All articles tagged with #ancientdna
An international team analyzed ancient DNA from the Medici brothers’ remains and detected Plasmodium falciparum infections, confirming malaria as the cause of death for Francesco and Giovanni and ending centuries of poisoning speculation.
An international team reports the first recovery of ancient human DNA from cave-wall calcite on 24 rock-art panels across 11 caves in Spain and Portugal, including Escoural and Altamira. The DNA traces, sometimes found on painted or unpainted walls, imply people touched or lingered at these sites thousands of years ago and may record movement and activity beyond what the art alone shows. In some samples, nuclear DNA aligns with Western Hunter-Gatherers and allows occasional sex inferences; the Escoural painted sample yielded ancient mitochondrial DNA, while an Altamira pigment sample showed DNA fragments but no strong ancient signal. The human DNA is at least 4,000–5,000 years old, with uncertain dating, and researchers caution that sampling remains destructive. If refined, this approach could help map cave use, gender distribution, and possibly which groups created or interacted with the art, adding a new dimension to prehistoric studies.
A Leiden-led study analyzed 27 Neanderthal genomes from France and Belgium, including a Les Cottés individual, revealing diverse, interconnected communities with distinct ancestral lineages and no evidence of recent contact with modern humans.
A Nature study analyzing genomes from 27 Neanderthals in Belgium and France—including a high-quality GN1 genome from Goyet—finds these late groups were genetically diverse and broadly connected across western Europe. The results challenge views of isolated, inbred populations and suggest regular long‑distance contact, with no evidence of recent interbreeding with modern humans in northwestern Europe. The data indicate a network of interconnected communities persisting until near the Neanderthals’ extinction around 52,500 years ago, while some older lineages persisted alongside newer ones.
A Princeton team led by Joshua Akey used IBDmix to compare modern humans with Neanderthals and Denisovans, revealing three interbreeding pulses roughly 200–250k, 120k, and 50–60k years ago. The finding suggests Neanderthals weren’t simply extinct but were repeatedly absorbed into the human lineage, with about 2.5–3.7% of non-African DNA of Neanderthal origin and bidirectional gene flow between the groups, reshaping the extinction narrative with a long, complex history of contact.
DNA from teeth at four Siberian cemeteries shows Yersinia pestis in victims dating to about 5,500 years ago, making this the oldest known plague outbreak and indicating that hunter-gatherers near Lake Baikal were devastated before farming communities. The early strain lacked later virulence genes but was still deadly, likely spreading pneumonically and disproportionately affecting children; burial patterns suggest the disease spread within families along the Angara River, challenging the idea that plague only emerged with agriculture.
Two waves of lethal Yersinia pestis outbreaks occurred among mid-Holocene hunter-gatherers near Lake Baikal around 5,500 years ago, with a 39% plague detection rate across four cemeteries. The Baikal strains are basal to known plague lineages and lack flea-transmission genes, implying rapid human-to-human spread (likely pneumonic) rather than flea-borne transmission. Outbreaks disproportionately affected children, clustered within tight radiocarbon date ranges, and kin groups show contemporaneous deaths, suggesting swift transmission within mobile communities. These findings push the plague’s origin earlier than Europe’s Neolithic cases and point to longstanding marmot/rodent reservoirs driving recurrent spillovers in Asia.
A Nature study of four Siberian graves near Lake Baikal, dating to about 5,500 years ago, found Yersinia pestis DNA in roughly 40% of the remains, offering the oldest evidence of plague and suggesting two prehistoric outbreaks that spread within families among hunter‑gatherers. The bacterium likely caused pneumonic plague at the time—not the flea‑borne bubonic form that emerged later—and the findings challenge the idea that the Neolithic agricultural shift was the primary driver of plague emergence, showing it could affect hunter‑gatherer communities as well.
A large-scale ancient genomics study from southern Germany’s former Roman frontier shows a major demographic shift after the late Roman period, with northern-European ancestry mixing with diverse Roman populations between 470–620 CE, and persistence of genetic structure into the sixth century before forming a population resembling modern Central Europeans by the early seventh century. Using Chronograph, a Bayesian method that integrates grave dating, radiocarbon and kinship, the researchers estimate a 28-year generation time, life expectancy around 40 years for women and 43 years for men, and high infant mortality, with roughly a quarter of children losing a parent by age 10. The social system appears to center on nuclear, monogamous families with strict incest avoidance and no levirate, echoing Late Roman practices. Despite a Frankish takeover around 540 CE, population structure remained largely stable, though long-distance migrations and nonlocal individuals were evident in pre- and post-Roman contexts. The findings challenge a simple “barbarian migration” narrative, highlighting gradual demographic reorganization driven by mobility and local integration across a broad region.
A study of eight Neanderthal teeth from Stajnia Cave in Poland reveals a small, tightly related group of at least seven individuals who lived around 100,000 years ago, sharing a common maternal lineage. The mitochondrial DNA links these Poles to Neanderthal populations across Western Eurasia, suggesting a wide, interconnected Neanderthal network and providing a rare window into family structures and group living in ancient Europe.
A Harvard-led study analyzing about 16,000 ancient genomes and DNA from over 6,000 modern people identifies around 479 genetic variants under selection in the last 10,000 years, including MC1R variants linked to red hair and pale skin, which may have spread because pale skin absorbs vitamin D more efficiently as farming diets became common.
A new PNAS study shows Neanderthals underwent a severe genetic bottleneck tens of thousands of years before their extinction, drastically reducing genetic diversity across Eurasia. The finding suggests their decline was gradual and climate-driven, with isolated refugia and fragmented populations, rather than a single catastrophe from modern humans, and helps explain their eventual disappearance even as interbreeding left a Neanderthal genetic legacy in modern humans.
Harvard-led analysis of nearly 16,000 ancient West Eurasian genomes finds that natural selection accelerated over the last 10,000 years as farming reshaped populations. The study identified 479 gene variants repeatedly favored or opposed, influencing traits such as skin tone and hair color and linked to disease risk, illustrating how modern humans carry evolutionary legacies from agricultural transitions; the dataset is publicly available for broader research.
A large ancient-DNA study of nearly 16,000 West Eurasian individuals finds that natural selection accelerated in the last 10,000 years as farming spread, identifying 479 gene variants tied to traits such as red hair, lighter skin, and lower body fat, with some links to modern diseases like type 2 diabetes and schizophrenia; the researchers have made their dataset public to enable broader cross-population analysis.
Ancient DNA from two 7,000-year-old Libyan skeletons reveals a previously unknown North African lineage that remained isolated from sub-Saharan, Near Eastern, and European groups, indicating pastoralism spread via cultural diffusion rather than large-scale migrations and showing the Green Sahara did not serve as a major migration corridor.