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Cited by 78Forensic Anthropology and Bioarchaeology StudiesForensic and Genetic ResearchPleistocene-Era Hominins and Archaeology

The questionable contribution of the Neolithic and the Bronze Age to European craniofacial form

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Brace, C. Loring, Seguchi, Noriko, Quintyn, Conrad B., Fox, Sherry C., Nelson, A. Russell, Manolis, Sotiris K., Qifeng, Pan·2006·Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences
DOI 10.1073/pnas.0509801102PMC PMC1325007
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Abstract

Many human craniofacial dimensions are largely of neutral adaptive significance, and an analysis of their variation can serve as an indication of the extent to which any given population is genetically related to or differs from any other. When 24 craniofacial measurements of a series of human populations are used to generate neighbor-joining dendrograms, it is no surprise that all modern European groups, ranging all of the way from Scandinavia to eastern Europe and throughout the Mediterranean to the Middle East, show that they are closely related to each other. The surprise is that the Neolithic peoples of Europe and their Bronze Age successors are not closely related to the modern inhabitants, although the prehistoric/modern ties are somewhat more apparent in southern Europe. It is a further surprise that the Epipalaeolithic Natufian of Israel from whom the Neolithic realm was assumed to arise has a clear link to Sub-Saharan Africa. Basques and Canary Islanders are clearly associated with modern Europeans. When canonical variates are plotted, neither sample ties in with Cro-Magnon as was once suggested. The data treated here support the idea that the Neolithic moved out of the Near East into the circum-Mediterranean areas and Europe by a process of demic diffusion but that subsequently the in situ residents of those areas, derived from the Late Pleistocene inhabitants, absorbed both the agricultural life way and the people who had brought it.

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  • The highest estimates of Basal Eurasian ancestry are from the Near East.

    “It is striking that the highest estimates of Basal Eurasian ancestry are from the Near East, given the hypothesis that it was there that most admixture between Neanderthals and modern humans occurred19,23.”

    From Genomic insights into the origin of farming in the ancient Near East (2016) · cites this paper as [23]

    The Conclusions discuss craniofacial evidence for Neolithic migration from the Near East, not estimates of Basal Eurasian ancestry. Searches for Basal Eurasian ancestry and Neanderthal admixture found no passage addressing where the highest ancestry estimates occur. The cited paper therefore does not verify this claim in our copy. (LLM, conf=0.76)

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1 of the 35 references couldn’t be matched to a known paper.

Research works printed but not linked: 5

  1. [15]Ammerman, A. J. & Cavalli-Sforza, L. L. (1984) The Neolithic Transition and the Population Genetics of Europe (Princeton Univ. Press, Princeton).
  2. [17]Brace, C. L., Nelson, A. R., Seguchi, N., Oe, H., Sering, L., Pan Q. & Tumen, D. (2001) Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. USA 98, 10017-10022.
  3. [18]Brace, C. L., Nelson, A. R. & Pan Q. (2004) in Pioneers on the Land : How America Got Its People , eds. Barton, C. M., Clark, G. A., Yesner, D. & Pearson, G. (Univ. of Arizona Press, Tucson), pp. 28-38.
  4. [35]Zvelebil, M. (1996) in The Origin and Spread of Agriculture and Pastoraliism in Europe , ed. Harris, D. R. (UCL Press, London), pp. 323-345.
  5. [48]Zvelebil, M. (1986) in Hunters in Transition : Mesolithic Societies of Temperate Europe and Their Transition to Farming, ed. Zvelebil, M. (Cambridge Univ. Press, Cambridge, U.K.), pp. 5-15.

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Authors
Brace, C. L., Seguchi, N., Quintyn, C. B., Fox, S. C., Nelson, A. R., Manolis, S. K., & Qifeng, P.
Affiliations
  • National and Kapodistrian University of Athens (GR)
  • Museum of Anthropology, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, MI 48109; Department of Anthropology, University of Montana, Missoula, MT 59812; Department of Anthropology, University of Pennsylvania, Bloomsburg, PA 17815-1301; Weiner Laboratory, The American School of Classical Studies at Athens, GR-106 76 Athens, Greece; Museum of Anthropology, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, MI 48109; Faculty of Biology, National and Kapodistrian University of Athens, GR-157 81 Athens, Greece; and Institute of...
ORCID
Venue
Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences
Publisher
National Academy of Sciences
Published
2005-12-21
Volume
103
Issue
1
Pages
242-247
ISSN
  • 0027-8424 (ISSN-L)
  • 1091-6490
DOI
10.1073/pnas.0509801102
PMC
PMC1325007
OpenAlex
W2099774167
Cited by
78
References
35
Citations by year
2025: 40 · 2021: 2 · 2020: 3 · 2019: 2 · 2018: 1 · 2016: 2 · 2014: 4 · 2012: 5
FWCI
32.31
Type
journal article
Language
en
Open access
Locations
  • Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (publishedVersion)
  • Europe PMC (PubMed Central) (publishedVersion)
  • PubMed Central (publishedVersion)
  • PubMed (publishedVersion)
Topics
  • Social Sciences › Arts and Humanities › Archeology › Forensic Anthropology and Bioarchaeology Studies
  • Life Sciences › Biochemistry, Genetics and Molecular Biology › Genetics › Forensic and Genetic Research
  • Social Sciences › Anthropology › Pleistocene-Era Hominins and Archaeology
Keywords
Neolithic, Bronze Age, craniofacial morphology, demic diffusion, Natufian, Basques, Cro-Magnon, population relatedness, Neolithic dispersal, Near East
MeSH terms
Anthropometry, Demography, Europe, Facial Bones, Fossils, Humans, Phylogeny, Population Dynamics, Cluster Analysis, White People, History, Ancient

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