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Some 40,000 years ago, Cro-Magnons -- the first people who had a skeleton that looked anatomically modern -- entered Europe, coming from Africa. A group of geneticists, coordinated by Guido Barbujani and David Caramelli of the Universities of Ferrara and Florence, shows that a Cro-Magnoid individual who lived in Southern Italy 28,000 years ago was a modern European, genetically as well as anatomically.

Ore. Discovery Challenges Beliefs About First Humans Until recently, most scientists believed that the first humans came to the Americas 13,000 years ago. But new archaeological findings from a cave in Oregon are challenging that assumption. Lee Hochberg of Oregon Public Television reports on the controversial discovery. LEE HOCHBERG, NewsHour correspondent: What archaeologist Dennis Jenkins found in the Paisley Caves in south central Oregon may turn on its head the theory of how and when the first people came to North America. Many scientists believe humans first came to this continent 13,000 years ago across a land bridge from Asia...

Woolly-Mammoth Gene Study Changes Extinction Theory Ball of permafrost-preserved mammoth hair containing thick outer-coat and thin under-coat hairs. Credit: Stephan Schuster lab, Penn State A large genetic study of the extinct woolly mammoth has revealed that the species was not one large homogenous group, as scientists previously had assumed, and that it did not have much genetic diversity. "The population was split into two groups, then one of the groups died out 45,000 years ago, long before the first humans began to appear in the region," said Stephan C. Schuster, associate professor of biochemistry and molecular biology at Penn...

DNA reveals sister power in Ancient Greece 02 Jun 2008 University of Manchester researchers have revealed how women, as well as men, held positions of power in ancient Greece by right of birth. Women were thought to have had little power in ancient Greece, unless they married a powerful man and were able to influence him. But a team of researchers testing ancient DNA from a high status, male-dominated cemetery at Mycenae in Greece believe they have identified a brother and sister buried together in a richly endowed grave, suggesting that she had as much power as him. The team,...

But hair sample could have been from a wandering mercenary. An early wave of migration into the New World and the Arctic has been identified by sequencing a genome from a frozen hair excavated in Greenland. Archaeological evidence shows that there were two waves of migration to Greenland starting 4,500 years ago, first with the Saqqaq and then the Dorset groups, collectively known as the Paleo-Eskimos. Later, around 1,000 years ago, came the Thule culture which led to the current native population. The relationship between these three groups has been uncertain. Some theories hold that Paleo-Eskimos derived from the populations...

Research led by the University of Leeds has discovered genetic evidence that overturns existing theories about human migration into Island Southeast Asia (covering the Philippines, Indonesia and Malaysian Borneo) - taking the timeline back by nearly 10,000 years. Prevailing theory suggests that the present-day populations of Island Southeast Asia (ISEA) originate largely from a Neolithic expansion from Taiwan driven by rice agriculture about 4,000 years ago - the so-called "Out of Taiwan" model. However an international research team, led by the UK’s first Professor of Archaeogenetics, Martin Richards, has shown that a substantial fraction of their mitochondrial DNA lineages (inherited...

Scientists at the Gladstone Institute of Virology and Immunology (GIVI) and the University of California, San Francisco (UCSF) have found that therapy can be used to stimulate the production of vital immune cells, called “T- cells,” in adults with HIV infection. HIV disease destroys T-cells, leading to collapse of the immune system and severe infection. The thymus gland, which produces T-cells, gradually loses function over time (a process called “involution”) and becomes mostly inactive during adulthood. Because the thymus gland does not function well in adults, it is difficult for HIV-infected adults to make new T-cells. Thus, therapies that stimulate...

JAMES WATSON, the DNA pioneer who claimed Africans are less intelligent than whites, has been found to have 16 times more genes of black origin than the average white European. An analysis of his genome shows that 16% of his genes are likely to have come from a black ancestor of African descent. By contrast, most people of European descent would have no more than 1%. The study was made possible when he allowed his genome - the map of all his genes - to be published on the internet in the interests of science. “This level is what you...

At 12:35 a.m. on Tuesday, Sept. 11, a Villa Dunes resident spotted a fire across the sound on Roanoke Island and called 911. Part of The Lost Colony’s Waterside Theatre was in flames. All fire departments north of Oregon Inlet responded. Fire crews worked swiftly and efficiently to control the blaze and take necessary precautions to save the nearby men’s dressing room structure. Despite of the efforts, the maintenance shed, thought to be at or near the source of the fire, was completely destroyed. Charred pieces of framing in a flimsy skeleton, pointing irregularly toward the star-lighted sky, appear to...

Wed Aug 1, 7:54 PM OTTAWA (AFP) - Canadian researchers on Wednesday said they positively identified the remains of a young child who died when the RMS Titanic sank in 1912. (Advertisement) The remains belong to a 19-month-old English boy named Sidney Leslie Goodwin who died with his family as they were setting out for a new life in Niagara Falls, New York, researchers said. Goodwin's body was found floating in the waters of the North Atlantic six days after the luxury liner sank on April 15,9 1912, killing 1,503 passengers and crew. Many of the Titanic victims are buried...

The researchers hope to scale the work up to the whole of the genome A close-up view of the human genome has revealed its innermost workings to be far more complex than first thought.The study, which was carried out on just 1% of our DNA code, challenges the view that genes are the main players in driving our biochemistry. Instead, it suggests genes, so called junk DNA and other elements, together weave an intricate control network. The work, published in the journals Nature and Genome Research, is to be scaled up to the rest of the genome. Views transformed...

First Americans Arrived Recently, Settled Pacific Coast, DNA Study Says Stefan Lovgren for National Geographic News February 2, 2007 A study of the oldest known sample of human DNA in the Americas suggests that humans arrived in the New World relatively recently, around 15,000 years ago. The DNA was extracted from a 10,300-year-old tooth found in a cave on Prince of Wales Island off southern Alaska in 1996. The sample represents a previously unknown lineage for the people who first arrived in the Americas. The findings, published last week in the American Journal of Physical Anthropology, shed light on how...

EXPERTS FIND RARE ROMANI DNA IN NORWICH ANGLO SAXON SKELETON By Sarah Morley 12/05/2006 The recent discovery of Romani DNA in an Anglo Saxon skeleton has made experts re-think the nature of the city's early population. Picture courtesy Sophie Cabot. © HEART Experts from Norfolk Archaeology Unit based at Norwich Castle have discovered a rare form of mitochondrial DNA identified as Romani in a skeleton discovered during excavations in a large area of Norwich for the expansion of the castle mall. The DNA was found in an 11th century young adult male skeleton, and with the first recorded arrival of...

Scientists row over Gosnold claim Scientists still hope to establish remains were Gosnold's US experts claim that bones alleged to belong to a founder of the country are authentic and a skeleton buried in the UK, thought to be his sister, is not. The archaeologists in Virginia are arguing with UK experts over American founding father Bartholomew Gosnold, born in Grundisburgh, Suffolk. DNA tests revealed a skeleton buried in Suffolk is not related to the US bones. US experts claim they have the real Gosnold while UK scientists believe the Suffolk skeleton is authentic. The British experts believe the body...

James LeVoy Sorenson loved his 1999 trip to Norway retracing the steps of distant ancestors. When he got home, he invited geneticist Scott Woodward to his office and told him, "Let's analyze all of Norway's DNA!" James Sorenson The scientist gulped. Both men recall that Woodward stared across a conference table and declared, "That would cost $500 million. I don't think you can afford it." Sorenson shot back, "Oh, yes I can." The 83-year-old Salt Lake resident and entrepreneur is a billionaire several times over thanks to his development of plastic catheters and heart-monitoring equipment plus a half-century of wise...

Ancient DNA may be misleading scientists Tuesday, 18 February 2003 Dating skeletal material with DNA may not be as acurate as thought Ancient DNA in skeletons has a tendency to show damage in a particular region, resulting in misleading genetic data and mistaken conclusions about the origin of the skeleton, British scientists said. A group of researchers at the Henry Wellcome Ancient Biomolecules Centre of the University of Oxford, in Britain, made the finding while studying Viking specimens. They found that about half of the specimens had DNA that suggested they were of Middle Eastern origin. But more detailed analysis...

August 6, 2002 Skulls Found in Africa and in Europe Challenge Theories of Human OriginsBy JOHN NOBLE WILFORD wo ancient skulls, one from central Africa and the other from the Black Sea republic of Georgia, have shaken the human family tree to its roots, sending scientists scrambling to see if their favorite theories are among the fallen fruit. Probably so, according to paleontologists, who may have to make major revisions in the human genealogy and rethink some of their ideas about the first migrations out of Africa by human relatives. Yet, despite all the confusion and uncertainty the skulls...

Migrants Poured into Britain after Ice Age By John von Radowitz, Science Correspondent, PA News Britain experienced a tidal wave of immigration as soon as the last Ice Age ended, new data has shown. Previously it was thought that Britain’s repopulation was a slow process led by a few pioneering explorers. Researchers now know that humans responded rapidly to climate change and moved into Britain en masse as soon as the ice receded. Up to 20,000 years ago a huge ice sheet extended as far south as Norfolk. Then temperatures rose rapidly, producing warming weather than we have now. Once...

A genetic study helps confirm the theory that Polynesians, who settled islands across a vast swathe of ocean, started out in Taiwan, researchers reported on Monday. Mitochondrial DNA, which is passed along virtually unchanged from mothers to their children, provides a kind of genetic clock linking present-day Polynesians to the descendants of aboriginal residents of Taiwan. Samples taken from nine indigenous Taiwanese tribes -- who are different ethnically and genetically from the now-dominant Han Chinese -- show clear similarities between the Taiwan groups and ethnic Polynesians, Jean Trejaut and Marie Lin of Mackay Memorial Hospital in Taipei and colleagues reported....

Seafood was the spur for Man's first migration By Roger Highfield, Science Editor (Filed: 13/05/2005) The lure of a seafood diet may explain why the first people left Africa, according to a genetic analysis published today that overturns the conventional picture of the very first migration of modern humans. The international project shows - contrary to previous thinking - that early modern humans spread across the Red Sea from the Horn of Africa, along the tropical coast of the Indian Ocean towards the Pacific in just a few thousand years. And it suggests that the first migratory wave probably included...

...for use in genetics-based population divergence studies. Abstract: The length of the human generation interval is a key parameter when using genetics to date population divergence events. However, no consensus exists regarding the generation interval length, and a wide variety of interval lengths have been used in recent studies. This makes comparison between studies difficult, and questions the accuracy of divergence date estimations. Recent genealogy-based research suggests that the male generation interval is substantially longer than the female interval, and that both are greater than the values commonly used in genetics studies. This study evaluates each of these hypotheses in...

Neanderthals sang like sopranos Jennifer Viegas Discovery News Tuesday, 15 March 2005 Neanderthals spoke in a high-pitched, sing-song voice, says one researcher. But not everyone is convinced (Image: iStockphoto) Neanderthals had strong, yet high-pitched, voices that the stocky hominins used for both singing and speaking, says a UK researcher. The theory suggests that Neanderthals, who once lived in Europe from around 200,000 to 35,000 BC, were intelligent and socially complex. It also indicates that although Neanderthals were likely to have represented a unique species, they had more in common with modern humans than previously thought. Stephen Mithen, a professor of...

Greger Larson,1* Keith Dobney,2 Umberto Albarella,3 Meiying Fang,4 Elizabeth Matisoo-Smith,5 Judith Robins,5 Stewart Lowden,6 Heather Finlayson,7 Tina Brand,8 Eske Willerslev,1 Peter Rowley-Conwy,2 Leif Andersson,4 Alan Cooper1* Abstract Mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA) sequences from 686 wild and domestic pig specimens place the origin of wild boar in island Southeast Asia (ISEA), where they dispersed across Eurasia. Previous morphological and genetic evidence suggested pig domestication took place in a limited number of locations (principally the Near East and Far East). In contrast, new genetic data reveal multiple centers of domestication across Eurasia and that European, rather than Near Eastern, wild boar are the...

A team headed by Craig Pikaard, Ph, D., Washington University professor of biology in Arts & Sciences, has discovered a fourth kind of RNA polymerase found only in plants and speculated to have been a plant feature for more than 200 million years. RNA polymerase is an enzyme, or protein machine, essential for carrying out functions of cells and for expression of biological traits. It does its job by copying a template of DNA genetic information in order to make RNAs that encode proteins or that function directly in the cell... Pikaard and his collaborators discovered that Pol IV does...

Team Searching for Columbus' Remains Mon Jan 17, 3:19 PM ET Science - AP By DANIEL WOOLLS MADRID, Spain - Spanish researchers said Monday they've won permission to open a tomb in the Dominican Republic purported to hold remains of Christopher Columbus, edging closer to solving a century-old mystery over whether those bones or a rival set in Spain are the real thing. A team of two high school teachers from Seville and a leading Spanish forensic geneticist has been testing 500-year-old bone slivers for more than two years to try to pinpoint the final resting place of the explorer...

Researchers in Iceland have discovered a region in the human genome that, among Europeans, appears to promote fertility, and maybe longevity as well. Though the region, a stretch of DNA on the 17th chromosome, occurs in people of all countries, it is much more common in Europeans, as if its effect is set off by something in the European environment. A further unusual property is that the region has a much more ancient lineage than most human genes and the researchers suggest, as one possible explanation, that it could have been inserted into the human genome through interbreeding with one...

Anthropologist Claims Humans, Neanderthals, Australopithecines All Variations on One Species   01/01/2005 According to a news story in the UK News Telegraph, all fossil hominims, including modern humans, Australopithecines, Neandertals and the recent Indonesian “hobbit man,” belong to the same species: Homo sapiens.  Reporter Robert Matthews wrote about Maciej Henneberg (U of Adelaide) and his argument, based on skull sizes and body weights for 200 fossil specimens, that all known hominim bones fit within the range of variation expected for a single species.  Henneberg made the startling claim in the Journal of Comparative Human Biology, where he said, “All hominims appear...

London - Red hair may be the genetic legacy of Neanderthals, according to a new study by British scientists. Researchers at the John Radcliffe Institute of Molecular Medicine in Oxford were quoted by The Times as saying the so-called "ginger gene" which gives people red hair, fair skin and freckles could be up to 100 000 years old. They claim that their discovery points to the gene having originated in Neanderthal man who lived in Europe for 200 000 years before Homo sapien settlers, the ancestors of modern man, arrived from Africa about 40 000 years ago. Rosalind Harding, the...

Scientists to start DNA analysis of ancient horse skeletons www.chinaview.cn 2005-01-10 15:19:28 XI'AN, Jan. 10 (Xinhuanet) -- Chinese and British scientists are planning for the DNA analysis of 12 horse skeletons unearthed from the burial ground of a prominent duke who lived more than 2,500 years ago in northwestern Shaanxi Province. Archeologists with Beijing University and Cambridge University have used a professional database to process data collected from the skeletons, including the size and weight of the skulls, spinalcolumns and limbs. A Cambridge laboratory will be entrusted to carry out the DNA analysis, after the State Administration of Cultural Heritage...

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,...

[Alcock] uncritically accepts the conclusions from highly contested studies of the genetics of human behavior, such as the Minnesota Study of Twins Reared Apart of Thomas J. Bouchard and his colleagues. In fact, the field of human behavior genetics is in a crisis stage, as the great hope of finding behavioral genes with the new DNA technologies has disappointed. Many of the concerns about this field of research parallel those offered by the critics of sociobiology -- that researchers have paid too little attention to nongenetic factors in collecting and analyzing their data. Alcock is at his worst when describing...

Ancient Amazon Settlements Uncovered Thu Sep 18, 7:26 PM ET Add Science - AP to My Yahoo! By PAUL RECER, AP Science Writer WASHINGTON - The Amazon River basin was not all a pristine, untouched wilderness before Columbus came to the Americas, as was once believed. Researchers have uncovered clusters of extensive settlements linked by wide roads with other communities and surrounded by agricultural developments. The researchers, including some descendants of pre-Columbian tribes that lived along the Amazon, have found evidence of densely settled, well-organized communities with roads, moats and bridges in the Upper Xingu part of the vast...

Calico: A 200,000-year old site in the Americas? New World archaeological sites inferred to be even slightly older than the 11.5 ka Clovis complexes have been controversial; so claims for a 200 ka site in North America have heretofore been treated with substantial disdain. But the acceptance of Monte Verde and Diring may soon change that. The classic "ancient site" in the New World is "Calico," located in the Central Mojave Desert of California (Shlemon and Budinger, 1990). Two issues have dogged acceptance of Calico by mainstream archaeologists: (1) the authenticity of the artifacts; are they truly the product of ...

Did the Vikings Stay... Vatican Files May Offer Clues. / How did the Swedes end up in Minnesota?

Did the Vikings Stay... Vatican Files May Offer Clues. / How did the Swedes end up in Minnesota?

Archaeologist continues to dig up history By Marjorie Wertz For The Tribune-Review Sunday, October 17, 2004 In the past 30 years archaeologists worldwide have visited the Meadowcroft Rockshelter in Washington County. The general public can now see what's involved in the archaeological dig that has proved the existence of early humans dating back 16,000 years. "The site was opened last year for the first time to the public," said David Scofield, director of Meadowcroft Museum of Rural Life. "We are now in the process of getting an architect to create a design for a permanent roof over the excavation. This...

Extinct humans left louse legacy By Paul Rincon BBC News Online science staff The evolutionary history of head lice is tied very closely to that of their hosts Some head lice infesting people today were probably spread to us thousands of years ago by an extinct species of early human, a genetics study reveals. It shows that when our ancestors left Africa after 100,000 years ago, they made direct contact with tribes of "archaic" peoples, probably in Asia. Lice could have jumped from them on to our ancestors during fights, sex, clothes-sharing or even cannibalism. Details of the research appear...

Deseret Morning News, Sunday, October 03, 2004 Mexico discovery fuels debate about man's origins Archeologists are baffled by hominid bones By John Rice Associated Press MEXICO CITY — For decades, Federico Solorzano has gathered old bones from the shores of Mexico's largest lake — bones he found and bones he was brought, bones of beasts and bones of men. Mexican professor Federico Solorzano shows the supraorbital arch from the fossil of an early hominid. Guillermo Arias, Associated Press The longtime teacher of anthropology and paleontology was sifting through his collection one day when he noticed some that didn't seem to...

May 2, 2000 The Human Family Tree: 10 Adams and 18 Eves Related Articles Genetics: Gene TherapyGenetics: Genetically Modified FoodsGenetics: The Human Genome ProjectThe New York Times on the Web: Science/HealthMapTracing Human History Through Genetic MutationsChartFollow the LineagesForumJoin a Discussion on DNA Research By NICHOLAS WADE he book of Genesis mentions three of Adam and Eve's children: Cain, Abel and Seth. But geneticists, by tracing the DNA patterns found in people throughout the world, have now identified lineages descended from 10 sons of a genetic Adam and 18 daughters of Eve. The human genome is turning out to be...

A team of senior Israeli rabbis is due to rule soon on whether thousands of Indians who say they are members of one of the lost tribes of Israel can settle there. Only 5,000 of the Benei Menashes have converted to Judaism Shlomo Amar recently led a delegation of rabbis to the north-eastern Indian states of Manipur and Mizoram where members of the Benei Menashe tribe live and practise Judaism. At the Beith-el Synagogue in the Manipur capital, Imphal, nine men wearing knitted skull caps read silently from the Old Testament. Four others stand on a wooden platform in the...

Early hair sample raises questions Posted: July 26, 2000 - 12:00am EST WOODBURN, Ore. (AP) - Under a small Woodburn city park may lie the answer to who are the earliest Oregonians yet discovered. Scientists have found an ancient strand of hair in Woodburn's Front Street Park - a human hair that may have been left behind before modern American Indians settled in North America a few thousand years ago. The hair, found in a core sample during a June 1999 dig, could be one of the oldest found in the Western United States, said Alison Stenger, director of the...

Regarding your question as to where the Lost Tribes were exiled, we saw in the previous installment that according to our sources they were exiled south to Ethiopia, and East through Syria, Iraq, Iran, and as far as India. [This should not be confused with those Jews who settled these lands much later, after the Exile in Roman times]. In addition, while discussing whether the Tribes will be re-united with the Jewish people in the future (which will be brought in detail in the next installment), Tiferet Israel (Sanhedrin 10:3) mentions that there are remnants of the Tribes living in...

Part 1: The debate Over recent years, there has been a loud debate within palaeoanthropology over the origins of anatomically modern humans, or AMH. Opinions have polarized into two camps: Multiregional Evolution, or MRE, and Out-of-Africa, or OOA. The former group of anthropologists, including Milford Wolpoff and Loring Brace, argue that ever since members of the genus Homo first spread out of Africa, probably before 1 million years ago (mya), we have all been members of one species. The many different populations of humans were all subject to natural selection, and gradually evolved along similar lines. These different populations may ...

WASHINGTON -- Scientists hoping to study the ancient skeleton known as Kennewick Man are protesting a bill by Colorado Sen. Ben Nighthorse Campbell that they say could block their efforts. A two-word amendment would change an Indian graves-protection law to allow federally recognized tribes to claim ancient remains even if they cannot prove a link to a current tribe. Scientists say the bill, if enacted, could have the effect of overturning a federal appeals court ruling that allowed them to study the 9,300-year- old bones.

The most recent common ancestor of all humanity lived just a few thousand years ago, according to a computer model of our family tree. Researchers have calculated that the mystery person, from whom everyone alive today is directly descended, probably lived around 1,500 BC in eastern Asia. Douglas Rohde of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in Cambridge and his colleagues devised the computer program to simulate the migration and breeding of humans across the world. By estimating how different groups intermingle, the researchers built up a picture of how tightly the world's ancestral lines are linked. The figure of 1,500...

In an otherwise unremarkable gravel bluff on the banks of the Bow River in Calgary, University of Alberta researchers Jiri Chlachula and Alan Bryan believe they have unearthed the remains of what could be the oldest human artifacts in North America, the pair announced this month. If substantiated, the discovery pushes back the known date of human settlement in North America by several thousand years. Other earth scientists are sceptical about the find's authenticity: U of A geomorphologist Rob Young describes it as "based only on pure speculation." ...Comments Prof. Young: "Any dude could have put that rock there."

Week of Sept. 18, 2004; Vol. 166, No. 12 , p. 183 In the Neandertal MindOur evolutionary comrades celebrated vaunted intellects before meeting a memorable demise Bruce Bower Call a person a Neandertal, and no one within earshot will mistake the statement for a compliment. It's a common, convenient way to cast someone as a stupid, brutish lout. From an evolutionary perspective, the invective has no basis in truth, say archaeologist Thomas Wynn and psychologist Frederick L. Coolidge. This interdisciplinary duo, based at the University of Colorado in Colorado Springs, has drawn on a range of scientific research and prehistoric...

Radiocarbon dating of charcoal found elsewhere on this site has suggested people might have camped here and built fires by the north branch of the Potomac River, anywhere from 9,000 years ago to as much as 16,000 years ago... Some tools and bones have been found in Pennsylvania and Virginia that date well before the Clovis era, although scientists debate whether the dating is accurate.

Divers making dangerous probes through underwater caves near the Caribbean coast have discovered what appears to be one of oldest human skeletons in the Americas, archaeologists announced at a seminar that was ending on Friday. The report by a team from Mexico's National Institute of Anthropology and History exploits a new way of investigating the past. Most coastal settlements by early Americans now lie deep beneath the sea, which during the Ice Age was hundreds of feet lower than now. Researchers at the international ``Early Man in America'' seminar here also reported other ancient finds -- including a California bone...

Last Updated: Tuesday, 7 September, 2004, 14:26 GMT 15:26 UK Tribe challenges American origins By Paul Rincon BBC News Online science staff, at the BA festival The skulls (r) are long and narrow, not in keeping with Native Indians' broader, rounder features. Some of the earliest settlers of America may have come from Australia, southern Asia, and the Pacific, new research suggests. Traditional theories have held that the first Americans originated from northern Asia. Dr Silvia Gonzalez conducted a study of ancient bones found in Mexico and found that they have very different characteristics to Native Americans. The results are...