All blue-eyed people related to single European ancestor Every blue-eyed person on the planet is descended from a single European who lived around 6,000 to 10,000 years ago, and who first developed a specific mutation that accounts for the now widespread iris coloration. Originally, all humans had brown eyes, although genetic variation relating to a gene called OCA2 resulted in changes to the amount of pigment produced by different individuals, resulting in the emergence of different shades of brown. Armed with this information, scientists had for many years searched for the source of blue eyes on the OCA2 gene, but without success. More recently, a mutation to a separate, nearby gene called HERC2 has been identified as the cause of blue eyes. The fact that every blue-eyed person alive today has this same mutation is pretty compelling evidence for this theory, although the identity of the initial mutant remains something of a mystery.
Ötzi Ötzi (German pronunciation: [ˈœtsi] ( ); also called Ötzi the Iceman, the Similaun Man, the Man from Hauslabjoch, Homo tyrolensis, and the Hauslabjoch mummy) is a well-preserved natural mummy of a man who lived around 3,300 BCE.[2][3] The mummy was found in September 1991 in the Ötztal Alps, hence Ötzi, near the Similaun mountain and Hauslabjoch on the border between Austria and Italy.[4] He is Europe's oldest known natural human mummy, and has offered an unprecedented view of Chalcolithic Europeans. His body and belongings are displayed in the South Tyrol Museum of Archaeology in Bolzano, South Tyrol, Italy. Discovery Ötzi the Iceman while still frozen in the glacier, photographed by Helmut Simon upon the discovery of the body in September 1991 46°46′45.8″N 10°50′25.1″E / 46.779389°N 10.840306°E / 46.779389; 10.840306.[7] The province of South Tyrol therefore claimed property rights, but agreed to let Innsbruck University finish its scientific examinations. Scientific analyses Body Blood
Cannibalism among late Neandertals in northern Europe – HeritageDaily 214 Shares Share Tweet Email Tübingen researchers in international team uncover grisly evidence that Neandertals butchered their own kind some 40,000 years ago. Neandertal bones from an excavation in Belgium have yielded evidence of intentional butchering. Professors Hervé Bocherens and Johannes Krause of Tübingen’s Senckenberg Center for Human Evolution and Palaeoenvironment, along with Cosimo Posth and Christoph Wissing, also of the University of Tübingen, took part in the investigations. By making a complete analysis of the mitochondrial DNA of ten Neandertals, the researchers doubled the existing genetic data on this species of humans which died out some 30,000 years ago. The Troisième caverne of Goyet was excavated nearly 150 years ago. Some Neandertal remains from Goyet have been worked by human hands, as evidenced by cut marks, pits and notches. Universitaet Tübingen
The Iceman had a tummy bug On the day that Ötzi the “Iceman” was murdered in the Tyrolean Alps of Italy about 5300 years ago, he had a full stomach—and a tummy bug. But it wasn’t just any gut microbe—this early farmer was infected with a particular ancient strain of Helicobacter pylori bacteria that is most similar to modern Asian strains. By sequencing the genome of this ancient pathogen, which can cause ulcers in people today, researchers have made a surprising discovery about Ötzi’s own history: His ancestors inherited bacteria from Asia rather than Africa, suggesting that the predecessors of early European farmers had intimate contact with Asians before they migrated to Europe. H. pylori is probably the most successful bacterium to infect humans, and lurks in the guts of almost half of all people today. In Europe today, for example, the most common type (known as hpEurope) shares elements of DNA with types of H. pylori from both Africa and Asia.
Omayra Sánchez Omayra Sánchez Garzón (August 28, 1972 – November 16, 1985) was a 13-year-old Colombian girl killed in Armero, Tolima, by the 1985 eruption of the Nevado del Ruiz volcano. Volcanic debris mixed with ice to form massive lahars (volcanically induced mudflows, landslides, and debris flows) that rushed into the river valleys below the mountain, killing nearly 23,000 people and destroying Armero and 13 other villages. After a lahar demolished her home, Sánchez was pinned beneath the debris of her house, where she remained trapped in water for three days. Her plight was documented as she descended from calmness into agony. Her courage and dignity touched journalists and relief workers, who put great efforts into comforting her. A photograph of Sánchez taken by the photojournalist Frank Fournier shortly before she died was published in news outlets around the world. Background[edit] On November 13, 1985, the Nevado del Ruiz volcano erupted. Life[edit] Death[edit] Photograph[edit] Legacy[edit]
The most isolated tribe in the world? In the days after the cataclysmic tsunami of 2004, as the full scale of the destruction and horror wreaked upon the islands of the Indian Ocean became apparent, the fate of the tribal peoples of the Andaman Islands remained a mystery. It seemed inconceivable, above all, that the Sentinelese islanders could have survived, living as they did on a remote island directly in the tsunami’s path. Yet when a helicopter flew low over the island, a Sentinelese man rushed out on to the beach, aiming his arrow at the pilot in a gesture that clearly said, ‘We don’t want you here’. Alone of the tens of millions of people affected by the disaster, the Sentinelese needed no help from anyone. Perhaps no people on Earth remain more genuinely isolated than the Sentinelese. This does not mean, however, that they live just as they did 60,000 years ago. Like so many isolated tribal people with a fearsome reputation, the Sentinelese are often inaccurately described as ‘savage’ or ‘backward’.
Genetic Study Confirms Australian Aborigines Have Been Isolated For 50,000 Years The indigenous aborigines of Australia have one of the oldest histories of any group of people living outside of Africa. The general consensus is that modern humans reached the continent around 50,000 years ago, tens of thousands of years before humans even managed to populate Europe. There have, however, been questions about just how isolated the aborigines have been during this long history, and whether there were later influxes of people. A new study looking into the genetic history of aboriginal men has seemingly managed to answer this, at least for male descendants. The dingo is not technically native to Australia, though it has lived there for thousands of years. “We worked closely with Aboriginal Australian communities to sequence the Y chromosome DNA from 13 male volunteers to investigate their ancestry,” explains Anders Bergstrom, who co-authored the study published in Current Biology, in a statement. Yet this still leaves another question unanswered. Photo Gallery
Álvar Núñez Cabeza de Vaca Álvar Núñez Cabeza de Vaca (Jerez de la Frontera, c. 1488/1490/1492[1] – Seville, c. 1557/1558/1559[1]/1560[2]) was a Spanish explorer of the New World, and one of four survivors of the 1527 Narváez expedition. During eight years of traveling across the US Southwest, he became a trader and faith healer to various Native American tribes before reconnecting with Spanish colonial forces in Mexico in 1536. After returning to Spain in 1537, he wrote an account, first published in 1542 as La Relación ("The Relation", or in more modern terms "The Account"[3]), which in later editions was retitled Naufragios ("Shipwrecks"). In 1540 Cabeza de Vaca was appointed adelantado of what is now Argentina, where he was governor and captain general of Río de la Plata.[4] He worked to build up the population of Buenos Aires, where settlement had declined due to the poor administration. Early life and education[edit] Coat of Arms of Cabeza de Vaca from the Archivo de Indias, Sevilla, Spain. Spanish[edit]
The Great Human Disruptions One can appreciate a work of art on two levels. When one beholds the sculpted renderings of the Classical Greeks, across the distance of more than 2,000 years we can feel viscerally that they have touched something beautiful, and made it stone. To reduce this to biology, our perception maps onto to deep grooves in our evolutionary landscape of aesthetic judgments. As a savanna ape the darkness of the forest haunts us with its beauty and majesty; but we are the children of the meadows and edges of the Paleolithic pastoral. Similarly, on some level we acknowledge physical beauty when we see it, before we even think it Another level of appreciation is narrower, and that is one where you have awareness of the ingenuity of technique, the deep virtuosity and fluency of execution. Reading Iosif Lazaridis’ The genetic structure of the world’s first farmers you can evaluate on both levels. To get to where we are now, and the embarrassment of copious conclusions, researchers needed three things:
Neanderthals Built Mystery Cave Rings 175,000 Years Ago They painted magnificent cave paintings. They mastered fire and used tools. And now we know they constructed complex buildings deep within subterranean caves, and they did it more than 175,000 years ago. No, we're not talking about early humans. Neanderthals did all this. A team of archaeologists led by Jacques Jaubert at the University of Bordeaux in France has just completed an archaeological examination of a mysterious find: the rubble of two ancient Neanderthal-made buildings meticulously crafted from stalagmites. Advertisement - Continue Reading Below "Because Neanderthals were the only [human-related primate] group present in western Europe at that time, the discovery provides the first directly dated evidence for Neanderthals' construction abilities. 3D reconstruction of the structures in the Bruniquel Cave. Xavier MUTH - Get in Situ, Archéotransfert, Archéovision -SHS-3D, base photographique Pascal Mora One of the ring structures is about 7 feet in diameter. Michel SOULIER - SSAC
Ota Benga Ota Benga (circa 1883[1] – March 20, 1916) was a Congolese man, an Mbuti pygmy known for being featured in an anthropology exhibit at the Louisiana Purchase Exposition in St. Louis, Missouri in 1904, and in a human zoo exhibit in 1906 at the Bronx Zoo. Benga had been purchased from African slave traders by the explorer Samuel Phillips Verner, a businessman hunting Africans for the Exposition.[2] He traveled with Verner to the United States. At the Bronx Zoo, Benga had free run of the grounds before and after he was exhibited in the zoo's Monkey House. Except for a brief visit with Verner to Africa after the close of the St. Louis Fair, Benga lived in the United States, mostly in Virginia, for the rest of his life. Displays of non-Western humans as examples of "earlier stages" of human evolution were common in the early 20th century, when racial theories were frequently intertwined with concepts from evolutionary biology. The mayor released Benga to the custody of Reverend James M. St.
Ancient ‘Deep Skull’ from Borneo full of surprises – HeritageDaily 704 Shares Share Tweet Email A new study of the 37,000-year old remains of the “Deep Skull” – the oldest modern human discovered in island South-East Asia – has revealed this ancient person was not related to Indigenous Australians, as had been originally thought. The Deep Skull was also likely to have been an older woman, rather than a teenage boy. The research, led by UNSW Australia Associate Professor Darren Curnoe, represents the most detailed investigation of the ancient cranium specimen since it was found in Niah Cave in Sarawak in 1958. “Our analysis overturns long-held views about the early history of this region,” says Associate Professor Curnoe, Director of the UNSW Palaeontology, Geobiology and Earth Archives Research Centre (PANGEA). “We’ve found that these very ancient remains most closely resemble some of the Indigenous people of Borneo today, with their delicately built features and small body size, rather than Indigenous people from Australia.”
Research findings back up Aboriginal legend on origin of Central Australian palm trees Updated The scientific world is stunned by research which backs an Aboriginal legend about how palm trees got to Central Australia. Several years ago Tasmanian ecologist David Bowman did DNA tests on palm seeds from the outback and near Darwin. A striking example of how traditional ecological knowledge can inform and enhance scientific research. Professor David Bowman, University of Tasmania The results led him to conclude the seeds were carried to the Central Desert by humans up to 30,000 years ago. Professor Bowman read an Aboriginal legend recorded in 1894 by pioneering German anthropologist and missionary Carl Strehlow, which was only recently translated, describing the "gods from the north" bringing the seeds to Palm Valley. Professor Bowman said he was amazed. "We're talking about a verbal tradition which had been transmitted through generations possibly for over 7,000, possibly 30,000 years," he said.