Latest news with #civilization
BBC News
11 hours ago
- Science
- BBC News
Ancient Egyptian history may be rewritten by a DNA bone test
A DNA bone test on a man who lived 4,500 years ago in the Nile Valley has shed new light on the rise of the Ancient Egyptian analysis of his skeleton shows he was 60 years old and possibly worked as a potter, but also that a fifth of his DNA came from ancestors living 1,500km away in the other great civilisation of the time, in Mesopotamia or modern day is the first biological evidence of links between the two and could help explain how Egypt was transformed from a disparate collection of farming communities to one of the mightiest civilisations on findings lend new weight to the view that writing and agriculture arose through the exchange of people and ideas between these two ancient worlds. The lead researcher, Prof Pontus Skoglund at the Francis Crick Institute in London, told BBC News that being able to extract and read DNA from ancient bones could shed new light on events and individuals from the past, allowing black and white historical facts to burst into life with technicolour details."If we get more DNA information and put it side by side with what we know from archaeological, cultural, and written information we have from the time, it will be very exciting," he understanding of our past is drawn in part from written records, which is often an account by the rich and powerful, mostly about the rich and powerful. Biological methods are giving historians and scientists a new tool to view history through the eyes of ordinary DNA was taken from a bone in the inner ear of remains of a man buried in Nuwayrat, a village 265km south of died between 4,500 and 4,800 years ago, a transformational moment in the emergence of Egypt and Mesopotamia. Archaeological evidence indicated that the two regions may have been in contact at least 10,000 years ago when people in Mesopotamia began to farm and domesticate animals, leading to the emergence of an agricultural society. Many scholars believe this social and technological revolution may have influenced similar developments in ancient Egypt – but there has been no direct evidence of contact, until now. Adeline Morez Jacobs, who analysed the remains as part of her PhD at Liverpool John Moores University, says this is the first clear-cut evidence of significant migration of people and therefore information between the two centres of civilisation at the time."You have two regions developing the first writing systems, so archaeologists believe that they were in contact and exchanging ideas. Now we have the evidence that they were."We hope that future DNA samples from ancient Egypt can expand on when precisely this movement from West Asia started and its extent."The man was buried in a ceramic pot in a tomb cut into the hillside. His burial took place before artificial mummification was standard practice, which may have helped to preserve his investigating chemicals in his teeth, the research team were able to discern what he ate, and from that, determined that he had probably grown up in the scientific detective story doesn't stop there. Prof Joel Irish at Liverpool John Moores University conducted a detailed analysis of the skeleton to build up a picture of the man as an individual."What I wanted to do was to find out who this guy was, let's learn as much about him as possible, what his age was, his stature was, what he did for a living and to try and personalise the whole thing rather than treat him as a cold specimen," he bone structure indicated that the man was between 45 and 65 years old, though evidence of arthritis pointed to the upper end of the scale. He was just over 5ft 2in tall, which even then was Irish was also able to establish he was probably a potter. The hook-shaped bone at the back of his skull was enlarged, indicating he looked down a lot. His seat bones are expanded in size, suggesting that he sat on hard surfaces for prolonged periods. His arms showed evidence of extensive movement back and forth, and there were markings on his arms where his muscles had grown, indicating that he was used to lifting heavy objects."This shows he worked is tail off. He's worked his entire life," the American-born academic told BBC Linus Girdland Flink explained that it was only because of a tremendous stroke of luck that this skeleton was available to study and reveal its historic secrets."It was excavated in 1902 and donated to World Museum Liverpool, where it then survived bombings during the Blitz that destroyed most of the human remains in their collection. We've now been able to tell part of the individual's story, finding that some of his ancestry came from the Fertile Crescent, highlighting mixture between groups at this time," he new research has been published in the journal Nature. A DNA bone test on a man who lived 4,500 years ago in the Nile Valley has shed new light on the rise of the Ancient Egyptian analysis of his skeleton shows that a fifth of his DNA came from ancestors living 1,500km away in the other great civilisation of the time, in Mesopotamia or modern day is the first biological evidence of links between the two civilisations, and could help explain how Egypt was transformed from a disparate collection of farming communities to one of the mightiest civilisations on findings lend new weight to the view that writing and agriculture arose through the exchange of people and ideas between these two ancient worlds.
Daily Mail
a day ago
- Science
- Daily Mail
EXCLUSIVE Atlantis is finally FOUND off coast of major city, archaeologist claims... and he's got video to prove it
Plato's writings describe an advanced civilization that built grand temples and massive harbor walls before being swallowed by the sea more than 11,600 years ago. Now, an archaeologist believes he has found Atlantis just two miles off the coast of Cádiz, Spain.
Yahoo
23-06-2025
- Health
- Yahoo
Scientists discover surprising cause for rapid increase in bedbug population: 'The bugs spread with them'
Scientists have discovered a surprising connection between the rise in civilizations and a subsequent increase in bedbug populations. Though they're not known to transmit diseases, the pests can contribute to sleep and mental health issues. As the Guardian reported, a new study by an international team of researchers found that bedbugs could likely be "the first urban pest insect," as their numbers exploded when humans began expanding across the globe and building cities. Dr. Warren Booth, an urban entomologist at Virginia Tech and a co-author of the research, said that when human settlements first emerged around 10,000 years ago, it created the ideal conditions for the blood-sucking parasites to thrive. "When we started to live in cities, we brought all these people together, and they all had their own bedbugs with them," Booth said. "And then, as civilisation spread across the world, the bugs spread with them to the point where they're now ubiquitous in human society." For the study, which was published in Biology Letters, the team compared the genetic material of 19 bedbugs from the Czech Republic and discovered that populations associated with both bats and humans — two common hosts for bedbugs — started declining in the midst of the last ice age, about 45,000 years ago. However, their populations experienced a "dramatic" rise around 8,000 years ago, shortly after humans migrated into big cities. While bedbugs are not generally considered to be harmful, they can cause discomfort and annoyance, especially if you're dealing with an infestation. Plus, some people experience minor symptoms, including itching and irritation, red, swollen bumps, and even allergic reactions that require treatment. Not to mention, knowing you have bedbugs crawling around your sheets can lead to insomnia and poor well-being. Having to replace bedding and potentially seek professional help to eradicate them is also a major hassle. However, the elephant in the room is that soaring bedbug numbers and the shifting climate have more to do with each other than you'd think. Warmer temperatures and higher humidity levels can accelerate bedbug life cycles and lead to more frequent reproduction. Additionally, a hotter climate provides the ideal conditions for pests to expand their ranges and colonize areas they previously could not survive in. Changes in the climate can also disrupt natural predators or competitors of bedbugs, further contributing to their successful reproduction. While bedbugs don't directly harm the planet, the need to control or eliminate them often involves the use of pesticides, which can damage ecosystems and hurt wildlife. In the grand scheme of things, bedbugs may be relatively harmless compared to other pests, but bugs such as mosquitoes, ticks, and fleas are contributing to an alarming rise in vector-borne illnesses — including malaria, Lyme disease, and typhus — around the globe. Do you worry about getting diseases from bug bites? Absolutely Only when I'm camping or hiking Not really Never Click your choice to see results and speak your mind. Prevention is the best cure, as they say, so regular cleaning and decluttering around your home will help keep the bedbugs at bay. If you have an infestation, make sure to thoroughly wash and dry bedding on high heat, use steam or heat treatments, or call for professional help if necessary. Keeping your home clean with natural cleaning products such as baking soda and vinegar is also a simple, affordable solution to prevent (or at least lessen) the likelihood of attracting bedbugs. Join our free newsletter for good news and useful tips, and don't miss this cool list of easy ways to help yourself while helping the planet.
New York Times
21-06-2025
- New York Times
Season Opener
Last night, at 10:42 p.m. Eastern, summer arrived in the Northern Hemisphere. With it, a major heat wave is affecting large swaths of the U.S. Keep yourself safe and stay cool however you can this weekend. If you can find your way to some water — a pool, a lake or a river, the ocean, your trusty old bathtub — do it. Not only will you cool off, but you'll also get the benefit that my friend Lori pointed out to me recently: Swimming is one of the only activities in modern life during which it's nearly impossible to be on your phone. (Fine, it's possible in the bathtub. But why are you on your phone in the bathtub?) The ideal of summer, the one that plays in my imagination during the colder months, is totally tech-free. It's all real life, all sensation: sun on skin, sand between toes, picking the corn cob free of its waxy silk, always smelling something grilling somewhere. There's no phone in this film, no text message or push alert, nothing vibrating in anyone's pocket. My colleagues on the Travel desk have a new story this morning about far-flung resorts where people pay up to $32,000 a night to get away from civilization, to unyoke themselves from the stranglehold of Wi-Fi. This seems extreme. But I still get nostalgic remembering the phone-free week I spent in the woods nearly two years ago, what a relief it was not to have that parallel life to tend to for a spell. Last week, I wrote about how to find a middle ground between obsession and retreat in the face of what feels like an impossible-to-process volume of information. The solution, as with so many of our persistent complaints, is presence. The phone takes us out of the present like nothing else. I've been thinking about the moment when you return, after having been deep in your phone, oblivious to your surroundings. There's this feeling of dislocation, like waking up. You have been traveling, you've been elsewhere, totally disconnected from the world, your home. You have this second where you aren't sure where you were, as if you've lost your place. You lose bits of your life when you're lost in your device. You know this, I know this, but somehow, in summer, it seems even more regrettable to miss out on the moment. It's finally warm enough to linger outside. There's enough daylight that, on a Saturday, you can get your chores done and still have time to lie in the grass with a book, to contemplate the leaves against the sky. On hot days in the city, you can see and smell the sun acting on the asphalt, refracting in blurry, mineral-y waves. The roses are almost obnoxious in their exuberance. Why would you want to miss a minute of this? Politics Mahmoud Khalil, the pro-Palestinian campus protester detained by the Trump administration, was released on bail, ending his three-month imprisonment. A federal judge sided with Harvard and barred the Trump administration from rescinding the school's right to host international students. The university has restarted talks with the White House to potentially settle their acrimonious dispute. The Trump administration laid off more than 600 workers from the federally funded news outlet Voice of America, leaving the broadcaster with fewer than 200 staffers. On Juneteenth, Trump did not utter the name of the federal holiday. It's part of a broader playbook to minimize the Black experience in America, writes Erica Green, a White House correspondent. This week, the Supreme Court upheld a Tennessee law that prohibits some medical treatments for transgender youths. In the video below, Adam Liptak, who covers the Supreme Court, describes the three factions within the 6-to-3 decision. Click to watch. Iran-Israel War A day of talks between the European Union and Iran yielded no significant breakthroughs. An Iranian official said there would be 'no room for talking' until Israel stopped its attacks. Israel and Iran traded fire for the ninth consecutive day after a European diplomatic effort — dismissed by President Trump — made little immediate progress in preventing the exchanges of fire from spiraling into a broader war. In a fiery U.N. Security Council meeting, Israel and Iran blamed each other for the war, and their allies took familiar sides. Trump says he wants to make a nuclear deal with Iran in two weeks. Veteran diplomats warn that his timeline may be too short for a notoriously slow process. More International News Microsoft recently suspended a European official's email account, under orders from the Trump administration. The move stoked fears abroad: Can Trump use U.S. tech dominance as a cudgel? The crash of an Air India flight last week highlighted the danger of building busy airports within dense city neighborhoods. Vladimir Putin's insistence on maintaining the Russian offensive in Ukraine has come at a diplomatic cost. Other Big Stories A law student at the University of Florida won a class award for a paper he wrote promoting racist views. It set off months of campus turmoil. The Republican plan to terminate billions in clean energy tax credits would result in a hotter planet, scientists warn. Trump's funding cuts are forcing universities to consider tuition hikes and layoffs. Some New York City leaders want to include nearly two million noncitizens in the next census. Film and TV Flesh-shredding creatures are wandering, crawling and, most worryingly, running amok in '28 Years Later,' the third installment in the zombie film series. Read the review. Three directors are credited on Pixar's 'Elio,' about an orphaned boy who dreams of being abducted by aliens. But they're not all listed onscreen at the same time. Here's why. Times critics put together a list of the best TV shows of 2025 so far, including the animated conspiracy thriller 'Common Side Effects.' In an era of skepticism around live-action remakes, Universal believed a new 'How to Train Your Dragon' would draw audiences. Read the inside story of the studio's big bet. More Culture Many modern video games take inspiration from Studio Ghibli, the famed Japanese animation studio. FIFA, soccer's governing body, unveiled a luxury fashion line at a starry party in L.A. See inside. New York City restaurants won three of the six major awards at the James Beard Restaurant awards this week, including outstanding chef and outstanding hospitality. After a ban last year, Joey Chestnut will return to the Nathan's Hot Dog Eating Contest. Leonard Lauder, the visionary executive behind Estée Lauder who died last week at 92, was the original beauty influencer. Want all of The Times? Subscribe.
Irish Times
19-06-2025
- Science
- Irish Times
Only two years left to limit global warming to 1.5 degrees target, scientists warn
The planet's remaining carbon budget to meet the international target of 1.5 degrees has just two years left at the current rate of emissions, scientists have warned, showing how deep into the climate crisis the world has fallen. Breaching the target would ramp up the extreme weather already devastating communities around the world. It would also require carbon dioxide to be sucked from the atmosphere in future to restore the stable climate in which the whole of civilisation developed over the past 10,000 years. The carbon budget is how much planet-heating carbon dioxide can still be emitted by humanity while leaving a reasonable chance that the temperature target is not blown. The latest assessment by leading climate scientists found that in order to achieve a 66 per cent chance of keeping below the 1.5 degrees target, emissions from 2025 onwards must be limited to 80bn tonnes of carbon dioxide. That is 80 per cent lower than it was in 2020. Emissions reached a new record high in 2024: at that rate the 80bn tonne budget would be exhausted within two years. Lags in the climate system mean the 1.5 degrees limit, which is measured as a multiyear average, would inevitably be passed a few years later, the scientists said. READ MORE Scientists have been warning for some time that breaching the 1.5 degrees limit is increasingly unavoidable as emissions from the burning of fossil fuels continue to rise. The latest analysis shows global emissions would have to plummet towards zero within just a few years to have any decent chance of keeping to the target. That appears extremely unlikely, given that emissions in 2024 rose yet again. However, the scientists emphasised every fraction of a degree of global heating increases human suffering, so efforts to cut emissions must ramp up as fast as possible. Currently, the world is on track for 2.7 degrees of global heating, which would be a truly catastrophic rise. The analysis shows, for example, that limiting the rise to 1.7 degrees is more achievable: the carbon budget for a 66 per cent chance of keeping below 1.7 degrees is 390bn tonnes, which is about nine years at the current rate of emissions. 'The remaining carbon budgets are declining rapidly and the main reason is the world's failure to curb global CO2 emissions,' said Prof Joeri Rogelj, at Imperial College London, UK. 'Under any course of action now, there is a very high chance we will reach and even exceed 1.5 and even higher levels of warming. 'The best moment to have started serious climate action was 1992, when the UN [climate] convention was adopted,' he said. 'But now every year is the best year to start being serious about emissions reduction. That is because every fraction of warming we can avoid will result in less harm and suffering, particularly for poor and vulnerable populations, and in less challenges to living the lives we desire.' The hottest year on record was 2024, fuelled by increasing coal and gas burning, and setting an annual average of 1.5 degrees for the first time. There is no sign yet of the transition away from fossil fuels promised by the world's nations at Cop28 in Dubai in December 2023. Solar and wind energy production is increasing rapidly and has precluded previous worst-case scenarios of 4 to 5 degrees of global heating. But energy demand is rising even faster, leading to more fossil fuel burning and turbocharging extreme weather disasters. The analysis, produced by an international team of 60 leading climate scientists, is an update of the critical indicators of climate change and is published in the journal Earth System Science Data. It aims to provide an authoritative assessment, based on the methods of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), but published annually unlike the intermittent IPCC reports, the most recent of which was 2021. The study found that the Earth's energy imbalance – the excess heat trapped by the greenhouse effect – has risen by 25 per cent when comparing the past decade with the decade before. – Guardian
