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The Uralic language family and languages such as Finnish, Estonian, Saami and Hungarian began to spread west approximately 4,200–3,900 years ago, first to the central Volga region and later to the Baltic Sea and North Atlantic. The Uralic language family is a few hundred years younger than the Indo-European one, and its spread led to contacts with Indo-Iranian language variants and the creation of a long contact zone in the area currently known as central Russia. Early loan words originating from this contact made their way into the Uralic languages that were beginning to emerge, including Sami, the Balto-Finnic languages,...

The analyses drew from a DNA sample of a man that dated back 800 years and another from a woman that went back 1,500 years, both well before the 1492 arrival of Christopher Columbus in the Americas. The samples were collected from an archeological site in eastern Uruguay by co-corresponding author Gonzalo Figueiro, a biological anthropologist at the University of the Republic.The results of the analyses showed a surprising connection to ancient individuals from Panama—the land bridge that connects North and South America—and to eastern Brazil, but not to modern Amazonians. These findings support the theory proposed by some archeologists...

Sometime before 12,000 years ago, nomadic hunter-gatherers in the Middle East made one of the most important transitions in human history: they began staying put and took to farming. A pair of ancient-DNA studies1,2 — including one of the largest assemblages of ancient human genomes yet published — has homed in on the identity of the hunter-gatherers who settled down. Archaeological and genetic evidence suggests that humans first took to farming in the Middle East. This transition — which also later occurred independently in other parts of the world — is known as the Neolithic revolution, and is linked to...

From Indus Valley to coastal Tamil Nadu T.S. Subramanian Strong resemblances between graffiti symbols in Tamil Nadu and the Indus script Continuity of tradition: Megalithic pots with arrow-work graffiti found at Sembiankandiyur village in Nagapattinam district. CHENNAI: In recent excavations in Nagapattinam district in Tamil Nadu, megalithic pottery with graffiti symbols that have a strong resemblance to a sign in the Indus script have been found. Indus script expert Iravatham Mahadevan says that what is striking about the arrow-mark graffiti on the megalithic pottery found at Sembiyankandiyur and Melaperumpallam villages is that they are always incised twice and together, just...

The south east coast of Tamil Nadu was inhabited in pre-historic times mainly by Caucasoids, Mongoloids, Negroids and Australoids rather than people similar to contemporary Tamils, a dental anthropological study has found. A team of anthropologists came to the finding after studying more than 1,000 teeth from Adichanallur's pre-historic harbour site on the south-east coast of Tamil Nadu that dates back to 2,500 BC... Optical microscope techniques were employed to study the teeth, which have shown the various growth stages, ageing and wearing processes, racial and ethnic and geographical affinities, dietary patterns, jaw mechanism, constitutional abnormalities of the jaws, pathological...

NEW YORK (AP) — A New York court halted the use of a DNA crimefighting tool that has helped crack cold cases and put murderers behind bars, but has also raised privacy and racial discrimination concerns, because state lawmakers never approved the practice. Known as familial DNA searching, the technique allows law enforcement agencies to search the state’s DNA databank for close biological relatives of people who have left traces of genetic material at a crime scene. A panel of judges on a mid-level appeals court ruled Thursday that regulations for the technique were invalid because a state committee implemented...

New ancient DNA analysis has shed light on how the black rat, blamed for spreading Black Death, dispersed across Europe -- revealing that the rodent colonized the continent on two occasions in the Roman and Medieval periods. By analyzing DNA from ancient black rat remains found at archaeological sites spanning the 1st to the 17th centuries in Europe and North Africa, researchers have pieced together a new understanding of how rat populations dispersed following the ebbs and flows of human trade, urbanism, and empires...The study -- led by the University of York along with the University of Oxford and the...

width =65% The California two-spot octopus displaying its blue eyespot. (Judit Pungor/UC Berkeley) Squishy cephalopods never cease to amaze with their clever features, including brained arms, color-shifting camouflage, escape artistry, and puzzle-solving skills. New analyses of squid, octopus, and cuttlefish (coleoid) genetics reveal their genomes are just as deliciously weird as the animals themselves. The cephalopod genome "is incredibly churned up," says developmental biologist Caroline Albertin, who led one of two new studies identifying strange twists in these cephalopods' genetic histories. In a massive effort, Albertin and colleagues sequenced three soft-bodied cephalopod genomes: the California two-spot octopus (Octopus bimaculoides) –...

Differences in Pitt-Hopkins Syndrome (right) and a control (left) organoid. (Papes et al., Nature Communications, 2022) ================================================================== Scientists have uncovered changes in neurological structure that could underlie the autism spectrum disorder known as Pitt Hopkins syndrome, thanks to the help of lab-grown brains developed from human cells. Furthermore, the researchers were able to recover lost genetic functions through the use of two different gene therapy strategies – hinting at the possibility of treatments that could one day give those with the condition new options in improving their quality of life. Pitt Hopkins syndrome is a neurodevelopmental condition stemming from a...

The authors combine pollen, spores, sedimentary DNA, and animal remains to characterize the pre-Neolithic habitat of the site, inferring partially open woodland conditions, which would have been beneficial to large grazing herbivores like aurochs, as well as hunter-gatherer communities. This study supports previous evidence that the Stonehenge region was not covered in closed canopy forest at this time, as has previously been proposed.This study also provides date estimates for human activity at Blick Mead. Results indicate that hunter-gatherers used this site for 4,000 years up until the time of the earliest known farmers and monument-builders in the region, who would...

A new phenomenon of constructing distinctive funerary monuments, collectively known as megalithic tombs, emerged around 4500 BCE along the Atlantic façade. The megalithic phenomenon has attracted interest and speculation since medieval times. In particular, the origin, dispersal dynamics, and the role of these constructions within the societies that built them have been debated. We generate genome sequence data from 24 individuals buried in five megaliths and investigate the population history and social dynamics of the groups that buried their dead in megalithic monuments across northwestern Europe in the fourth millennium BCE. Our results show kin relations among the buried individuals...

Detectives from the Fairfax County Police Department Major Crimes Bureau Cold Case Squad have arrested a 59-year-old Ashburn man for the sexual assault of a teenager that occurred in Fairfax 35 years ago. On March 6, 1987, the mother of the victim received a phone call from a man pretending to be a local radio personality. The man told the woman she only needed to listen to the radio station to be eligible for $1,000 and a trip to Hawaii. He stated that he needed personal information to proceed with the award. The woman provided the man her home phone...

When Mexican police found a pile of about 150 skulls in a cave near the Guatemalan border, they thought they were looking at a crime scene, and took the bones to the state capital. It turns out it was a very cold case. It took a decade of tests and analysis to determine the skulls were from sacrificial victims killed between A.D. 900 and 1200, the National Institute of Anthropology and History said Wednesday. Frontera Comalapa in southern Chiapas state has long been plagued by violence and immigrant trafficking. And pre-Hispanic skull piles in Mexico usually show a hole bashed...

Patients diagnosed with a type of brain tumor survived for longer when they were treated aggressively with surgery, radiation and chemotherapy. But far from suggesting that more treatment always leads to better survival, the study by UC San Francisco underscores the critical role of genomic profiling in diagnosing and grading brain tumors. In the study, UCSF researchers followed 38 patients with a tumor type that was reclassified by the World Health Organization in November 2021, from a grade 2 or 3 glioma, to a "glioblastoma, IDH-wildtype, CNS WHO grade 4," based on its molecular features. The previous diagnosis was determined...

Many people know modern dogs evolved from the grey wolf. But did you know most of the more than 340 modern dog breeds we have today only emerged within the past 200 years? Dogs were first domesticated during the Neolithic period between 29,000 and 14,000 years ago, and have been closely linked to humans ever since. Dingoes – the only native Australian dog – are thought to represent a unique event within canine evolution, having arrived in Australia 5,000–8,000 years ago. Yet dingoes' exact place in the evolutionary family tree of dogs has never been known. To find out where...

Separated by geography and language, there's not much that might seem to connect India's five dwindling Jewish communities – except praying in Hebrew, and food. ...Kolkata is home to the Baghdadi Jews, who were once abundant enough to warrant five synagogues; now there aren't enough for a minyan (minimum [10] male Jews required for liturgical purposes). Magen David and the smaller Beth El Synagogue were both classified as protected monuments and renovated by the Archaeological Survey of India in 2017. ...The story of disappearing Jewish populations finds echoes elsewhere in India. Jews are believed to have first arrived in India...

The Jane Doe, known only as "Blue Pacheco" by authorities, has now been identified as Patricia Skiple of Colton, Oregon. On June 3, 1993, Skiple's body was found on the side of California state Route 152 in unincorporated Gilroy. She was 45 years old at the time of her death. In 2019, the Santa Clara County Sheriff's Office partnered with the DNA Doe Project to attempt to identify the body via investigative genetic genealogy. “This case was exceptionally challenging due to recent Norwegian ancestry which resulted in very distant DNA matches on GEDmatch and FamilyTreeDNA,” said DNA Doe Project team...

New research shows that people with blue eyes have a single, common ancestor. Scientists have tracked down a genetic mutation which took place 6,000-10,000 years ago and is the cause of the eye color of all blue-eyed humans alive on the planet today "Originally, we all had brown eyes," said Professor Hans Eiberg from the Department of Cellular and Molecular Medicine. "But a genetic mutation affecting the OCA2 gene in our chromosomes resulted in the creation of a "switch," which literally "turned off" the ability to produce brown eyes." The OCA2 gene codes for the so-called P protein, which is...

A colossal simulation of the past two million years of Earth’s climate provides evidence that temperature and other planetary conditions influenced early human migration — and possibly contributed to the emergence of the modern-day human species around 300,000 years ago. The finding is one of many to come out of the largest model so far to investigate how changes in Earth’s movement have influenced climate and human evolution, published in Nature today. “This is another brick in the wall to support the role of climate in shaping human ancestry,” says Peter de Menocal, director of the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution...

A new study suggests that people with cancer and non-O blood types, such as types A, B, and AB, face an increased risk of developing venous thromboembolism (VTE), or blood clots in the veins, three months after their initial diagnosis. Scientists have long strived to understand the risk factors for VTE, the leading cause of preventable hospital deaths in the United States. Existing assessments use factors like tumor or cancer type to detect those at high risk of VTE. Yet, many patients without these diagnoses still develop life-threatening blood clots but go unidentified. VTE includes deep-vein thrombosis (DVT) and pulmonary...