Formative Years
The Origin of the State: Land Productivity or Appropriability?
Joram Mayshar, Omer Moav & Luigi Pascali
Journal of Political Economy, forthcoming
Abstract:
The conventional theory about the origin of the state is that the adoption of farming increased land productivity, which led to the production of food surplus. This surplus was a prerequisite for the emergence of tax-levying elites, and eventually states. We challenge this theory and propose that hierarchy arose due to the shift to dependence on appropriable cereal grains. Our empirical investigation, utilizing multiple data sets spanning several millennia, demonstrates a causal effect of the cultivation of cereals on hierarchy, without finding a similar effect for land productivity. We further support our claims with several case studies.
A selection pressure landscape for 870 human polygenic traits
Weichen Song et al.
Nature Human Behaviour, December 2021, Pages 1731-1743
Abstract:
Characterizing the natural selection of complex traits is important for understanding human evolution and both biological and pathological mechanisms. We leveraged genome-wide summary statistics for 870 polygenic traits and attempted to quantify signals of selection on traits of different forms in European ancestry across four periods in human history and evolution. We found that 88% of these traits underwent polygenic change in the past 2,000-3,000 years. Recent selection was associated with ancient selection signals in the same trait. Traits related to pigmentation, body measurement and nutritional intake exhibited strong selection signals across different time scales. Our findings are limited by our use of exclusively European data and the use of genome-wide association study data, which identify associations between genetic variants and phenotypes that may not be causal. In sum, we provide an overview of signals of selection on human polygenic traits and their characteristics across human evolution, based on a European subset of human genetic diversity. These findings could serve as a foundation for further populational and medical genetic studies.
No borders for innovations: A ca. 2700-year-old Assyrian-style leather scale armour in Northwest China
Patrick Wertmann et al.
Quaternary International, forthcoming
Abstract:
The first millennium BCE was pivotal for the environment and for human societies in Central and Eastern Eurasia because transformations accelerated and altered natural and cultural landscapes to hitherto unknown dimensions. Among the major driving forces was the increasing use of horse riding, which extended range of movement significantly and led to the development of cavalry units as a part of large armies. Empires with enormous outreach and gravitational pull formed and disintegrated in close dependence. The wide spread of military technologies demonstrates their bonds, though mostly in the form of metal objects due to the inherent survivability of their materials. Equipment and protective clothing of organic material, albeit produced in large numbers and thus an economic and environmental factor, are rarely preserved. In Yanghai cemetery site, Turfan, the remains of one leather scale armour were discovered. In this study, the results of the AMS radiocarbon dating as well as the construction details of the Yanghai find are presented and compared with a contemporary armour of unknown origin in the Metropolitan Museum of Art New York (MET) and with finds and depictions from the Near East, the adjacent northern steppe areas and the territory of China. The armour, datable to 786-543 cal BCE (95% probability), was originally made of about 5444 smaller scales and 140 larger scales, which, together with leather laces and lining, had a total weight of ca. 4-5 kg. Our reconstruction demonstrates that it can be donned quickly and without the help of another person by wrapping the left part around the back, tying it to the right part under the right arm and fastening with thongs crosswise over the back to laces at the opposite hip parts. Fitting different statures, it is a light and highly efficient defensive garment. In age, construction details and aesthetic appearance it resembles the MET armour. The stylistic similarities but constructional differences suggest that the two armours were intended as outfits for distinct units of the same army, i.e. light cavalry and heavy infantry, respectively. As such a high level of standardization of military equipment during the 7th century BCE is only known for the Neo-Assyrian military forces, we suggest that the place of manufacture of both armours was the Neo-Assyrian Empire. If this supposition is correct, then the Yanghai armour is one of the rare actual proofs of West-East technology transfer across the Eurasian continent during the first half of the first millennium BCE, when social and economic transformation enhanced.
The Mongol Conquest, State Capacity, and Historical Stagnation of Imperial China
Kaman Ho
George Mason University Working Paper, December 2021
Abstract:
The Mongol conquest was one of the bloodiest wars in human history. The Mongol conquest of China (1205-1279 AD) continued to have persistent negative effects on long-term development, even centuries after the war. Using newly assembled war, population, and 16th century county-level agricultural data, I show that regions that were more severely impacted by the conquest are associated with lower granary storage, indicating lower levels of productivity. An additional year of war is associated with a 1.58 - 2.8% decrease in granary levels. The Mongols intentionally targeted more developed areas in the conquest. Correcting for potential biases, the results of instrumental variable analyses report that granary storage drops from 18.7% to 56.7% with an additional year of war. The mechanism for stagnation is regional differences in state capacity. In counties where the conquest lasted longer, the government collected less land tax. The Malthusian mechanism, in contrast to state capacity, does not explain the long-term economic outcomes of China after the Mongol conquest.
An infant burial from Arma Veirana in northwestern Italy provides insights into funerary practices and female personhood in early Mesolithic Europe
Jamie Hodgkins et al.
Scientific Reports, December 2021
Abstract:
The evolution and development of human mortuary behaviors is of enormous cultural significance. Here we report a richly-decorated young infant burial (AVH-1) from Arma Veirana (Liguria, northwestern Italy) that is directly dated to 10,211-9910 cal BP (95.4% probability), placing it within the early Holocene and therefore attributable to the early Mesolithic, a cultural period from which well-documented burials are exceedingly rare. Virtual dental histology, proteomics, and aDNA indicate that the infant was a 40-50 days old female. Associated artifacts indicate significant material and emotional investment in the child's interment. The detailed biological profile of AVH-1 establishes the child as the earliest European near-neonate documented to be female. The Arma Veirana burial thus provides insight into sex/gender-based social status, funerary treatment, and the attribution of personhood to the youngest individuals among prehistoric hunter-gatherer groups and adds substantially to the scant data on mortuary practices from an important period in prehistory shortly following the end of the last Ice Age.
Landscape modification by Last Interglacial Neanderthals
Wil Roebroeks et al.
Science Advances, December 2021
Abstract:
Little is known about the antiquity, nature, and scale of Pleistocene hunter-gatherer impact on their ecosystems, despite the importance for studies of conservation and human evolution. Such impact is likely to be limited, mainly because of low population densities, and challenging to detect and interpret in terms of cause-effect dynamics. We present high-resolution paleoenvironmental and archaeological data from the Last Interglacial locality of Neumark-Nord (Germany). Among the factors that shaped vegetation structure and succession in this lake landscape, we identify a distinct ecological footprint of hominin activities, including fire use. We compare these data with evidence from archaeological and baseline sites from the same region. At Neumark-Nord, notably open vegetation coincides with a virtually continuous c. 2000-year-long hominin presence, and the comparative data strongly suggest that hominins were a contributing factor. With an age of c. 125,000 years, Neumark-Nord provides an early example of a hominin role in vegetation transformation.
Collapse of the mammoth-steppe in central Yukon as revealed by ancient environmental DNA
Tyler Murchie et al.
Nature Communications, December 2021
Abstract:
The temporal and spatial coarseness of megafaunal fossil records complicates attempts to to disentangle the relative impacts of climate change, ecosystem restructuring, and human activities associated with the Late Quaternary extinctions. Advances in the extraction and identification of ancient DNA that was shed into the environment and preserved for millennia in sediment now provides a way to augment discontinuous palaeontological assemblages. Here, we present a 30,000-year sedimentary ancient DNA (sedaDNA) record derived from loessal permafrost silts in the Klondike region of Yukon, Canada. We observe a substantial turnover in ecosystem composition between 13,500 and 10,000 calendar years ago with the rise of woody shrubs and the disappearance of the mammoth-steppe (steppe-tundra) ecosystem. We also identify a lingering signal of Equus sp. (North American horse) and Mammuthus primigenius (woolly mammoth) at multiple sites persisting thousands of years after their supposed extinction from the fossil record.