Category Archives: Ancient DNA

Bones attributed to St Peter have been found by chance in a church in Rome during routine restoration work, 2,000 years after the apostle’s death.
The relics of the saint, who is regarded as the first Pope, were found in clay pots in the 1,000-year-old Church of Santa Maria in Cappella in the district of Trastevere, a medieval warren of cobbled lanes on the banks of the Tiber River.
The bones were discovered when a worker lifted up a large marble slab near the medieval altar of the church, which has been closed to the public for 35 years because of structural problems.

Genetic analysis could revolutionize the study of medieval books.
If their technique works, it could revolutionize the use of parchment to study history. Every one of these books is a herd of animals. Using DNA, researchers might track how a disease changed the makeup of a herd or how the skin of sheep from one region moved to another medieval trade routes. It’s part of a growing movement to bring together scholars in the sciences and humanities to study medieval manuscripts.

Two medieval mummies from an Arctic civilization have been discovered at the edge of Siberia. The remains of an adult and a baby were found in the Zelenyy Yar necropolis, an archaeological complex discovered in 1997. They were covered in copper, the adult having been plated from head to toe.
Excavations at Zelenyy Yar ended last week, but over the course of this year’s expedition to the Arctic site, scientists found 10 graves. Five had not been looted for their “grave goods,” valuable objects placed with bodies in ancient burials.

(CNN)Ancient Egyptians and their modern counterparts share less in common than you might think. That is, at least genetically, a team of scientists have found.
Researchers from the University of Tuebingen and the Max Planck Institute for the Science of Human History in Jena, both in Germany, have decoded the genome of ancient Egyptians for the first time, with unexpected results.

Let’s face it: Even with the modern conveniences of U-Hauls and cardboard boxes, moving is a pain. For Neolithic humans living in Europe 5,000 years ago, the obstacles—roaming predators, lack of transportation, unforgiving—must have seemed insurmountable. “Deep in the past, a few humans could have moved hundreds of kilometers, certainly, but most people at that time would not have,” says Chris Tyler-Smith, a human genetics researcher at England’s Sanger Institute.

Ancient Egyptians were an archaeologist’s dream. They left behind intricate coffins, massive pyramids and gorgeous hieroglyphs, the pictorial writing code cracked in 1799. Egyptians recorded tales of royalty and gods. They jotted down life’s miscellanies, too, as humdrum as beer recipes and doctor’s notes.
But there was one persistent hole in ancient Egyptian identity: their chromosomes. Cool, dry permafrost can preserve prehistoric DNA like a natural freezer, but Egypt is a gene incinerator. The region is hot. Within the mummies’ tombs, where scientists would hope to find genetic samples, humidity wrecked their DNA. What’s more, soda ash and other chemicals used by Egyptian embalmers damaged genetic material.

Scientists examining human remains from Henry VIII’s flagship Mary Rose are hoping to reconstruct skeletons of some of its crew using DNA.
Previous attempts to reform the bodies were based on “physical matching”, including bone size, and not DNA.
It is hoped more faces of some crew members can then be recreated.
The University of Portsmouth research will also enable scientists to learn more about their heights, ages and where they came from.

Sifting through teaspoons of clay and sand scraped from the floors of caves, German researchers have managed to isolate ancient human DNA — without turning up a single bone.
Their new technique, described in a study published on Thursday in the journal Science, promises to open new avenues of research into human prehistory and was met with excitement by geneticists and archaeologists.