Much of the study of how people transitioned away from a lifestyle based mostly on food collected from the wild to one based on cultivated crops has focused on Europe, where the shift to agriculture, or “Neolithic transition,” concluded thousands of years ago. Based largely on genetic studies, the prevailing view is that the transition occurred mainly by population replacement rather than cultural change, said first author Shyamalika Gopalan, a graduate student at the time of the work advised by Brenna Henn, associate professor of anthropology at the University of California, Davis.

The team, led by Henn and Barry Hewlett at Washington State University, Vancouver, collected DNA samples from five groups of people in the southwest highlands: the hunter-gatherer Chabu; the Majang, who practice small-scale cultivation of crops; and the Shekkacho, Bench and Sheko, who practice more intensive farming. The goals were to assess both the genetic ancestry of the different groups and demographic trends in the recent past.

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Science Daily
Phys.org

The United Nation’s latest climate change report forecasts bad news for a host of issues from rising food insecurity to increasing social inequality in North America unless steps are taken now to reduce global carbon emissions.

There is perhaps no one in the Inland Northwest who understands the dire consequences laid out in the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change’s (IPCC) report better than Tim Kohler, a Washington State University emeritus professor of archaeology and evolutionary anthropology.

“One of the things archaeologists see that most other IPCC authors do not is that the changes are going to come more rapidly than we have ever seen in the past,” Kohler said. “Contributing to the report is really a small breakthrough for archaeology and shows that the IPCC is starting to take longer sweeps of history into account when assessing the significance of the coming climate changes.”

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Mirage News
WSU Insider

Not so long ago, large creatures roamed the Pullman area. Formidable beasts journeyed through the plains of the Palouse during the last Ice Age.

Fossils of mastodons, distant mammoth relatives, were found a few hours from Seattle, according to Washington State Magazine. At the site in Sequim, WSU professor Carl Gustafson uncovered evidence humans hunted the giant beasts: a spear tip embedded in a fossilized rib. Gustafson’s finding revolutionized the timeline of human presence in North America, revealing humans arrived in North America at least 800 years earlier than previously thought.

Gustafson’s discovery remains one of the most significant in WSU history. He also unearthed mammoth bones in central Washington, according to the Seattle Times. After nearly 40 years of teaching, Gustafson retired from WSU in 1998. He passed away in 2016, leaving a legacy of mammoth proportions. You can visit the Conner Museum on the ground floor of Abelson Hall to see a fossilized mammoth femur and mastodon teeth in person.

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Daily Evergreen

Limited data is available about the risks and benefits associated with breastfeeding following a positive COVID-19 diagnosis, however, scientists recently published a study which supports recommendations for lactating mothers to continue breastfeeding during and after illness.

Washington State University anthropology professor Courtney Meehan made significant contributions to the research showing that breastmilk from women infected with COVID-19 provides natural protection to their infants against the virus.

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The Lewiston Tribune

It was the worst time to be alive, according to some scientists. From 536 C.E. to 541 C.E., a series of volcanic eruptions in North and Central America sent tons of ash into the atmosphere, blocking sunlight, chilling the globe, and destroying crops worldwide. Societies everywhere struggled to survive. But for the Ancestral Pueblo people living in what today is the U.S. Southwest, this climate catastrophe planted the seeds for a more cohesive, technologically sophisticated society, a new study suggests.

“This story makes sense to me,” says Tim Kohler, an archaeologist at Washington State University, Pullman, who has studied climate impacts on the Pueblo people of different eras but was not involved in the new work. He says the disturbance and subsequent reorganization of the Ancestral Puebloans provide clues to what makes societies resilient in the face of dramatic climate change.

Climate data from tree rings from northern Arizona suggest the region suffered abnormally cold temperatures and drought between the years 534 and 569. So the Ancestral Puebloans, like people around the globe, endured the harsh weather conditions of the time. Yet within a few decades, they had bounced back and reorganized into a larger, more cohesive civilization, the team reported last week in Antiquity.

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