On reconstructing the cranium of the one-million-year-old Yunxian 2 fossil, reserchers found that the cranium contained both primitive and derived traits and concluded that it is representative of the H. longi clade, which is sister to H. sapiens and likely contained the Denisovans
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Two studies provide new insights into one of the most consequential episodes in human history. Genomic evidence links Y. pestis to the plague of Justinian, marking the begining of the First Pandemic (AD 541-750) in the ancient city of Jerash, Jordan. Genomic evidence also shows Y. pestis was circulating in human populations for millennia even before the Justinian outbreak
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Unlike trees, bamboos, which have hollow culms and fibrous tissues, seldom get fossilised. That makes the Imphal Valley bamboo fossil remarkable — not only does it retain structural features such as nodes, internodes, and nodal buds, but it also preserves scars of thorns, details that almost never survive fossilisation
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The dawn of animal domestication 6,500 years ago unleashed a hidden epidemic crisis across Eurasia, with zoonotic diseases becoming more widespread about 5,000 years ago. Analysis of DNA from the teeth and bones of 1,313 ancient humans spanning 37,000 years unravelled the first direct genomic evidence that close contact with livestock dramatically increased humanity’s burden of infectious diseases
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The two studies confirm that enamel — a highly mineralised and durable tissue that serves as an extraordinary molecular archive — is capable of preserving endogenous peptides far beyond the temporal limits of ancient DNA, which typically degrades within a million years
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For the first time, researchers have sequenced the whole ancient Egyptian genome from an individual who lived 4,500 to 4,800 years ago — the oldest DNA sample from Egypt to date. The body belongs to an adult male — 157.4-160.5 cm tall, and 44-64 years old — who died during Egypt’s Old Kingdom
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Sinhalese chronicles and previous genetic studies had proposed that Sinhalese had migrated from northern or northwest India to Sri Lanka. But a recent whole genome study has found that genetic ancestries and their proportions in Adivasi and Sinhalese are most similar to Dravidian speaking populations who live in Southern India
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Whole-genome sequencing of 2,762 Indians has unravelled the layers of ancestry, high intermixing with Neanderthals and Denisovans — which allowed the reconstruction of roughly half of the Neanderthal genome and one-fifth of the Denisovan genome using only Indian genomes — and high endogamy in India resulting in harmful mutations in some groups.
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In less than 10 years after the human genome from a living individual was first sequenced, scientists have successfully sequenced
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For the first time ever the genome of an ancient human has been studied. The about 4,000-year-old sample studied was
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