Trade and colonization caused an unprecedented increase in Mediterranean human mobility in the first millennium BCE. Often seen as a dividing force, warfare is in fact another catalyst of culture contact. We provide insight into the demographic dynamics of ancient warfare by reporting genome-wide data from fifth-century soldiers who fought for the army of the Greek Sicilian colony of Himera, along with representatives of the civilian population, nearby indigenous settlements, and 96 present-day individuals from Italy and Greece. Unlike the rest of the sample, many soldiers had ancestral origins in northern Europe, the Steppe, and the Caucasus. Integrating genetic, archaeological, isotopic, and historical data, these results illustrate the significant role mercenaries played in ancient Greek armies and highlight how participation in war contributed to continental-scale human mobility in the Classical world.
We examine whether Stephen Sandford's (2006b) 'too many people, too few livestock' thesis for the Greater Horn of Africa applies to West Africa. In a comparative study of seven pastoral systems across West Africa we found that pastoralists have generally successfully adapted to pressures on grazing resources. We describe three adaptive strategies: 1) integration and intensification in the Sudanian zone; 2) movement to the Sub-Humid zone; and 3) extensification in the Sahelian zone. We end by proposing four interrelated factors that account for the differences in pastoral systems between West Africa and the Greater Horn of Africa.
Objectives:We are testing competing scenarios regarding the population history of the ancient Greek colonization of southern Italy using dental phenotypic evidence.
Materials and Methods:We collected dental metric and nonmetric trait data for 481 human skeletons from six archaeological sites along the Gulf of Taranto, dating to pre-colonial (900-700 BC) and post-colonial periods (700-200 BC). We are evaluating scenarios through an individual-level biodistance analysis using a three-pronged approach: (a) by analyzing levels of mobility in pre-and post-colonial periods under a model of isolation-by-distance; (b) by quantifying differences in group means and variances in pre-and post-colonial periods utilizing permutational multivariate analysis of variance and Betadisper analyses; and (c) by identifying ancestries of post-colonial individuals using naïve Bayes classification. Results: Southern Italy during pre-colonial times was characterized by low levels of mobility and marked differences in group means and variances. During post-colonial times, mobility increased and there were no differences in group means and variances. About 18% of the people in post-colonial times were of Greek ancestry and lived equally distributed across Greek colonies and indigenous villages. Nevertheless, the overall biological composition and variability of southern Italy remained relatively unchanged across pre-and post-colonial periods. Discussion: Our results support a scenario in which only few Greek colonists migrated to southern Italy and lived in smaller numbers alongside indigenous people in Greek colonies as well as in indigenous villages. Our results contradict a scenario in which large numbers of Greek invaders founded biologically isolated and substantially homogeneous colonial enclaves within conquered territories.
Our findings generally support the hypothesis that skeletal stress is evidence of frailty (i.e., leading to greater risk of mortality). However, the relationship between stress and frailty is complicated by social factors, when considering historical context. In particular, a possible "soldier-class" may have experienced less stress than the overall civilian population.
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