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Ostrich eggshell beads reveal 50,000-year-old social network in Africa
Humans evolved in a patchwork of semi-connected populations across Africa(1,2); understanding when and how these groups connected is critical to interpreting our present-day biological and cultural diversity. Genetic analyses reveal that eastern and southern African lineages diverged sometime in the...
Autores principales: | , |
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Formato: | Online Artículo Texto |
Lenguaje: | English |
Publicado: |
Nature Publishing Group UK
2021
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Materias: | |
Acceso en línea: | https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8755535/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/34931044 http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/s41586-021-04227-2 |
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author | Miller, Jennifer M. Wang, Yiming V. |
author_facet | Miller, Jennifer M. Wang, Yiming V. |
author_sort | Miller, Jennifer M. |
collection | PubMed |
description | Humans evolved in a patchwork of semi-connected populations across Africa(1,2); understanding when and how these groups connected is critical to interpreting our present-day biological and cultural diversity. Genetic analyses reveal that eastern and southern African lineages diverged sometime in the Pleistocene epoch, approximately 350–70 thousand years ago (ka)(3,4); however, little is known about the exact timing of these interactions, the cultural context of these exchanges or the mechanisms that drove their separation. Here we compare ostrich eggshell bead variations between eastern and southern Africa to explore population dynamics over the past 50,000 years. We found that ostrich eggshell bead technology probably originated in eastern Africa and spread southward approximately 50–33 ka via a regional network. This connection breaks down approximately 33 ka, with populations remaining isolated until herders entered southern Africa after 2 ka. The timing of this disconnection broadly corresponds with the southward shift of the Intertropical Convergence Zone, which caused periodic flooding of the Zambezi River catchment (an area that connects eastern and southern Africa). This suggests that climate exerted some influence in shaping human social contact. Our study implies a later regional divergence than predicted by genetic analyses, identifies an approximately 3,000-kilometre stylistic connection and offers important new insights into the social dimension of ancient interactions. |
format | Online Article Text |
id | pubmed-8755535 |
institution | National Center for Biotechnology Information |
language | English |
publishDate | 2021 |
publisher | Nature Publishing Group UK |
record_format | MEDLINE/PubMed |
spelling | pubmed-87555352022-01-26 Ostrich eggshell beads reveal 50,000-year-old social network in Africa Miller, Jennifer M. Wang, Yiming V. Nature Article Humans evolved in a patchwork of semi-connected populations across Africa(1,2); understanding when and how these groups connected is critical to interpreting our present-day biological and cultural diversity. Genetic analyses reveal that eastern and southern African lineages diverged sometime in the Pleistocene epoch, approximately 350–70 thousand years ago (ka)(3,4); however, little is known about the exact timing of these interactions, the cultural context of these exchanges or the mechanisms that drove their separation. Here we compare ostrich eggshell bead variations between eastern and southern Africa to explore population dynamics over the past 50,000 years. We found that ostrich eggshell bead technology probably originated in eastern Africa and spread southward approximately 50–33 ka via a regional network. This connection breaks down approximately 33 ka, with populations remaining isolated until herders entered southern Africa after 2 ka. The timing of this disconnection broadly corresponds with the southward shift of the Intertropical Convergence Zone, which caused periodic flooding of the Zambezi River catchment (an area that connects eastern and southern Africa). This suggests that climate exerted some influence in shaping human social contact. Our study implies a later regional divergence than predicted by genetic analyses, identifies an approximately 3,000-kilometre stylistic connection and offers important new insights into the social dimension of ancient interactions. Nature Publishing Group UK 2021-12-20 2022 /pmc/articles/PMC8755535/ /pubmed/34931044 http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/s41586-021-04227-2 Text en © The Author(s) 2021 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/Open Access This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons license, and indicate if changes were made. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article’s Creative Commons license, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the article’s Creative Commons license and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder. To view a copy of this license, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/) . |
spellingShingle | Article Miller, Jennifer M. Wang, Yiming V. Ostrich eggshell beads reveal 50,000-year-old social network in Africa |
title | Ostrich eggshell beads reveal 50,000-year-old social network in Africa |
title_full | Ostrich eggshell beads reveal 50,000-year-old social network in Africa |
title_fullStr | Ostrich eggshell beads reveal 50,000-year-old social network in Africa |
title_full_unstemmed | Ostrich eggshell beads reveal 50,000-year-old social network in Africa |
title_short | Ostrich eggshell beads reveal 50,000-year-old social network in Africa |
title_sort | ostrich eggshell beads reveal 50,000-year-old social network in africa |
topic | Article |
url | https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8755535/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/34931044 http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/s41586-021-04227-2 |
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