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Scientists analyzed more than 2,700 modern Indian genomes from 17 states, including DNA from individuals from most geographic regions, speakers of all major languages, tribal and caste groups.They revealed that one of the three main ancestral groups in India — ancient Iranian farmers — can be traced back to a group of agricultural farmers from Sarazm in modern-day Tajikistan. They also uncovered the extraordinary diversity of DNA inherited from Neanderthals and Denisovans, the closest, now-extinct relatives of modern humans.Additionally, the team found that most of the genetic variation within the current Indian population stems from a single, major migration event...

There's never been a better time to eat — and cook with — American apple varieties.One day in 2004, Brooke Hazen noticed something unusual about one of his Golden Delicious apple trees. “Some people are lucky enough in their career to have their own bud mutation variety that they get to name,” says Hazen. “Out of the thousands of trees I have, one branch on one tree decided to do its own thing.” What it did was yield an apple with the typical green-yellow skin but an unusual pink patch where it faced the sun and a sweetness and fragrance...

SYDNEY (Reuters) - It was a great legend while it lasted, but DNA testing has finally ended a century-old story of the Hawaiian arrow carved from the bone of British explorer Captain James Cook who died in the Sandwich Islands in 1779. "There is no Cook in the Australian Museum," museum collection manager Jude Philp said on Thursday in announcing the DNA evidence that the arrow was not made from Cook's bone. But that will not stop the museum from continuing to display the arrow in its exhibition, "Uncovered: Treasures of the Australian Museum," which does include a feather cape...

Alma Gamongan has made headlines with her startling claim that her son's unique appearance, characterised by excessive facial and body hair, was a consequence of her pregnancy diet. What does Jaren Gamongan suffer from? According to Alma, she indulged in the consumption of a wild cat, a local delicacy, to satisfy intense cravings during her pregnancy with her son, Jaren Gamongan, now two years old. The superstition surrounding Jaren's condition, commonly referred to as "werewolf syndrome", emerged from Alma's belief that her dietary choice had invoked a curse."I worry so much for him when it's time for him to go...

They remain one of the most elusive groups of humans to have walked on earth. Evidence from the DNA traces left by Denisovans shows they lived on the Tibetan plateau, ­probably ­travelled to the Philippines and Laos in south Asia and might have made their way to northern China more than 100,000 years ago. They also interbred with modern humans...Their DNA, which was first found in samples from the Denisova cave in Siberia in 2010, provides most of our ­information about their existence.But recently scientists have pinpointed a strong candidate for the species to which the Denisovans might have belonged....

Nations of the Blackfoot Confederacy have long fought to maintain control over their land and water. Oral traditions and archaeological evidence indicate the Blackfoot Indigenous peoples and their ancestors have inhabited a broad swatch of North America more than 10,000 years.A study published today in Science Advances reinforces that connection. Genetic data confirm modern Blackfoot people are closely related to those who lived on the land hundreds of years ago. The findings also suggest Blackfoot people descend from a previously unknown genetic lineage extending back roughly 18,000 years ago, when people first populated the Americas—evidence that could bolster their claims...

The neo-Nazi who inspired Edward Norton’s skinhead character in “American History X” has revealed he is now an observant Jew after turning his life around — and discovering his heritage through DNA testing. Frank Meeink, 48, became a leader of a violent ultra-right group in the early 1990s, torturing enemies who stood in the way of his attempt to foment a race war. Intensely anti-semitic and flaunting a flaming swastika tattooed on his neck, he railed against what he called the “Zionist occupation government” and believed the Jews were “the root of all evil.”

At the start of the week of the Summer Solstice, many will once again marvel at the magnificent structures built across Ireland thousands of years ago, including Newgrange in Co Meath. The structures were built by the descendants of the first peoples that landed on the island in what is believed to be two migratory waves from around 10,000 years ago. Until recently it was argued that much of the population of Ireland was descended from this group of people, mainly from what is now Spain and southern France, with the arrival of the Celts around 500 BC adding what...

Tails are useful in many ways, but — unlike these vervet monkeys pictured in Lake Mburo National Park in Uganda — humans' closest primate relatives lost the appendages about 25 million years ago. (Photo credit: imageBROKER/Shutterstock via CNN Newsource) ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Humans have many wonderful qualities, but we lack something that’s a common feature among most animals with backbones: a tail. Exactly why that is has been something of a mystery. Tails are useful for balance, propulsion, communication and defense against biting insects. However, humans and our closest primate relatives — the great apes — said farewell to tails about 25...

Scientists are “getting closer” to creating human embryos using the DNA of two men and no women.

Experts have long thought that the human brain is one of the first organs to rot and decompose after we die, but new research suggests that is not the case. And in fact, it turns out that brains preserve quite well, according to a team of scientists at Oxford University - though they don't know how nearly a third of the brains lasted as long as they have. Until now, any time archaeologists found an old, well-preserved brain, it was regarded as something of an oddity - or at least the product of intentional preservation efforts by ancient people.

Emerging clues may shine a new light on Hollywood’s darkest tale: the shocking 1947 death of Elizabeth Short. On January 15, 1947, an aspiring 22-year-old actress named Elizabeth Short was found brutally murdered in a vacant lot near Leimert Park in Los Angeles, California, her nude, posed body cut in half and severely mutilated. “It was pretty gruesome,” Brian Carr, a detective with the Los Angeles Police Department who worked on Short’s case, later said. It was an understatement; Short’s killer had also drained her corpse of blood and scrubbed it clean. “I just can’t imagine someone doing that to...

A biotech company that hopes to resurrect extinct species said Wednesday that it has reached an important milestone: the creation of a long-sought kind of stem cell for the closest living relative of the woolly mammoth. "This is probably the most significant step in the early stages of this project," said George Church, a geneticist at Harvard University and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology who co-founded Colossal Biosciences in Dallas. The woolly mammoth was a big, shaggy species of elephant that roamed the tundra before going extinct thousands of years ago. Colossal has been working to bring the mammoth, the...

Globally in 2022, there were an estimated 249 million malaria cases and 608,000 malaria deaths across 85 countries. Today, the majority of the disease is concentrated on the continent of Africa, which carries a disproportionately high share of cases. But it is also a serious and persistent threat in other areas—especially Southeast Asia, which has the second highest estimated malaria burden after Africa. A new study, however, shows that was not the case for people living in ancient Asia. DNA analysis has revealed that ancient Eastern Arabia people developed resistance to malaria following the appearance of agriculture in the region...

In December 1980, the remains of an unidentified man were discovered in Pomona Park, a city in Putnam County, Florida. During a routine patrol, a deputy found the body of a partially-buried individual near Sisco Road and Broward Lake Roan. It was determined that the remains were that of a male estimated to be 5' 6" tall and approximately 160 pounds. The man died from a gunshot wound to the neck about two to three weeks before his body was discovered. The man had no identification on him and through interviews it was believed that he was a migrant worker....

A century-old science mystery has been solved, according to scientists who say recent studies involving mutation revealed the molecular mechanism behind a previously unresolved biological pattern involving chromosomes. Each individual organism that is the product of sexual reproduction bears qualities that resemble its parents, as well as its siblings. Despite these similarities, no two organisms are identical, thanks in part to the process of meiosis. Meiosis is what happens as cells undergo division, resulting in the production of four “daughter” cells that each possess only half the number of chromosomes as the parent. Genetic information is exchanged during this initial...

The woolly mammoth could roam the Earth once again. That’s the goal of Colossal Biosciences as the biotech company announced a major breakthrough Wednesday in its mission to revive the 6-ton, 16-foot animal back from extinction. The Dallas-based company said it has created a set of stem cells from an Asian elephant in hopes of bringing back a creature that would be eerily similar to the woolly mammoth, according to reports. “This is probably the most significant step in the early stages of this project,” said geneticist and company co-founder George Church, a Harvard University professor, according to NPR. The...

Stone tools unearthed in a quarry in [southwest] Ukraine belonged to ancient humans...The researchers determined they were 1.4 million years old...No human fossils have been found at the open-air site...the study suggested it would have been Homo Erectus...The earliest human fossils unearthed in Europe are from...Spain and date back 1.1 million years...In Georgia [Caucasus], human fossils found near Dmanisi are thought to be 1.8 million years old.

Up to 70 percent of British men and half of all Western European men are related to the Egyptian Pharaoh Tutankhamun, geneticists in Switzerland said. Scientists at Zurich-based DNA genealogy center, iGENEA, reconstructed the DNA profile of the boy Pharaoh, who ascended the throne at the age of nine, his father Akhenaten and grandfather Amenhotep III, based on a film that was made for the Discovery Channel. The results showed that King Tut belonged to a genetic profile group, known as haplogroup R1b1a2, to which more than 50 percent of all men in Western Europe belong, indicating that they share...

A South African anthropologist has asked permission to open the graves of William Shakespeare and his family to determine, among other things, what killed the Bard and whether his poems and plays may have been composed under the influence of marijuana. But while Shakespeare's skeleton could reveal clues about his health and death, the question of the man's drug use depends on the presence of hair, fingernails or toenails in the grave, said Francis Thackeray, the director of the Institute for Human Evolution at the University of Witwatersrand in Johannesburg, who floated the proposal to the Church of England. Thackeray...