All articles tagged with #archaeology and anthropology
Ancient DNA from teeth of 46 hunter-gatherers buried near Lake Baikal, Siberia, shows fragments of Yersinia pestis in more than one-third, marking two outbreaks beginning about 5,500 years ago—the oldest known plague. This challenges the view that mass disease outbreaks began with agriculture and suggests plague circulated in hunter-gatherer communities, possibly spreading via marmots.
Trump’s border-wall expansion in the Arizona desert damaged a rare Indigenous intaglio—a roughly 200‑foot ground etching resembling a fish and thought to be at least 1,000 years old—after heavy machinery cut a 60–70‑foot swath inside Cabeza Prieta National Wildlife Refuge. The project’s DHS waivers to bypass environmental and Indigenous protections have alarmed Native communities and conservationists as hundreds of miles of barriers are rapidly built across the border, prompting calls for accountability and greater site protection.
Ancient DNA confirms interbreeding between Neanderthals and Homo sapiens, showing a consistent pattern: Neanderthal fathers and Homo sapiens mothers produced hybrids, and these legacy genes are carried by many people today, illustrating the long-running process of archaic introgression.