Tuberculosis in Dr Granville’s mummy
‘Dr Granville's mummy’ was described to the Royal Society of London in 1825 and was the first ancient Egyptian mummy to be subjected to a scientific autopsy. The remains are those of a woman, Irtyersenu, aged about 50, from the necropolis of Thebes and dated to about 600 BC. Augustus Bozzi Granville (1783–1872), an eminent physician and obstetrician, described many organs still in situ and attributed the cause of death to a tumour of the ovary.
However, subsequent histological investigations indicate that the tumour is a benign cystadenoma. Histology of the lungs demonstrated a potentially fatal pulmonary exudate and earlier studies attempted to associate this with particular disease conditions. Palaeopathology and ancient DNA analyses show that tuberculosis was widespread in ancient Egypt, so a systematic search for tuberculosis was made, using specific DNA and lipid biomarker analyses.
Clear evidence for Mycobacterium tuberculosis complex DNA was obtained in lung tissue and gall bladder samples, based on nested PCR of the IS6110 locus. Lung and femurs were positive for specific M. tuberculosis complex cell-wall mycolic acids, demonstrated by high-performance liquid chromatography of pyrenebutyric acid–pentafluorobenzyl mycolates. Therefore, tuberculosis is likely to have been the major cause of death of Irtyersenu.
A Single Origin for Dogs South of Yangtze River
An interesting paper on the origin of dogs in the forthcoming issue of Molecular Biology and Evolution - mtDNA Data Indicate a Single Origin for Dogs South of Yangtze River, Less Than 16,300 Years Ago, from Numerous Wolves:
There is no generally accepted picture of where, when, and how the domestic dog originated. Previous studies of mitochondrial DNA mtDNA have failed to establish the time and precise place of origin because of lack of phylogenetic resolution in the so far studied control region CR, and inadequate sampling. We therefore analyzed entire mitochondrial genomes for 169 dogs to obtain maximal phylogenetic resolution and the CR for 1,543 dogs across the Old World for a comprehensive picture of geographical diversity.
Hereby, a detailed picture of the origins of the dog can for the first time be suggested. We obtained evidence that the dog has a single origin in time and space and an estimation of the time of origin, number of founders, and approximate region, which also gives potential clues about the human culture involved. The analyses showed that dogs universally share a common homogenous gene pool containing 10 major haplogroups.
However, the full range of genetic diversity, all 10 haplogroups, was found only in southeastern Asia south of Yangtze River, and diversity decreased following a gradient across Eurasia, through seven haplogroups in Central China and five in North China and Southwest SWAsia, down to only four haplogroups in Europe.
The mean sequence distance to ancestral haplotypes indicates an origin 5,400–16,300 years ago ya from at least 51 female wolf founders. These results indicate that the domestic dog originated in southern China less than 16,300 ya, from several hundred wolves.
The place and time coincide approximately with the origin of rice agriculture, suggesting that the dogs may have originated among sedentary hunter-gatherers or early farmers, and the numerous founders indicate that wolf taming was an important culture trait.
Wednesday Wiki: A list of languages by first written accounts
A List of languages by first written accounts.
This is a list of languages by first written accounts which consists of the approximate dates for the first written accounts that are known for various languages.
Because of the way languages change gradually, it is usually impossible to pinpoint when a given language began to be spoken with any precision. In many cases, some form of the language had already been spoken (and even written) considerably earlier than the dates of the earliest extant samples provided here.
The problems with Paleofantasies
Marlene Zuk in the New York Times attacks a core belief of Evolutionary Psychology:
Remember when life was simpler, and diets weren’t full of processed food and chemicals? No, not the 1950s. Increasingly, we are developing nostalgia for a much earlier epoch: the Pleistocene, when humans lived in small hunter-gatherer groups and didn’t worry about high cholesterol.
(...) In short, we have what the anthropologist Leslie Aiello called "paleofantasies."
Migration: An engine for social change
In today's Nature, Peter Richerson and Robert Boyd argue that migration is an engine of social change because the movement of people into societies that offer a better way of life is a more powerful driver of cultural evolution than conflict and conquest (pay-access only, sorry!):
As cultural evolutionists interested in how societies change over the long term, we have thought a lot about migration, but only recently tumbled to an obvious idea: migration has a profound effect on how societies evolve culturally because it is selective. People move to societies that provide a more attractive way of life and, all other things being equal, this process spreads ideas and institutions that promote economic efficiency, social order and equality.
Jacobs et al ‘08 – Ages for the Middle Stone Age of Southern Africa: Implications for Human Behavior and Dispersal
In today's Science, Jacobs et al discuss Ages for the Middle Stone Age of Southern Africa: Implications for Human Behavior and Dispersal:
The expansion of modern human populations in Africa 80,000 to 60,000 years ago and their initial exodus out of Africa have been tentatively linked to two phases of technological and behavioral innovation within the Middle Stone Age of southern Africa—the Still Bay and Howieson's Poort industries—that are associated with early evidence for symbols and personal ornaments.
Establishing the correct sequence of events, however, has been hampered by inadequate chronologies. We report ages for nine sites from varied climatic and ecological zones across southern Africa that show that both industries were short-lived (5000 years or less), separated by about 7000 years, and coeval with genetic estimates of population expansion and exit times.
Comparison with climatic records shows that these bursts of innovative behavior cannot be explained by environmental factors alone.