Return of the Anthropology Thread

[Stuart Galbraith]

 

[JWB]

What ancient rabbis knew about nonbinary genders (msn.com)

[sunday]

1 hour ago, JWB said:

What ancient rabbis knew about nonbinary genders (msn.com)

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In spite of this textual tradition, many observant Jewish communities today still tend toward a gender binary. In most Orthodox synagogues, for example, a physical partition divides the worship space into two sections: one for men and one for women.

Good for them!

[Ivanhoe]

https://scitechdaily.com/challenging-assumptions-scientists-unearth-untold-technological-secrets-of-neanderthals/

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New excavations at the Neanderthal site of Chez-Pinaud-Jonzac (Charente-Maritime), carried out by an international team since 2019, have made it possible to reconsider this assumption. Current studies have shown that bone tools are as numerous as flint ones. Moreover, their diversity provides evidence for a genuine industry that consists not only of retouchers but also of cutting tools, scrapers, chisels, and smoothers, used for various activities and on multiple materials.

 

[Ivanhoe]

https://journals.plos.org/plosgenetics/article?id=10.1371/journal.pgen.1010360

 

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Here we present two high-quality Pictish genomes (2.4 and 16.5X coverage) from central and northern Scotland dated from the 5th-7th century which we impute and co-analyse with >8,300 previously published ancient and modern genomes. Using allele frequency and haplotype-based approaches, we can firmly place the genomes within the Iron Age gene pool in Britain and demonstrate regional biological affinity. We also demonstrate the presence of population structure within Pictish groups, with Orcadian Picts being genetically distinct from their mainland contemporaries. When investigating Identity-By-Descent (IBD) with present-day genomes, we observe broad affinities between the mainland Pictish genomes and the present-day people living in western Scotland, Wales, Northern Ireland and Northumbria, but less with the rest of England, the Orkney islands and eastern Scotland—where the political centres of Pictland were located. The pre-Viking Age Orcadian Picts evidence a high degree of IBD sharing across modern Scotland, Wales, Northern Ireland, and the Orkney islands, demonstrating substantial genetic continuity in Orkney for the last ~2,000 years.

 

[JWB]

Neanderthals live on within us.

These ancient human cousins, and others called Denisovans, once lived alongside our early Homo sapiens ancestors. They mingled and had children. So some of who they were never went away — it’s in our genes. And science is starting to reveal just how much that shapes us.

Using the new and rapidly improving ability to piece together fragments of ancient DNA, scientists are finding that traits inherited from our ancient cousins are still with us now, affecting our fertility, our immune systems, even how our bodies handled the COVID-19 virus.

https://apnews.com/article/neanderthals-denisovans-genetics-dna-disease-e49cb7d939cfe5d583e7ed0af8751784?taid=651195e92c604f0001c11e41&utm_campaign=TrueAnthem&utm_medium=AP&utm_source=Twitter

[Ivanhoe]

Neanderthal Privilege. 

 

[JWB]

 

[Ivanhoe]

2 hours ago, JWB said:

 

Impossible. The Science Is Settled. 

[sunday]

2 hours ago, Ivanhoe said:

Impossible. The Science Is Settled. 

Looks like there are still some real scientists around...

[lucklucky]

https://www.sciencealert.com/oxford-was-the-murder-capital-of-late-medieval-england-and-it-was-all-because-of-students

Oxford Was The Murder Capital of Late Medieval England, And It Was All Because of Students

[DB]

Send for Brother Cadfael!

[lucklucky]

Did not know, are the books good?

[Ivanhoe]

I never read the books, but the TV series starring Derek Jacobi was exceptional. 

 

[lucklucky]

Thanks

[Ivanhoe]

https://www.science.org/content/article/ancient-siberian-cave-hosted-neanderthals-denisovans-and-modern-humans-possibly-same

 

Quote

A decade ago, anthropologists shocked the world when they discovered a fossil pinkie bone from a then-unknown group of extinct humans in Siberia's Denisova Cave. The group was named "Denisovans" in its honor. Now, an extensive analysis of DNA in the cave's soils reveals it also hosted modern humans—who arrived early enough that they may have once lived there alongside Denisovans and Neanderthals.

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Working with another team of experts who had previously dated the layers of the cave, the researchers dug out 728 soil samples. After 2 years of analysis, in which they isolated and sequenced the samples, the researchers found human DNA in 175 of them. That makes the study "the largest and most systematic of its kind," says Katerina Douka, an archaeological scientist at the Max Planck Institute for the Science of Human History who was not involved in the work.

 

[Ivanhoe]

https://www.sciencealert.com/unknown-human-lineage-found-buried-in-the-neanderthal-genome

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During their Late Pleistocene overlap in Eurasia, however, we know the two hominin species sometimes interbred, since many humans today still have traces of Neanderthal DNA.

And according to a new study, this relationship goes back even farther than we thought, with a long-forgotten earlier chapter re-emerging from clues in the Neanderthal genome.

When modern humans reached Eurasia in the Late Pleistocene, the study suggests, Neanderthals living there already carried traces of our species' DNA, apparently from a much older, previously unknown run-in with an even more ancient lineage of anatomically modern humans.

That would mean some Homo sapiens ventured into Eurasia more than 250,000 years ago, the study's authors report, long before the continent's earliest evidence of modern humans. For context, the fossil record indicates our species evolved in Africa only 300,000 years ago.

"We found this reflection of ancient interbreeding where genes flowed from ancient modern humans into Neanderthals," says Alexander Platt, an evolutionary biologist at the University of Pennsylvania.

 

 

[Ivanhoe]

https://www.science.org/content/article/warrior-skeletons-reveal-bronze-age-europeans-couldn-t-drink-milk

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About 3000 years ago, thousands of warriors fought on the banks of the Tollense river in northern Germany. They wielded weapons of wood, stone, and bronze to deadly effect: Over the past decade, archaeologists have unearthed the skeletal remains of hundreds of people buried in marshy soil. It's one of the largest prehistoric conflicts ever discovered.

Now, genetic testing of the skeletons reveals the homelands of the warriors—and unearths a shocker about early European diets: These soldiers couldn't digest fresh milk.

 

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But the Tollense skeletons show that at least 6000 more years went by before the gene for lactase persistence caught on. The DNA results also quash the theory, first proposed in 2015, that the gene for lactase persistence was imported to Western Europe at about 5000 B.C.E. by cow-herding nomads from the steppes of modern-day Ukraine and Russia, the Yamnaya people.

 

 

[lucklucky]

I don't get the calendar. How 6000 more years went by when it was about 3000 years ago. Or am i reading it incorrectly?

[sunday]

3 hours ago, lucklucky said:

I don't get the calendar. How 6000 more years went by when it was about 3000 years ago. Or am i reading it incorrectly?

From the article:

Quote

Other studies have shown lactase persistence was common in parts of Germany by 500 C.E., and widespread across the region by 1000 C.E. So the gene must have spread before that time, but after the battle just 2000 years earlier. That means that within about 100 generations, the mutation had penetrated populations across Europe. "That's the strongest selection found in the human genome," Burger says.

The finding only deepens the mystery of lactase persistence. In a 2007 study, Burger showed that Europe's first farmers, living more than 8000 years ago, weren't lactase persistent either. At the time, he argued that the mutation gradually spread along with the development of agriculture and herding, a theory supported by signs of milking and cheese- and yogurt-making in Stone Age Europe. People able to digest milk, the argument went, would be able to get more calories from their herds than those without, and more of their children would survive to pass on the gene.

But the Tollense skeletons show that at least 6000 more years went by before the gene for lactase persistence caught on. The DNA results also quash the theory, first proposed in 2015, that the gene for lactase persistence was imported to Western Europe at about 5000 B.C.E. by cow-herding nomads from the steppes of modern-day Ukraine and Russia, the Yamnaya people.

Tollense battle should have been fought 1000 years BC

[lucklucky]

So in the other direction, so 9000 years?

[sunday]

No, the previous theory was this:

Quote

But the Tollense skeletons show that at least 6000 more years went by before the gene for lactase persistence caught on. The DNA results also quash the theory, first proposed in 2015, that the gene for lactase persistence was imported to Western Europe at about 5000 B.C.E. by cow-herding nomads from the steppes of modern-day Ukraine and Russia, the Yamnaya people.

But Tollense battle was in 1000 BC, so 4000 years after the supposed import of the gen for lactase persistance, there was no lactase persistance among the participants in the battle, and that persistance was found in 1000 AC, so 6000 years after the immigration of the cow-herding nomads in 5000 AC.

[lucklucky]

5000 BC i think what you meant to say.

[sunday]

Yes, sorry.

[lucklucky]

No problem. Thanks.