Abstract: “Walrus ivory was a prized commodity in medieval Europe and was supplied by Norse intermediaries who expanded across the North Atlantic, establishing settlements in Iceland and Greenland. However, the precise sources of the traded ivory have long remained unclear, raising important questions about the sustainability of commercial walrus harvesting, the extent to which Greenland Norse were able to continue mounting their own long-range hunting expeditions, and the degree to which they relied on trading ivory with the various Arctic Indigenous peoples that they were starting to encounter. We use high-resolution genomic sourcing methods to track walrus artifacts back to specific hunting grounds, demonstrating that Greenland Norse obtained ivory from High Arctic waters, especially the North Water Polynya, and possibly from the interior Canadian Arctic. These results substantially expand the assumed range of Greenland Norse ivory harvesting activities and support intriguing archaeological evidence for substantive interactions with Thule Inuit, plus possible encounters with Tuniit (Late Dorset Pre-Inuit).”

Abstract: “Uncertainties regarding traditional osteological methods in biological sex estimation can often be overcome with genomic and proteomic analyses. The combination of the three methodologies has been used for a better understanding of the gender-related funerary rituals at the Iberian megalithic cemetery of Panoría. As a result, 44 individuals have been sexed including, for the first time, non-adults. Contrary to the male bias found in many Iberian and European megalithic monuments, the Panoría population shows a clear sex ratio imbalance in favour of females, with twice as many females as males. Furthermore, this imbalance is found regardless of the criterion considered: sex ratio by tomb, chronological period, method of sex estimation, or age group. Biological relatedness was considered as possible sociocultural explanations for this female-related bias. However, the current results obtained for Panoría are indicative of a female-centred social structure potentially influencing rites and cultural traditions.”

Abstract: The Maghreb (north-west Africa) played an important role during the Palaeolithic and later in connecting the western Mediterranean from the Phoenician to Islamic periods. Yet, knowledge of its later prehistory is limited, particularly between c. 4000 and 1000 BC. Here, the authors present the first results of investigations at Oued Beht, Morocco, revealing a hitherto unknown farming society dated to c. 3400–2900 BC. This is currently the earliest and largest agricultural complex in Africa beyond the Nile corridor. Pottery and lithics, together with numerous pits, point to a community that brings the Maghreb into dialogue with contemporaneous wider western Mediterranean developments.

Snippet: Near the coast of Peru lies the ancient city of Caral, which was in existence at the same time as the Egyptians were still building the pyramids. Caral is said to be the first ancient city of the Americas.

Caral was the central city on Peru’s coastline from 3000 to 1800 BC. Today, it is remembered for the massive stone complex its people left behind. The Stone City spans over 150 square miles of desert and contains many plazas, houses for both the elite and residents, and a 60-foot temple.

Abstract: “Southern Africa has one of the longest records of fossil hominins and harbours the largest human genetic diversity in the world. Yet, despite its relevance for human origins and spread around the globe, the formation and processes of its gene pool in the past are still largely unknown. Here, we present a time transect of genome-wide sequences from nine individuals recovered from a single site in South Africa, Oakhurst Rockshelter. Spanning the whole Holocene, the ancient DNA of these individuals allows us to reconstruct the demographic trajectories of the indigenous San population and their ancestors during the last 10,000 years. We show that, in contrast to most regions around the world, the population history of southernmost Africa was not characterized by several waves of migration, replacement and admixture but by long-lasting genetic continuity from the early Holocene to the end of the Later Stone Age. Although the advent of pastoralism and farming substantially transformed the gene pool in most parts of southern Africa after 1,300 BP, we demonstrate using allele-frequency and identity-by-descent segment-based methods that the ‡Khomani San and Karretjiemense from South Africa still show direct signs of relatedness to the Oakhurst hunter-gatherers, a pattern obscured by recent, extensive non-Southern African admixture. Yet, some southern San in South Africa still preserve this ancient, Pleistocene-derived genetic signature, extending the period of genetic continuity until today.”

Published Summary: Neanderthal genomes have been recovered from sites across Eurasia, painting an increasingly complex picture of their populations’ structure that mostly indicates that late European Neanderthals belonged to a single metapopulation with no significant evidence of population structure. Here, we report the discovery of a late Neanderthal individual, nicknamed “Thorin,” from Grotte Mandrin in Mediterranean France, and his genome. These dentognathic fossils, including a rare example of distomolars, are associated with a rich archeological record of Neanderthal final technological traditions in this region ∼50–42 thousand years ago. Thorin’s genome reveals a relatively early divergence of ∼105 ka with other late Neanderthals. Thorin belonged to a population with a small group size that showed no genetic introgression with other known late European Neanderthals, revealing some 50 ka of genetic isolation of his lineage despite them living in neighboring regions. These results have important implications for resolving competing hypotheses about causes of the disappearance of the Neanderthals.

Snippet: “Life during prehistory was believed to be as Thomas Hobbes described: “nasty, brutish and short.” However, this new study shows these teens were actually quite healthy. Most individuals in the study sample entered puberty by 13.5, reaching full adulthood between 17 and 22 years old. This indicates these Ice Age adolescents started puberty at a similar time to teens in modern, wealthy countries.”

Link to research study (open access)

The study(not open access), published today in *Science *and co-led by the University of Bristol and China University of Geosciences (Wuhan), has shed new light on why the effects of rapid climate change in the Permian-Triassic warming were so devastating for all forms of life in the sea and on land.

What AR games are good for runners? I’ve played Run an Empire and Zombies! Run which are okay but looking for other options in the genre where I can use my fitness activity to gather resources and build when I’m at home or similar.

There is no reason to require this setting for users who aren’t posting live videos.

I love the concept of apple’s in house journal app which allows you to create dated posts that include text, videos, and photos. I hate the idea of writing anything private in a journal hosted by apple as well as the fact that apple could discontinue at any time. Any ideas on a way to achieve something similar in a clean interface (a long word document wouldn’t cut it) without the middle man? A dedicated un-networked device even?

Link to research article (open access)

Snippet: “"It was extremely exciting to be able to count the chromosomes of an extinct creature for the first time. It's usually not possible to have this much fun simply counting from one to 28."

By examining the fossil chromosomes, which derived from the mammoth's skin, it was possible to see which genes were active. This is because of a phenomenon called chromosome compartmentalization—the fact that active and inactive DNA tends to segregate into two spatial neighborhoods inside the cell nucleus. For most genes, the activity state matches what researchers saw in modern elephant skin. But not always.

"The obvious question for us was: why is it a 'woolly mammoth?' Why isn't it a 'shockingly bald mammoth?'" said Dr. Thomas Gilbert, director of the Center for Hologenomics and co-corresponding author of the paper.

"The fact that the compartmentalization was still preserved in these fossils was critical, because it made it possible to look, for the very first time, at which genes were active in a woolly mammoth. And it turns out that there are key genes that regulate hair follicle development whose activity pattern is totally different than in elephants."

Researchers learned much but they were left with a puzzle: how could the DNA fragments of ancient chromosomes possibly survive for 52,000 years with their three-dimensional structure intact? After all, in 1905—his 'annus mirabilis,' or 'miracle year'—Albert Einstein published a classic paper calculating how quickly small particles, like bits of DNA, tend to move through a substance.

"Einstein's work makes a very simple prediction about chromosome fossils: under ordinary circumstances, they shouldn't exist," Dudchenko said. "And yet: here they are. It was a physics mystery."

To explain this apparent contradiction, the researchers realized that the chromosome fossils were in a very special state, closely resembling the state of molecules in glass. "Chromoglass is a lot like the glass in your window: it's rigid, but it's not an ordered crystal," said Dr. Erez Lieberman Aiden, co-corresponding author of the study, director of the Center for Genome Architecture and professor at the Baylor College of Medicine.“

https://www.ancient-origins.net/news-evolution-human-origins-ancient-places-asia/jabal-kaf-addor-rock-shelter-0021004

It was a decent