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The carcass was remarkably well preserved, but something was clearly wrong. A rounded hole through the interior jugal. Deep incisions along the ribs. Dents in the left scapula. A broken mandible. This 45,000 year-old mammoth's life ended violently at the hands of hunters. That wouldn't be surprising-it's well known that Pleistocene humans were expert mammoth killers=but for the location. It was excavated from a permafrost embankment at Yenisei bay, a remote spot in central Siberia where a massive river empties into the Arctic Ocean. That makes this brutalized mammoth the oldest evidence for human expansion into the high Arctic by...

King Tut's skin color a topic of controversy By Evan Henerson Staff Writer Wednesday, June 15, 2005 - Nobody can be sure exactly what the boy king Tutankhamun looked like. But a group of African-American activists charting the "Tutankhamun and the Golden Age of the Pharaohs" exhibition are certain of one thing: He didn't look white. Following an appearance before the Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors, activists from the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, the Committee for the Elimination of Media Offensive to African People, and the Association for the Study of Classical African Civilizations plan...

From 1948 to 1961, there was a show called "This Is Your Life," hosted by Ralph Edwards. In it, an unsuspecting celebrity was lured to a place by a friend or family member where Edwards would surprise them. People from the celebrity's past would then come out one by one and tell stories of the celebrity's early life. A modern-day version of that program is "Finding Your Roots," the latest in a brilliant series about race, identity and heritage hosted by Harvard Professor Henry Louis Gates Jr. (Scheduled to air September 23 through November 25 on PBS. Check your local...

Harvard professor Henry Louis Gates, Jr. was recently arrested for disorderly conduct. (Snip) Several officers arrived at the scene and sought to question the professor, who promptly accused the investigating officer of being a racist. (Snip) Monday on CNN’s Situation Room, Blitzer interviewed Democratic Socialist Michael Eric Dyson about Gates’ arrest. Dyson played precisely the song one would expect of him: America is a fundamentally racist nation and Gates was an innocent victim of racial profiling.

An archaeological bid to discover more about the hilltop where Ulster chieftains were crowned 700 years ago has uncovered artefacts dating back more than 7,000 years. Tullaghoge Fort in rural Co Tyrone was the place leaders of the dominant O'Neill clan came to be crowned from around the 14th Century to just before the arrival of the planters at the start of the 17th Century. Targeted excavation work around the picturesque tree encircled earthen mound ahead of the planned development of new visitor facilities hoped to find and preserve buried artefacts from that period -- but it ended up unearthing...

Genghis Khan, law giver, free trader and diplomat, is back with a new image By Richard Spencer in Ulan Bator (Filed: 11/07/2006) The Mongolian capital has been swamped with images of its former potentate, Genghis Khan, in honour of the anniversary of his unification of the nation in 1206. At the climax of celebrations in Ulan Bator yesterday, soldiers in traditional uniform and bearing yaks' tail standards heralded the unveiling of an enormous statue of the Great Khan in the main Sukhbaatar Square. The monument in which it is set contains earth and stones from the holy and historic places...

A study by the University of Chicago found that Arab populations, including Palestinians, Jordanians, Syrians, Iraqis, and Bedouin, have at least some sub-Saharan African genes. Non-Arabs from the region, including Turks, Kurds, Armenians, Azeris, Georgians, and Jews did not have any African roots. [1] A possible explanation is the proximity of the Arabian peninsula to the Black African nations. This conclusion is favored by the fact that Yemenite Arabs have 35% Black African genes in their mtDNA (which passes through the mother), while others have less. Yemen, of course, is very close geographically to several Black African nations. Other Arabs,...

Ancestry.com Reveals Prince Charles and Camilla are Cousins PROVO, Utah, April 4/PRNewswire/ -- When Prince Charles first met Camilla Parker-Bowles at a polo match in the early seventies, she said to the prince, “My great-grandmother and your great-great grandfather were lovers, so how about it?” Today, genealogical research shows they have an even stronger bond, they are ninth cousins. According to family history experts at Ancestry.com, a service of MyFamily.com, Inc., Prince Charles and Camilla are ninth cousins once removed. Prince Charles and Camilla are both descendents of Henry Cavendish, 2nd Duke of Newcastle. Prince Charles’ family history can be...

Europe's family tree has a THIRD branch: Link found in genetic connection between Modern Europeans and Native Americans Europeans share DNA with ancient hunters and Middle Eastern farmers Study claims Europeans also share their genes with North Eurasians This group gave their DNA to the people who traveled the Bering Strait Ancient Middle Eastern farmers and their European descendants can trace ancestry to a previously unknown lineage called the Basal Eurasians It has long been believed that modern Europeans descended from indigenous hunters and Middle Eastern farmers. But a new study suggests all Europeans today have DNA from a third...

How do you feel about "family tree" homework? My kids have had to do this repeatedly. To me, this seems like something that should be done at home on one's own time.

Obama has at least 7 (maybe 8) half siblings from 4 different women. Papa got around.

Ben Affleck has at least three ancestors who owned slaves including a wealthy landowner who bought a young boy who he appears to have set to work in his tanning business. The Batman star's distant family can be traced to Connecticut and in 1728 they paid 80 pounds for a slave called Tobe who they kept until he was grown up. The bill of sale refers to Tobe as a 'negro boy' which the previous owner 'sold as my proper estate'. Tobe's owner was called Nathaniel Stanley and was known as a smart man of 'respected piety and evangelical sentiments'...

Ben Affleck went searching for his roots and ended up finding more than he bargained for. And he admits it. "After an exhaustive search of my ancestry for Finding Your Roots, it was discovered that one of my distant relatives was an owner of slaves," Affleck wrote on Facebook Tuesday, breaking his silence on the controversy kicked up by a leaked Sony email that revealed the actor specifically requested that that limb of his family tree be left out of his episode of the PBS series Finding Your Roots. "I didn't want any television show about my family to include...

I am wondering if any FReepers had unexpected results when they did a DNA test during a family History search. In my case I was looking for an oppressed history of serfdom and general nastiness from Norman Overlords during the Middle Ages, just preparing for an Obama America. To my surprise I discovered we were Normans, in the Staple, Merchants, and in general capitalists, until God and Religion brought us unto this Blessed Shore to continue in the same trades. So in this election year of the usual Freeper cage fights I thought to step outside the blood and gore...

When modern humans met Neanderthals in Europe and the two species began interbreeding many thousands of years ago, the exchange left humans with gene variations that have increased the ability of those who carry them to ward off infection. This inheritance from Neanderthals may have also left some people more prone to allergies. Researchers of the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology in Leipzig, Germany, and the Institut Pasteur and the CNRS in Paris, France, report about the discoveries in two independent studies, adding to evidence for an important role for interspecies relations in human evolution and specifically in the...

Otzi the legendary “Iceman” wasn't alone when he was mummified on a glacier 5,300 years ago. With him were gut microbes known to cause some serious tummy trouble. These bacteria, Helicobacter pylori, are providing fresh evidence about Otzi's diet and poor health in the days leading up to his murder. Intriguingly, they could also help scientists better understand who his people were and how they came to live in the region. ... Discovered in the 1990s, Otzi lived in what are today the Eastern Italian Alps, where he was naturally mummified by ice after his violent death. The body is...

Bronze Age rock carving depicts a Mediterranean style boat. Above: A graphic representation of the Auga dos Cebros petroglyph, showing the obvious boat feature at the bottom. This image is a screenshot of the same as depicted in the YouTube video (see below). =================================================================================================================== A unique petroglyph discovered near the Atlantic coast of northern Spain has provided evidence that contacts between ancient Atlantic cultures and contemporaneous cultures of the Mediterranean were earlier and perhaps more intense than previously thought. The rock art panel, located in the Costa dos Castros region and known as Auga dos Cebros, depicts a boat with...

Scientists have grown a tree from what may be the oldest seed ever germinated. The new sapling was sprouted from a 2,000-year-old date palm excavated in Masada, the site of a cliff-side fortress in Israel where ancient Jews are said to have killed themselves to avoid capture by Roman invaders. Dubbed the "Methuselah Tree" after the oldest person in the Bible, the new plant has been growing steadily, and after 26 months, the tree was nearly four feet (1.2 meters) tall.

A team of geneticists from Trinity College Dublin and archaeologists from Queen's University Belfast has sequenced the first genomes from ancient Irish humans, and the information buried within is already answering pivotal questions about the origins of Ireland's people and their culture. The team sequenced the genome of an early farmer woman, who lived near Belfast some 5,200 years ago, and those of three men from a later period, around 4,000 years ago in the Bronze Age, after the introduction of metalworking. Their landmark results are published today in international journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

Students from Winnipeg, Canada recently discovered a stash of 800-year-old seeds while on an archaeological dig. The mysterious seeds, once planted, grew into a rare species of squash that has been extinct for hundreds of years. While we don't know if the seeds themselves were safe to eat, the squash that they harvested was absolutely delicious. Check out the images below to see the rare gourd for yourself and learn more about this discovery.