March 24, 2010
Denisova cave from the outside. / Bence Viola. DNA isolated from a tiny bone fragment from the finger of a being that walked the earth between 30,000 and 50,000 years ago has possibly added a new branch to the human family tree. The piece of bone was found in the Denisova Cave in the Altai Mountains, [...]
February 10, 2010
Artist's impression of Inuk based on genetic analysis Nuka Godfredsen/Nature Tufts of hair rescued from the permafrost in Greenland and then tucked away in a basement in Denmark for more than 20 years have given scientists their first glimpse into the genetics of an ancient human. Eske Willerslev and [...]
September 9, 2009
About 10,000 years ago, the prehistoric hunter-gatherers of Europe began meeting some new neighbors. These farmers spread gradually at first, expanding from the Near East through Anatolia and the Balkans. Then agriculture exploded, reaching present-day Britain within a few thousand years. The farmers [...]
July 1, 2009
On August 20, 79 AD, a series of small tremors and earthquakes began to shake the two ancient Roman cities of Pompeii and Herculaneum. Lying in the shadow of Mount Vesuvius — about 150 miles south of the Roman capital — the two cities were often hit by tremors and earthquakes, so most residents were [...]
December 10, 2008
Archaeologists rarely agree on anything. So it's no surprise that for years two groups of scholars have drawn completely opposite conclusions about the relationship between the ancient people of Thailand and China. Some experts argue that, thousands of years ago, people from Thailand migrated into East [...]
November 19, 2008
About 4,600 years ago, in northern Germany, a small village buried 13 of its residents. The deceased ranged in age from less than a year to nearly 60 years old and were buried in pairs or small groups. And virtually all of them had suffered violent, probably painful deaths. Because the majority of the [...]
July 15, 2008
(Ed: Newer research suggests that Homo sapiens and Neanderthals did in fact interbreed. On average, two to four percent of DNA in present-day humans who trace their ancestry from Europe or Asia comes from our Neanderthal cousins. 23andMe customers can check out their own Neanderthal ancestry here! -- [...]
