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ancient DNA

number of breaks: 6

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Diversity matters – Syphilis and related diseases in historical Europe

First historical cases of sexually transmitted syphilis were documented by Italian doctors in the wake of Neapolitan war. The disease was characterized by painful pustules, frightful facial deformities, eventual madness and even death. The bacteria responsible for this scourge, Treponema pallidum (also known as T.... click to read more

  • Verena J. Schuenemann | Assistant Professor at Institute for Evolutionary Medicine, University of Zurich, Zurich, Switzerland
  • Kerttu Majander | Postdoctoral Research Fellow at Institute of Evolutionary Medicine, University of Zurich, Zurich, Switzerland
Views 2151
Reading time 3 min
published on Oct 12, 2021
7000 years of the peopling of present-day France revealed by paleogenomics

By accessing the genomes of past populations, researchers have revealed how migrations have been at the origin of major cultural changes for our societies. Some of them have shaped Europe's modern genetic heritage. In France, this type of study had only been carried out on... click to read more

  • Melanie Pruvost | Research fellow at University of Bordeaux, CNRS, UMR5199 De la Préhistoire à l’Actuel : Culture, Environnement et Anthropologie (PACEA), allée Geoffroy Saint-Hilaire, 33600 Pessac
Views 3915
Reading time 3.5 min
published on Dec 23, 2020
Beware of humans and glacial maximums – the story of cave bear extinction

The cave bear is one of the dozens of species of large Pleistocene mammals that faced extinction during the last Ice Age. Until today, the reasons for their extinctions remain mysterious, especially since the cave bear Ursus spelaeus populated vast areas of Eurasia for more... click to read more

  • Verena J. Schuenemann | Assistant Professor at Institute for Evolutionary Medicine, University of Zurich, Zurich, Switzerland
  • Joscha Gretzinger | PhD student at Max Planck Institute for the Science of Human History, Jena, Germany
Views 4677
Reading time 3 min
published on Mar 25, 2020
Tracing the Ancestral Roots of Neandertals

Before modern humans started migrating outside Africa, Eurasia was home to Neandertals, a group of humans that parted ways with the ancestors of modern humans half a million years ago. Neandertals lived in Europe for hundreds of thousands of years, from at least 430,000 years... click to read more

  • Stéphane Peyrégne | Postdoctoral Research Fellow at Department of Evolutionary Genetics, Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology, Germany
Views 4950
Reading time 3 min
published on Feb 5, 2020
An ancient affair: a Neandertal woman and a Denisovan man had a daughter

In prehistoric times, at least two groups of hominins (that is, the entity which includes humans and their closest relatives) inhabited Eurasia: Neandertals, who lived throughout Europe and the Near East, and Denisovans, who likely lived in Asia. Genetically, Neandertals and Denisovans were more different... click to read more

  • Viviane Slon | Postdoctoral Research Fellow at Department of Evolutionary Genetics, Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology, Leipzig, Germany
Views 4194
Reading time 4 min
published on Jun 19, 2019