Analysis of a latrine in Jerusalem that dates back over 500 years finds human parasites common in northern Europe yet very rare in Middle East at the time, suggesting long-distance trade or pilgrimage routes and shedding light on prevalent infectious diseases of the age.
A genome taken from a 36,000 year old skeleton reveals an early divergence of Eurasians once they had left Africa, and allows scientists to better assess the point at which ‘admixture’ - or interbreeding - between Eurasians and Neanderthals occurred. The latest research also points to a previously unknown population lineage as old as the first population separations since humans dispersed out of Africa.
Understanding our biological past is a tricky business. It's like trying to build a jigsaw puzzle when most of the pieces are missing. However, bioarchaeologists at the University of Cambridge are doing just that through the study of human-environment interactions within a historic and prehistoric framework, often with surprising results.
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