Marta Krenz-Niedbała

• PhD
• Professor (Assistant) at Adam Mickiewicz University in Poznań

The North Pontic Region was the meeting point of the farmers of Old Europe and the foragers and pastoralists of the Eurasian steppe1,2, and the source of migrations deep into Europe3, 4–5. Here we report genome-wide data from 81 prehistoric North Pontic individuals to understand the genetic makeup of its people. North Pontic foragers had ancestry f...

We present the first ancient DNA data from the Pre-Pottery Neolithic of Mesopotamia (Southeastern Turkey and Northern Iraq), Cyprus, and the Northwestern Zagros, along with the first data from Neolithic Armenia. We show that these and neighboring populations were formed through admixture of pre-Neolithic sources related to Anatolian, Caucasus, and...

Literary and archaeological sources have preserved a rich history of Southern Europe and West Asia since the Bronze Age that can be complemented by genetics. Mycenaean period elites in Greece did not differ from the general population and included both people with some steppe ancestry and others, like the Griffin Warrior, without it. Similarly, peo...

The north Black Sea (Pontic) Region was the nexus of the farmers of Old Europe and the foragers and pastoralists of the Eurasian steppe 1,2 , and the source of waves of migrants that expanded deep into Europe 3-5. We report genome-wide data from 78 prehistoric North Pontic individuals to understand the genetic makeup of the people involved in these...

Aging changes in the facial skeleton are concentrated mostly in orbits, maxilla and mandible. The aim of this study was to analyze metric traits of the adult viscerocranium in a medieval sample from Cedynia (Poland, Central Europe) and confront the results with literature data for modern populations. It was assumed that diet-related greater biomech...

Achondroplasia (ACH, achondroplastic dwarfism) represents the most common form of skeletal dysplasia, occurring in c. 4 out of every 100,000 births. This study presents a computer-based facial approximation of the skull of a male individual suffering from ACH, who died at 30-45 years of age and was buried in Łekno, Poland between the 9th and 11th c...

Aging changes in the facial skeleton are concentrated mostly in orbits, maxilla and mandible. The aim of this study was to analyze metric traits of the adult viscerocranium in a medieval sample from Cedynia (Poland, Central Europe) and confront the results with literature data for modern populations. It was assumed that diet-related greater biomech...

Literary and archaeological sources have preserved a rich history of Southern Europe and West Asia since the Bronze Age that can be complemented by genetics. Mycenaean period elites in Greece did not differ from the general population and included both people with some steppe ancestry and others, like the Griffin Warrior, without it. Similarly, peo...

Literary and archaeological sources have preserved a rich history of Southern Europe and West Asia since the Bronze Age that can be complemented by genetics. Mycenaean period elites in Greece did not differ from the general population and included both people with some steppe ancestry and others, like the Griffin Warrior, without it. Similarly, peo...

We present the first ancient DNA data from the Pre-Pottery Neolithic of Mesopotamia (Southeastern Turkey and Northern Iraq), Cyprus, and the Northwestern Zagros, along with the first data from Neolithic Armenia. We show that these and neighboring populations were formed through admixture of pre-Neolithic sources related to Anatolian, Caucasus, and...

We present the first ancient DNA data from the Pre-Pottery Neolithic of Mesopotamia (Southeastern Turkey and Northern Iraq), Cyprus, and the Northwestern Zagros, along with the first data from Neolithic Armenia. We show that these and neighboring populations were formed through admixture of pre-Neolithic sources related to Anatolian, Caucasus, and...

Literary and archaeological sources have preserved a rich history of Southern Europe and West Asia since the Bronze Age that can be complemented by genetics. Mycenaean period elites in Greece did not differ from the general population and included both people with some steppe ancestry and others, like the Griffin Warrior, without it. Similarly, peo...

We present the first ancient DNA data from the Pre-Pottery Neolithic of Mesopotamia (Southeastern Turkey and Northern Iraq), Cyprus, and the Northwestern Zagros, along with the first data from Neolithic Armenia. We show that these and neighboring populations were formed through admixture of pre-Neolithic sources related to Anatolian, Caucasus, and...

Literary and archaeological sources have preserved a rich history of Southern Europe and West Asia since the Bronze Age that can be complemented by genetics. Mycenaean period elites in Greece did not differ from the general population and included both people with some steppe ancestry and others, like the Griffin Warrior, without it. Similarly, peo...

The skeletal dysplasias are a group of more than 450 heritable disorders that affect bone and cartilage, along with muscles, tendons and ligaments. Achondroplasia is one of the most common skeletal dysplasias in both current and past populations. It can be transmitted intergenerationally, or it can result from a mutation. This paper aims to describ...

From 19 inhumation graves from the cemetery in Malbork-Wielbark (northern Poland) samples (teeth) were collected for the analysis of strontium (87Sr/86Sr) isotopes in order to try to determine the origin of the subjects. The chronological range of the analyzed statistical sample covers about 300 years of over 600 years of necropolis history, i. e....

Human auditory ossicles, the malleus, the incus, and the stapes, are located in the tympanic cavity in the temporal bone and through forming a chain for the sound transmission from the tympanic membrane to the cochlea, they play an important role in the hearing process. Despite their clinical, phylogenetic, and evolutionary significance, the morpho...

Objectives Studies of the demography of past populations involving deterministic life tables can be criticized for ignoring the errors of estimation. Bayesian methods offer an alternative, by focusing on the uncertainty of the estimates, although their results are often sensitive to the choice of prior distributions. The aim of this study is to exp...

The process of urbanization in medieval Europe brought spatial, political, economic, and social changes when compared to rural environments that had an impact on the biology of urban residents. This chapter deals with two contrasting, pre-urban and rural, contexts in Polish territories in the medieval and early modern period. Skeletal remains of i...

Osteoarthritis is a problematic trait in terms of etiology and interpretation in past human populations. The relationships between osteoarthritic changes (osteophytes, porosity, and eburnation) and entheseal changes, body mass, stature, bone massiveness, sex, and age on the basis of skeletal material from Łekno (Poland) are analyzed here. Entheses...

Interments of massacre victims typically differ from normal funerary practices. Bodies are commonly not orderly buried, but are thrown into a single grave‐pit and exhibit multiple perimortem traumatic injuries. Although perimortem skeletal trauma constitutes the most direct and unambiguous evidence for violence and warfare in the past, analysis sho...

For millennia, the Pontic-Caspian steppe was a connector between the Eurasian steppe and Europe. In this scene, multidirectional and sequential movements of different populations may have occurred, including those of the Eurasian steppe nomads. We sequenced 35 genomes (low to medium coverage) of Bronze Age individuals (Srubnaya-Alakulskaya) and Iro...

Scythians were nomadic groups, playing a dominant role on the Eurasian steppes in the Early Iron Age according to many archaeological and historical sources. In this paper, we aim at assessing demographic features and dynamics of a Scythian population from the Black Sea region. We hypothesise that they differed from other societies not only in term...

Scythians were nomadic groups who played a dominant role on the Eurasian steppes in the Early Iron Age according to many archaeological and historical sources. In this paper, we assess demographic features and dynamics of a Scythian population from the Black Sea region. We hypothesize that they differed from other societies in terms of not only cul...

Scythians were nomadic and semi-nomadic people that ruled the Eurasian steppe during much of the first millennium BCE. While having been extensively studied by archaeology, very little is known about their genetic identity. To fill this gap, we analyzed ancient mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA) from Scythians of the North Pontic Region (NPR) and successful...

Subadult growth and health have been analyzed in three cemetery samples from medieval Poland, including two early-urban sites: Cedynia dated to the 10t-14th centuries AD, and Ostrów Lednicki dated to the 13th-15th centuries AD, and a rural site Słaboszewo dated to the 14th-17th centuries AD. The nutritional status was not expected to have substanti...

Maxillary sinuses of 100 subadults from Cedynia, an early-urban site (stronghold), dated to the 10th-14th centuries AD, and of 28 subadults from Słaboszewo, a rural site, dated to the 14th-17th centuries AD, were examined for bone formation indicative of chronic sinusitis in order to explore the effect of urban and rural environments on the occurre...

In paleopathological research otitis media (OM) is a rarely reported disease, although it is one of the most common diseases of childhood, with potentially severe consequences resulting in physical and social impairment, or even death. The episodes of OM are often preceded by upper respiratory tract infections, though the etiology of OM is multifac...

Das Grab aus Kruszyn, 2009 in Kujawien entdeckt, rechnet zu einer kleinen Regionalgruppe der Schnurkeramik. Es zeichnet sich durch einen verhältnismäßig guten Erhaltungszustand und untypisch zahlreiche, aus Knochen und Geweih gefertigte Werkzeugbeigaben aus. Die aufgedeckten sterblichen Überreste wurden anthropologisch und isotopisch analysiert ( L...

Studies of the protective effect of breastfeeding on asthma have not brought unequivocal results, and thus this issue remains controversial. Antibiotic use, known to increase asthma risk, may be involved in this relationship. The objective of this study was to assess the influence of breastfeeding duration on obesity and asthma risk in childhood an...

Late and post-medieval writings report that scurvy was a widespread condition in medieval and early historical Poland. Archaeological and historical data indicate that the diet of children was based on foods poor in vitamin C and contained small amounts of raw plant products. Also, historians emphasize that in medieval and post-medieval Poland ther...

In the study of enamel hypoplasia formation ages basically two standards of dental development are being applied. According to some authors, different methods produce different results, thus it is critical to decide which method to use. This study focuses on the comparison of three methods for estimating ages of linear enamel hypoplasia (LEH) forma...

This study focuses on the changes in the human skeleton that are associated with the transition to agricultural subsistence. Two populations from the territory of contemporary Poland that differ in terms of their subsistence strategies are compared. An agricultural subsistence strategy is represented by a Lengyel Culture population from Osłonki (56...

The frequency and chronological distribution of enamel hypoplasias were assessed in a Roman Period population of the Wielbark culture from Rogowo, northern Poland, dated to the 2nd century ad . Hypoplasias were recorded on permanent incisors, canines, and premolars of 52 skeletons. The position of linear defects on the crown surface was measured an...

The purpose of this paper is: to document the prevalence of traumas identified in the late medieval and early modern (13th –16th centuries AD) population from Łekno, Poland; to commpare the obtained for the Lekno population results with the results obtained for other medieval populations from Poland and for selected medieval populations from Centra...

The relationship between season of birth and various physical and psychological outcomes was reported in many studies, although the underlying mechanism still remains unrecognized. The aim of this study was to explore the season-of-birth effect on body size in the sample of 1,148 eight-year-old Polish urban children and propose the mechanism respon...

In skeletal biology it is assumed that living conditions are reflected in the frequency and distribution of nonspecific stress indicators. Since children belong to the most vulnerable section of the population, child health and growth are treated as markers reflecting well-being of the whole society. Therefore, this study combines these two areas o...

Body height differentiation by season of birth: Girls from Cracow, Poland Published studies world wide demonstrate that measures of human development and health status vary depending on the month of birth but these patterns are not always consistent and sometimes even conflict. Direct factors related to the birth season that may significantly diffe...

This study investigated a hypothesis of dependence of child height and weight on the month of their birth. The sample comprised 1,241 subjects, 568 boys and 673 girls, age 6-20 years, from villages in Olsztyn Province, Northeast Poland. Individuals' height and weight data were standardized by sex and age to allow grouping of individuals born in the...

Enamel hypoplasia, the deficiency in enamel thickness resulting from disruption in the matrix apposition stage of tooth enamel development, was analysed in 235 sixteen years old Polish girls. The purpose of this paper is to determine the defect frequency, compare results with studies on other contemporary populations, estimate the defect chronology...