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Dani tribesman on his way to his village in the Baliem Valley, Papua.

Ancient ‘trace’ in Papuan genomes suggests previously unknown expansion out of Africa

21 Sep 2016

Several major studies, published today, concur that virtually all current global human populations stem from a single wave of expansion out of Africa...

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The fieldwork was conducted during the winter because the frozen lake surface provided the researchers with a solid (but freezing) platform for drilling into the sediment

Textbook story of how humans populated America is “biologically unviable”, study finds

10 Aug 2016

Using ancient DNA, researchers have created a unique picture of how a prehistoric migration route evolved over thousands of years – revealing that it...

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DNA was extracted from the molar teeth of this skeleton, dating from almost 10,000 years ago and found in the Kotias Klde rockshelter in Western Georgia.

‘Fourth strand’ of European ancestry originated with hunter-gatherers isolated by Ice Age

16 Nov 2015

Populations of hunter-gatherers weathered Ice Age in apparent isolation in Caucasus mountain region for millennia, later mixing with other ancestral...

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Left: Skull of a Yamnaya, the people who migrated to Central Asia in early Bronze Age and developed the Afanasievo culture. The Afanasievo are one of the Bronze Age groups carrying Y. pestis. Right: Scanning Electron Micrograph Of A Flea

Plague in humans ‘twice as old’ but didn’t begin as flea-borne, ancient DNA reveals

22 Oct 2015

New research dates plague back to the early Bronze Age, showing it had been endemic in humans across Eurasia for millennia prior to the first...

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