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The ancients are always a
puzzle, whether colonising
Europe or even when
they left Africa and bred with
Neanderthals. See the latest
DNA evidence from a Siberian femur
for that one! The genetic reason for this
European success is now becoming
more evident. The colonists developed
advantageous genes, combined with
several other factors based on their
technologies.
The Hungarian Plain has always been
at the centre of European invasions. The
study concerned here used samples of
DNA from skulls dated 5,700 to 800BC.
The late Neolithic led there into the
Copper Age Baden Culture, the early
Bronze Age and the early Iron Age as
the Near East, the steppes and Central
Europe all swapped technologies.
The Hallstatt Culture began there, in
Transdanubia, with the fabled Scythians
further east on the fertile plain.
Did the invasions bring new people,
or just a few with the requisite technology?
Agriculture provides the answer
here, if we twist around the evidence
to include knowledge of the genomes.
Evidence of Mesolithic hunter gatherers,
like them is scattered here and there,
apart from northern Hungary and also
to the north. We want to know if these
early settlers intermarried with the
farmers appearing from the south and
the east.
Genome results show that Neolithic
people has southern Mediterranean,
mainly Sardinian affinities, as has been
found before. Local male hunter gatherers
became incorporated into farming
Our ancient ancestors
couldn’t digest milk
Other genes were found relevant to population changes
communities, but in the 3rd millennium
BC, the Bronze Age must have been
revolutionary. Trade increased and
heavily fortified settlements grew in
Carpathia and its mountain passes.
Only one Iron Age sample was taken
from the Mezőcsát Culture (possibly
pre-Scythian in 830-980 BC.) Asian
Credit: © Shutterstock
influence is obvious here, probably from
the steppes. Technology then involved
horse domestication, carts, chariots
and the obvious metallurgies. Today’s
Hungarians have more western genome
affinities, presumable due to mixing of
European populations since then.
The real excitement of this mixture
Birds run carefully in the rough
Placing feet in the right place
concerns robots and runners,
and almost all bipeds and
tetrapods. Here is an article
of interest to in Runners. The
UKs Royal Veterinary College
(and Oregon State University)
have often studied small
crouching creatures and large
upright birds such as ostrich.
The mass of these birds ranges
from 0.2kg to 117kg, so the
strategy for movement could
be extremely varied.
Aleksandra Birn-Jeffrey,
Monica Daley and 4 colleagues
published their findings in the
science journal JEB as Don’t
break a leg: running birds
from quail to ostrich prioritise
leg safety and economy on
uneven terrain. Being bipedal,
stability of the body seemed
likely to be a priority, but the
maintenance of consistent
forces from the running
legs was found to be more
important. Economy in terms
of energy expended and the
safety of the legs turned out
to be major results of that
consistent running mode, no
matter how uneven the ground
was.
When birds first flew,
it would have given them
ecological advantages. If
take-off speed was a precursor,
however, then running in
a stable manner could have
influenced avian evolution too.
The stability of the animal does
seem to be a control priority for
many species.
As all birds are dynamically
similar as they approach a step
obstacle (from 0.1 to 0.5 times
their leg length), the leap they
make onto the object seems
to be followed by a crouch that
keeps them stable there. The
forces exerted in the procedure
showed up how they negotiated
the steps. They all jump off
with extended legs.
Some ostriches used in
the experimental work had to
be reared from chicks for two
years, so that their imprinting
on humans could be used to
decrease any aggression and
enable handling. These big
guys were expected to vault
upward and then immediately
step down, but every bird
performed the basic crouch on
top of the step.
With an Oregon University
computer model, the runners
could be modelled exactly.
They discovered two alternative
task level priorities. The
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november-december, green+.2014