[Description of methods used for collection/generation of data] Revision of written sources and testing of geographical information., This database will be accessible under request, if permission is granted by the owners. Please contact maria.cruz-berrocal@incipit.csic.es, EUForts is a database of European forts founded in Asia-Pacific between the 16th and 19th centuries. It includes the information about founding and successive cultural attributions, and exact locations of the forts produced specifically for this data set., Grant PID2020-116196GB-I00 funded by MCIN/AEI/10.13039/501100011033 and by the European Union NextGenerationEU/PRTR. PI María Cruz Berrocal., Peer reviewed

Malaria-causing protozoa of the genus Plasmodium have exerted one of the strongest selective pressures on the human genome, and resistance alleles provide biomolecular footprints that outline the historical reach of these species1. Nevertheless, debate persists over when and how malaria parasites emerged as human pathogens and spread around the globe1,2. To address these questions, we generated high-coverage ancient mitochondrial and nuclear genome-wide data from P. falciparum, P. vivax and P. malariae from 16 countries spanning around 5,500 years of human history. We identified P. vivax and P. falciparum across geographically disparate regions of Eurasia from as early as the fourth and first millennia BCE, respectively; for P. vivax, this evidence pre-dates textual references by several millennia3. Genomic analysis supports distinct disease histories for P. falciparum and P. vivax in the Americas: similarities between now-eliminated European and peri-contact South American strains indicate that European colonizers were the source of American P. vivax, whereas the trans-Atlantic slave trade probably introduced P. falciparum into the Americas. Our data underscore the role of cross-cultural contacts in the dissemination of malaria, laying the biomolecular foundation for future palaeo-epidemiological research into the impact of Plasmodium parasites on human history. Finally, our unexpected discovery of P. falciparum in the high-altitude Himalayas provides a rare case study in which individual mobility can be inferred from infection status, adding to our knowledge of cross-cultural connectivity in the region nearly three millennia ago., This project was funded by the National Science Foundation, grants BCS-2141896 and BCS-1528698; the European Research Council (ERC) under the European Union’s Horizon 2020 programme, grants 851511-MICROSCOPE (to S. Schiffels), 771234-PALEoRIDER (to W.H.) and starting grant 805268-CoDisEASe (to K.I.B.); and the ERC starting grant Waves ERC758967 (supporting K. Nägele and S.C.). We thank the Max Planck-Harvard Research Center for the Archaeoscience of the Ancient Mediterranean for supporting M. Michel, E. Skourtanioti, A.M., R.A.B., L.C.B., G.U.N., N.S., V.V.-M., M. McCormick, P.W.S., C.W. and J.K.; the Kone Foundation for supporting E.K.G. and A.S.; and the Faculty of Medicine and the Faculty of Biological and Environmental Sciences at the University of Helsinki for grants to E.K.G. A.S. thanks the Magnus Ehrnrooth Foundation, the Sigrid Jusélius Foundation, the Finnish Cultural Foundation, the Academy of Finland, the Life and Health Medical Foundation and the Finnish Society of Sciences and Letters. M.C.B. acknowledges funding from: research project PID2020-116196GB-I00 funded by MCIN/AEI/10.13039/501100011033; the Spanish Ministry of Culture; the Chiang Ching Kuo Foundation; Fundación Palarq; the EU FP7 Marie Curie Zukunftskolleg Incoming Fellowship Programme, University of Konstanz (grant 291784); STAR2-Santander Universidades and Ministry of Education, Culture and Sports; and CEI 2015 project Cantabria Campus Internacional. M.E. received support from the Czech Academy of Sciences award Praemium Academiae and project RVO 67985912 of the Institute of Archaeology of the Czech Academy of Sciences, Prague. This work has been funded within project PID2020-115956GB-I00 ‘Origen y conformación del Bronce Valenciano’, granted by the Ministry of Science and Innovation of the Government of Spain, and grants from the Canadian Institutes for Health Research (MZI187236), Research Nova Scotia (RNS 2023-2565) and The Center for Health Research in Developing Countries. D.K. is the Canada research chair in translational vaccinology and inflammation. R.L.K. acknowledges support from a 2019 University of Otago research grant (Human health and adaptation along Silk Roads, a bioarchaeological investigation of a medieval Uzbek cemetery). P.O. thanks the Jane and Aatos Erkko Foundation, the Finnish Cultural Foundation and the Academy of Finland. S. Peltola received support from the Emil Aaltonen Foundation and the Ella and Georg Ehrnrooth Foundation. D.C.S.-G. thanks the Generalitat Valenciana (CIDEGENT/2019/061). E.W.K. acknowledges support from the DEEPDEAD project, HERA-UP, CRP (15.055) and the Horizon 2020 programme (grant 649307). M. Spyrou thanks the Elite program for postdocs of the Baden-Württemberg Stiftung.
Open access funding provided by Max Planck Society., Peer reviewed

Taiwan is a useful case study for the evaluation of well-established ideas in prehistory, in this case, concerning the relationship between technological advancement and social change. Continuity and conservatism are key concepts to understand the prehistory of the island of Taiwan, even in the context of metal use and the introduction of iron production technology. In this paper, we revise extant evidence and conceptualizations of metal use and contextualize, in archaeological and analytical terms, the metallurgy of iron in Taiwan and the broader region, using new stratigraphic records. The paper presents a discussion of iron production and use in Taiwan to prompt a new discussion on the technical issues around iron technology itself; revisits significant debates in the discipline on the role of technology and social change; and questions the definition of chronocultural periods based on diagnostic material culture., Open Access funding provided thanks to the CRUE-CSIC agreement with Springer Nature. Funding for this research came from (PI: MCB) the Formosa Program 2010 between the National Science Council of Taiwan and the Spanish National Research Council (CSIC); the Spanish Ministry of Economy and Competitiveness Acciones Complementarias program (HAR2011-16017-E); the Spanish Ministry of Culture in its program Excavaciones Arqueológicas en el Exterior in 2011, 2012, 2018, 2021; the Chiang Ching Kuo Foundation (2013 and 2020); the University of Konstanz through its Anschubsfinanzierung-EU call, and the EU FP7 Marie Curie Zukunftskolleg Incoming Fellowship Programme, University of Konstanz (Grant no. 291784) between 2014 and 2017; the Fundación Palarq (2018); the program STAR2-Santander Universidades and Ministry of Education, Culture and Sports, in the frame of the Program Campus de Excelencia Internacional, call CEI 2015 of the project Cantabria Campus Internacional; and grant PID2020-116196 GB-I00 funded by MCIN/AEI/https://doi.org/10.13039/501100011033 and by the European Union NextGenerationEU/PRTR. This paper was finished while MCB enjoyed a visiting research position in the National Taipei University of Education (Taiwan), under the project NSTC 112-2410-H-152-019-MY3 (PI: Fang Chenchen) funded by the National Science and Technology Council in Taiwan. The Keelung City Cultural Affairs Bureau (2019–2021) (PI: TCh, EH, MCB) and the Institute of History and Philology of the Academia Sinica (2016) (PI: TCh) provided funding for archaeological work in Heping Dao. MGM was supported during part of the production of this paper by the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme by a Marie Sklodowska-Curie grant (GA797785) and by the grant PTA2020-019518-I funded by MCIN/AEI/https://doi.org/10.13039/501100011033.x, Peer reviewed