The Great London:
Anthropology

Modern humans have been blamed for killing off the Neanderthals by out competing them, breeding with them and even outright murdering them.

But new research suggests it may actually have been infectious diseases carried by our modern ancestors as they migrated out of Africa that finished them off.

Scientists studying the latest genetic, fossil and archaeological evidence claim that Neanderthals suffered from a wide range of diseases that still plague us today.

They have found evidence that suggests our prehistoric cousins would have been infected by diseases such as tuberculosis, typhoid, whooping cough, encephalitis and the common cold.

But anthropologists from Cambridge University and Oxford Brookes University say that new diseases carried by modern humans may have led to the downfall of Neanderthals.

They speculate that pathogens like Heliocbacter pylori, the bacteria that causes stomach ulcers, were brought to Europe by modern humans from Africa and may have infected Neanderthals, who would have been unable to fight off these new diseases.

However, Neandethals may have also helped modern humans by passing on slivers of immunity against some diseases to our ancestors when they interbred.

Dr Simon Underdown, a principal lecturer in anthropology at Oxford Brookes University and co-author of the study, said: 'As Neanderthal populations became more isolated they developed very small gene pools and this would have impacted their ability to fight off disease.

'When Homo sapiens came out of Africa they brought diseases with them.

'We know that Neanderthals were actually much more advanced than they have been given credit for and we even interbred with them.

'Perhaps the only difference was that we were able to cope with these diseases but Neanderthals could not.'

The findings add to a growing body of evidence that Neanderthals were not as different from modern humans as was originally thought.

Recent discoveries have suggested that rather than being brutish cavemen, Neanderthals had sophisticated culture, were master tool makers and may even have had their own language.

The new study suggests that Neanderthals also suffered from many of the same afflictions and complaints that modern humans experience.

Indeed, there is some evidence from caves that early humans may have burned their bedding in a bid to rid themselves of infestations of lice or bed bugs.

Dr Underdown and his colleague Dr Charlotte Houldcroft, a researcher in infectious diseases at Cambridge University and University College London, analysed recent genetic studies on Neanderthals and other early humans.

They also examined recent genetic research on common human pathogens that have aimed to trace their origins and combined it with fossil and archaeological evidence.

Most evidence from the fossil record suggest that Neanderthals tended to suffer traumatic injuries as a result of their hunter gatherer lifestyle, but there are also signs of inflammation and infection.

Their study, which is published on the open source database bioRxiv, contradicts the common view that infectious diseases only really became a problem for humans in the Holocene about 11,000 years ago when humans began living in dense settlements and farming livestock.

Instead, they say many of the diseases we see around us today were common during the pleistocene when Neanderthals dominated much of Europe and Asia between 250,000 and 45,000 years ago, when they disappeared.

They say pathogens like TB, typhoid and Crimean fever that were thought to be zoonoses caught from herd animals may have actually originated in humans and were only passed to animals during the rise of farming around 8,000 years ago.

Genetic sequencing of Neanderthal and Denisovan - another early human ancestor - DNA has shown that modern humans have inherited a number of genes from these extinct species.

These include genes that provide immunity to viral infections such as tick-borne encephalitis.

Dr Underdown said this virus would probably have been common in the forested areas of northern Europe that Neanderthals inhabited and so immunity would have been an advantage.

Other genes found in modern Papua New Guineans that are involved in the immune response against viruses like dengue and influenza may have come from Neanderthals.

Analysis of ancient DNA has also shown that Neanderthals carried genes that would have protected them against bacterial blood poisoning, or sepsis.

Dr Underdown said: 'There are genetic signals in the Neanderthal genome that suggest quite clearly that they were exposed to these types of diseases but also developed some resistance to them.

'It had been thought that many of these diseases began infecting humans with the population increases that came with domestication of animals and permanent settlements.

'Be here we have got Neanderthals being infected by these diseases long before those developments.'

Author: Richard Gray | Source: Daily Mail Online [April 03, 2015]

New research led by the University of Southampton shows Neanderthals kept coming back to a coastal cave site in Jersey from at least 180,000 years ago until around 40,000 years ago.

As part of a re-examination of La Cotte de St Brelade and its surrounding landscape, archaeologists from Southampton, together with experts from three other universities and the British Museum, have taken a fresh look at artefacts and mammoth bones originally excavated from within the site's granite cliffs in the 1970s. Their findings are published in the >journal Antiquity.

The researchers matched types of stone raw material used to make tools to detailed mapping of the geology of the sea bed, and studied in detail how they were made, carried and modified. This helped reconstruct a picture of what resources were available to Neanderthals over tens of thousands of years -- and where they were travelling from.

Lead author Dr Andy Shaw of the Centre for the Archaeology of Human Origins (CAHO) at the University of Southampton said: "La Cotte seems to have been a special place for Neanderthals. They kept making deliberate journeys to reach the site over many, many generations. We can use the stone tools they left behind to map how they were moving through landscapes, which are now beneath the English Channel. 180,000 years ago, as ice caps expanded and temperatures plummeted, they would have been exploiting a huge offshore area, inaccessible to us today."

Previous research focussed on particular levels in the site where mammoth bones are concentrated, but this new study took a longer-term perspective, looking at how Neanderthals used it and explored the surrounding landscape for over 100,000 years.

The team, including academics from the British Museum, University College London (UCL) and the University of Wales found that Neanderthals kept coming back to this particular place, despite globally significant changes in climate and landscape. During glacial phases (Ice Ages), they travelled to the site over cold, open landscapes, now submerged under the sea. They kept visiting as the climate warmed up and Jersey became a striking highpoint in a wide coastal plain connected to France.

Dr Beccy Scott of the British Museum added: "We're really interested in how this site became 'persistent' in the minds of early Neanderthals. You can almost see hints of early mapping in the way they are travelling to it again and again, or certainly an understanding of their geography. But specifically what drew them to Jersey so often is harder to tease out. It might have been that the whole Island was highly visible from a long way off -- like a waymarker -- or people might have remembered that shelter could be found there, and passed that knowledge on."

Paper author Dr Matt Pope, of the Institute of Archaeology at UCL, agrees: "La Cotte de St Brelade is probably the most important Neanderthal site in northern Europe and could be one of the last known places that Neanderthals survived in the region. It was certainly as important to them as it is to us, as we try and understand how they thrived and survived for 200,000 years.

"With new technology we have been able to reconstruct the environment of the La Cotte Neanderthals in a way earlier researchers couldn't. Our project has really put the Neanderthal back into the landscape, but emphasised how significant the changes in climate and landscape have been since then."

Project leader Professor Clive Gamble, of CAHO at the University of Southampton, comments: "Jersey is an island that endures, summed up by the granite cliffs of St Brelade's Bay. The elements which led to Neanderthals coming back for so many thousands of years shows how this persistence is deep rooted in Jersey's past. Our project has shown that more unites the past with the present than separates. We are not the only humans to have coped successfully with major environmental changes. Let's hope we are not the last."

The team's work was undertaken as part of the 'Crossing the Threshold' project led by Professor Clive Gamble and Dr John McNabb at the University of Southampton, together with UCL and the British Museum. The research was funded by the Arts and Humanities Research Council and looks at major changes in how early humans used places from 400,000 years ago.

Source: University of Southampton [December 12, 2016]

The stories of Roman lives are written their bones: diet, disease, childbirth and trauma all leave their mark. Individual skeletons can tell rich tales, but the fullest information comes from large groups, when we can look at populations. So what can we learn about about a Roman community from their skeletons?

Whether they were a slave

Slavery was ubiquitous in the Roman world, and some of its agonies are preserved on skeletons: those working in and living near Roman mines in Jordan were exposed to lead and copper at levels that would have been toxic, and caused a range of illnesses. The remains of people who were likely to have been slaves have also been found still wearing iron shackles, for instance in a subterranean room of a villa in Pompeii, and near the silver mines of Laurion in Roman-era Greece.

Whether they played sports

Among the human remains from ancient Herculaneum, which was destroyed by the eruption of Vesuvius at the same time as Pompeii, were a possible boxer, with typical fractures to his hands and nose, and a javelin-thrower whose bones reveal the same elbow problems experienced by modern athletes.

How they died, who they loved

At Dura-Europos in Syria, remains of Roman and Sasanian troops trapped in a siege mine beneath the walls of the ancient city reveal the brutal and violent reality of ancient conflict, including gas warfare. In the nearby cemetery, families were buried together in underground tombs, with women and children placed together.

Where people came from

Even places like Roman Britain were diverse. Scientific methods (such as isotope analysis), as well as the study of graves and grave goods (the objects buried with a body) can tell us where a person was likely to have come from, or where they had links to. For instance, work on the cemeteries of Roman York has shown that people buried there came from other places in Britain, and much further afield in Europe, the Middle East and North Africa.

The extent of childhood illnesses

In the Roman world, children often didn’t make it to adulthood. Roman cemeteries such as Poundbury in Dorset include many children with rickets, scurvy and anaemia – survival rates were staggeringly low by modern Western standards. Infant and early childhood mortality was high in the Roman period, with 45% of children unlikely to survive past five years of age.

So we can learn a lot about how a Roman may have lived from her or his remains, but, while skeletons are biological, bodies are cultured and contextual; they can be modified to fit ideals of beauty, status, or gender. Ultimately, Roman skeletons tell us that culture is a significant factor in determining difference: underneath it all, we’re pretty much the same collection of 206 interlocking parts.

Dr Jen Baird and Dr Tim Reynolds from the Department of History, Classics and Archaeology, Birkbeck College, University of London, will be talking in depth about Roman skeletons at a Guardian Live/Birkbeck event on 21 November.

Authors: Dr Jen Baird and Dr Tim Reynolds | Source: The Guardian [November 14, 2015]

Researchers have observed wild-bearded capuchin monkeys in Brazil deliberately break stones, unintentionally creating flakes that share many of the characteristics of those produced by early Stone Age hominins. The difference is that the capuchins' flakes are not intentional tools for cutting and scraping, but seem to be the by-product of hammering or 'percussive behaviour' that the monkeys engage in to extract minerals or lichen from the stones.

In a paper, >published in Nature, the research team says this finding is significant because archaeologists had always understood that the production of multiple stone flakes with characteristics such as conchoidal fractures and sharp cutting edges was a behaviour unique to hominins. The paper suggests that scholars may have to refine their criteria for identifying intentionally produced early stone flakes made by hominins, given capuchins have been observed unintentionally making similar tools.

The research is authored by researchers from the University of Oxford, University College London and University of Sao Paulo in Brazil. The team observed individual monkeys in Serra da Capivara National Park unintentionally creating fractured flakes and cores. While hominins made stone flake tools for cutting and butchery tasks, the researchers admit that it is unclear why monkeys perform this behaviour. They suggest that the capuchins may be trying to extract powdered silicon (known to be an essential trace nutrient) or to remove lichen for some as yet unknown medicinal purpose. At no point did the monkeys try to cut or scrape using the flakes, says the study.

Lead author Dr Tomos Proffitt, from the School of Archaeology at the University of Oxford, comments: 'Within the last decade, studies have shown that the use and intentional production of sharp-edged flakes are not necessarily linked to early humans (the genus Homo) who are our direct relatives, but instead were used and produced by a wider range of hominins. However, this study goes one step further in showing that modern primates can produce archaeologically identifiable flakes and cores with features that we thought were unique to hominins.

'This does not mean that the earliest archaeological material in East Africa was not made by hominins. It does, however, raise interesting questions about the possible ways this stone tool technology developed before the earliest examples in the archaeological record appeared. It also tells us what this stone tool technology might look like. There are important questions too about the uniqueness of early hominin behaviour. These findings challenge previous ideas about the minimum level of cognitive and morphological complexity required to produce numerous conchoidal flakes.'

The monkeys were observed engaging in 'stone on stone percussion', whereby they individually selected rounded quartzite cobbles and then using one or two hands struck the 'hammer-stone' forcefully and repeatedly on quartzite cobbles embedded in a cliff face. This action crushed the surface and dislodged cobbled stones, and the hand-held 'hammer stones' became unintentionally fractured, leaving an identifiable primate archaeological record. As well as using the active hammer-stone to crush 'passive hammers' (stones embedded in the outcrop), the capuchins were also observed re-using broken hammer-stones as 'fresh' hammers.

The research team examined 111 fragmented stones collected from the ground immediately after the capuchins had dropped them, as well as from the surface and excavated areas in the site. They gathered complete and broken hammer-stones, complete and fragmented flakes and passive hammers. Around half of the fractured flakes exhibited conchoidal fracture, which is typically associated with the hominin production of flakes.

Bearded capuchins and some Japanese macaques are known to pound stones directly against each other, but the paper remarks that the capuchins in Serra da Capivara National Park are the only wild primates to be observed doing this for the purpose of damaging the stones.

Co-author and leader of the Primate Archaeology (Primarch) project Michael Haslam, from the University of Oxford, says: 'Our understanding of the new technologies adopted by our early ancestors helps shape our view of human evolution. The emergence of sharp-edged stone tools that were fashioned and hammered to create a cutting tool was a big part of that story. The fact that we have discovered monkeys can produce the same result does throw a bit of a spanner in the works in our thinking on evolutionary behaviour and how we attribute such artefacts. While humans are not unique in making this technology, the manner in which they used them is still very different to what the monkeys seem capable of.'

Source: University of Oxford [October 19, 2016]

The forests of Central Africa could be home to up to 920,000 Pygmies, according to researchers from UCL, Manchester Metropolitan University and the University of Malaga, who have conducted the first measured estimate of the population and distribution of these indigenous groups.

Up until now it has not been possible to determine the numbers and actual geographic ranges of Pygmy communities, because of their location in remote forest areas, mobility, lack of census data, and imprecise and partial sources of information. Pygmy communities live in rainforests across nine countries in Central Africa—an area of some 178 million hectares—where they make up a very small minority of the total population.

Despite the Pygmies' significance to humanity's cultural diversity as the largest group of active hunter-gatherers in the world, the new study, published in >PLOS ONE, is the first to predict how many Pygmies are likely to be found in the vast expanse of tropical forests in Central Africa. The study maps their distribution and identifies which areas are of ecological importance.

Dr Jerome Lewis (Hunter-Gatherer Resilience Project, UCL Anthropology), co-author of the paper, said: "This is a very underprivileged and neglected group of people many of whom have already lost their forest land, livelihoods and whose rich cultural traditions are seriously threatened in many regions.

"Information on their locations and population numbers are crucial for developing appropriate human rights, cultural and land security safeguards for them, as for other indigenous peoples."

Using a compilation of evidence collected by an unprecedented number of researchers, the authors generated the largest database of Pygmy camp locations throughout their known range.

As there are no known accurate censuses of Pygmy population the researchers used a statistical method, developed by paper co-author Dr Jesus Olivero (University of Malaga), to forecast the distribution of Pygmies in Central Africa. Based on species distribution models that investigate the relationship between environmental conditions and the distribution of organisms, the study is the first to apply this method to human societies and their cultural diversity.

Dr Olivero said: "By using tried and tested animal and plant distribution models we hope to promote a greater awareness of the importance of these too often ignored and marginalized groups in this region."

Professor John Fa (Manchester Metropolitan University), co-author, explained that understanding where and how Pygmy communities live is an important first step in supporting them and safeguarding their rights.

"It's important for all of the countries involved to come together to help support Pygmies' cultures and human rights to make sure they are respected and understood.

"At the end of the day, 900,000 people living in small groups in such a vast area can very easily be ignored, leading to their cultural extinction, and given the extraordinary role they have played in the human story since well before antiquity, we don't want that."

Source: University College London [January 15, 2016]

A genetic mutation in extinct European apes that enabled them to convert fruit sugar into fat could be a cause of the modern obesity epidemic and diabetes, according to scientists. Fossil evidence reveals that apes living around 16 million years ago, in what was then subtropical Europe, began to suffer as global cooling subsequently changed the forest, making the fruit they ate scarce.

Experts suggest that a mutation in the uricase gene which helps to convert fruit sugar (fructose) occurred around 15 million years ago. This aided apes in adding on fat layers so they could survive famines and harsh winters.

Persistence of the same mutation in all modern great apes and all modern humans, along with the fossil evidence, suggests that the now extinct European apes evolved into today's great apes and the earliest hominids.

Scientists have spent decades researching the genetic causes of obesity which is rarely found in other animals – apart from domesticated pets. The latest research focuses on fructose: a sugar which breaks down to form uric acid in the blood, according to a Sunday Times report.

The Western diet contains so much uric acid that it cannot be removed quickly enough, but triggers liver cells to turn fructose into fat, with the effect of humans adding on extra weight. The uricase mutation predisposes humans to obesity and diabetes in modern times. The results suggest a need to eat and drink much less fructose to fight obesity and prevent its dangerous complications.

"The gene enables uric acid levels to spike in response to two types of food," wrote Peter Andrews, professor of anthropology at University College London in Scientific American, co-authored with Richard Johnson, a professor of medicine in the US. "Those like beer that produce a lot of uric acid [directly] and those that contain a lot of fructose. These include honey and processed food that are high in table sugar or high-fructose corn syrup. When uric acid spikes we become susceptible to obesity and diabetes."

Obesity is considered as one of the biggest public health challenges of the century. Statistics show that it is affecting more than 500 million people worldwide. In the US alone, obesity costs at least $200 billion each year.

This medical condition also contributes to potentially fatal disorders such as cancer, type 2 diabetes and cardiovascular disease.

Author: Fiona Keating | Source: International Business Times [November 20, 2015]

A mummy from ancient Egypt was heavily tattooed with sacred symbols, which may have served to advertise and enhance the religious powers of the woman who received them more than 3,000 years ago.

The newly reported tattoos are the first on a mummy from dynastic Egypt to show actual objects, among them lotus blossoms on the mummy’s hips, cows on her arm and baboons on her neck. Just a few other ancient Egyptian mummies sport tattoos, and those are merely patterns of dots or dashes.

Especially prominent among the new tattoos are so-called wadjet eyes: possible symbols of protection against evil that adorn the mummy’s neck, shoulders and back.

“Any angle that you look at this woman, you see a pair of divine eyes looking back at you,” says bioarchaeologist Anne Austin of Stanford University in California, who presented the findings last month at a meeting of the >American Association of Physical Anthropologists.

Austin noticed the tattoos while examining mummies for the French Institute of Oriental Archaeology, which conducts research at Deir el-Medina, a village once home to the ancient artisans who worked on tombs in the nearby Valley of the Kings. Looking at a headless, armless torso dating from 1300 to 1070 bc, Austin noticed markings on the neck. At first, she thought that they had been painted on, but she soon realized that they were tattoos.

Hidden history

Austin knew of tattoos discovered on other mummies using infrared imaging, which peers more deeply into the skin than visible-light imaging. With help from infrared lighting and an infrared sensor, Austin determined that the Deir el-Medina mummy boasts more than 30 tattoos, including some on skin so darkened by the resins used in mummification that they were invisible to the eye. Austin and Cédric Gobeil, director of the French mission at Deir el-Medina, digitally stretched the images to counter distortion from the mummy’s shrunken skin.

The tattoos identified so far carry powerful religious significance. Many, such as the cows, are associated with the goddess Hathor, one of the most prominent deities in ancient Egypt. The symbols on the throat and arms may have been intended to give the woman a jolt of magical power as she sang or played music during rituals for Hathor.

The tattoos may also be a public expression of the woman’s piety, says Emily Teeter, an Egyptologist at the University of Chicago’s Oriental Institute in Illinois. “We didn’t know about this sort of expression before,” Teeter says, adding that she and other Egyptologists were “dumbfounded” when they heard of the finding.

Some tattoos are more faded than others, so perhaps some were made at different times. This could suggest that the woman’s religious status grew with age, Austin says.

Penetrating gaze

She has already found three more tattooed mummies at Deir el-Medina, and hopes that modern techniques will uncover more elsewhere.

Even infrared imaging can’t penetrate an intact mummy’s linen binding. But a nineteenth-century penchant for unwrapping mummies could enable the discovery of more tattoos, says Marie Vandenbeusch, a curator at the British Museum in London. Such examples could provide needed evidence “to really pinpoint the use of those tattoos”, she says.

Austin argues that the scale of the designs, many of them in places out of the woman’s reach, implies that they were more than simple adornment.

The application of the tattoos “would’ve been very time consuming, and in some areas of the body, extremely painful”, Austin says. That the woman subjected herself to the needle so often shows “not only her belief in their importance, but others around her as well”.

Author: Traci Watson | Source: Nature [doi:10.1038/nature.2016.19864] [May 09, 2016]

Cutting-edge genome technology in Trinity College Dublin has cast more light on a mystery that has perplexed archaeologists for more than a decade. The origins of a set of Roman-age decapitated bodies, found by York Archaeological Trust at Driffield Terrace in the city, have been explored, revealing a Middle Eastern body alongside native British.

Archaeologists have speculated that the skeletons belonged to gladiators, although they could also have been soldiers or criminals. Several suffered perimortem decapitation and were all of a similar age – under 45 years old. Their skulls were buried with the body, although not positioned consistently – some were on the chest, some within the legs, and others at the feet.

Although examining the skeletons revealed much about the life they lived – including childhood deprivation and injuries consistent with battle trauma – it was not until genomic analysis by a team from Trinity College Dublin, led by Professor of Population Genetics, Dan Bradley, that archaeologists could start to piece together the origins of the men.

The Trinity College team recently published the first prehistoric Irish genomes and this analysis by Trinity PhD Researcher, Rui Martiniano, also breaks new ground as it represents the first genome analysis of ancient Britons.

From the skeletons of more than 80 individuals, Dr Gundula Muldner of the University of Reading, Dr Janet Montgomery of the University of Durham and Malin Holst and Anwen Caffel of York Osteoarchaeology selected seven for whole genome analyses. Despite variation in isotope levels which suggested some of the 80 individuals lived their early lives outside Britain, most of those sampled had genomes similar to an earlier Iron Age woman from Melton, East Yorkshire. The poor childhood health of these men suggests that they were locals who endured childhood stress, but their robust skeletons and healed trauma, suggest that they were used to wielding weapons.

The nearest modern descendants of the Roman British men sampled live not in Yorkshire, but in Wales. A man from a Christian Anglo-Saxon cemetery in the village of Norton, Teesside, has genes more closely aligned to modern East Anglia and Dutch individuals and highlights the impact of later migrations upon the genetic makeup of the earlier Roman British inhabitants.

However, one of the decapitated Romans had a very different story, of Middle Eastern origin he grew up in the region of modern day Palestine, Jordan or Syria before migrating to this region and meeting his death in York.

"Archaeology and osteoarchaeology can tell us a certain amount about the skeletons, but this new genomic and isotopic research can not only tell us about the body we see, but about its origins, and that is a huge step forward in understanding populations, migration patterns and how people moved around the ancient world," says Christine McDonnell, Head of Curatorial and Archive Services for York Archaeological Trust.

"This hugely exciting, pioneering work will become the new standard for understanding the origins of skeletons in the future, and as the field grows, and costs of undertaking this kind of investigation fall, we may be able to refine our knowledge of exactly where the bodies were born to a much smaller region. That is a remarkable advance."

As well as Trinity College Dublin, the multi-disciplinary scientific analysis involved scientists from the University of York and The York Archaeological Trust, as well as the universities of Durham, Reading and Sheffield, University College London and the University Medical Centre in Utrecht. The research also included experts from York Osteoarchaeology Ltd, City of York Council and the Natural History Museum.

The Roman skeletons sampled were all male, under 45 years old and most had evidence of decapitation. They were taller than average for Roman Britain and displayed evidence of significant trauma potentially related to interpersonal violence. All but one would have had brown eyes and black or brown hair but one had distinctive blue eyes and blond hair similar to the single Anglo-Saxon individual.

The demographic profile of the York skeletons resembles the population structure in a Roman burial ground believed to be for gladiators at Ephesus. But the evidence could also fit with a military context—the Roman army had a minimum recruitment height and fallen soldiers would match the age profile of the York cemetery.

Professor Dan Bradley, Trinity, said: "Whichever the identity of the enigmatic headless Romans from York, our sample of the genomes of seven of them, when combined with isotopic evidence, indicate six to be of British origin and one to have origins in the Middle East. It confirms the cosmopolitan character of the Roman Empire even at its most northerly extent."

PhD Researcher and lead author, Rui Martiniano, Trinity, said: "This is the first refined genomic evidence for far-reaching ancient mobility and also the first snapshot of British genomes in the early centuries AD, indicating continuity with an Iron Age sample before the migrations of the Anglo-Saxon period."

Professor Matthew Collins, of the BioArCh research facility in the Department of Archaeology at York, who co-ordinated the report on the research, "These genomes give the first snapshot of British genomes in the early centuries AD, showing continuity with the earlier Iron Age and evidence of migrations in the Anglo-Saxon period."

The paper is published in >Nature Communications.

Source: Trinity College Dublin [January 20, 2016]

A DNA analysis of four ancient Roman skeletons found in London shows the first inhabitants of the city were a multi-ethnic mix similar to contemporary Londoners, the Museum of London said on Monday.

Two of the skeletons were of people born outside Britain -- one of a man linked genealogically to eastern Europe and the Near East, the other of a teenage girl with blue eyes from north Africa.

The injuries to the man's skull suggest that he may have been killed in the city's amphitheatre before his head was dumped into an open pit.

Both the man and the girl were suffering from periodontal disease, a type of gum disease.

The other two skeletons of people believed to have been born in Britain were of a woman with maternal ancestry from northern Europe and of a man also with links through his mother to Europe or north Africa.

"We have always understood that Roman London was a culturally diverse place and now science is giving us certainty," said Caroline McDonald, senior curator of Roman London at the museum.

"People born in Londinium lived alongside people from across the Roman Empire exchanging ideas and cultures, much like the London we know today," she said.

The museum said in a statement that this was "the first multidisciplinary study of the inhabitants of a city anywhere in the Roman Empire".

The Romans founded Britain's capital city in the middle of the first century AD, under the emperor Claudius.

Britain's University of Durham researched stable isotopes from tooth enamel to determine migration patterns.

A tooth from each skeleton was also sent to McMaster University in Canada for DNA analysis that established the hair and eye colour of each individual and identified the diseases they were suffering from.

McMaster University also examined the mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA) to identify maternal ancestry.

The exhibition of the four skeletons, entitled "Written in Bone", opens on Friday.

Source: AFP [November 24, 2015]

Scientists used the full DNA sequences of Schistosoma mansoni parasites from Africa and the French Caribbean to discover the fluke's origins, map its historic transmission and identify the secrets of its success. Their findings, published in Scientific Reports, show how the global slave trade transported the disease from Senegal and Cameroon to Guadeloupe. Further genomic comparison with a closely related schistosome species that infects rodents reveals how the parasite has adapted to infecting human beings.

Schistosoma mansoni is a blood fluke (flatworm) that infects more than 250 million people worldwide and causes more than 11,000 deaths each year. Six years ago the Sanger Institute published the parasite's first full DNA sequence (genome); this latest study used that 'genetic map' to construct and compare the genomes of S. mansoni parasites gathered from across Africa and the New World, the majority of which were held at the Schistosomiasis Collection in the Natural History Museum, London.

By analysing the differences between the human-infecting S. mansoni and its close relative, the rodent-infecting S. rodhaini, the scientists calculated that the two species evolved from a common ancestor approximately 107,000 to 148,000 years ago in East Africa. This finding suggests that the species is much 'younger' than previously thought.

"The timing of the separation of the two species coincidences with the first archaeological evidence of fishing in Africa," explains Thomas Crellen, first author of the study from Imperial College London, the Sanger Institute and the Royal Veterinary College London. "The parasite develops in freshwater and infects people by burrowing through their skin. The introduction of fishing would have meant that people spent more time in the water, greatly increasing their chances of being infected."

Analysing the differences between genomes from different locations also revealed the darker side of human history.

"Comparing the S. mansoni genomes suggests that flukes in West Africa split from their Caribbean counterparts at some point between 1117AD and 1742AD, which overlaps with the time of the 16th-19th Century Atlantic Slave Trade," says Professor Joanne Webster from Imperial College London and the Royal Veterinary College. "During this period more than 22,000 African people were transported from West Africa to Guadeloupe by French slave ships, and the fluke was carried with them."

Comparing the genomes of S. mansoni with S. rodhaini also revealed the genetic variations that have been positively selected over time in the human-infecting fluke and have been "fixed" into its DNA. It is likely that these variations are the evolutionary adaptations that have occurred to enable the fluke to successfully tunnel into, and thrive within, human beings.

"When we looked for the differences between human-infecting S. mansoni DNA and its rodent infecting cousin S. rodhaini, we found two important variations. We found that changes to two genes in S. mansoni's DNA -- VAL21 and an elastase gene -appear to be important in allowing the fluke to enter and live in humans," says Dr James Cotton, senior author of the study from the Sanger Institute. "VAL genes produce proteins that cause allergic responses, so it is possible that the variation in VAL21 helps the fluke to hide from our immune systems. The elastase gene helps the parasite to burrow in to the body, by breaking down elastin -- a major component of human skin."

It is hoped that exploring the genetic makeup of the fluke it will be possible to discover more about the processes the parasite relies on to infect humans and offer new opportunities to develop preventive and therapeutic interventions.

Source: Wellcome Trust Sanger Institute [February 17, 2016]

The worst land grab in decades in the Brazilian Amazon is threatening the survival of isolated tribes that have no contact with the outside world, a rights group said Wednesday.

Ranchers and settlers in the remotest reaches of northwestern Brazil are voraciously cutting down rainforest to farm crops, encroaching on the ancestral lands of three uncontacted groups, said Survival International.

The land grab is also threatening another tribe, the Uru Eu Wau Wau, or "Harpy Eagle" people, that has only limited contact with the outside world, said the London-based group.

Warning the groups face "annihilation," it accused local politicians in the state of Rondonia of backing the deforestation, even though the area is officially designated as an indigenous reserve and sits within a national park, Pacaas Novas.

Because isolated peoples' immune systems have never been exposed to the outside world's diseases, the land grab risks causing devastating outbreaks, Survival said.

"Around the world, industrialized society is stealing tribal lands in the pursuit of profit. What's happening in Brazil is simply a continuation of the invasion and genocide which characterized the European colonization of the Americas," said the group's director, Stephen Corry.

The organization quoted a letter the Harpy Eagle tribe sent to Brazilian police, in which they call the land grab "extremely serious."

"We are very worried because the invasions are close to our villages and putting the lives of women, old people, children and men at risk," said the letter.

Experts estimate between 50 and 90 percent of the populations of Brazil's isolated tribes were wiped out when the government initiated contact with them in the 1970s and 80s—official policy at the time.

Today, the government tries to avoid any contact with isolated peoples, in order to protect them.

Brazil is home to some 900,000 indigenous people from 305 different ethnic groups.

Source: AFP [October 27, 2016]