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Pirates or no pirates, the islands of the Caribbean were settled and resettled by at least three successive waves of colonists from the American mainland, according to a new study. The examination of ancient DNA from 93 islanders who lived between 400 and 3200 years ago reveals a complex population history and ties to broader, inter-continental human expansions in both North and South America, according to an international research team... The Caribbean was one of the last regions in the Americas to be settled. Archaeological evidence suggests the first residents arrived about 8000 years ago, and that 3000 years later...

Ancient humans, Neanderthals and Denisovans were genetically closer than polar bears and brown bears, and so, like the bears, were able to easily produce healthy, fertile hybrids according to a study, led by the University of Oxford's School of Archaeology... The long history of matings between Neanderthals, humans, and Denisovans has only recently been demonstrated through the analysis of ancient genomes. The ability of mammalian species, including ancient humans, to produce fertile hybrid offspring has been hard to predict, and the relative fertility of the hybrids remains an open question. Some geneticists have even said that Neanderthals and humans were...

Archaeological remains have shown that in the middle part the Stone Age, there were at least three different but partially contemporary cultural groups in Sweden. The groups are often called: Funnel Beaker culture, which is associated with Scandinavia's first farmers; Pitted Ware culture, which is mainly linked to fishing and hunting; and Battle Axe culture, which represents a blended culture of herding and farming... The researchers have analysed DNA from 25 Stone Age individuals from four Pitted Ware culture burial grounds on Gotland. About half of the individuals were buried in typical Pitted Ware culture graves and the other half...

One in three women in Europe inherited the receptor for progesterone from Neandertals -- a gene variant associated with increased fertility, fewer bleedings during early pregnancy and fewer miscarriages. This is according to a study published in Molecular Biology and Evolution by researchers at the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology in Germany and Karolinska Institutet in Sweden... Progesterone is a hormone that plays an important role in the menstrual cycle and in pregnancy. Analyses of biobank data from more than 450,000 participants -- among them 244,000 women -- show that almost one in three women in Europe have inherited...

Rechavi's group obtained DNA from minuscule bits that either fell off or were removed from 26 Dead Sea Scroll fragments. Those samples contained no writing. After excluding DNA left by people who had handled the scrolls, the scientists identified DNA of animals used to make the ancient parchments. All fragments were made of sheepskin except for two made from cow skin... Four Qumran fragments from the Hebrew Bible's book of Jeremiah likely came from two different versions of that book, the investigators find. Two sheepskin fragments belonged to one book and two cow skin fragments belonged to another. Cows couldn't...

The researchers used advanced ancient DNA capture techniques to retrieve ancient DNA from 25 individuals dating back 9,500-4,200 years and one individual dating back 300 years from northern and southern East Asia... Prof. FU and her team found that these Neolithic humans share the closest genetic relationship to present-day East Asians who belong to this "second layer." This suggests that by 9,500 years ago, the primary ancestries composing the genetic makeup of East Asians today could already be found in mainland East Asia. While more divergent ancestries can be found in Southeast Asia and the Japanese archipelago, in the Chinese...

Microscopic signatures of malting could help reveal which prehistoric people had a taste for beer. Ancient beer is difficult to trace, because many of beer’s chemical ingredients, like alcohol, don’t preserve well (SN: 9/28/04). But a new analysis of modern and ancient malted grain indicates that malting’s effects on grain cell structure can last millennia. This microscopic evidence could help fill in the archaeological record of beer consumption, providing insight into the social, ritual and dietary roles this drink played in prehistoric cultures, researchers report online May 7 in PLOS ONE. Malting, the first step in brewing beer, erodes cell...

At some point in the past two millennia — peanuts on an evolutionary time scale — humans transformed their horses into equine speed demons. Selective breeding had a price, though, beyond $30,000 vials of pedigreed racehorse sperm. Unhelpful mutations plagued the animals. The current population of domesticated horses is about 55 million, but at some point in their history, their genetic diversity crashed. The Y chromosomes of all the world's stallions are now quite similar, suggesting that only a relatively few males were the ancestors of today's horses. Humans have not always bred so selectively, according to a study published...

...Prof. Haak will also try to detect more plague DNA in hundreds of skeletons from the late Neolithic and early Bronze Age. So far, DNA evidence from a dozen skeletons points to little variability between the strains of Yersinia pestis in such remains, suggesting that the pestilence spread rapidly across the continent. The speed may owe to another human advance at this time -- the domestication of wild horses, which may literally have carried the disease into Europe. "We see the change from wild local horses to domesticated horses, which happened rapidly at the beginning of the Bronze Age," said...

Genetic enhancement may not be restricted to the pages of sci-fi novels for much longer. For example, scientists have already inserted genes from tardigrades — tiny, adorable and famously tough animals that can survive the vacuum of space — into human cells in the laboratory. The engineered cells exhibited a greater resistance to radiation than their normal counterparts... Tardigrades and "extremophile" microbes, such as the radiation-resistant bacterium Deinococcus radiodurans, "are a great, basically natural reservoir of amazing traits and talents in biology," added Mason... "Maybe we use some of them." Harnessing these traits might also someday allow astronauts to journey...

Neanderthals selected rib bones from specific animals to make the lissoirs (French for 'smoothers'), which are bone tools that have been intentionally shaped and used on animal hides to make them softer and more water resistant, according to new research led by paleoanthropologists from the University of California, Davis. Scientists know that some Neanderthals produced bone tools. These include the discovery of five nearly identical fragments of lissoirs from two Paleolithic sites in southwest France: Pech-de-l'Azé I (Pech I) and Abri Peyrony. These specialized tools are often worn so smooth that it's impossible to tell which animal they came from...

An international team of scientists led by the University of Adelaide's Davies Research Centre has shown that it is possible to disentangle the DNA sequences of the chromosomes inherited from the mother and the father, to create true diploid genomes from a single individual. In a report published in Nature Communications, and funded by the Davies Research Centre over the past 15 years, the researchers have shown that genomes of two important modern-day cattle breeds, Angus (Bos taurus taurus) and Brahman (Bos taurus indicus), can be completely decoded from a single hybrid individual carrying the genetics of both breeds, using...

For decades, the enormous disease-curing potential of human stem cells has been thwarted by the inability to produce sufficient quantities of mature human cells in vivo -- in a living organism. Now, a team led by University at Buffalo scientists has developed a method that dramatically ramps up production of mature human cells in mouse embryos. Producing human cells in vivo is critical because cells made in a petri dish often do not behave the same way that cells do in the body. The research was published on May 13 in Science Advances. "This is fundamental research that allows us...

A 3,400-year-old Canaanite fort discovered in the heart of the modern Israeli city of Nahariya will be incorporated into a residential high-rise to be built at the spot. The Bronze Age citadel apparently served as an administrative center serving Mediterranean mariners... It had been destroyed at least four times by fire and was rebuilt each time... Among the artifacts discovered in the ruined citadel's rooms are ceramic figurines with human and animal forms, bronze weapons, and pottery vessels that hadn't been made locally -- they had been imported. That is further testimony to the extensive trading relations among the peoples...

In 1844, when the Ottoman Empire still controlled the Holy Land, a census was conducted, which revealed that Jews constituted a majority of the population of Jerusalem. Where were the "Palestinians"? Where were the Canaanites? The census count reported the presence of three groups in the city: Jews, Muslims, and Christians. Canaanites were apparently not present. But suddenly, inexplicably, all Palestinians were spontaneously transformed into Canaanites in 2019, just as quickly as all Jordanian and Egyptian Arabs in Israel were spontaneously transformed into Palestinians in 1967. It took nothing more than the word of Yasser Arafat to create Palestinians out...

More than 3,000 years have passed since this dramatized event, but for the archaeologists of the Lautenschläger Azekah Expedition, it looks as if it had happened only yester-day. Slowly and carefully -- it took four full seasons -- we uncovered a building filled with more than 200 complete ceramic vessels, 45 stone tools, exceptional metal objects, 108 beads, five scarabs, eight034 amulets, and the remains of four people. This collapsed building is located on the top of Tel Azekah. The name of Azekah (or 'Azeqah) is known to most readers as the location of the famous battle between David and...

Gezer is mentioned in a well-known passage in the Hebrew Bible that states that Solomon used forced labor "to build the wall of Jerusalem, Hazor, Megiddo, [and] Gezer" (1 Kings 9:15)... at Hazor, Megiddo and Gezer... most of the structures clearly belong to the Iron Age. In contrast, the water system at Tel Gezer has now been dated by project archaeologists to a much earlier period -- the MBA -- with a date as early as 2000 B.C... Gezer is also the site of massive fortifications and other structures dating to the MBA -- in addition to the Iron Age...

The bill is titled "H.R. 6666 — COVID-19 Testing, Reaching, And Contacting Everyone," or the TRACE Act. It aims to provide $100 billion in funding for the Health and Human Service Department for the purpose of "diagnostic testing for COVID–19, to trace and monitor the contacts of infected individuals, and to support the quarantine of such contacts ..." The bill also says that it will provide, "as necessary, testing [for] individuals and ... services related to testing and quarantine at their residences."

Led by researchers at Harvard Medical School and the University of California, Santa Cruz, the team analyzed genome-wide data from 89 individuals who lived between 500 and 9,000 years ago. Of these, 64 genomes, ranging from 500 to 4,500 years old, were newly sequenced - more than doubling the number of ancient individuals with genome-wide data from South America. The analysis included representatives of iconic Andean civilizations from whom no genome-wide data had been reported before, including the Moche, Nasca, Wari, Tiwanaku and Inca. The central Andes, surrounding present-day Peru, is one of the few places in the world where...

A French medical team is to spend six months analysing the presumed remains of Joan of Arc, who was burned at the age of 19 in 1431, the daily Le Parisien reported Monday."We will use the remains that were recovered from beneath the pyre, essentially bones and skin fragments that have been preserved over generations," said Philippe Charlier, a known specialist in the field of forensic medicine. A complete DNA analysis of the remains will be carried out, he added.The examination is intended mainly to definitively identify the remains. The girl known the world over as "The Maid of Orleans"...