Late pleistocene exploitation of Ephedra in a funerary context in Morocco.

The active compounds found in many plants have been widely used in traditional medicine and ritual activities. However, archaeological evidence for the use of such plants, especially in the Palaeolithic period, is limited due to the poor preservation and fragility of seed, fruit, and other botanical macro-remains. In this study, we investigate the presence and possible uses of Ephedra during the Late Pleistocene based on the analysis of exceptionally preserved plant macrofossils recovered from c.

Maritime-oriented foragers during the Late Pleistocene on the eastern costa del sol (Southeast Iberia): Cueva Victoria (Málaga, Spain).

The Mediterranean coast of Spain is marked by several clusters of Palaeolithic sites: to the south of the Pyrenees, in the area around the Ebro River, in the central part, and on the south coast, one of the southernmost regions in Europe. The number of sites is small compared with northern Iberia, but like that region, the Palaeolithic occupations are accompanied by several rock art ensembles. The archaeological material (both biotic and abiotic resources) and radiocarbon dates presented here were obtained during archaeological fieldwork of professor J.

The genomic history of the Iberian Peninsula over the past 8000 years.

We assembled genome-wide data from 271 ancient Iberians, of whom 176 are from the largely unsampled period after 2000 BCE, thereby providing a high-resolution time transect of the Iberian Peninsula. We document high genetic substructure between northwestern and southeastern hunter-gatherers before the spread of farming. We reveal sporadic contacts between Iberia and North Africa by ~2500 BCE and, by ~2000 BCE, the replacement of 40% of Iberia's ancestry and nearly 100% of its Y-chromosomes by people with Steppe ancestry.