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The Southern Cone represents the southernmost region of South America settled by humans. Although ancient genomes from southern Patagonia have been sequenced, genomes from the central Southern Cone (CSC) remain temporally and spatially sparse. Archaeology documents major cultural transformations during the Middle and Late Holocene, yet their relationship with demographic processes has been debated. We present genome-wide data from 52 individuals spanning 6,000 years, originating from four regions of the CSC in present-day Argentina and Uruguay: the central and southern Pampas, Northwest Patagonia, the Paraná River Delta and Lower Uruguay River, and the eastern lowlands of Uruguay. Genomic evidence from the Pampas reveals the presence of at least three distinct ancestries during the Middle Holocene. Although genetic contacts with southern Patagonian groups were sporadic, we identified the expansion of an ancestry of unknown geographic origin by 5,500 years ago (ya), which increased during the Late Holocene. This ancestry arrived in Northwest Patagonia by at least 600 ya and co-existed locally with a southern Andean genetic profile until colonial times. Genetic structure differentiates populations along the Paraná River Delta and Lower Uruguay River by 1,500 ya. Individuals from the eastern lowlands of Uruguay show genetic links with Sambaqui-associated populations from the southern coast of Brazil, suggesting the role of human dispersals in connecting tropical lowland cultural traditions. Our work documents the diffusion of genetically distinct groups across all studied regions and provides compelling evidence that large-scale human movements contributed to the remarkable cultural diversity of CSC populations during the Middle and Late Holocene.

Research on the commitment of accommodation representatives to sustainability practices in protected areas is limited. In recent years, digitisation has become increasingly important in promoting places and the decision-making process for travel. However, there is still a lack of knowledge about the accuracy of the sustainability practices claimed by accommodation establishments on online booking platforms. Focusing on Serra da Estrela Natural Park in Portugal as a case study, the current approach is the first one to verify, through interviews with the accommodation representatives, the sustainability practices declared on Booking.com. For deeper insights, the perception of accommodation establishment representatives regarding the role of sustainability in their business is explored. To obtain a comprehensive perspective, a sustainability practice ranking is employed, with the established hierarchy spatially represented through GIS techniques. Even though the results confirmed the largest majority of the reported information on Booking.com, the information is insufficient, as additional practices emerged through interviews. Challenging the results of other studies, the commitment to sustainability is not correlated either with the size of the unit or its degree of comfort, denoting rather a correlation with personal values, beliefs and business strategy. Overall, most respondents express a broader, multi-scalar perspective on sustainability, shaped by their awareness of the businesses' embeddedness in the natural park, which features outstanding natural values that need preservation. Furthermore, several categories of opinions on the benefits and downsides of developing a business within a protected area are highlighted. A notable finding is that half of the respondents considered the regulations imposed by the protected area status as essential to prevent chaotic development and environmental degradation. However, the interaction with natural park representatives is described as mostly passive, since most respondents have little to no interaction with them, highlighting the need to establish mutually beneficial cooperation and foster pro-sustainability behaviour.

Climate change is a pressing global issue. Research on living populations fails to capture the full range of possible responses. Archaeological and bioarchaeological research offers a window into how people adapted to past climatic changes. We investigate the relationship between human health and precipitation among archaeological populations in the Andes region of South America. We conduct a path analysis of precipitation, cribra orbitalia, and age-at-death to assess the evidence for metabolic responses to climate change. Our models suggest that cribra orbitalia was less common, and that fertility was higher, when precipitation was greater. Model results were characterized by uncertainty, emphasizing the high variety in human responses to environmental change.

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The Qinghai-Xizang Plateau imposes severe environmental pressures that have driven extensive adaptive responses in both humans and animals. Among the domestic species that underpin high-altitude pastoral livelihoods, goats are of particular importance, yet their historical origins remain poorly resolved. In this study, ancient genomic data were generated from five goat remains recovered from the Lake Qinghai Basin and dated to approximately 3 600 years ago. After stringent authentication and filtering, three individuals with genomic coverages ranging from 0.152× to 1.45× were retained for subsequent population genetic analysis. These data revealed a close genetic affinity between ancient goats from the Lake Qinghai Basin and goat populations from West Eurasia. In contrast, most present-day Chinese goats predominantly carried ancestry related to Neolithic Iran. Notably, modern Dazu black goats ( Capra hircus) were found to derive primarily from a lineage closely related to the ancient Lake Qinghai Basin goats, indicating marked genetic continuity across time. In addition, modern Alpas cashmere goats and Qinghai-Xizang goats carried approximately 4%-8% ancestry from the Lake Qinghai Basin-related lineage. Collectively, these findings refine current understanding of early herd management on the Qinghai-Xizang Plateau and provide new insight into the genetic history and population formation of Chinese goats. 青藏高原的极端环境要求人类与动物具备独特的适应能力。家养山羊对于高海拔牧民的生计至关重要，但其起源和演化历史尚不清楚。该研究对青海盆地约 3 600 年前的5例古山羊进行了全基因组测序，经严格质控，保留 3例样本（覆盖度 0.152×–1.45×）用于群体遗传分析。结果显示，青海盆地古山羊与西欧亚古山羊存在显著遗传联系。相比之下，现代中国山羊主要携带以新石器时代伊朗为代表的相关祖先成分。尤为重要的是，现代大足黑山羊的主要遗传成分源自以青海湖古山羊为代表的谱系，呈现明显的遗传连续性。此外，现代阿尔巴斯绒山羊及西藏山羊（Qinghai-Xizang_Bangor 和 Qinghai-Xizang_Ritu）也检测到 4%–8% 青海湖古山羊祖先成分。该研究为早期牧民的动物管理策略及中国山羊的遗传演化历史提供了重要见解。.

Getting heritage-relevant adaptation indicators right is critical for adapting heritage to climate change. We assess the Belém Adaptation Indicators adopted at COP30 under the UAE Framework for Global Climate Resilience to clarify strengths and gaps. Adoption is a significant step toward operationalising the Global Goal on Adaptation. To close outstanding gaps, we call for clear definitions, baselines and metadata that reflect tangible and intangible heritage, including diverse knowledge systems, while minimising reporting burdens by aligning with UNESCO inventories and national channels. We flag omissions and propose pragmatic fixes for credible, low‑burden monitoring and action including mixed‑methods and narrative 'direction‑of‑travel' measures, capacity strengthening and finance access to manage losses and damages and reposition heritage as a driver of climate‑resilient development.

Spinal osteoarthritis (SOA) is an important contributor to back pain, but the factors that lead to its development are poorly understood. Here, we report a study designed to test the idea that vertebral shape influences the probability of developing SOA. We used geometric morphometrics to compare the 3D shape of the last thoracic (T12) and the first lumbar vertebrae (L1) of adults with and without SOA. The sample was drawn from archaeological and documented skeletons, consisting of 143 T12s and 136 L1s. Two linked hypotheses were tested. The first was that there is an association between vertebral shape and SOA. The second was that the association between in the first hypothesis exists because the risk of SOA is increased by a morphotype that includes more sagittal zygapophyseal facets and smaller interfacet distances. This hypothesis was informed by the results of two previous studies. The analyses supported the first hypothesis. MANOVAs and DFAs indicated that the vertebrae of individuals with SOA tend to have a significantly different morphotype to unaffected individuals. In contrast, the results of the analyses only partially supported the second hypothesis. PCA-derived wireframes upheld only one of the predicted differences, smaller interfacet distances. The other predicted difference more sagittal facets in affected individuals was not supported. Unexpectedly, the analyses identified several other traits that distinguish the vertebrae of individuals with SOA. All of these traits can be plausibly linked to suboptimal biomechanics for the spine. Overall, the study supports the idea that vertebral shape can increase the probability of developing SOA.

The emergence of new political and social structures in Western and Central Europe during the transition from Antiquity to the Middle Ages has long been attributed to large-scale migrations. Yet emerging evidence increasingly emphasizes the role of small-group mobility in reshaping the Roman world1-3. Here we present 258 ancient genomes from the former Roman frontier of southern Germany, which we analyse alongside 2,500 ancient and 379 modern genomes. Population genetic analyses reveal a major demographic shift coinciding with the late fifth century collapse of Roman state structures, when a founding population of northern European ancestry mixed with genetically diverse Roman provincial groups. Pedigree reconstruction and filia, a method for inferring the ancestry of unsampled relatives, indicate widespread intermarriage and minimal cultural differentiation. Genetic structure persisted through the sixth century, with admixture forming a population resembling modern Central Europeans by the early seventh century. Using Chronograph to refine the chronology of genealogically linked individuals, we estimate a generation time of 28 years, life expectancies of 39.8 years for women and 43.3 years for men, high infant mortality, and a society in which nearly one quarter of children lost at least one parent by age 10, yet most still grew up with grandparents. Pedigrees further reveal a society centred on nuclear families that practiced lifelong monogamy, strict incest avoidance, flexible lineage continuation and no levirate unions, indicating continuity with Late Roman social practices that later shaped the European family.

Bread wheat (Triticum aestivum L.) is the most popular wheat species in the world today. However, studies on the domestication of wheat have rarely focused on the evolution of this specific species of Triticum. The discussions that have emerged have focused on the evolution of bread wheat, revealing it to have emerged from the hybridization of an already domesticated free-threshing wheat and the wild goatgrass known as Aegilops tauschii Coss. These studies, however, have focused on the previous genetic evidence, with data suggesting a date of circa 7,000 to 6,500 BC, and given the distribution of the parent grains, a locus of the South Caucasus and Southwest Caspian regions for its emergence. This paper discusses the archaeological data, including archaeobotanical and chronometric data from the excavations at Gadachrili Gora and Shulaveris Gora, Georgia of the South Caucasus, which provides physical evidence for the emergence of bread wheat and A. tauschii, supporting the aforementioned studies.

It is clear that malaria, a disease caused by Plasmodium spp., has burdened humans throughout our evolutionary paths and remains one of the deadliest maladies to date. Yet, in sharp contrast to the consequence, the human-malaria interaction is a topic that archaeologists do not understand well. This is partially due to the technical difficulties in extracting evidence from archaeological contexts, and partially due to a dearth of interdisciplinary review on this parasite - valuable information is thus veiled by technical as well as linguistic barriers. This review synthesizes archaeological, biological and ecological evidence to explore such interaction on the east side of the Eurasian continent - namely, East, Southeast and South Asia. Materials under scrutiny involve published genetic analysis on pertinent malaria species, ancient Chinese historical/medical documents and osteoarchaeological data on relevant skeletal markers. We examine how the evolution of both Plasmodium and humans engaged in this theatre, and highlight the role played by malaria in driving human demographic shifts as well as the biological and even societal resilience of people to its exposure. Interestingly, humans, in creating favourable environments for us - for instance, watering fields for rice cultivation - had inadvertently yet systematically made it suitable for malaria transmission as well.

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Neanderthal presence in the southern Levant has raised questions regarding behavioral flexibility and adaptation strategies across diverse climatic and ecological settings. The association of most Levantine Neanderthal sites with the last glacial period has led some researchers to frame their presence and subsequent disappearance from the region as climatically driven. Increasingly, the use of site-specific paleoenvironmental proxies and recognition of Neanderthal behavioral complexity are challenging simple climate-driven explanations, suggesting resilience to ecological impacts. Amud Cave is a key Levantine Middle Paleolithic site documenting Neanderthal occupation from Marine Isotope Stage (MIS) 4 through early MIS 3. Its two discrete occupation phases provide a framework for comparing local environmental dynamics across fluctuating glacial conditions. Here, we present an isotopic study of fallow deer (Dama mesopotamica) tooth enamel and plant waxes extracted from archaeological sediments directly associated with Neanderthal activity. These proxies are used to refine reconstructions of evolving hydroclimatic and ecological conditions at Amud and to evaluate their implications for hunting behavior. Plant wax hydrogen and carbon isotope results indicate that the late occupation phase was characterized by hydroclimatic variability alongside an expansion of woody vegetation in the cave's vicinity. This finding supports previously proposed climate-mediated changes in gazelle hunting practices. In contrast, tooth enamel isotope data does not indicate diachronic shifts in fallow deer home ranges. Oxygen, carbon, and strontium isotope ratios instead suggest persistent exploitation of low-lying channels near the cave, with only sporadic use of adjacent territories during both occupation phases. Together, these results indicate that Amud Neanderthals employed differential procurement strategies for distinct prey species, reflecting behavioral flexibility in hunting organization. Such flexibility likely enabled stable access to resources despite changing ecological conditions. Considered alongside evidence for amelioration during the Amud sequence, these findings underscore importance of non-climatic factors shaping Neanderthal persistence and disappearance from Levant.

Despite a number of issues in its collation, the dataset published by Oswalt et al. (1976) remains a key resource for operationalising cross-cultural technological variability and understanding the socioecological drivers of cultural change in small-scale societies. At the same time, however, it has not been comprehensively explored using up-to-date contextual metrics of subsistence, climate, and demographic structure in each population. In this paper, we present a novel evolutionary framework for understanding technological change in both modern and past populations, according to the complex fitness landscapes of cultural evolution present in different environments. We then use this framework as a lens to explore the drivers of toolkit composition and complexity among hunter-gatherer populations to assess how they relate to the adoption of particular behavioural strategies. We suggest a hierarchy of interlinked influences on the nature of technology: resource distributions exert the most proximate influence on their character, but demography (especially the size of seasonally-aggregated groups) and climate (especially seasonality and inter-annual predictability) are themselves critical in constraining technological possibilities. Finally, we argue that landscape knowledge is crucial in driving access over time to the highest-return technological strategies that are possible in any given environmental context.

Continental rifting initiates the transition to breakup when the crust is necked and deformation localizes at the rift axis. However, the slow crustal-stretching rates and >20-km deep mantle beneath many active rifts worldwide suggest that present-day breakup may not be imminent. High-resolution seismic data from the Turkana Rift Zone of the East African Rift System (EARS) reveal the rift's subsurface structure. Here, we show that Turkana's crystalline crust has thinned to ~13 km along the rift axis, revealing an active rift undergoing crustal necking. Onset of necking is constrained to ~4 Ma and facilitated the accumulation of Turkana's world-famous fossil record of human evolution. Identification of necking in the EARS indicates that eastern Africa is primed for continental breakup.

While climate is often seen as the main driver of early humans' spatial organization in Africa, genetic and archaeological studies also suggest diseases as key selective forces in the Pleistocene. We explored whether Plasmodium falciparum-induced malaria drove habitat choice in human societies 74,000 to 5000 years ago. Combining species distribution models of mosquito complexes, palaeoclimatic and epidemiological data, we estimated an index of malaria transmission risk in sub-Saharan Africa through time. We then correlated it with an independent reconstruction of the human niche, demonstrating that humans avoided or were unsuccessful in potential malaria hotspots. Our results highlight the importance of considering disease distributions when modeling past human demography, demonstrating that factors beyond climate underlay population structure, patterns of habitat choice, and dispersal.

Understanding how ecological variation shapes skeletal morphology is important for linking observed locomotor behavior to anatomical correlates in extant hominoids, and for the subsequent interpretation of locomotor behavior in extinct taxa. In this study, we investigate ecomorphological variation in the metacarpals and phalanges across all five manual rays within Gorilla, focusing particularly on differences between western lowland gorilla (Gorilla gorilla gorilla) and the Rwandan (Volcanoes National Park) and Ugandan (Bwindi Impenetrable National Park) populations of mountain gorilla (Gorilla beringei beringei). This work incorporates the first substantial set of skeletal measurements from the Bwindi mountain gorilla population, derived from individuals recovered by the Mountain Gorilla Skeletal Project between 2018 and 2025. By comparing these data with samples from low and high-elevation Grauer's gorillas (Gorilla beringei graueri), we assess how variation in arboreality correlates with digit element lengths, demonstrating that the Bwindi mountain gorillas exhibit intermediate metacarpal and phalangeal lengths between the more arboreal western lowland gorillas and the more terrestrial Virunga mountain gorillas. These findings indicate a correlation between longer digital rays in more arboreal populations, even within the same species, which may enhance grasping and stability on arboreal substrates. We show a population-specific relationship between ecology and hand morphology in Gorilla and emphasize the value of documenting localized skeletal responses to environmental and behavioral variation to better interpret patterns in the hominoid fossil record.

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Coastal estuaries are key hotspots for the accumulation of nanoplastics and hydrophobic organic pollutants, yet the co-transport of these contaminants under coupled salinity fluctuations and plastic aging remains poorly understood. This study integrated microcosm soil column experiments, micro-computed tomography (Micro-CT), and molecular dynamics (MD) simulations to elucidate the co-transport of pristine/aged polymethyl methacrylate nanoplastics (PMN) and 4-nonylphenol (4-NP) in saturated estuarine soils along salinity gradients. Pristine PMN inhibited 4-NP migration through co-deposition, whereas aged PMN acted as a source of dynamic release, facilitating its continuous breakthrough migration. Notably, 4-NP exerted a bidirectional feedback effect on PMN migration. Although it enhanced the migration efficiency of pristine PMN by 3.8-22.9% through electrostatic repulsion and site competition, it acted as a molecular bridge to trigger heterogeneous aggregation, thereby impeding the transport of aged PMN and reducing its recovery to as low as 10.3% at 5 PSU. Salinity further amplified these aging-related interactions, increasing aggregate size by 6.3-14.8% and enhancing attachment efficiency by a factor of 1.6-3.2 within the range of 0.5 to 5 PSU. MD simulations indicated that oxygen-containing functional groups on the surface of aged PMN provided high affinity binding sites for 4-NP by enhancing hydrogen bonding. Micro-CT visualisation and pore network modelling further confirmed that high salinity narrowed pore size distribution and reduced connectivity, increasing the fraction of low-connectivity pores from 4.3% to 6.2%, thereby forming hydrodynamic dead zones that enhanced the retention of enlarged PMN/4-NP hetero-aggregates within them. These findings provide multi-scale insights into the fate of composite pollutants and inform strategies for assessing pollution risks in salinized farmlands and coastal groundwater systems.

The drivers and consequences of hominin dispersals out of Africa remain debated. The spatial and temporal distribution of large mammal faunas contemporaneous with early Homo provides direct evidence for their ecological context and impact. In this study, we conduct taxonomic and functional similarity analyses on fossil and extant Eurasian and African large mammal communities of the last 10 Ma. We test two hypotheses: 1) the dispersal of hominins across Eurasia around or shortly after ~2 Ma was part of a wave of faunal dispersals out of Africa; 2) the arrival of hominins at Eurasian sites coincided with major changes in the functional structure of large mammal communities. Our results indicate that hominin dispersals from Africa to Eurasia during the Plio-Pleistocene were not part of a larger faunal expansion. Instead, the most significant faunal interchange during the Plio-Pleistocene occurred between Europe and Asia, while African faunas have mostly remained distinct from Eurasian faunas since ~7 Ma. Our results suggest relative homogeneity in community functional structure across Eurasia and Africa since at least 10 Ma. In contrast to fossil communities, modern Eurasian and African terrestrial large mammal faunas show strong geographic functional structure, which might reflect the selectivity of Late Pleistocene extinctions.