At https://www.sciencealert.com/surprise-discovery-reveals-hidden-lineage-of-ancient-japanese-ancestry … the genes of modern Japanese people have been hiding a long lost line of ancestry. We now have another spike from NE Asia. This now means the Japanese people have 3 major genetic lines of descent. Firstly, there are the indigenous Jomon culture people who arrived in the region over 10,000 years ago. Then, the arrival of rice farmers from China via Korea in the first millennium BC. In 2021 a genetic study detected a third wave of arrivals – affecting mainly people living today in NE Japan. These are the Emishi people of the 5th century AD.
At https://www.sciencealert.com/new-evidence-reveals-unexpected-origins-of-horse-domestication … over the years, almost every place on Earth and at different times, has been touted as the possible place of origin of horse domestication. These include Europe, Saudi Arabia, Anatolia, China, and even the Americas. The most dominant hypothesis is linked to the spread of Indo European languages. They were for a long time dated to the 4th millennium BC and specifically with the Yamnaya culture north of the Black Sea. These people were associated with building kurgans – tombs beneath earth mounds. The Royal Graves of Ur are thought to represent an example of the kurgans transplanted to Sumeria around 3000BC. However, horses weren’t being bred in Sumeria and they disappeared from Mesopotamia until the late 3rd millennium BC – following further inroads from the steppe zone.
Horse domestication was an important development as it allowed barbarian hordes to migrate over very long distances. This is thought why and how the Indo European languages were dispersed – south into India, and west into Europe etc. Seemed like a neat hypothesis. More recently some research on the ground has caused doubt about these ideas. For example, archaeozoological data looked at the role of horses amongst the Botai culture people of Kazakhstan. Botai horse teeth appear to have been worn down by a bridal mouthpiece, or bit – it was claimed. However, in 2018, nuclear genomic sequencing revealed the Botai horses were not the ancestors of modern horses. Instead, they belonged to a wild relative of the steppe that has never been domesticated. It seems the Botai hunted horses as a meat resource and this is why so many horse bones are found at Botain sites. Further, a genomic study of Yamnaya horses has shown no genetic link to the first domesticated horses. In fact, it seems to only go back to around 2000BC – long after the migration and dispersal of the Yamnaya. In spite of that, horse domestication seems to have taken place on the steppes but later than the kurgan hypothesis allows.
Lastly, we have the discovery of a large Roman fort in Wales – see https://www.livescience.com/archaeology/romans/possible-mega-fort-found-in-wales-hints-at-tension-between-romans-and-celtics …. the remains of a Roman camp that would have accommodated hundreds of soldiers in Pembrokeshire shines a light on an unknown struggle between invader and locals. It was discovered at the end of a suspected Roman road that was traced to a farmers field full of slate and stones.