Global Positioning
Characterizing the American Upper Paleolithic
David Madsen et al.
Science Advances, October 2025
Abstract:
In North America, there are enough sites with relatively large tool assemblages predating ~13,500 calibrated years before the present (cal yr B.P.) to allow assessment of the underlying characteristics of their shared lithic tradition. Their shared technological features involve the use of dual core-and-blade and biface technologies similar to those in the Northeast Asian Late Upper Paleolithic. These dual approaches were often merged to produce small projectile points, including stemmed point forms using an elliptical cross-sectional ogive design. Similar dual lithic technologies are found in assemblages in northern Japan dating to ~20,000 cal yr B.P. We suggest a group with a similar lithic technology became isolated somewhere in the vicinity of the Paleo-Sakhalin-Hokkaido-Kuril region, developing genetically into ancestral American populations. Between ~22,000 and ~18,000 cal yr B.P., a subset of this population migrated along the southern Beringian and Northwest coasts into the Americas. By ~16,000 to ~15,000 cal yr B.P., they had become widely dispersed across North America.
Incentives and the economics of freedom: Slave peculium, manumission and paramone in ancient Greece
Laurent Gauthier
Explorations in Economic History, October 2025
Abstract:
This paper seeks to explain Greek-specific manumission patterns that economic models have not yet accounted for. According to epigraphic sources, some slaves were able to retain earnings, which potentially allowed them to purchase their freedom (manumission), but in many cases there was a paramone, a duty to remain with the former master, for several years or until the master’s death. Manumission prices were also well above recorded slave sale prices. I propose a tractable incentive-theoretic account of these phenomena: income shares serve as effort incentives, manumission prices screen ability, and paramone acts as a credibility device that eliminates the master’s financial incentive to unilaterally take all of the slave’s savings. Simulations align with basic facts, reproducing high manumission premia and the substantial share of conditional manumissions in the epigraphic record.
Itiner-e: A high-resolution dataset of roads of the Roman Empire
Pau de Soto et al.
Scientific Data, November 2025
Abstract:
The Roman Empire’s road system was critical for structuring the movement of people, goods and ideas, and sustaining imperial control. Yet, it remains incompletely mapped and poorly integrated across sources despite centuries of research. We present Itiner-e, the most detailed and comprehensive open digital dataset of roads in the entire Roman Empire. It was created by identifying roads from archaeological and historical sources, locating them using modern and historical topographic maps and remote sensing, and digitising them with road segment-level metadata and certainty categories. The dataset nearly doubles the known length of Roman roads through increased coverage and spatial precision, and reveals that the location of only 2.737% are known with certainty. This resource is transformative for understanding how mobility shaped connectivity, administration, and even disease transmission in the ancient world, and for studies of the millennia-long development of terrestrial mobility in the region.
Genomic evidence for the Holocene codispersal of dogs and humans across Eastern Eurasia
Shao-Jie Zhang et al.
Science, 13 November 2025, Pages 735-740
Abstract:
As the first domestic species, dogs likely dispersed with different cultural groups during the Late Pleistocene and Holocene. To test this hypothesis, we analyzed 73 ancient dog genomes, including 17 newly sequenced individuals sampled from East Asia to the West Eurasian Steppe spanning nearly 10,000 years. Our results indicate correlations between the ancestry of dogs and specific ancient human populations from eastern Europe to Eastern Siberia, including Ancient Paleo-Siberians, Eastern hunter-gatherers, East Asians, and Steppe pastoralists. We also identify multiple shifts in the ancestry of dogs that coincide with specific dispersals of hunter-gatherers, farmers, and pastoralists. Combined, our results reveal the long-term and integral role that dogs played in a multitude of human societies.
The emergence and diversification of dog morphology
Allowen Evin et al.
Science, 13 November 2025, Pages 741-744
Abstract:
Dogs exhibit an exceptional range of morphological diversity as a result of their long-term association with humans. Attempts to identify when dog morphological variation began to expand have been constrained by the limited number of Pleistocene specimens, the fragmentary nature of remains, and difficulties in distinguishing early dogs from wolves on the basis of skeletal morphology. In this study, we used three-dimensional geometric morphometrics to analyze the size and shape of 643 canid crania spanning the past 50,000 years. Our analyses show that a distinctive dog morphology first appeared at about 11,000 calibrated years before present, and substantial phenotypic diversity already existed in early Holocene dogs. Thus, this variation emerged many millennia before the intense human-mediated selection shaping modern dog breeds beginning in the 19th century.
A new late Neanderthal from Crimea reveals long-distance connections across Eurasia
Emily Pigott et al.
Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 11 November 2025
Abstract:
The Crimean Peninsula contains several important Middle and Upper Paleolithic sites, including Starosele, Kabazi II, and Siuren I. The region has been considered a potential refugium for Neanderthals before their replacement by Homo sapiens. However, no genetic data have been obtained from any of these late Neanderthals, some being inaccessible or badly preserved. Starosele is a notable site which has undergone excavations in recent years. We used collagen peptide mass fingerprinting (Zooarchaeology by Mass Spectrometry, ZooMS), to screen for potential human remains among thousands of fragmented bones from the site. Of the 150 bone fragments we analyzed, 97.3% had sufficient collagen preservation for taxonomic identification. Our results suggest Paleolithic humans primarily hunted horses. One ~5 cm bone fragment yielded peptide mass fingerprints matching Hominidae. Radiocarbon dating revealed an age range of 46 to 45,000 y old, close to the transition from the disappearance of Neanderthals to the dispersal of H. sapiens in western Europe. We sequenced a twofold coverage mitochondrial genome from this bone, indicating the individual belongs to the Neanderthal lineage. The mitogenome clusters with other Neanderthal mitogenomes previously generated from the Russian Altai region. Alongside this, an analysis of the lithic corpus from both regions suggests that a wider Neanderthal dispersal, linked to the Micoquian stone tool industry, occurred after ~60,000 y ago. We assessed the paleoclimate connection (temperature and precipitation) between these locations and identified a high habitat suitability corridor along 55°N, suggesting that the long-distance movement of Neanderthals would have been facilitated by periods of favorable climate.
Eight millennia of continuity of a previously unknown lineage in Argentina
Javier Maravall-López et al.
Nature, forthcoming
Abstract:
The central Southern Cone of South America was one of the last regions of the globe to become inhabited by people, and remains under-represented in studies of ancient DNA. Here we report genome-wide data from 238 ancient individuals spanning ten millennia. The oldest, from the Pampas region and dating to 10,000 years before present (BP), had distinct genetic affinity to Middle Holocene Southern Cone individuals, showing that differentiation from the central Andes and central east Brazil had begun by this time. Individuals dating to 4,600–150 BP primarily descended from a previously unsampled deep lineage of which the earliest representative is an individual dating to around 8,500 BP. This central Argentina lineage co-existed with two other lineages during the Mid-Holocene and, within central Argentina, this ancestry persisted for thousands of years with little evidence of inter-regional migration. Central Argentina ancestry was involved in three distinct gene flows: it mixed into the Pampas by 3,300 BP and seemingly became the main component there after 800 BP, with central Andes ancestry in northwest Argentina, and with tropical and subtropical forest ancestry in the Gran Chaco. In northwest Argentina, there was an increased rate of close-kin unions by 1,000 BP, paralleling the pattern in the central Andes. In the Paraná River region, a 400 BP individual with a Guaraní archaeological association clusters with Brazilian groups, consistent with Guaraní presence by this time.