In recent years, DNA evidence has added important new tools for scientists studying the human past. Now, a collection of reviews published by Cell Press in a special issue of Current Biology published online on February 22nd offers a timely update on how new genetic evidence, together with archaeological and linguistic evidence, has enriched our understanding of human history on earth.
"To understand what it is to be human, it is essential to understand the human past," says Colin Renfrew of the University of Cambridge, who first coined the term "archaeogenetics" and is the author of a guest editorial in the special issue. "Nearly all civilizations have their own origin or creation myth. Now we can use archaeogenetics to tell a global story that is robust and applicable to all human communities everywhere."
The journey started around 60 to 70 thousand years ago in Africa, where modern humans evolved more than 150 thousand years ago, and where human diversity is still the highest among all continents in terms of genetic variation and languages. From there, humans settled Europe and South Asia and reached Oceania. The Americas (apart from the remote Oceanian islands) were settled last.
Science & Technology
US authorities will return to Egypt an ornately painted pharaonic coffin smuggled out of the country more than 125 years ago, Egyptian culture minister Faruq Hosni said.
The 3000-year-old casket, which was painted with inscriptions to help its occupant in the afterlife, would be handed over to Egypt's antiquities chief Zahi Hawass next month, Mr Hosni said.
Egypt last year had asked the United States to return the wooden coffin, which dates back to the 21st dynasty (1081-931 BC) and contains the remains of a man named Emus but about whom little else was known.
Mr Hawass said US Immigration and Customs had contacted him in 2008 about the coffin after confiscating it from a Spanish merchant who had shipped it to Florida for sale.
The 3000-year-old casket, which was painted with inscriptions to help its occupant in the afterlife, would be handed over to Egypt's antiquities chief Zahi Hawass next month, Mr Hosni said.
Egypt last year had asked the United States to return the wooden coffin, which dates back to the 21st dynasty (1081-931 BC) and contains the remains of a man named Emus but about whom little else was known.
Mr Hawass said US Immigration and Customs had contacted him in 2008 about the coffin after confiscating it from a Spanish merchant who had shipped it to Florida for sale.
Rockefeller University's Jean Laurent Casanova spoke on the connection between genetics and infectious diseases at the 2010 annual conference of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) on Friday, February 19, focusing on current findings and putting them in context in this small but emerging field.
The talk, titled "Inborn Errors of Innate Immunity in Humans," was presented at AAAS's symposium on innate immunity at 1:50 p.m. in Room 5A at the San Diego Convention Center.
Drawing from his most recent work on invasive pneumococcal disease and herpes simplex encephalitis, Casanova presented evidence that infectious diseases in the general population depend to a large extent on underlying genetic vulnerabilities. While microbes are required for infection, he says, one's genetic background could make the difference between fighting an infection and succumbing to it.
The talk, titled "Inborn Errors of Innate Immunity in Humans," was presented at AAAS's symposium on innate immunity at 1:50 p.m. in Room 5A at the San Diego Convention Center.
Drawing from his most recent work on invasive pneumococcal disease and herpes simplex encephalitis, Casanova presented evidence that infectious diseases in the general population depend to a large extent on underlying genetic vulnerabilities. While microbes are required for infection, he says, one's genetic background could make the difference between fighting an infection and succumbing to it.
© Unknown
The INCO has made the country 14th to access the technology and go green in terms of energy generation.
"Such microbes can convert organic matter into electrical energy. Iranian researchers built a simple battery to collect the electricity generated by the micro-organic creatures," said Peyman Eqtesadi head of biological researches group in INCO.
"The microbes were responsible for generating electricity. Iranian researchers have designed and produced special cells to harvest ocean energy," Eqtesadi told IRNA.
© Berthold Steinhilber / Laif-Redux
A pillar at the Gobekli Tepe temple near Sanliurfa, Turkey, the oldest known temple in the world
A pillar at the Gobekli Tepe temple near Sanliurfa, Turkey, the oldest known temple in the world
Standing on the hill at dawn, overseeing a team of 40 Kurdish diggers, the German-born archeologist waves a hand over his discovery here, a revolution in the story of human origins. Schmidt has uncovered a vast and beautiful temple complex, a structure so ancient that it may be the very first thing human beings ever built. The site isn't just old, it redefines old: the temple was built 11,500 years ago - a staggering 7,000 years before the Great Pyramid, and more than 6,000 years before Stonehenge first took shape. The ruins are so early that they predate villages, pottery, domesticated animals, and even agriculture - the first embers of civilization. In fact, Schmidt thinks the temple itself, built after the end of the last Ice Age by hunter-gatherers, became that ember - the spark that launched mankind toward farming, urban life, and all that followed.
Floodwaters rise more than 1,000 feet as they slam into the Columbia River Gorge from the east. The torrent blasts through the narrows at 60 mph, carrying truck-size boulders and house-size icebergs. Reaching Portland, water loaded with gravel and dirt roils to a depth of 400 feet, leaving tiny islands at the summits of Mount Tabor and Rocky Butte.
Geologists have spent decades piecing together evidence to tell the story of the great Missoula floods that reshaped much of Oregon and Washington between 18,000 and 15,000 years ago.
Now scientists have found a way to travel back in time to watch the megafloods unfold, in a virtual bird's eye view. Their computer simulation displays the likely timing and play-by-play action, starting with the collapse of an ice dam and outpouring of a lake 200 miles across and 2,100 feet deep.
Geologists have spent decades piecing together evidence to tell the story of the great Missoula floods that reshaped much of Oregon and Washington between 18,000 and 15,000 years ago.
Now scientists have found a way to travel back in time to watch the megafloods unfold, in a virtual bird's eye view. Their computer simulation displays the likely timing and play-by-play action, starting with the collapse of an ice dam and outpouring of a lake 200 miles across and 2,100 feet deep.
© Paramount/Everett/Rex Features
This kind of speed could be fatal for the crew of the Enterprise
This kind of speed could be fatal for the crew of the Enterprise
Star Trek fans, prepare to be disappointed. Kirk, Spock and the rest of the crew would die within a second of the USS Enterprise approaching the speed of light.
The problem lies with Einstein's special theory of relativity. It transforms the thin wisp of hydrogen gas that permeates interstellar space into an intense radiation beam that would kill humans within seconds and destroy the spacecraft's electronic instruments.
Interstellar space is an empty place. For every cubic centimetre, there are fewer than two hydrogen atoms, on average, compared with 30 billion billion atoms of air here on Earth. But according to William Edelstein of the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine in Baltimore, Maryland, that sparse interstellar gas should worry the crew of a spaceship travelling close to the speed of light even more than Romulans decloaking off the starboard bow.
Special relativity describes how space and time are distorted for observers travelling at different speeds. For the crew of a spacecraft ramping up to light speed, interstellar space would appear highly compressed, thereby increasing the number of hydrogen atoms hitting the craft.
© Tim Gravestock
Messages from a long-lost universe
Messages from a long-lost universe
The project's computers automatically forwarded the images to a data server to await analysis. The same routine kicks in scores of times each year when a far-off star in its death throes explodes onto the night sky, before fading back to obscurity once more.
But this one did not fade away. It got brighter. And brighter. That's when human eyes became alert.
The supernova finally reached its peak brightness after 77 days. After 200 days - long after most supernovae have dwindled back into obscurity - it was still burning brightly. Only in October 2008, an unprecedented 555 days after it was first spotted, had it faded enough for the supernova hunters to call off their observations.
Digesting what they had seen took longer still. SN 2007bi, as dry protocol labelled the event, was one of the most extreme explosions ever recorded, of that there was no doubt. It was so intense that it didn't fit any model of how normal stars die. But then, it was rapidly becoming clear that, in life as in death, this had been no normal star.
Ephemeral vortices that form in the vacuum of space may have been spotted for the first time. They could help to explain how matter gets much of its mass.
© NASA
Saturn's Prometheus
Saturn's Prometheus
This stereoscopic view is a complementary color anaglyph image, which combines two black-and-white images taken from slightly different angles. By coloring one image red and the other blue, the two images can be combined into one stereo image by the brain of the viewer wearing red-blue glasses.
The viewer is being treated to a view of the leading hemisphere of Prometheus (53 miles, or 86 kilometers, across). North on Prometheus is up and rotated 47 degrees to the right. The end of Prometheus on the lower right points toward Saturn, while the opposite end on the upper left points away from the planet.
The Cassini spacecraft narrow-angle camera took the images in visible light on Dec. 26, 2009. The view was obtained at a distance of approximately 35,000 miles (57,000 kilometers) from Prometheus and at a Sun-Prometheus-spacecraft, or phase, angle of 33 degrees.
Comment: Perhaps the cataclysmic floods did have additional causes, like Meteorites, Asteroids, and Comets: Damages, Disasters, Injuries, Deaths, and Very Close Calls