Tag Archives: Ancient DNA

Archaeology, Evolution, Genetics, Journalism

The new revolution in prehistory: DNA from dirt

IT was an otherwise ordinary day in 2015 when Viviane Slon had her eureka moment. As she worked at her computer, the results revealed the sample she was examining contained human DNA. There was nothing so unusual about that in itself: at the time, the ancient DNA (aDNA) revolution was in full swing, and surprising new insights about our ancestors were being gradually unveiled. But Slon’s sample wasn’t from human remains – it was just dirt from a cave floor. That immediately told her she was onto something big…

This article first appeared online in New Scientist on 31 December 2024. To continue reading, click here (paywall).

Archaeology, Evolution, Genetics, History, Journalism, Language, Technology

All change in the Bronze Age

MYKHAILIVKA, a village on the right bank of the River Dnieper in Ukraine, lies dangerously close to the front line of Russia’s war on its western neighbour. Seventy years ago, however, it was the site of an excavation by Ukrainian archaeologists. There, they discovered one of the earliest known settlements of the Yamnaya culture…

Facial reconstruction of a western Yamnaya. Reconstruction: Emese Gábor, Magyarságkutató Intézet. Photograph: Hajdúsági Museum, Hajdúböszörmény.

This article first appeared online in The Economist on 5 May 2024 (and in the magazine on 11 May 2024). To continue reading, click here (paywall).

Archaeology, Genetics, History, Journalism, Medicine

On the origins of smallpox

THE death date of smallpox is clear. After killing more than 300 million people in the twentieth century, it claimed its last victim in 1978; two years later, on 8 May 1980, the World Health Assembly declared that the variola virus, which causes smallpox, had been eradicated. But the origins of this devastating virus are obscure. Now, genetic evidence is starting to uncover when smallpox first started attacking people…

This article first appeared in Nature on 23 July 2020. To continue reading, click here (paywall).

 

Archaeology, Environment, Evolution, Forensic, Genetics, History, Journalism, Language

Europe’s first farmers

EIGHT thousand years ago small bands of seminomadic hunter-gatherers were the only human beings roaming Europe’s lush, green forests. Archaeological digs in caves and elsewhere have turned up evidence of their Mesolithic technology: flint-tipped tools with which they fished, hunted deer and aurochs (a now extinct species of ox), and gathered wild plants. Many had dark hair and blue eyes, recent genetic studies suggest, and the few skeletons unearthed so far indicate that they were quite tall and muscular. Their languages remain mysterious to this day…

This article first appeared in the July 2020 issue of Scientific American. To continue reading, click here.

Archaeology, Evolution, Genetics, History, Journalism, Medicine

The 2010s: what just happened?

THE 2010s were the decade in which we were reminded that science is just a method, like the rhythm method. And just like the rhythm method, it can be more or less rigorously applied, sabotaged, overrated, underrated and ignored. If you don’t treat it with respect, you may not get the optimal result, but that’s not the method’s fault…

This article was first published in The Guardian on 26 December 2019. To continue reading, click here.