McLENNAN'S STUDIES IN ANCIENT HISTORY

Ancient admixture in human history.

Population mixture is an important process in biology. We present a suite of methods for learning about population mixtures, implemented in a software package called ADMIXTOOLS, that support formal tests for whether mixture occurred and make it possible to infer proportions and dates of mixture. We also describe the development of a new single nucleotide polymorphism (SNP) array consisting of 6...

Atomism in Ancient Medical History.

THE history of the development of the atomic theory is usually imagined to be the exclusive province of chemistry and physics, and there is a tendency to suppose that molecular biology is one of the most recent products of twentiethcentury science. For these reasons it is surprising to discover that the paths of the corpuscular world-view and theoretical physiology crossed more than two thousan...

Ancient DNA and human history.

We review studies of genomic data obtained by sequencing hominin fossils with particular emphasis on the unique information that ancient DNA (aDNA) can provide about the demographic history of humans and our closest relatives. We concentrate on nuclear genomic sequences that have been published in the past few years. In many cases, particularly in the Arctic, the Americas, and Europe, aDNA has ...

Ancient History: Resources for Teachers

Advances in ancient DNA studies

The first aDNA studies used bacterial cloning to amplify small sequences retrieved from skins of animal and human mummies, and revealed the inefficient reaction kinetics of this technique (Higuchi et al., 1984; Pääbo 1985, 1989). These studies demonstrated that the genetic material surviving in ancient specimens was often principally microbial or fungal in origin. Endogenous DNA was generally l...