Malaria, smallpox, polio: Here's how we know life in ancient Egypt was ravaged by disease
The mention of ancient Egypt usually conjures images of colossal pyramids and precious, golden tombs.
The mention of ancient Egypt usually conjures images of colossal pyramids and precious, golden tombs.
Archaeology
Mar 15, 2024
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44
Writing a commentary in the 50th anniversary issue of Cell, Fu Qiaomei and E. Andrew Bennett, both of the Institute of Vertebrate Paleontology and Paleoanthropology (IVPP) of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, explored the ...
Evolution
Feb 29, 2024
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187
For many years, researchers at MPI-EVA have been collecting and analyzing ancient DNA from humans who lived during the past tens of thousands of years. Analyzing these data has allowed the researchers to trace the movement ...
Archaeology
Feb 20, 2024
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183
Poignant prehistoric burials containing the remains of an adult and child laid in a grave as though embracing in death have long fascinated archaeologists.
Archaeology
Jan 29, 2024
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288
Archaeologists have combined DNA analysis with the study of pottery to examine the spread of broomcorn millet across Eurasia, revealing how regional culinary traditions persisted even as new crops were introduced.
Archaeology
Jan 24, 2024
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190
Ancient DNA helps explain why northern Europeans have a higher risk of multiple sclerosis than other ancestries: It's a genetic legacy of horseback-riding cattle herders who swept into the region about 5,000 years ago.
Molecular & Computational biology
Jan 10, 2024
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36
If two persons are biologically related, they share long stretches of DNA that they co-inherited from their recent common ancestor. These almost identically shared stretches of genomes are called IBD ("Identity by Descent") ...
Archaeology
Dec 20, 2023
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365
Scientists from the Francis Crick Institute, Durham University, and MOLA Headland Infrastructure have discovered that a man who lived between AD 126–228 during the Roman period did not originally come from a rural farmstead ...
Archaeology
Dec 20, 2023
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87
An international team of scientists led by geneticists and disease biologists from the University of Oxford and LMU Munich have used ancient DNA to trace the evolution of Marek's Disease Virus (MDV). This global pathogen ...
Evolution
Dec 14, 2023
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31
The difference in height between female and male individuals in northern Europe during the Early Neolithic (8,000–6,000 years before present, bp) may have been influenced by cultural factors, a paper published in Nature ...
Archaeology
Dec 12, 2023
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299
Ancient DNA can be loosely described as any DNA recovered from biological samples that have not been preserved specifically for later DNA analyses. Examples include the analysis of DNA recovered from archaeological and historical skeletal material, mummified tissues, archival collections of non-frozen medical specimens, preserved plant remains, ice and permafrost cores, Holocene plankton in marine and lake sediments, and so on. Unlike modern genetic analyses, ancient DNA studies are characterised by low quality DNA. This places limits on what analyses can achieve. Furthermore, due to degradation of the DNA molecules, a process which correlates loosely with factors such as time, temperature and presence of free water, upper limits exist beyond which no DNA is deemed likely to survive. Current estimates suggest that in optimal environments, i.e environments which are very cold, such as permafrost or ice, an upper limit of max 1 Million years exists. As such, early studies that reported recovery of much older DNA, for example, from Cretaceous dinosaur remains, have been proven to be wrong, with results stemming from sample or extract contamination, as opposed to authentic extracted DNA.
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