Many interesting short news

Partly because of the arrival of the Archaeo News bulletin but also because of mere randomness, it seems to me, a lot of more or less interesting news items are accumulating. In most cases I lack the information to deal with them in any greater depth but are still interesting to read about:


Genetics

Study suggests that the populations leading to modern Africans and Non-Africans did keep mixing for some 40,000 years before a Non-Africans suffered a severe bottleneck and became truly separated. This period of early divergence with interaction could have begun c. 120,000 or 100,000 years ago and would have ended c. 80-60 Ka ago. It could add support to the idea that Toba explosion caused a bottleneck. I'd like to write more about this but I have no access to the paper. -> Science Daily, -> Nature (PPV).

Inheritable epigenetics confirmed: may explain how living beings of all sorts adapt to changing conditions without need to alter their genetic backbone (DNA). -> Science Daily.


Human evolution

Chimpanzee brains do not shrink with age. Unlike humans, chimpanzee do not suffer the array of symptoms we loosely call senility, this may be therefore a hidden cost of having such large brains and living for so long. -> Science News.



Archaeology

Heacham burial

Magdalenian Age erotic art found in Bavaria (Germany). The unusual rock art was found near Bamberg and are believed to be c. 12,000 years old. It seems that the natural shapes in thecave may have inspired the ancient artists. -> news.com.au (no images provided).

Epipaleolithic open air cemetery found in Somerset (England). It is dated to c. 10,000 years ago. -> BBC.

England: Sheffield 6000 BCE: people lived continuously at nearby Whirlow Hall Farm since the Epipaleolithic and into the Iron Age. -> The Star. 

5000 years-old skeleton unearthed in Aosta Valley (Italy). The woman has been nicknamed Lady of Introd and was more or less contemporary of Ötzi the iceman, found frozen in Tyrol years ago. -> Archaeo News.

Tall el-Hammam pottery

And more England findings: burial of two women with amber beads found in Yorkshire, near Heacham, and dated to c. 2500 BCE (late Neolithic by British chronology, Chalcolithic by pan-European standards). -> EDP24.

Egyptian Old Kingdom may have succumbed to drought, suggests geological survey at Lake Tana (Ethiopia) at the source of the Blue Nile (the main contributor to the Nile in volume and the responsible of seasonal floods). -> PhysOrg.

Bronze and Iron Age city unearthed in Jordan, NE of the Dead Sea (near modern Kafrein, just across the Jordan river from Jerico). -> Tall el-Hammam (dig site), -> Popular Archaeology.