Latest news with #MaxPlanckInstituteforEvolutionaryAnthropology
CairoScene
25-05-2025
- Science
- CairoScene
Oldest Known Use of Harmal Unearthed in Saudi Arabia's Tabuk Region
Harmal residue discovered in a 2,700-year-old tomb offers rare insight into Iron Age Arabian culture. A new study published in Communications Biology has revealed the earliest known use of the harmal plant (Peganum harmala) in the Arabian Peninsula, dating back approximately 2,700 years. The discovery was made at the ancient Midianite site of Qurayyah in Saudi Arabia's Tabuk region, where archaeologists recovered charred remains of the plant from a burial context. Led by Saudi Arabia's Heritage Commission in collaboration with Germany's Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology and the University of Vienna, the research team used advanced chemical analysis—including gas chromatography-mass spectrometry—to detect alkaloids specific to Peganum harmala. The plant, widely known for its psychoactive and antibacterial properties, has long been used in traditional healing and rituals across the Middle East. The presence of harmal in an Iron Age tomb suggests that it served both medicinal and ceremonial functions, pointing to a complex understanding of botanical pharmacology in ancient Arabia. The study not only provides rare physical evidence of plant-based medicine from the Iron Age, but also adds to emerging research that links cultural practice with early scientific knowledge in the region.
The Hindu
13-05-2025
- Health
- The Hindu
East Asians began evolving to drink milk before they reared cattle
Female mammals produce milk to nourish their young. Much of the nourishment comes from lactose, the major sugar in milk. The lactose is broken down in the infant's small intestine into the more simpler sugars, glucose, and galactose, which are readily absorbed by the small intestine. The break-down, or digestion, of lactose is mediated by an enzyme called lactase. After weaning, a baby rapidly loses the ability to produce lactase. When adults consume milk, cheese, ice cream or other dairy products, many of them experience unpleasant effects like bloating, flatulence, and diarrhoea. This is because the undigested lactose passes into the large intestine, where it is utilised by the bacteria residing there. This produces hydrogen, carbon dioxide, and methane, and the unabsorbed sugars increase water flow into the bowels to produce diarrhoea. These are the hallmarks of lactose intolerance. Yet millions of people around the world regularly indulge in milkshakes, cheese pizzas, and ice cream sundaes even as adults. This is because they carry genetic mutations that allow them to continue producing lactase even as adults. This trait is called lactase persistence. A textbook example The mutations that confer lactase persistence emerged independently in different populations. Their emergence in North European and African populations in particular appears to have coincided with the domestication of cattle, buffaloes, goats, sheep, and other livestock, which began about 11,000 years ago. The cultural shift from hunting/gathering to pastoralism gave continued access to meat, milk, and hides from herds of domesticated animals. The coincidental emergence of lactase persistence mutations with livestock domestication was taken by many scientists at the time to be a 'textbook example' of convergent evolution. That is, the independent evolution of similar traits in distantly related populations. Experts believed it was driven, in the words of a 2007 paper in Nature Genetics, by the 'strong selective pressure resulting from shared cultural traits — animal domestication and adult milk consumption'. A wrinkle in the textbook Scientists may need to reevaluate this neat summation in the light of new findings reported by a team of researchers from Fudan University in Shanghai, China; the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology, in Leipzig, Germany; and the Université de Lyon in France. Their findings were published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. The researchers found a distinct evolutionary pathway for lactase persistence in East Asian populations, which includes the Chinese, the Japanese, and the Vietnamese. Unlike the gene-and-culture coevolution well-documented in African and European groups, the East Asian lactase persistence gene had come from the Neanderthals, an archaic group of humans that went extinct about 30,000 years ago. When the researchers conducted population genetic analyses of the part of the genome containing the lactase gene, they found evidence of pre-agricultural selection pressures beginning more than 30,000 years ago. That is, the East Asian genomes began evolving towards lactase persistence several millennia before these populations began to domesticate livestock. This early evolution likely targeted advantages related to the immune system rather than lactose digestion directly. The researchers found the East Asian (Neanderthal-derived) lactase gene showed the same expression pattern as the mutant responsible for lactase persistence in Europeans. This suggested it also conferred lactate persistence. Neanderthals in our genome About 7 million years ago, the evolutionary line leading to the contemporary Homo sapiens diverged from the one leading to our closest living cousins, the chimpanzees and bonobos. About 800,000 years ago, our line split once more: one population broke away and migrated to Eurasia, adapting to cold climes and eventually becoming the Neanderthals. The other stayed put in Africa and, by about 200,000 years ago, evolved into modern humans. Modern humans migrated out of Africa into Eurasia 120,000 to 80,000 years ago, and came into contact with their Neanderthal cousins there. DNA evidence from skeletal remains dating to after the contact showed the two occasionally interbred as well. As a result, today, about 1-4% of the genome of individuals with Eurasian ancestry — i.e. Europeans, East Asians, Indians, Native Americans, and Oceanians — represents Neanderthal-derived DNA sequences. The lactase gene of East Asians was one such segment. On the other hand, those of African descent have close to 0% Neanderthal-derived sequences. About 30,000 years ago the Neanderthals went extinct for reasons that are still not clear. Bones to pick Experts can distinguish Neanderthal skeletal remains from those of modern humans by the shape of the skull, inner ear bones, and pelvis width. Neanderthal bones have yielded DNA, which scientists have sequenced and compared with that of H. sapiens. Two random humans share about 99.9% of their DNA sequence whereas humans and Neanderthals shared only about 99.7%. Thus, there are about 9.6 million points of difference between Neanderthal and human DNA sequences, in terms of the bases the DNA is made of. Based on these differences, if a DNA sequence is sufficiently long, one can tell whether it is from humans or Neanderthals. The Allen Ancient DNA Resource (AADR) is a curated database of more than 10,000 genome sequences from the skeletal remains of ancient individuals who lived up to 20,000 years ago. The researchers who put this resource together have also identified, on every genome, more than a million sites where the DNA has been known to exhibit a different ordering of bases than 'normal'. About 67% of the ancient DNA sequences in AADR are from remains recovered in Europe and Russia, some 8% each are from East Asia and the Near East, about 7% are from the Americas, about 5% are from South and Central Asia, about 3% from Africa, and about 2% from Oceania. A story upended The researchers behind the new study searched AADR and found one modern human who lived around 14,000 years ago in the Amur area of China. This individual carried the Neanderthal-derived lactase gene. The gene occurred in roughly 10% of those humans who lived 8,000 to 3,000 years ago, and in about 20% of those who lived about 3,000 to 1,000 years ago. Its current frequency among East Asians is 28.9%. Thus, the AADR data also supported the inference made from the population genetic analyses: that the lactase gene had already experienced selection and had reached a (relatively) high frequency among East Asians long before they began to domesticate animals. Thus either the selection in East Asians, unlike that in Africans and North Europeans, was for reasons other than lactase persistence, or in all three geographies the selection was similarly not for lactase persistence. Either way in the light of these findings the classic story of gene–culture coevolution has become more complicated and hence, as the researchers note, more interesting. D.P. Kasbekar is a retired scientist.
Yahoo
12-05-2025
- Health
- Yahoo
Wild chimp babies bond with their moms in human-like ways
Chimpanzees are our closest primate relatives, sharing 99 percent of our DNA. We can both keep a beat, may perform a task differently if others are watching, and have chaotic conversations. Infant and mother bonds also appear to share some similarities. Like human children, chimpanzees develop different attachment styles with their mothers, according to a study published May 12 in the journal Nature Human Behaviour. In human children, disorganized attachment occurs when the child experiences fear, trauma, or aggression from their caregiver. Due to the fear, a child might display confusing behaviors. They may want affection from their caregiver, but fear the caregiver at the same time. This type of attachment style can lead to difficulties with emotional regulation, social integration, and even long-term mental health problems. Some psychologists believe that disorganized attachment is maladaptive since it leaves a child uncertain about how to respond in times of distress, and might hinder their ability to effectively cope–and affect their overall survival. A similar disorganized attachment can occur in captive chimpanzees, particularly orphans who are raised by humans. A lack of a permanent caregiver can lead to this more fearful behavior. However, in the wild, research has shown that chimpanzees typically grow up in more stable family groups and face natural survival pressures including predators. In the new study, an international team of biologists observed the behavior of wild chimpanzees in Taï National Park in Côte d'Ivoire, West Africa for four years. 'Taï chimpanzee communities differ from other populations in that they exhibit lower levels of aggression and infanticide,' Eléonore Rolland, a study co-author and primatologist at the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology in Germany, tells Popular Science. 'As a result, mothers tend to remain within the group alongside males. Additionally, when young individuals lose their mothers, they are often adopted by adult males, an unusual behavior not typically observed in many other chimpanzee communities.' The researchers found that wild chimpanzee infants develop different types of attachment to their mothers the way that human children do. Some of them feel secure and rely on their mother when they are distressed. These chimps often explore their environment more confidently, likely knowing that she is there for support and feeling more able to explore. Some of the others have an insecure-avoidant attachment. They tend to be more independent and do not seek out comfort from their mothers quite as often. Unlike in humans and captive orphaned chimpanzees, where 23.5 and 61 percent of offspring, respectively, show disorganized attachment, the wild chimpanzees in this study did not show any signs of disorganized attachment. 'This result supports the hypothesis that disorganised attachment is not an adaptive strategy for the survival of the offspring,' says Rolland. In humans, attachment theory is considered a key concept in psychology and can help explain how our relationship shapes social and emotional development. Secure attachment is associated with resilience and confidence. Insecure and disorganized attachment can be associated with difficulties in relationships, stress, and anxiety. 'One behavior most closely resembling human attachment styles was the offspring's tendency to seek comfort from their mother in response to threatening situations, even in individuals who had already been weaned,' says Rolland. 'This suggests that mothers play a crucial role in protecting their offspring, and that infants continue to rely on them for safety for several years, much like in humans.' Since the wild chimpanzees only showed insecure avoidant or secure attachment and not disorganized attachment, it raises some new questions about modern human parenting. 'Our results deepen our understanding of chimpanzees' social development and show that humans and chimpanzees are not so different after all. But they also make us think: have some modern human institutions or caregiving practices moved away from what is best for infant development?' Rolland says. [ Related: Adolescent chimpanzees might be less impulsive than human teens. ] Future studies exploring how an individual offspring's personality type might influence their attachment might further explain what is at play. Either way, understanding attachment styles helps us understand how early life experiences shape social and emotional development across species. 'Our findings suggest that shared attachment strategies in primates may reflect a common evolutionary heritage,' study co-author and evolutionary anthropologist Catherine Crockford said in a statement. 'The high prevalence of disorganised attachment in humans and captive orphan chimpanzees, in contrast to wild chimpanzees, also supports the idea that the rearing environment plays an important role in shaping attachment types.'
NBC News
11-05-2025
- Science
- NBC News
Chimpanzees use some features of language to talk to each other
New research suggests wild chimpanzees have developed a far more nuanced communication system than previously realized, using several mechanisms that combine their vocalizations to create new meaning. These elements of chimpanzee communication, described in a study published Friday in the journal Science Advances, resemble some of the fundamental building blocks of human language. Scientists analyzed recordings of three groups of chimpanzees living in the Ivory Coast and found that chimps can combine their hoots, grunts and calls in a similar way to how humans use idioms or change the order of words to build new phrases. The new research is the first time scientists have documented such complexity in a nonhuman communication system, and they think that the chimpanzees' abilities represent an evolutionary transition point between rudimentary animal communication and human language. 'Generating new or combined meanings by combining words is a hallmark of human language,' Catherine Crockford, a researcher at the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology who co-directs the Tai Chimpanzee Project, said in a news release. 'It is crucial to investigate whether a similar capacity exists in our closest living relatives, chimpanzees and bonobos.' A separate study, published last month, provided similar evidence that bonobos, another primate, can also combine their calls to modify calls and form phrases. Together, these studies suggest both species evolved to develop fundamental building blocks of human language. Bonobos and chimpanzees are the species most closely related to humans in evolutionary history, which means all three species could have evolved from a common ancestor with this ability, a theory that could help researchers understand how human language developed. 'Our findings suggest a highly generative vocal communication system, unprecedented in the animal kingdom, which echoes recent findings in bonobos suggesting that complex combinatorial capacities were already present in the common ancestor of humans and these two great ape species,' Cédric Girard-Buttoz, a researcher with the ENES bioacoustics research lab and the first author of the study, said in a news release. The researchers discovered these new complexities in chimpanzees' vocal system by following particular animals in the field from dawn to dusk for about 12 hours each day, recording the sounds the chimpanzees made and the responses from others in the group. They recorded more than 4,300 vocalizations from 53 wild chimpanzees. During the chimps' vocal calls, the researchers also tracked what activities, social interactions and environmental changes were occurring, and noted if the animals were eating, playing or encountering a predator, for example. Then, the researchers performed a statistical analysis of specific two-call combinations — such as a grunt followed by a bark — that were documented in multiple animals. The researchers found that chimpanzees combined calls in all of their daily aspects of life and that the combinations could express a wide variety of meanings. Simon Townsend, a professor at the University of Zurich who studies cognition in primates and contributed to the bonobo research but was not involved in this study, said the paper is the first to show chimpanzees using several different mechanisms that are considered to be among the building blocks of language. He said the evidence does suggest that the common evolutionary ancestor of bonobos, humans and chimpanzees probably had this ability, too. 'It does seem to suggest that our linguistic abilities were already well on the way to evolving ... 6-7 million years ago,' Townsend said, referring to when the species likely branched off from one another in the evolutionary tree. Not all primates show evidence of such complicated communication. Forest monkeys, which have relatively simple social groups, mostly use vocalizations to manage predatory threats, Townsend said. But he thinks the formation of increasingly large and complicated social groups — an element common to great ape species and humans — likely spurred the evolution of more complex communication and eventually the ability to form language. For bonobos and chimpanzees, 'the biggest challenge for them is navigating their complex social world. They live in much larger groups. … There's aggression, there's reconciliation, there's territoriality, there's intergroup interactions, and vocalizations, I think, is one evolutionary solution to trying to manage these complex and fine-grained social interactions,' Townsend said. In human language, syntax is the set of rules that creates a system capable of expressing an infinite number of meanings. 'Syntax is all about providing more and more precise, refined information. And you probably only need to do that when your social interactions get more complex,' Townsend said.
Scientific American
25-04-2025
- Science
- Scientific American
Ancient DNA Reveals Phoenicians' Surprising Ancestry
An ancient Middle Eastern civilization that developed an early alphabet spread its culture far and wide—but not its DNA, finds a 23 April Nature study of hundreds of ancient human genomes. Phoenician civilization emerged more than 3,000 years ago, centred around what is now Lebanon, before expanding across the Mediterranean Sea. Middle Eastern Phoenician city-states eventually fell to other groups, but the culture thrived farther west—most notably in Carthage, in what is now Tunisia, until its destruction in 146 BC. Phoenician city-states shared languages—recorded with an alphabet that was a precursor to Greek and Latin letters—religious practices and maritime trading economies. Many researchers have presumed that their inhabitants also shared ancestries connected to the culture's Middle Eastern origins. On supporting science journalism If you're enjoying this article, consider supporting our award-winning journalism by subscribing. By purchasing a subscription you are helping to ensure the future of impactful stories about the discoveries and ideas shaping our world today. To study this history, population geneticist Harald Ringbauer at the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology in Leipzig, Germany, and his colleagues analysed the DNA from the remains of around 200 people from Phoenician archaeological sites in the Middle East, Europe and North Africa. Ancestry puzzle To Ringbauer's surprise, people from Mediterranean outposts of Phoenician culture—also known as Punic people—shared no ancestry with ancient Middle Easterners, even those from sites linked to Phoenicians and their forebears the Canaanites. But neither did Punic people's genomes always resemble those of people from other local populations, such as those in Sardinia and Ibiza. Instead, Punic people shared an ancestry profile resembling those of ancient inhabitants of Greece and Sicily. Over time, North African ancestry entered the mix—reflecting the rise of Carthage after 500 BC. This unique mixture of ancestries is probably the result of a regular influx of diverse people connected by a 'Mediterranean highway' maintained by trade between Phoenician outposts, says Ringbauer. The study identified related individuals found at distant archaeological sites, including a pair of possible second cousins, one from North Africa and one from Sicily. After the fall of Phoenician city-states in the Middle East, people with ancestry from this region might have been cut off from the Mediterranean highway, says Ringbauer. The absence of Middle Eastern ancestry in Punic people doesn't surprise Pierre Zalloua, a geneticist at Khalifa University in Abu Dhabi, United Arab Emirates. 'The Phoenicians were a culture of integration and assimilation,' he says. 'They settled where they sailed.' Ringbauer would like to know why diverse Mediterranean people adopted Phoenician culture, instead of sticking to their existing practices. 'How can there be such a disconnect?' he wonders. 'Does this mean Phoenician culture was like a franchise that others could adopt? That's one for the archaeologists.'
