were employed as execution vehicles in public arena events...

Unique Heart-Shaped Jesuit Ring from 1700s at Fort St Joseph, Michigan

18 September 2022

18 September 2022

An archeology student from the Fort St. Joseph Archeology project at Western Michigan University has uncovered a unique heart-shaped Jesuit...

1,800 years old Sewer system found in ancient city of Mastaura

17 May 2022

17 May 2022

Archaeologists found an 1800-year-old sewer system during excavations in the ancient city of Mastaura, in the Nazilli district of Aydın...

2600-year-old Med period artifacts found in Oluz Höyük, in Turkey

17 October 2022

17 October 2022

During the Oluz Höyük excavations in Amasya, artifacts dating back to the Med Kingdom period were found, dating back to...

Structures in Turkey’s Panaztepe pointing out a 5,000-year-old settlement found

8 November 2021

8 November 2021

In the 5000-year-old Panaztepe settlement located in the Menemen district of Izmir, structures thought to belong to the oldest period...

The Historical Building Next To The Million Stone Will Sell

6 February 2021

6 February 2021

Everyone has heard of the Million Stone, which was built during the Byzantine Empire and accepted as the zero points...

A Polish-Croatian team discovered Ancient Roman Temple under a Croatian 18th Century church

24 November 2022

24 November 2022

Under an 18th-century church, the Church of St. Daniel in Danilo near Sibenik, Croatia, the foundations of an ancient Roman...

Archaeologists Uncover lost Indigenous Settlement of Sarabay, Florida

9 June 2021

9 June 2021

The University of North Florida archaeological team is now quite sure that they have uncovered Sarabay, a lost Indigenous northeast...

Evidence of the Birth of Archaic Monotheism in Anatolia found at Oluz Höyük, “Havangah prayer at Oluz Höyük”

27 March 2022

27 March 2022

Oluz Höyük, located 25 kilometres west of Amasya, is an ancient city which has rich findings of religious structuring. During...

Bronze belt of Urartian warrior found in the ancient city Satala

29 May 2022

29 May 2022

During the excavations in the ancient city of Satala, located in the Kelkit district of Gümüşhane province in Turkey, a...

The Oldest Odin Inscription in the World Found in the Vindelev treasure

8 March 2023

8 March 2023

Scientists have identified the earliest known inscription referring to the Norse god Odin on part of a gold disc unearthed...

4,500-year-old rare Canaanite goddess sculpture found by a farmer in Gaza Strip

25 April 2022

25 April 2022

A farmer in the city of Khan Yunis, in the southern Gaza Strip, found a rare 4,500-year-old stone sculpture while...

Spanish Stonehenge re-emerges from the ‘Valdecañas reservoir’

19 August 2022

19 August 2022

Submerged by the Valdecañas reservoir for decades, the Guadalperal dolmen has been fully exposed as it was two summers ago....

Comments
Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *