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Categories: Archaeology: General, Space: Cosmology

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Scientists have used paleogenomics to trace 10,000 years of human immune system evolution. They analyzed the genomes of more than 2,800 individuals who lived in Europe over the past ten millennia. They were able to date the increase in frequency of most of the mutations that are advantageous in defending against pathogens to after the Bronze Age, 4,500 years ago. The scientists also observed that mutations conferring a higher risk of developing inflammatory disorders have become more frequent over the past 10,000 years.

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A team has studied the relation between galaxy size and luminosity of some of the earliest galaxies in the universe taken by the James Webb Space Telescope, less than a billion years after the Big Bang.

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The movement of people across the Bering Sea from North Asia to North America is a well-known phenomenon in early human history. Nevertheless, the genetic makeup of the  people who lived in North Asia during this time has remained mysterious due to a limited number of ancient genomes analyzed from this region. Now, researchers describe genomes from ten individuals up to 7,500 years old that help to fill the gap and show geneflow from people moving in the opposite direction from North America to North Asia.

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NGC 346, one of the most dynamic star-forming regions in nearby galaxies, is full of mystery. Now, it is less mysterious with new findings from NASA's James Webb Space Telescope.

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The analysis of ancient DNA allows scientists to trace human evolution and make important discoveries about modern populations. The data revealed by ancient DNA sampling can be valuable, but the human remains that carry this ancient DNA are often those of the ancestors of modern Indigenous groups, and some communities have expressed concerns about the ethics of sampling by outside parties. A group of scientists make the case for involvement of descendant communities in all aspects of the research process.

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Astrophysicists have discovered the tightest ultracool dwarf binary system ever observed. The two stars are so close that it takes them less than one Earth day to revolve around each other. In other words, each star's 'year' lasts just 20.5 hours.

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New data have revealed that the structures of galaxies in the early universe were much more diverse and mature than previously known. JWST's ability to see faint high redshift galaxies in sharper detail than Hubble allowed the team of researchers to resolve more features and see a wide mix of galaxies.

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While studying a nearby pair of merging galaxies scientists have discovered two supermassive black holes growing simultaneously near the center of the newly coalescing galaxy. These super-hungry giants are the closest together that scientists have ever observed in multiple wavelengths. What's more, the new research reveals that binary black holes and the galaxy mergers that create them may be surprisingly commonplace in the Universe.

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Astronomers have used data from NASA's James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) Early Release Observations and discovered 87 galaxies that could be the earliest known galaxies in the universe. The finding moves the astronomers one step closer to finding out when galaxies first appeared in the universe -- about 200-400 million years after the Big Bang.

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A new analysis of distant galaxies imaged by NASA's James Webb Space Telescope shows that they are extremely young and share some remarkable similarities to 'green peas,' a rare class of small galaxies in our cosmic backyard.

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Smallpox was once one of humanity's most devastating diseases, but its origin is shrouded in mystery. For years, scientific estimates of when the smallpox virus first emerged have been at odds with historical records. Now, a new study reveals that the virus dates back 2,000 years further than scientists have previously shown, verifying historical sources and confirming for the first time that the disease has plagued human societies since ancient times.

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An unexpected ancient manufacturing strategy may hold the key to designing concrete that lasts for millennia.

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A new study based on 297 ancient Scandinavian genomes analysed together with the genomic data of 16,638 present day Scandinavians resolve the complex relations between geography, ancestry, and gene flow in Scandinavia -- encompassing the Roman Age, the Viking Age and later periods. A surprising increase of variation during the Viking period indicates that gene flow into Scandinavia was especially intense during this period.

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What genetic changes are responsible for the evolution of phenotypic traits? This question is not always easy to answer. A newly developed method now makes the search much easier.

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New images from NASA's James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) reveal galaxies with stellar bars -- elongated features of stars stretching from the centers of galaxies into their outer disks -- at a time when the universe was a mere 25% of its present age. The finding of so-called barred galaxies, similar to our Milky Way, this early in the universe will require astrophysicists to refine their theories of galaxy evolution.

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More than 500 years ago in the midwestern Guatemalan highlands, Maya people bought and sold goods with far less oversight from their rulers than many archeologists previously thought. Overtime, the availability of obsidian resources and the prevalence of craftsmen to shape it resulted in a system that is in many ways suggestive of contemporary market-based economies.

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In giant clusters of hundreds or thousands of galaxies, innumerable stars wander among the galaxies like lost souls, emitting a ghostly haze of light. These stars are not gravitationally tied to any one galaxy in a cluster. The nagging question for astronomers has been: how did the stars get so scattered throughout the cluster in the first place? Several competing theories include the possibility that the stars were stripped out of a cluster's galaxies, or they were tossed around after mergers of galaxies, or they were present early in a cluster's formative years many billions of years ago.

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A new study that reconstructs the history of sea level at the Bering Strait shows that the Bering Land Bridge connecting Asia to North America did not emerge until around 35,700 years ago, less than 10,000 years before the height of the last ice age (known as the Last Glacial Maximum). The findings indicate that the growth of the ice sheets -- and the resulting drop in sea level -- occurred surprisingly quickly and much later in the glacial cycle than previous studies had suggested.

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Archaeologists have uncovered projectile points in Idaho that are thousands of years older than any previously found in the Americas, helping to fill in the history of how early humans crafted and used stone weapons.

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Spread across vast distances, the islands of the tropical Pacific Ocean are thought to have been populated by humans in two distinct migrations beginning approximately 3,330 years ago. The first followed a northern route out of what is today the Philippines and the second followed a southern route from Taiwan and New Guinea. People arrived on the islands between these routes -- now making up the Federated States of Micronesia -- about 1,000 years later. But a new finding by sea-level researchers suggests that the islands in Micronesia were possibly settled much earlier than supposed and that voyagers on the two routes may have interacted with one another.