#mpi-shh

[tvshowsaholic]

Where did cannabis originate

Today, in excess of 150 million individuals routinely smoke cannabis, making it one of the world's most well known sporting medications. Be that as it may, when and where people started to see the value in the psychoactive properties of weed has been more an issue of hypothesis than science. Presently, a group drove by archeologists Yang Yimin and Ren Meng of the Chinese Foundation of Sciences in Beijing reports clear actual proof that grievers consumed cannabis for its inebriating exhaust on a distant mountain level in Focal Asia exactly a long time back.

The review, distributed today in Science Advances, depends on new strategies that empower analysts to recognize the substance mark of the plant and even assess its strength. "We are amidst a truly thrilling period," says colleague Nicole Boivin of the Maximum Planck Organization for the Study of Mankind's Set of experiences (MPI-SHH) in Jena, Germany.

 The paper is essential for a more extensive work to follow how the medication spread along the incipient Silk Street, while heading to turning into the worldwide intoxicant it is today.

Cannabis, otherwise called hemp or pot, developed around a long time back on the eastern Tibetan Level, as per a dust study distributed in May. A direct relation of the normal jump found in lager, the plant actually develops wild across Focal Asia. Over quite a while back, Chinese ranchers started to develop it for oil and for fiber to make rope, dress, and paper.

The plant is otherwise called hemp, albeit this term is frequently used to allude just to assortments of Cannabis developed for non-drug use. Cannabis has for some time been utilized for hemp fiber, hemp seeds and their oils, hemp leaves for use as vegetables and as juice, restorative purposes, and as a sporting medication. Modern hemp items are produced using cannabis plants chose to create an overflow of fiber.

To fulfill the UN Opiates Show, some cannabis strains have been reared to create negligible degrees of tetrahydrocannabinol (THC), the essential psychoactive constituent.

A few strains have been specifically reproduced to deliver a limit of THC (a cannabinoid), the strength of which is upgraded by restoring the natural products. Different mixtures, including maryjane and hash oil, are extricated from the plant.

"The possibility that this is a shrewd medication is an exceptionally late development," and the way that it is unlawful is a "verifiable peculiarity," Warf said. Pot has been lawful in numerous districts of the world for the vast majority of its set of experiences.

Where did pot come from?

It is critical to recognize the two natural subspecies of the cannabis plant, Warf said. Cannabis sativa, known as maryjane, has psychoactive properties. The other plant is Cannabis sativa L. (The L was remembered for the name to pay tribute to the botanist Carl Linnaeus.) This subspecies is known as hemp; it is a no psychoactive type of cannabis, and is utilized in assembling items like oil, fabric and fuel.

Second psychoactive types of the plant, Cannabis indica, was recognized by the French naturalist Jean-Baptiste Lamarck, and a third, phenomenal one, Cannabis ruderalis, and was named in 1924 by Russian botanist D.E. Janischevisky.

Cannabis plants are accepted to have advanced on the steppes of Focal Asia, explicitly in the districts that are presently Mongolia and southern Siberia, as per Warf. The historical backdrop of cannabis use returns to the extent that 12,000 years, which puts the plant among mankind's most seasoned developed crops, as per data in the book "Marihuana: The Initial Twelve Thousand Years" (Springer, 1980).

"It probably thrived in the supplement rich dump destinations of ancient trackers and finders," Warf wrote in his review.

The Historical backdrop Of Maryjane in the US

Cannabis has had a long and once in a while wild past in the US since the country was shaped. Initially utilized as a material and later a restorative fixing, this plant turned out to be exceptionally disputable as the years progressed. The pot history timetables underneath frames this excursion:

1600s: The starting points of weed in the US can be connected back to the earliest long stretches of settlement when hemp was developed like some other harvest. In the seventeenth hundred years, the development of hemp-an assortment of the cannabis plant-was exceptionally urged to make dress, rope, and sails. In 1619, the Virginia Get together passed regulation expecting that all ranchers develop hemp. A few states even exchanged hemp as legitimate delicate.

1700s: George Washington was keen on cultivating hemp. In any case, he additionally scrutinized the possible restorative purposes of cannabis in his diaries in 1765.

1840: Weed turned out to be broadly acknowledged in standard medication and was a fixing in numerous over-the-counter items.

1850: Maryjane was added to the U.S. Pharmacopeia. It was utilized as a treatment for narcotic withdrawal, torment, craving feeling, and help of queasiness and spewing.

1862: Weed candy was promoted in an issue of Vanity Fair as a pleasurable and innocuous energizer that could fix despairing and anxiety.

1906: The Food and Medication Act expected that any item containing cannabis be named fittingly.

1900-1930: For a long time, cannabis was a fixing in different meds. It was showcased as a pain reliever but on the other hand was utilized for sedation and to treat muscle spasms.1 Nonetheless, during this equivalent time span, Mexican outsiders presented sporting utilization of cannabis. Since the medication became related with the Mexican outsiders, individuals started to fear the medication, with hostile to sedate campaigners alluding to it as the "Mexican Threat."

1914-1925: 26 states passed regulations precluding cannabis. These regulations passed promptly and effectively with practically zero public objection or political discussion.

1930s: The Economic crisis of the early 20s brought about employment cutback for some Americans. This made more apprehension and slander of Mexican workers as numerous Americans stressed they would remove their positions. This lead to more open worry over the risks of maryjane. The media started to report that examination showed that weed use was connected to wrongdoing and violence.4 simultaneously, Harry a slinger, chief of the Government Department of Opiates, started a mission to condemn cannabis, guaranteeing that it prompted madness. Because of his endeavors, by 1936, all states had some type of pot guideline regulations.

1936: The film Dope Frenzy was delivered. It portrayed cannabis as a medication that could prompt brutality, assault, self destruction, and psychosis.

1937: The Pot Duty Act was passed, which confined pot use to just those that could pay a weighty extract charge for explicit approved modern and clinical purposes.

1942: Weed was eliminated from the U.S. Pharmacopeia and specialists started to ruin maryjane as not having any restorative use.

1944: The New York Institute of Medication distributed a report expressing that pot was just a gentle intoxicant. Harry A slinger answered this report with a requested article in the American Diary of Psychiatry that endeavored to assault and ruin the data they had recently distributed.

1952: The Boggs Act passed, making severe required disciplines for offenses including weed and various different medications.

1960s: Cannabis acquired fame among the nonconformity, who thought of it as an innocuous high. Its utilization was well known among undergrads, unique Beats, hostile to war activists, hipsters, and other youth.1,4,6 President John F. Kennedy and VP Lyndon Johnson appointed reports that found that weed didn't instigate brutality or lead to the utilization of other more hazardous medications.

1965-1970: Cannabis captures on the state level expanded ten times as specialists took action against weed use and appropriation.

1970: Congress passed the Controlled Substances Act, which put maryjane as a Timetable I drug, alongside LSD and heroin. As indicated by the demonstration, weed had no restorative worth and a high potential for misuse, giving it more extreme criminal punishments. This regulation made it challenging for specialists and researchers to concentrate on maryjane and its many purposes.

1970s: Notwithstanding government endeavors to fortify authorization of severe weed regulations, states like Oregon, Maine, and Gold country decriminalized cannabis.

1972: The Shafer Board of trustees suggested that individual utilization of cannabis be decriminalized. Yet, President Richard Nixon overlooked their suggestion.

1976: The guardian’s development against weed started, as an ever increasing number of guardians dreaded the medication and tried to forestall use in youngsters. Their endeavors were reinforced by the Medication Implementation Organization and the Public Foundation on Chronic drug use.

1980s-90s: The general assessment of pot moved back to it being perilous, as many thought of it as a habit forming substance to harder medications like cocaine and heroin.

1982: First Woman Nancy Reagan began the "Simply Say No" crusade.

1983: The Illicit drug use Opposition Training (DARE) program was laid out, which brought cops into schools to examine the risks of substance addiction. Subsidizing and utilization of this program was subsequently scaled back as exploration showed that it didn't prompt diminished drug use in youth.

1986: President Ronald Reagan marked The Counter Illicit drug use Act. This regulation raised cannabis punishments and made required sentences, a large number of which likened maryjane with heroin.

1989: President George H.W. Hedge pronounced "Another Conflict on Medications" and proceeded with against cannabis crusades.

1996: California electors supported Suggestion 215, which legitimized weed for restorative use at the state level.

1998-1999: The Clinton organization burned through $25 million on TV crusades that put enemy of medication messages in early evening Network programs.

[linguisten]

https://clics.clld.org/

Every language has cases in which two or more concepts are expressed by the same word, such as the English word fly, which refers to both the act of flying and to the insect. By comparing patterns in these cases, which linguists call colexifications, across languages, researchers can gain insights into a wide range of issues, including human perception, language evolution, and language contact. The third installment of the CLICS database significantly increases the number of languages, concepts, and data sources available in earlier versions, allowing researchers to study colexifications on a global scale in unprecedented detail and depth.

Zoom Image 

Colexification network centered on the concepts of “hand” and “arm”© J.-M. List, T. Tresoldi

With detailed computer-assisted workflows, CLICS facilitates the standardization of linguistic datasets and provides solutions to many of the persistent challenges in linguistic research. “While data aggregation was generally based on ad-hoc procedures in the past, our new workflows and guidelines for best practice are an important step to guarantee the reproducibility of linguistic research,” says Tiago Tresoldi.

Effectiveness of CLICS demonstrated in research applications

The ability of CLICS to provide new evidence to address cutting-edge questions in psychology and cognition has already been illustrated in a recent study published in Science, which concentrated on the world-wide coding of emotion concepts. The study compared colexification networks of words for emotion concepts from a global sample of languages, and revealed that the meanings of emotions vary greatly across language families.

“In this study, CLICS was used to study differences in the lexical coding of emotion in languages around the world, but the potential of the database is not limited to emotion concepts. Many more interesting questions can be tackled in the future,” says Johann-Mattis List.

New standards and workflows allow for the reproducible harvesting of global lexical data

Building on the new guidelines for standardized data formats in cross-linguistic research, which were first presented in 2018 (DOI: 10.1038/sdata.2018.205), the CLICS team was able to increase the amount of data from 300 language varieties and 1200 concepts in the original database to 3156 language varieties and 2906 concepts in the current installation. The new version also guarantees the reproducibility of the data aggregation process, conforming to best practices in research data management. “Thanks to the new standards and workflows we developed, our data is not only FAIR (findable, accessible, interoperable, and reproducible), but the process of lifting linguistic data from their original forms to our cross-linguistic standards is also much more efficient than in the past,” says Robert Forkel.

Zoom Image

Global distribution of languages included in the CLICS3 release, identified by language family© S. J. Greenhill

The effectiveness of the workflow developed for CLICS has been tested and confirmed in various validation experiments involving a large range of scholars and students. Two different student tasks were conducted, resulting in the creation of new datasets and the progressive improvement of the existing data. Students were tasked with working through the different steps of data set creation described in the study, e.g. data extraction, data mapping (to reference catalogs), and identification of sources. “Having people from outside of the core team use and test your tools is essential and helps tremendously in fine-tuning all processes,” says Christoph Rzymski.

With CLICS and its workflow being accessible to a wider audience, scholars cannot only directly contribute to the database in the future; they can also profit from the established machinery and start their own targeted collections. “The number of linguists who actively use our standards and workflows is constantly increasing. We hope that the release of this new version of CLICS will propagate them further,” says Simon Greenhill.

Publication: Scientific Data

DOI: 10.1038/s41597-019-0341-x

[supercunninglinguist]

Friendly reminder that Martine Robbeets showed me pornography during my interview at the MPI-SHH in 2016 and has also been investigated for bullying but she apparently still gets to keep her job. hey Max Planck Gesellschaft how about you fire ALL of your garbage humans and issue me a formal apology.

[symbiotic-science]

More than 3000 years ago, herds of horses, sheep, and cows or yaks dotted the steppes of Mongolia. Their human caretakers ate the livestock and honored them by burying animal bones with their own. Now, a cutting-edge analysis of deposits on ancient teeth shows that early Mongolians milked their animals as well. That may not seem surprising. But DNA analysis of the same ancient individuals shows that as adults they lacked the ability to digest lactose, a key sugar in milk.

The findings present a puzzle, challenging an oft-told tale of how lactose tolerance evolved. From other studies, “We know now dairying was practiced 4000 years before we see lactase persistence,” says Christina Warinner of the Max Planck Institute for the Science of Human History (MPI-SHH) in Jena, Germany. “Mongolia shows us how.”

As University of Copenhagen paleoproteomicist Matthew Collins, who was not on the team, puts it, “We thought we understood everything, but then we got more data and see how naïve we were.”

[archaeologicalnews]

Major corridor of Silk Road already home to high-mountain herders over 4,000 years ago

Using ancient proteins and DNA recovered from tiny pieces of animal bone, archaeologists at the Max Planck Institute for the Science of Human History (MPI-SHH) and the Institute of Archaeology and Ethnography (IAET) at the Russian Academy of Sciences-Siberia have discovered evidence that domestic cattle, sheep and goats made their way into the high mountain corridors of southern Kyrgyzstan more than four millennia ago, as published in a study in PLOS ONE.

Long before the formal creation of the Silk Road—a complex system of trade routes linking East and West Eurasia through its arid continental interior—pastoral herders living in the mountains of Central Asia helped form new cultural and biological links across this region. However, in many of the most important channels of the Silk Road itself, including Kyrgyzstan's Alay Valley, a large mountain corridor linking northwest China with the oasis cities of Bukhara and Samarkand, very little is known about the lifestyles of early people who lived there in the centuries and millennia preceding the Silk Road era. Read more.

[fumpkins]

Max Planck archaeology director removed after alleged bullying | Science

For a second time, archaeologist Nicole Boivin has been removed as director of the Max Planck Institute for the Science of Human History (MPI-SHH), following a vote on 25 March by a governing board of the Max Planck Society (MPG).

The decision is another twist in a case that has drawn wide attention in Germany and has become a headache for MPG, the country’s premier basic science organization. It has also created an atmosphere of uncertainty for dozens of researchers at MPI-SHH, a leading center for archaeology and archaeogenetics. “The feeling at the institute is one of confusion, not a sense that things have been righted or that anyone has trust in the process,” one MPI-SHH researcher says.

Boivin was first removed from her directorship by the MPG president in October 2021, following an investigation that lasted nearly 3 years and found evidence of bullying and scientific misconduct. The Canadian archaeologist sued the society, and a Berlin court reinstated her barely 1 month later, ruling that MPG’s president hadn’t followed the society’s own rules in removing her and that she should be able to continue in her position while her case was being decided.

According to MPG bylaws, its Senate—a panel of prominent scientists, government officials, and industry representatives—is the ultimate arbiter of a director’s contract. And so, on 25 March, following a 32-to-1 vote with three abstentions, Boivin was once again demoted and stripped of leadership responsibilities. She remains a researcher at MPG.

Boivin plans to continue her legal efforts to reclaim her directorship. “It is extremely disappointing that the MPG would not agree to repeated calls over the last months for an external review of this highly problematic case, or leave me in my position while matters were resolved in court,” she wrote in an email to Science. “The case urgently highlights the need for independent tribunals that can examine deeply contested cases like mine.”

The MPG Senate’s vote was based on a summary of the findings of a commission led by Ulrich Sieber, director emeritus of the Max Planck Institute for the Study of Crime, Security and Law, and University of Freiburg law professor Silja Vöneky. The commission said it found evidence of scientific misconduct by Boivin, including claiming credit for the work of others, and workplace bullying of institute staff and younger researchers. Boivin has denied the allegations. The commission did not share details of the report with the MPG Senate “because it contained confidential personnel information … and not all witnesses were willing to have their identity disclosed,” says MPG spokesperson Christina Beck.

MPG Senate member Ulrike Beisiegel, a former president of the University of Göettingen, voted against the demotion. She says she wasn’t given enough information to make an informed decision, nor was Boivin given a chance to make her case. “The Senate waved it through,” Beisiegel says. “There were two sides to the story, and that is reason enough to have an independent investigation.” Christiane Nüsslein-Volhard, a researcher at the Max Planck Institute for Biology and a nonvoting member of the MPG Senate, is critical of the way the case has played out. “The Senate should have voted before she was demoted the first time,” she says. “There were obvious mistakes in how they handled the whole thing. I think it has really damaged the society.”

Over the past few months, the case has sparked discussion about MPG’s treatment of women at its many institutes. Just over 15% of the society’s 304 directors are women. In an open letter in the fall of 2021 that mentioned the Boivin case without addressing its merits, nearly 150 prominent women scientists from around the world pointed out that recent demotions at MPG have disproportionately impacted women.

But William Taylor, an archaeozoologist at the University of Colorado, Boulder, says Boivin’s case needs to be separated from allegations of MPG’s systemic bias against women. Taylor was a witness in the Sieber-Vöneky investigation and a member of Boivin’s department until 2019. “There’s an important point to be made that the Max Planck system and science in general are failing to support women scientists,” he says. “However, this is a poor argument for failing to protect those that find themselves in an abusive work environment, many of whom are young female scholars themselves.”

A researcher affiliated with the institute who asked to remain anonymous to avoid retaliation agreed with the commission’s conclusions. “The fact that MPG voted to demote Dr. Boivin twice … speaks very strongly towards the merit of their case against her,” she told Science.

Launched in 2014, MPI-SHH, in Jena, Germany, was supposed to explore human history through a blend of genetics, archaeology, and linguistics; its multimillion-dollar archaeology budget is one of the world’s largest. But in 2020, the genetics and linguistics departments relocated to the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology in nearby Leipzig after conflicts between Boivin and the two other MPI-SHH directors, Johannes Krause and Russell Gray. That left Boivin as sole director at MPI-SHH.

Some of the 100 or so remaining researchers and graduate students are planning to find new jobs or leave academia altogether. MPG Vice President Ulman Lindenberger, who is taking over from Boivin as interim director, tried to reassure staff about the institute’s future in an email announcing Boivin’s demotion on 28 March. “I also would like to reiterate once more that the Max Planck Society will hold on to the Institute,” he wrote.

New post published on: https://livescience.tech/2022/04/02/max-planck-archaeology-director-removed-after-alleged-bullying-science/

[tlatollotl]

Many large-scale epidemics spread through the New World during the 16th century but their biological causes are difficult to determine based on symptoms described in contemporaneous historical accounts. In this study, published in Nature Ecology and Evolution, scientists made use of new methods in ancient DNA research to identify Salmonella enterica Paratyphi C, a pathogen that causes enteric fever, in the skeletons of victims of the 1545-1550 cocoliztli epidemic in Mexico.

After European contact, dozens of epidemics swept through the Americas, devastating New World populations. Although many first-hand accounts of these epidemics were recorded, in most cases it has been difficult, if not impossible, for researchers to definitively identify their causes based on historical descriptions of their symptoms alone. In some cases, for example, the symptoms caused by infection of different bacteria or viruses might be very similar, or the symptoms presented by certain diseases may have changed over the past 500 years. Consequently, researchers have hoped that advancements in ancient DNA analysis and other such approaches might provide a breakthrough in identifying the unknown causes of past epidemics.

The first direct evidence for one of the potential causes of the 1545-1550 cocoliztli epidemic

Of all the colonial New World epidemics, the unidentified 1545-1550 “cocoliztli” epidemic was among the most devastating, affecting large parts of Mexico and Guatemala, including the Mixtec town of Teposcolula-Yucundaa, located in Oaxaca, Mexico. Archaeological excavations at the site have unearthed the only known cemetery linked to this particular outbreak to date. “Given the historical and archaeological context of Teposcolula-Yucundaa, it provided us with a unique opportunity to address the question regarding the unknown microbial causes responsible for this epidemic,” explains Åshild J. Vågene of the MPI-SHH, co-first author of the study. After the epidemic, the city of Teposcolula-Yucundaa was relocated from the top of a mountain to the neighboring valley, leaving the epidemic cemetery essentially untouched prior to recent archaeological excavations. These circumstances made Teposcolula-Yucundaa an ideal site to test a new method to search for direct evidence of the cause of the disease.

The scientists analyzed ancient DNA extracted from 29 skeletons excavated at the site, and used a new computational program to characterize the ancient bacterial DNA. This technique allowed the scientists to search for all bacterial DNA present in their samples, without having to specify a particular target beforehand. This screening method revealed promising evidence of S. enterica DNA traces in 10 of their samples. Subsequent to this initial finding, a DNA enrichment method specifically designed for this study was applied. With this, the scientists were able to reconstruct full S. enterica genomes, and 10 of the individuals were found to contain a subspecies of S. enterica that causes enteric fever. This is the first time scientists have recovered molecular evidence of a microbial infection from this bacterium using ancient material from the New World. Enteric fever, of which typhoid fever is the best known variety today, causes high fevers, dehydration, and gastro-intestinal complications. Today, the disease is considered a major health threat around the world, having caused an estimated 27 million illnesses in the year 2000 alone. However, little is known about its past severity or worldwide prevalence.

A new tool in discovering past diseases

“A key result of this study is that we were successful in recovering information about a microbial infection that was circulating in this population, and we did not need to specify a particular target in advance,” explains Alexander Herbig, also of the MPI-SHH and co-first author of the study. In the past, scientists usually targeted a particular pathogen or a small set of pathogens, for which they had prior indication.

“This new approach allows us to search broadly at the genome level for whatever may be present,” added Johannes Krause, director of the Department of Archaeogenetics at the MPI-SHH and last author of the study. Kirsten Bos, also of the MPI-SHH, adds, “This is a critical advancement in the methods available to us as researchers of ancient diseases – we can now look for the molecular traces of many infectious agents in the archaeological record, which is especially relevant to typical cases where the cause of an illness is not known a priori.”

[fwa18kremser-blog]

Das Max-Planck-Institut für Menschheitsgeschichte (MPI-SHH) in Jena wurde 2014 im Bestreben gegründet, grundlegende Fragen der menschlichen Evolution und Geschichte seit der Steinzeit zu erforschen. Mit seinen drei interdisziplinären Abteilungen – der Abteilung für Archäogenetik (Direktor Johannes Krause), der Abteilung für Archäologie (Direktorin Nicole Boivin) sowie der Abteilung für Sprach- und Kulturevolution (Direktor Russell Gray) – verfolgt das Institut eine dezidiert integrierende Wissenschaft der Menschheitsgeschichte, die den traditionellen Graben zwischen Natur- und Geisteswissenschaften überwindet.

Das MPI-SHH vereint internationale Expertinnen und Experten der Paläogenetik, Proteomforschung, Bioinformatik, Anthropologie, Archäologie, Geschichte und der quantitativen Linguistik, die gemeinsam ein bisher nie dagewesenes Spektrum an Methoden, Zugriffen und Datensätzen zur Erforschung der großen Themen der Menschheitsgeschichte erschließen und miteinander kombinieren. Unter Anwendung modernster analytischer Verfahren und Technologien werden insbesondere folgende Themen beforscht:

die Besiedlungsgeschichte der Welt, Migrationen und genetische Mischungen

die Ausbreitung und Entwicklung von Infektionskrankheiten und mit dem Menschen assoziierten Mikroorganismen

die Auswirkungen von Klima- und Umweltveränderungen auf die menschliche Existenz in unterschiedlichen Regionen der Welt

das Einwirken des Menschen auf den Lebensraum

das Entstehen früher Formen globaler Handelsbeziehungen

die Verbreitung und Ausdifferenzierung von Sprachen, Kulturen und gesellschaftlichen Praktiken

die Ko-Evolution von Genen und Kultur

[jangoxyarmeloxxeduardo68]

Se descubre el enterramiento humano intencional más antiguo de África y son restos de un niño de hace 78.000 años — Xataka Ciencia

El Centro Nacional de Investigación sobre la Evolución Humana (CENIEH), el Instituto Max Planck para la Ciencia de la Historia Humana (MPI-SHH) y los Museos Nacionales de Kenia (NMK) han colaborado en una investigación donde se describe el enterramiento humano más antiguo de África. Se trata de unos restos de un niño de unos tres…Se descubre el enterramiento humano intencional más antiguo de…

[giaitritonghop123]

Xác ướp giám mục hé lộ nguồn gốc bệnh lao

Dấu vết trong phổi của một giám mục ở thế kỷ 17 giúp các nhà nghiên cứu phát hiện bệnh lao xuất hiện vào thời Đồ Đá mới.

Xác ướp giám mục Peder Winstrup. Ảnh: Wikipedia.

Khi nhà nhân chủng học Caroline Arcini và đồng nghiệp ở Bảo tàng Lịch sử Tự nhiên Thụy Điển phát hiện những nốt vôi hóa nhỏ trong lá phổi được bảo quản nguyên vẹn của giám mục Peder Winstrup, họ nghi ngờ đó là dấu vết của một dạng bệnh viêm phổi và bệnh lao xếp đầu tiên trong danh sách suy đoán của họ. Các nhà nghiên cứu quyết định phân tích ADN để xác nhận.

Khoảng 1/4 dân số thế giới được cho là từng tiếp xúc với vi khuẩn Mycobacterium tuberculosis complex gây bệnh lao (TB). Giám mục Winstrup là một trong nhiều người đổ bệnh khi đại dịch lao xuất hiện ở châu Âu sau thời Trung Cổ. Ngày nay, bệnh lao là một trong những căn bệnh phổ biến nhất, chiếm tỷ lệ tử vong cao nhất do nhiễm khuẩn.

Sự phân bố trên toàn cầu của bệnh lao dẫn tới giả định phổ biến cho rằng mầm bệnh này đã tiến hóa từ rất sớm trong lịch sử nhân loại và lan rộng khắp thế giới thông qua những cuộc di cư của con người cách đây hàng chục nghìn năm. Năm 2014, nhóm nghiên cứu ở Đại học Tübingen, Đức và Đại học Arizona, Mỹ, phục dựng 3 hệ gene bệnh lao cổ đại từ Nam Mỹ. Kết quả so sánh với nhiều chủng lao ở người cho thấy bệnh lao xuất hiện trong vòng 6.000 năm qua. Ước tính mới này gây hoài nghi trong cộng đồng nghiên cứu do dựa hoàn toàn vào hệ gene cổ đại không đại diện cho chủng lao gắn liền với con người ngày nay.

"Việc phát hiện nốt vôi hóa ở phổi của giám mục mang đến cho chúng tôi cơ hội để xem xét lại câu hỏi về nguồn gốc của bệnh lao bằng dữ liệu từ châu Âu thời xưa", chuyên gia Bệnh học Phân tử ở Viện Khoa học Lịch sử Nhân loại Max Planck (MPI-SHH), đồng tác giả nghiên cứu cho biết. "Nếu chúng tôi có thể phục dựng hệ gene bệnh lao từ giám mục Winstrup, đó sẽ là bằng chứng tin cậy cho ước tính về niên đại của bệnh lao".

Trong nghiên cứu công bố hôm 10/8 trên tạp chí Genome Biology, các nhà khoa học phục dựng hệ gene bệnh lao từ nốt vôi hóa ở xác ướp của giám mục Winstrup. Theo Bos, hệ gene này có chất lượng tốt đến mức vô cùng hiếm gặp ở ADN cổ đại. Cùng với nhiều hệ gene bệnh lao từ các công trình nghiên cứu khác, nhóm của Arcini và Bos tìm hiểu niên đại của vi khuẩn Mycobacterium tuberculosis complex. Sử dụng nhiều mô hình tính độ tuổi phân tử, họ nhận thấy mọi kết quả đều chỉ ra loại vi khuẩn này có độ tuổi tương đối trẻ. Đây là bằng chứng thuyết phục nhất chứng minh bệnh lao xuất hiện từ thời Đồ Đá mới.

An Khang (Theo Phys.org)

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[kathleenseiber]

New clues to early human innovation

Archaeologists have found some rare treasures in a 48,000-year-old cache of bone tools and artefacts excavated from a Sri Lankan cave.

They include the earliest known bow-and-arrow technology found outside Africa and implements possibly used to make clothing – a development traditionally believed to have arisen only as protection against cold.

Also uncovered were decorative beads made from the pointed tips of marine snail shells, which likely came from the coast through trade, and the world’s oldest beads made entirely of red ochre.

All offer new insights into how early Homo sapiens adapted to diverse and often extreme environments as they spread across the globe, the researchers suggest in a paper in the journal Science Advances.

And, they add, they highlight the importance of not confining our study of the history of human innovation to the grasslands and coasts of Africa or the temperate environments of Europe.

“[T]his traditional focus has meant that other parts of Africa, Asia, Australasia and the Americas have often been sidelined in discussions of the origins of material culture, such as novel projectile hunting methods or cultural innovations associated with our species,” says Patrick Roberts from Germany’s Max Planck Institute for the Science of Human History (MPI-SHH).

The study was led by Michelle Langley from Australia’s Griffith University and involved researchers from Griffith, MPI-SHH, and the Sri Lankan Government’s Department of Archaeology.

They analysed tools and artefacts from four distinct stages of occupation, between 48,000 and 4000 years ago, discovered in Fa-Hien Lena, in the tropical forests of the island’s southwest, which has emerged as one of South Asia’s most important archaeological sites since the 1980s.

Map of Sri Lanka alongside views of Fa-Hien Lena and the excavation site. Credit: Wedage et al., 2019

Among them were 130 projectile points made from animal bone and showing impact fractures consistent with hunting damage. Originally used to target monkeys, they increased in length over time for the purpose of hunting larger mammals, such as pigs and deer.

Notches and wear patterns show the points were attached to thin shafts, but they are too short and heavy to have been the tips of blowgun darts. Thus, the researchers conclude, they are the remnants of bow-and-arrow toolkits – the earliest definitive evidence for high-powered projectile hunting in a tropical rainforest environment.

Also recovered were 29 bone tools used to work animal skins, plant fibres or both. The authors hypothesise that clothing made with these implements may have served as protection from insect-borne diseases.

Other tools were identified as implements likely associated with freshwater fishing.

“We also found clear evidence for the production of coloured beads from mineral ochre and the refined making of shell beads traded from the coast, at a similar age to other ‘social signaling’ materials found in Eurasia and Southeast Asia, roughly 45,000 years ago,” says Langley.

Together, she adds, this reveals a complex, early human social network in the tropics of South Asia.

The post New clues to early human innovation appeared first on Cosmos Magazine.

New clues to early human innovation published first on https://triviaqaweb.weebly.com/

[mysololaki]

#новости | В останках прибывших в CША из Африки рабов нашли вирусы

#новости | В останках прибывших в CША из Африки рабов нашли вирусы

Наука

15:26 01.05.2020Получить короткую ссылку

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Ученые склонные верить в том, что множество инфекционных заболеваний были привезены на континент из Старого Света в результате работорговли

ТБИЛИСИ, 1 мая – Грузия онлайн.Поразительную находку сделали ученые из Института исследований в области истории человечества имени Макса Планка (MPI SHH) в немецком городе Йена – они изучили скелеты…

[sciencespies]

How millet sustained Mongolia's empires

https://sciencespies.com/biology/how-millet-sustained-mongolias-empires/

How millet sustained Mongolia's empires

Cultivated land in northern Mongolia. Credit: Alicia Ventresca Miller

Researchers have examined stable isotopes from bone collagen and dental enamel to reconstruct the diets of ancient Mongolians. Findings challenge the popular notion of a completely nomadic prehistoric population, linking grain cultivation with the success of the Xiongnu Empire (c. 200 BCE-150 CE) and showing continual grain consumption during the Mongol Empire of the Khans (c. 1200-1400 CE).

The historic economies of Mongolia are among the least understood of any region in the world. The region’s persistent, extreme winds whisk away signs of human activity and prevent the buildup of sediment that archaeologists rely on to preserve the past. Today, crop cultivation comprises only a small percent of Mongolia’s food production, and many scholars have argued that Mongolia presents a unique example of dense human populations and hierarchical political systems forming without intensive farming or stockpiling grains.

The current study, led by Dr. Shevan Wilkin of the Max Planck Institute for the Science of Human History provides the first detailed glimpse into the diets and lives of ancient Mongolians, underscoring the importance of millets during the formation of the earliest empires on the steppe.

Isotopic analysis and the imperial importance of millets

Collaborating with archaeologists from the National University of Mongolia and the Institute of Archaeology in Ulaanbaatar, Dr. Wilkin and her colleagues from the MPI SHH sampled portions of teeth and rib bones from 137 previously excavated individuals. The skeletal fragments were analysed in the ancient isotope lab in Jena, Germany, where researchers extracted bone collagen and dental enamel to examine the ratios of stable nitrogen and carbon isotopes within. With these ratios in hand, scientists were able to reconstruct the diets of people who lived, ate, and died hundreds to thousands of years ago.

Researchers tracked the trends in diet through the millennia, creating a “dietscape” that clearly showed significant differences between the diets of Bronze Age peoples and those who lived during the Xiongnu and Mongol Empires. A typical Bronze Age Mongolian diet was based on milk and meat, and was likely supplemented with small amounts of naturally available plants. Later, during the Xiongnu Empire, human populations displayed a larger range of carbon values, showing that some people remained on the diet common in the Bronze Age, but that many others consumed a high amount of millet-based foods. Interestingly, those living near the imperial heartlands appear to have been consuming more millet-based foods than those further afield, which suggests imperial support for agricultural efforts in the more central political regions. The study also shows an increase in grain consumption and increasing dietary diversity through time, leading up to the well-known Mongolian Empire of the Khans.

Mongolian landscape with pastoral herd of sheep and goats. Credit: Alicia Ventresca Miller

Horses are still used by many for transport across Mongolia. Credit: Shevan Wilkin

Rethinking Mongolian prehistory

The new discoveries presented in this paper show that the development of the earliest empires in Mongolia, like in other parts of the world, was tied to a diverse economy that included the local or regional production of grain. Dr. Bryan K. Miller, a co-author who studies the historical and archaeological records of Inner Asian empires, remarks that “these regimes were like most empires, in that they directed intricate political networks and sought to amass a stable surplus—in this case a primarily pastoral one that was augmented by other resources like millet.”

“In this regard,” Dr. Miller adds, “this study brings us one step closer to understanding the cultural processes that led humanity into the modern world.”

The view that everyone in Mongolian history was a nomadic herder has skewed discussions concerning social development in this part of the world. Dr. Wilkin notes that “setting aside our preconceived ideas of what prehistory looked like and examining the archaeological record with modern scientific approaches is forcing us to rewrite entire sections of humanity’s past.”

Dr. Spengler, the director of the archaeobotany labs at the MPI SHH, emphasizes the importance of this discovery, noting that “this study pulls the veil of myth and lore off of the real people who lived in Mongolia millennia ago and lets us peak into their lives.”

The study is published in Scientific Reports.

Explore further

5,000-year-old milk protein points to importance of dairying in eastern Eurasia

More information: Economic Diversification Supported the Growth of Mongolia’s Nomadic Empires, Scientific Reports, DOI: 10.1038/s41598-020-60194-0

Provided by Max Planck Society

Citation: How millet sustained Mongolia’s empires (2020, March 3) retrieved 3 March 2020 from https://phys.org/news/2020-03-millet-sustained-mongolia-empires.html

This document is subject to copyright. Apart from any fair dealing for the purpose of private study or research, no part may be reproduced without the written permission. The content is provided for information purposes only.

#Biology

[evoldir]

Fwd: Workshop: Toulouse.SPAAM2.Sep21-22

Begin forwarded message: > From: evoldir@evol.biology.mcmaster.ca > Subject: Workshop: Toulouse.SPAAM2.Sep21-22 > Date: 13 November 2019 at 06:53:57 GMT > To: rdmpage@gmail.com > > > > Workshop: Standards, Precautions and Advances in Ancient Metagenomics (SPAAM2) > PROPOSED DATES: 21-22nd September 2020 (prior to the ISBA9 conference) > PROPOSED LOCATION:TBA, Toulouse, France > > Dear all, > We are circulating a ‘registration of interest’ survey for an ancient > metagenomics workshop, possibly to be held as a satellite-meeting the > two days prior to ISBA9 (https://ift.tt/2pZcYoW). This > workshop will revive the Standards, Precautions and Advances in > Ancient Metagenomes workshop that was held in 2016, which resulted in > the guidelines published in A Robust Framework for Microbial > Archaeology (https://ift.tt/2QdtyMn). We > are currently developing a proposal to hold this meeting and ask for > your input. > > We would like to have a round table discussion meeting between active > PhD and postdoc researchers working in this area of research to share > experiences, challenges, and propose practical solutions for the field > in both data generation and analysis. We aim to announce the outcomes > of this workshop at the closing ceremony of ISBA9, including an > (in-)formal ‘community’/network for continued interaction, and to > develop an opinion paper in which we: > -Discuss major issues > -Outline recommended technical best-practices in ancient microbial genomics > -Define metadata standardsAnnounce the network > > We would be grateful if you could forward the above information your > students and early career researchers to get their feedback and > register their interest. > > Please submit your registration of interest form by 30th January 2020. > > The registration of interest form can be found here: > https://ift.tt/2rF0aEA > > Kind Regards, > SPAAM2 Organizing Committee > James Fellows Yates (MPI-SHH, Jena. Email: fellows@shh.mpg.de) > Irina Velsko (MPI-SHH, Jena) > Alexander Hübner (MPI-SHH, Jena) > Andaine Seguin-Orlando (UMR5288, CNRS, University Toulouse 3) > Clio Der Sarkissian (UMR5288, CNRS, University of Toulouse 3) > Åshild Vågene (Globe Institute, University of Copenhagen) > Anna Fotakis (Globe Institute, University of Copenhagen) > > > > Irina M. Velsko, PhD. > Postdoctoral Researcher > Department of Archaeogenetics > Max Plank Institute for the Science of Human History > Kahlaische Strasse 10 > 07745 Jena > Germany > velsko@shh.mpg.de > > > irinavelsko@gmail.com > via IFTTT

[freehealthteacher]

Microscopic evidence sheds light on the disappearance of the world's largest mammals

Microscopic evidence sheds light on the disappearance of the world’s largest mammals

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IMAGE: A new article, published in BioScience, emphasizes contributions from five different approaches: radiocarbon dating, stable isotope analysis, ancient DNA, ancient proteins, and microscopy. These techniques can offer robust, high-resolution insights… view more 

Credit: Artwork by Michelle O’Reilly, MPI-SHH

Understanding the causes and consequences of Late Quaternary…