Oldest case of leukemia found in Neolithic skeleton

German researchers have discovered what might be the earliest case of leukemia in a 7,000-year-old skeleton, they announced at the first European conference on evolutionary medicine.

The Neolithic skeleton affected by leukemia 
[Credit: University of Tübingen]

Belonging to a female individual who died at 30-40 years, the skeleton was excavated in 1982 among other 72 burials at an early Neolithic site near Stuttgart-Mühlhausen in south western Germany.

Beside the individual stood a round-bottomed jar. The site was linked with the Linear Pottery culture, an early farming culture which flourished in western and central Europe between 5500–4800 BC and produced pottery with distinctive linear decorations.

“So far only a severe case of dental caries with alveolar inflammation was reported for this individual,” team leader Heike Scherf, from the Senckenberg Center for Human Evolution and Paleoenvironment at the University of Tübingen in Germany, said.

Using high resolution CT scans, Scherf and colleagues found a pattern of deep loss of spongy bone in both the bone tissue of the humerus (the long bone that runs from the shoulder to the elbow) and the sternum, or breastbone.

According to the researchers, the resorption of central spongy bone is significantly higher compared to specimens of the same age group from the same site and to recent human samples of the adult age class.

“Our results strongly suggests leukemia in its initial stages, affecting the hematopoietic stem cells in bone marrow,” Scherf said.

The locally restricted destruction of the sternum and humerus’s bone tissue ruled out other diseases such as osteoporosis, hyperparathyroidism and bone tumor.

“A virus associated with a special type of leukemia (T-cell leukemia) was previously found in Andean mummies. But this case is probably the earliest known appearance of leukemia in an archeological case,” Scherf told Discovery News.

The researchers admitted it’s impossible to make any more detailed assumptions, such as establishing the type of leukemia that affected the Neolithic woman.

Frank Rühli, director of the Institute of Evolutionary Medicine at the University of Zurich, where the conference took place, found the study interesting.

“Based even on such state-of-the-art imaging, one can never be 100 percent sure about such a paleopathological finding,” Rühli told Discovery News.

“That said, to have an indication for the oldest paleopathological record of a modern, frequent disease with a major impact such as leukemia is very important from the perspective of the evolution of the disease,” he added.

Author: Rossella Lorenzi | Source: Discovery News [August 19, 2015]

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Evidence of massacre found in Neolithic Germany

Violent conflicts in Neolithic Europe were held more brutally than has been known so far. This emerges from a recent anthropological analysis of the roughly 7000-year-old mass grave of Schöneck-Kilianstädten by researcher of the Universities of Basel and Mainz. The findings, published in the journal PNAS, show that victims were murdered and deliberately mutilated.

Severe injuries inflicted either shortly before or after death: Cranial injury on
 a child between 3 to 5 years of age [Credit: PNAS, University of Basel]

It was during the time when Europeans  first began to farm. To what degree conflicts and wars featured in the early Neolithic (5600 to 4900 B.C.), and especially in the so-called Linear Pottery culture (in German, Linearbandkeramik, LBK), is a disputed theme in research.

It is particularly unclear whether social tensions were responsible for the termination of this era. So far two mass graves from this period were known to stem from armed conflicts (Talheim, Germany, and Asparn/Schletz, Austria).

Shin fracture [Credit: PNAS, University of Basel]

Researcher from the Universities of Basel and Mainz now report new findings after analyzing the human remains of the mass grave of Schöneck-Kilianstädten (Germany), a massacre site discovered in 2006. Their results show that the prehistoric attackers used unprecedented violence against their victims. The researchers examined and analyzed the bones and skeletons of at least 26, mainly male, adults and children – most of them exhibiting severe injuries.

Torture and mutilation

Besides various types of (bone) injuries caused by arrows, they also found many cases of massive damage to the head, face and teeth, some inflicted on the victims shorty before or after their death. In addition, the attackers systematically broke their victims’ legs, pointing to torture and deliberate mutilation. Only few female remains were found, which further indicates that women were not actively involved in the fighting and that they were possibly abducted by the attackers.

Cranial injury on an 8-year-old child [Credit: PNAS, University of Basel]

The authors of the study thus presume that such massacres were not isolated occurrences but represented frequent features of the early Central European Neolithic period. The fact that the Neolithic massacre sites examined so far are all located in some distance to each other further underlines this conclusion. The researchers thus suggest that the goal of this massive and systematic violence may have been the annihilation of entire communities.

Source: University of Basel [August 18, 2015]

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First Scandinavian farmers more advanced than thought

Farming started in Denmark and southern Sweden about 6,000 years ago, and now researchers have discovered that these early farmers were far more advanced than they have previously been given credit for.

The very first farmers in Denmark and Sweden had good control of their cattle. 
This meant that they could get them to calve in different seasons so farmers 
had milk all year round [Credit: Shutterstock]

According to a new study, settlers from more developed regions of Central Europe moved to Denmark and Sweden, where they introduced advanced farming practices.

They brought knowledge and agricultural experience with them, which they shared with the local hunter-gatherers over the next 300 years, transforming them into a well-developed agrarian society.

In the new study, researchers from England studied cow teeth dated to 3,950 BC from southern Sweden.

The teeth show that the early farmers had mastered the cumbersome task of calving at different times of the year, so that milk was available all year round.

"It’s very interesting that the farmers of the period were able to manipulate the calving seasons, so all the calves did not come in the spring. This is very hard to do, and would not have taken place if the farmers had not intended to do it,” says Kurt Gron, a researcher from the Department of Archaeology at Durham University, UK, and lead-author on the study.

“This means that the earliest farmers were highly skilled from the beginning of the Neolithic period, which suggests immigrants were instrumental in bringing pastoral agriculture to the region," he says.

The new results are published in PLOS One.

Danish scientist: Completely new insights

Lasse Sørensen, a postdoc at the National Museum of Denmark, studies the transition of early Scandinavian society from hunter-gatherers to a culture dominated by farming.

He was not involved in the new study, but he describes it as exciting work that is part of a larger discussion of the importance of agriculture for the first farmers.

Until now, most researchers believed that early farming was primitive because the farmers held on to many of their hunter-gatherer traditions.

"We know that the first farmers had cows, but we do not know anything about how they managed them, and how much they still had to rely on their ancient hunter-gatherer traditions to hunt and fish,” says Sørensen.

“This study points to a very advanced agriculture, and it gives us a whole new understanding of everyday life in a very interesting transition period in Scandinavian history," he says.

Studied isotopes in teeth

In the new study, researchers analysed the oxygen isotopes in the teeth of prehistoric cattle from Almhov, in south Sweden.

The isotopes are incorporated into teeth when the young cattle drink water and the chemical signal is then preserved.

Since the isotopes in their drinking water vary over the course of a year, analysing the isotopes in the cows’ teeth can tell the researchers which season the cow was born in.

“This comparison allowed us to conclude that cattle were manipulated by farmers to give birth in multiple seasons,” says Gron.

They could make yogurt and cheese

Calving in different seasons meant that farmers had access to milk all year round.

According to Sørensen, this means that quite early in the Neolithic period farmers already had the techniques to make milk into yogurt or cheese. Otherwise, why would they produce milk all year round?

They must also have been able to plan and collect food for the cattle to last the winter -- a time when the young calves were especially vulnerable.

All these things required buildings, tools, and skills that Danish hunter-gatherers were not able to either invent themselves or learn from others in such a short period.

"It is a giant leap from hunter-gathering to farming, and it is so advanced that one cannot imagine that hunter-gatherers could have learned the necessary skills from newcomers or by themselves for that matter,” says Sørensen.

“It takes many generations to master these techniques so these farmers must have been outsiders. Their presence has spread over the centuries and become integrated with the local populations of hunter-gatherers, who would have had to spend a lot of time learning about the agricultural techniques and the farming lifestyle," he says.

Exactly how old are the teeth?

Søren Andersen is an archaeologist and senior scientist at Moesgaard Museum in Aarhus, Denmark, and studies early farming societies.

Andersen does not agree that the transition from hunter-gatherers to farmers happened so suddenly. He suggests it developed gradually -- and contrary to the new study -- was not introduced by a sudden influx of large groups of immigrants from the south.

He does not believe that the scientists behind the new research have proven adequately that the teeth are actually from 3950 BC, and not, for example, 200 years later.

If the teeth are 200 years younger, then this puts them in a period in which all researchers agree that the agricultural revolution was well established in southern Scandinavia. In which case, it would not be so strange for people to manipulate calving times.

Critic not convinced by the new research

"Before the results can be credible, there must be no doubt that the teeth come from the time that the researchers say they do. I believe, however, this has not been proven,” says Andersen.

“In addition, researchers come up with evidence from several settlements to say that it was a widespread phenomenon. I remain sceptical until I see evidence that migrants brought agriculture to southern Scandinavia," says Andersen.

Andersen suggests that the agricultural settlements are located in exactly the same places as the hunter-gatherer settlements once lay. According to him, it is illogical that the new migrants should settle in the exact same places where people already lived.

Andersen maintains that the transition from a hunter-gatherer society to a farming society happened more gradually.

Author: Kristian Sjøgren | Source: Science Nordic [August 17, 2015]

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