Demographic history of early centralized societies: A biodistance study on prehistoric Anatolia

Abstract

The emergence of urbanization and centralized authority in the Early Bronze Age marks the most significant transformation in Southwest Asia since the Neolithic transition. Political centralization and social stratification, which originated in Southern Mesopotamia, spread to surrounding regions through long-distance interactions, especially trading relations. Anatolia experienced these shifts dynamically during both the Neolithic and Early Bronze Age. While the archaeological aspects of these changes have long been well-documented, their biological impact through ancient DNA analysis has gained more interest in recent years. This study investigates whether patterns of increased genetic diversity and homogenization observed in archaeogenomic data are consistent with biodistance analyses based on dental morphological data, and assesses the impact of lifestyle changes during the Late Chalcolithic-Early Bronze Age on biocultural interactions in Anatolia and its surroundings. Biodistance analysis was conducted on human skeletal remains from six archaeological sites in Anatolia, spanning the Neolithic to the Early Bronze Age, using crown and cervical mesiodistal and buccolingual measurements alongside 36 dental nonmetric traits defined in ASUDAS. Heterogeneity and evenness analyses, Mean Measure of Divergence, Gower’s Coefficient, and Mahalanobis Distances for Multivariate Mixed Data analyses were applied to dental morphological data. The results reveal increased genetic diversity and phenotypic similarity following the Neolithic to the Early Bronze Age. These findings align with patterns seen in archaeogenomic studies which indicate gene flow occurred before cultural diffusion associated with urbanization.