Beyond bones & stones
I recently completed a medical parasitology course as part of my medical education. One of the diseases we discussed was leishmaniasis. Leishmaniasis is a zoonotic disease that is transferred to humans from reservoir hosts via the sand fly vector. The sand fly injects the promastigote form of the parasite, and the parasite invades white blood... Continue Reading →
Okay, I got some really cool archaeology news to share with you. In fact it is so cool that I'm staying up to write up my review. Before I get into it, let me first introduce some relative background you'll need to understand. One of the most important predecessors to the Inca Empire were the... Continue Reading →
Dienekes briefly introduced a new paper which attempted to reassess the age of the earliest human settlements in southern Chile and Argentina through radiocarbon dating. This is an important anthropological paper since the dates on peopling of Americas are being pushed back further and further. You may remember the seaweed analysis from Monte Verde, Chile... Continue Reading →
It is coincidental that a regular Anthropology.net commenter, Terry, just posted a comment about last year's study on the origins of early American chicken because PNAS published a new paper on this topic today. Razib pointed out the link to the new paper, "Indo-European and Asian origins for Chilean and Pacific chickens revealed by mtDNA."... Continue Reading →
Monte Verde, Chile is a very interesting archaeological site. First discovered in 1976, the site is about 500 miles south of Santiago and has yielded artifacts of a small settlement of 20 to 30 people living in a dozen huts along a small creek. Aside from artifacts, a wide variety of midden has also been... Continue Reading →
