Ecological and genetic factors have influenced the composition of the human microbiome during our evolutionary history. We analysed the oral microbiota of the Agta, a hunter–gatherer population where some members have adopted an agricultural diet. We show that age is the strongest factor modulating the microbiome, probably through immunosenescence since we identified an increase in the number of species classified as pathogens with age. We also characterised biological and cultural processes generating sexual dimorphism in the oral microbiome. A small subset of oral bacteria is influenced by the host genome, linking host collagen genes to bacterial biofilm formation. Our data also suggest that shifting from a fish/meat diet to a rice-rich diet transforms their microbiome, mirroring the Neolithic transition. All of these factors have implications in the epidemiology of oral diseases. Thus, the human oral microbiome is multifactorial and shaped by various ecological and social factors that modify the oral environment.

The Neolithic transition is a particularly favorable field of research for the study of the emergence and evolution of cultures and cultural phenomena. In this framework, high-precision chronologies are essential for decrypting the rhythms of emergence of new techno-economic traits. As part of a project exploring the conditions underlying the emergence and dynamics of the development of the first agro-pastoral societies in the Western Mediterranean, this paper proposes a new chronological modeling. Based on 45 new radiocarbon (14C) dates and on a Bayesian statistical framework, this work examines the rhythms and dispersal paths of the Neolithic economy both on coastal and continental areas. These new data highlight a complex and far less unidirectional dissemination process than that envisaged so far.

The diversity of archaeological evidence for the adoption of farming in Northern Europe has led to competing hypotheses about this critical shift in subsistence strategy. Through a review of the archaeological material alongside ethnographic evidence, we reconsider the Neolithic Transition in Southern Scandinavia, and argue for both continuity and change during the early Funnel Beaker Culture (c. 4000–3500 cal BC). A new model is proposed for understanding the processes of regional transition—one which allows for compromise between the dominant explanatory frameworks. We conclude that the first centuries of the Scandinavian Neolithic saw cultural and economic negotiation between the last foragers and the first farmers. This has major implications for the understanding of agricultural origins in Northern Europe.

Where did pottery first appear in the Old World? Statistical modelling of radiocarbon dates suggests that ceramic vessel technology had independent origins in two different hunter-gatherer societies. Regression models were used to estimate average rates of spread and geographic dispersal of the new technology. The models confirm independent origins in East Asia (c. 16000 cal BP) and North Africa (c. 12000 cal BP). The North African tradition may have later influenced the emergence of Near Eastern pottery, which then flowed west into Mediterranean Europe as part of a Western Neolithic, closely associated with the uptake of farming.

Attempts to understand the origins of domestication and sedentary settlement in the Near East have traditionally focused on the Fertile Crescent. Beyond this region, however, in the foothills of the Alborz Mountains of north-eastern Iran, evidence has emerged that charts the Neolithic transition over a period of 1500 years. Investigations at the twin mounds of Tappeh Sang-e Chakhmaq have revealed pre-pottery and pottery Neolithic occupation in a sequence long enough to document the evolving exploitation of plants and animals leading to the development of a permanent, agro-pastoral community during the eighth to sixth millennia BC. The continuous occupation of this settlement during this crucial transition allows significant changes in lifestyle to be mapped, and provides a new framework for the earliest Neolithic occupation of Iran.

The origins of the Neolithic in the Near East were accompanied by significant ritual and symbolic innovations. New light is thrown on the social context of these changes by the discovery of a bone wand displaying two engraved human faces from the Early Neolithic site of Tell Qarassa in Syria, dating from the late ninth millennium BC. This small bone object from a funerary layer can be related to monumental statuary of the same period in the southern Levant and south-east Anatolia that probably depicted powerful supernatural beings. It may also betoken a new way of perceiving human identity and of facing the inevitability of death. By representing the deceased in visual form the living and the dead were brought closer together.

The authors present new research on social and economic developments in southern China in the Early Holocene, ninth to fifth millennia BC. The ‘Neolithic package’ doesn't really work for this fascinating chapter of the human experience, where pottery, social aggregation, animal domestication and rice cultivation all arrive at different places and times. The authors define the role of the ‘pottery-using foragers’, sophisticated hunter-gatherers who left shell or fish middens in caves and dunes. These colonising non-farmers shared numerous cultural attributes with rice cultivators on the Yangtze, their parallel contemporaries over more than 5000 years. Some agriculturalists became hunter-foragers in turn when they expanded onto less fertile soils. No simple linear transition then, but the practice of ingenious strategies, adaptations and links in a big varied land.