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This article presents new archaeological observations and multidisciplinary research from Dor, Israel to establish a more reliable relative sea level for the Carmel Coast and Southern Levant between the Middle Bronze Age and the Roman period (ca. 3500–1800 y BP). Our record indicates a period of low relative sea level, around -2.5 m below present, from the Middle Bronze Age to the Hellenistic period (ca. 3500–2200 y BP). This was followed by a rapid rise to present levels, starting in the Hellenistic period and concluding during the Roman period (ca. 2200–1800 y BP). These Roman levels agree with other relative sea-level indications from Israel and other tectonically stable areas in the Mediterranean. Several relative sea-level reconstruction models carried out in the current study provide different predictions due to their parameters and do not model the changes observed from field data which points to a non-isostatic origin for the changes. Long-term low stable Iron Age relative sea level can be seen in Dor, where Iron Age harbor structures remain around the same elevation between ca. 3100–2700 y BP. A similar pattern occurs at Atlit, the Iron Age harbor to the north used continuously from ca. 2900 y BP to the beginning of the Hellenistic period (ca. 2200 y BP). An examination of historical and archaeological sources reveals decline and occasional disappearance of Hellenistic sites along the coast of Israel at ca. 2200 y BP (2ndcentury BCE), as in the case of Yavneh Yam, Ashdod Yam, Straton’s Tower, and tel Taninim. In Akko-Ptolemais, the large harbor installations built in the Hellenistic period were never replaced by a substantial Roman harbor. The conclusions of this research are thus relevant for the sea-level research community and for the historical analyses of the Israeli and South Levantine coastline.

Genetic predictions of height differ among human populations and these differences have been interpreted as evidence of polygenic adaptation. These differences were first detected using SNPs genome-wide significantly associated with height, and shown to grow stronger when large numbers of sub-significant SNPs were included, leading to excitement about the prospect of analyzing large fractions of the genome to detect polygenic adaptation for multiple traits. Previous studies of height have been based on SNP effect size measurements in the GIANT Consortium meta-analysis. Here we repeat the analyses in the UK Biobank, a much more homogeneously designed study. We show that polygenic adaptation signals based on large numbers of SNPs below genome-wide significance are extremely sensitive to biases due to uncorrected population stratification. More generally, our results imply that typical constructions of polygenic scores are sensitive to population stratification and that population-level differences should be interpreted with caution. Editorial note: This article has been through an editorial process in which the authors decide how to respond to the issues raised during peer review. The Reviewing Editor's assessment is that all the issues have been addressed (see decision letter). Peer reviewed

21 pages, 3 figures, supplementary information https://doi.org/10.1038/s41586-022-04932-6.-- Data availability: Fossil diversity digitized data and those data downloaded from the Sepkoski’s Online Genus Database (http://strata.geology.wisc.edu/jack/) are provided as source data with this paper. Diversity data downloaded from the Ocean Biodiversity Information System (OBIS) database (www.obis.org) are also provided as source data with this paper. Source data are provided with this paper.-- Code availability: The coupled palaeogeographical–diversification model presented here uses input data of seafloor age distributions and palaeoenvironmental conditions from the siwill22/agegrid-0.1 v1-alpha palaeogeographical model and the cGENIE Earth system model, respectively. The code used to reconstruct seafloor age distributions from GPlates full-plate tectonic reconstructions is available at Zenodo (https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.3271360). The code for the version of the ‘muffin’ release of the cGENIE Earth system model used in this paper is tagged as v0.9.30, and is available at Zenodo (https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.6676435). Configuration files for the specific experiments presented in the paper can be found in the directory: genie-userconfigs/PUBS/published/Cermeno_et_al.2022. Details of the experiments, plus the command line needed to run each one, are given in the readme.txt file in that directory. The code for the muffingen boundary file generator, is available at Zenodo (https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.6676451). The code for the coupled palaeogeographical–diversification model is available at Zenodo (https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.6535496). The code is also available at GitHub (https://github.com/CarmenGarciaComas/INDITEK); this is the recommended mode of access as it will contain any updates and clarifications The fossil record of marine invertebrates has long fuelled the debate as to whether or not there are limits to global diversity in the sea1,2,3,4,5. Ecological theory states that, as diversity grows and ecological niches are filled, the strengthening of biological interactions imposes limits on diversity6,7. However, the extent to which biological interactions have constrained the growth of diversity over evolutionary time remains an open question1,2,3,4,5,8,9,10,11. Here we present a regional diversification model that reproduces the main Phanerozoic eon trends in the global diversity of marine invertebrates after imposing mass extinctions. We find that the dynamics of global diversity are best described by a diversification model that operates widely within the exponential growth regime of a logistic function. A spatially resolved analysis of the ratio of diversity to carrying capacity reveals that less than 2% of the global flooded continental area throughout the Phanerozoic exhibits diversity levels approaching ecological saturation. We attribute the overall increase in global diversity during the Late Mesozoic and Cenozoic eras to the development of diversity hotspots under prolonged conditions of Earth system stability and maximum continental fragmentation. We call this the ‘diversity hotspots hypothesis’, which we propose as a non-mutually exclusive alternative to the hypothesis that the Mesozoic marine revolution led this macroevolutionary trend12,13 This work was funded by research grant CGL2017-91489-EXP from the Spanish government. A.P. acknowledges funding from the European Union’s Horizon research and innovation programme under the Marie Skłodowska-Curie grant agreement no. 838373. S.W. was supported by NSFC grant no. 41972237 and ARC grant nos DP180102280 and DP200100966. M.J.B. acknowledges support through ERC Advanced Grant ‘Innovation’ (ERC 788203). P.C. and S.M.V. acknowledge support through grant no. CTM2017-87227-P. A.R. acknowledges NSF grant EAR-2121165, as well as support from the Heising–Simons Foundation. The Institut de Ciències del Mar (CSIC) received funding from the Spanish government through the ‘Severo Ochoa Centre of Excellence’ accreditation (CEX2019-000928-S) Peer reviewed

The Lake Titicaca Basin is one of the regions in the world where both primary village and state formation occurred in prehistory. Although agriculture has been discussed as the central engine fueling these processes, fish and other aquatic resources were significant but little-understood components of the region's ancient economy. In this paper, we use zooarchaeological analysis of faunal remains from 367 flotation samples recovered from five archaeological sites to discuss the interplay between fishing, environmental change, and the emergence of sociopolitical complexity in the Taraco Peninsula of Lake Titicaca. Our results suggest that fishing comprised a significant component of the local inhabitants' diet between 1500 BC and 1100 AD. The intensity of fish procurement, however, varied through time and independently of both climatic and population change. We interpret variation in fish consumption through time as a product of group and individual decisions to optimize resource use in a context of dynamic environmental and sociopolitical variability. © 2014 Elsevier Inc.

Recent studies have shown that the Early Eocene Climatic Optimum (EECO) was preceded by a series of short-lived global warming events, known as hyperthermals. Here we present high-resolution benthic stable carbon and oxygen isotope records from ODP Sites 1262 and 1263 (Walvis Ridge, SE Atlantic) between ~ 54 and ~ 52 million years ago, tightly constraining the character, timing, and magnitude of six prominent hyperthermal events. These events, which include Eocene Thermal Maximum (ETM) 2 and 3, are studied in relation to orbital forcing and long-term trends. Our findings reveal an almost linear relationship between δ13C and δ18O for all these hyperthermals, indicating that the eccentricity-paced covariance between deep-sea temperature changes and extreme perturbations in the exogenic carbon pool persisted during these events towards the onset of the EECO, in accordance with previous observations for the Paleocene Eocene Thermal Maximum (PETM) and ETM2. The covariance of δ13C and δ18O during H2 and I2, which are the second pulses of the "paired" hyperthermal events ETM2-H2 and I1-I2, deviates with respect to the other events. We hypothesize that this could relate to a relatively higher contribution of an isotopically heavier source of carbon, such as peat or permafrost, and/or to climate feedbacks/local changes in circulation. Finally, the δ18O records of the two sites show a systematic offset with on average 0.2 ‰ heavier values for the shallower Site 1263, which we link to a slightly heavier isotopic composition of the intermediate water mass reaching the northeastern flank of the Walvis Ridge compared to that of the deeper northwestern water mass at Site 1262.

Early American notions of sympathy, largely shaped by Adam Smith’s theory of rational self-interest and fellow feeling, undergird the period’s dominant narrative tropes, socio-political philosophies, and economic ideologies. In this dissertation, I argue that investments in sympathy structure two “domestic” cultural ideals on a watery globe. The first ideal is of a seamlessly productive shipboard society. The second ideal is of an essentially familial national order. To advance these ideals, common sailors, women writers, and political policymakers uphold sympathy as a corrective to sea-based geological or cultural unruliness. In other words, each asserts that domestic stability in a transoceanic system may be gained via a perfection of moral feeling. As I show in two sections, these discrete sentimental narratives on land and at sea confirm antebellum domesticity’s oceanic entanglements. My first section highlights a shipboard domestic ideal that results from oceanic labors that power a U.S.-backed oceanic economy. Specifically, isolated vessels’ socio-material structures direct sailors’ bodies towards affectively cohesive labor. In short, proper feeling at sea is a technical skill as well as a social one. In this system, ideal “sentimental seamen” know exactly how to feel, how to labor, and how to describe those feeling labors. Sailors use novel materialist, labor-based sentimental forms to stake their relative claims to this economic and social ideal. Ultimately, sentimental seamen embody the forms of regulated and monetized feeling that structure age of sail vessels as historical and literary spaces. My second section tracks an antebellum domestic ideal that results from the nation’s reliance on oceanic cultures and economies. Namely, landed writers debate the domestic nation’s place in a “family of nations” via competing definitions of the “villain of all nations.” Within these debates, “pirates of sympathy” are maritime subjects whose incompatibility with state power is due to their supposed incapacity for moral feeling. For some, such figures’ removal protects an ideal national family; for others, the pirate embodies the effects of state violence. As I conclude, this figure’s pervasive literary-historical presence reflects the antebellum era’s shifting and conflicting moral compasses, particularly in relation to maritime slavery and its inheritances. In tracking sentimental seamen and pirates of sympathy, I place two “domestic” ideals on a watery globe. One is a model for ideal domestic laborers at sea. The other is a foil for ideal domestic citizens on land. Both of these figures are defined by their relation to interior, domestic attachments that ripple across and within transoceanic space. In turn, the study of sentimental seamen and pirates of sympathy provide a glimpse of a field I am tentatively calling “terraqueous domestic studies.” Overall, this field treats early American domestic interiority and attachment as fashioned by earth and water together.

Abstract. Wildfires and their emissions have significant impacts on ecosystems, climate, atmospheric chemistry, and carbon cycling. Well-dated proxy records are needed to study the long-term climatic controls on biomass burning and the associated climate feedbacks. There is a particular lack of information about long-term biomass burning variations in Siberia, the largest forested area in the Northern Hemisphere. In this study we report analyses of aromatic acids (vanillic and para-hydroxybenzoic acids) over the past 2600 years in the Eurasian Arctic Akademii Nauk ice core. These compounds are aerosol-borne, semi-volatile organic compounds derived from lignin combustion. The analyses were made using ion chromatography with electrospray mass spectrometric detection. The levels of these aromatic acids ranged from below the detection limit (0.01 to 0.05 ppb; 1 ppb = 1000 ng L−1) to about 1 ppb, with roughly 30 % of the samples above the detection limit. In the preindustrial late Holocene, highly elevated aromatic acid levels are observed during three distinct periods (650–300 BCE, 340–660 CE, and 1460–1660 CE). The timing of the two most recent periods coincides with the episodic pulsing of ice-rafted debris in the North Atlantic known as Bond events and a weakened Asian monsoon, suggesting a link between fires and large-scale climate variability on millennial timescales. Aromatic acid levels also are elevated during the onset of the industrial period from 1780 to 1860 CE, but with a different ratio of vanillic and para-hydroxybenzoic acid than is observed during the preindustrial period. This study provides the first millennial-scale record of aromatic acids. This study clearly demonstrates that coherent aromatic acid signals are recorded in polar ice cores that can be used as proxies for past trends in biomass burning.