Ancient World Review

DNA Helix May Have Originated With Startling Ease

"Trying to explain how DNA and RNA evolved to form such neat spirals has been a notorious enigma in science. But a new study suggests the rotation may have occurred with ease billions of years ago when RNA's chemical ancestors casually spun into spiralled strands." Source: Archaeology News Network .

Note: This research describes how the spiral shape and general structure of DNA and RNA molecules might have evolved. Up until now, this was considered to have been an almost miraculous event:

"Making RNA or DNA using their actual nucleobases in the lab without the aid of the enzymes of living cells that usually do this job is more than a herculean task. Thus, although RNA and DNA are ubiquitous on Earth now, their evolution on pre-life Earth would appear to have been an anomaly requiring erratic convergences of extreme conditions."

This new study challenges that view, however:

"By contrast, the Georgia Tech researchers' model of chemical evolution holds that precursor nucleobases self-assembled easily to into ancestral prototypes -- that were polymer-like and referred to as assemblies -- which later evolved into RNA."

Statistical Method Recreates The History Of A Long-Abandoned Village

"Archaeologists now have new tools for studying the development of medieval villages and the transformation of the historical landscapes surrounding them. In a study recently published in EPJ Plus, scientists have attempted to reconstruct the history of Zornoztegi, an abandoned medieval village located in the Basque Country, Spain." Source: Phys.org.

Note: I couldn't find anything on Zornoztegi in English so the site must be fairly small and obscure. Some pictures of what I think is the site can be found here.

Bringing Back The Mammoth

Video from 2013.

"Paleogenomics has become a reality only with the onset of next-generation sequencing. This technique overcomes problems that bedeviled Sanger sequencing, such as the necessity of cloning ancient DNA into vectors (DNA libraries), thus requiring a cloning host like E. coli to propagate it. Both steps are likely to introduce severe biases into the mixtures of ancient DNA to be analyzed. Next-generation sequencing, as marketed by Roche/454 Life Sciences, combines the two principles of emulsion PCR and pyro-sequencing to allow for a several-orders-higher throughput than what is possible on a Sanger capillary-electrophoresis DNA sequencer, while avoiding sequencing biases. It thus becomes feasible to sequence DNA from samples of fossil specimens that might contain only a small percentage of endogenous DNA." Source: Mammoth Genome Project, Pennsylvania State University.

Comment: Descriptions of how DNA technology works might as well be written in Cretan hieroglyphics as far as I'm concerned, but it seems that paleogeneticists used to have to insert their ancient DNA fragments into the DNA of some kind of host organism like a modern bacteria in order to store it and get it to multiply. That created all kinds of errors, but they now have a new technique that supposedly makes it easier to create entire (?) sequences of fossil DNA from small samples without screwing everything up. That's a major step forward, but if you consider the fact that we still don't have any mammoth clones running around, the process must still be incredibly complex and difficult.

Scientists Measure Severity Of Drought During The Maya Collapse

Video from 2015.

"'The role of climate change in the collapse of Classic Maya civilisation is somewhat controversial, partly because previous records are limited to qualitative reconstructions, for example whether conditions were wetter or drier,' said Nick Evans, a PhD student in Cambridge's Department of Earth Sciences and the paper's first author. 'Our study represents a substantial advance as it provides statistically robust estimates of rainfall and humidity levels during the Maya downfall.'" Source: Archaeology News Network.

Note: Researchers found that "annual precipitation decreased between 41% and 54% during the period of the Maya civilisation's collapse, with periods of up to 70% rainfall reduction during peak drought conditions, and that relative humidity declined by 2% to 7% compared to today."

No one really knows what happened to the Classic Mayan civilization. A number of theories have been proposed, but the drought theory is one of the more plausible. According to Wikipedia, "[c]limatic factors were first implicated in the collapse as early as 1931 by Mayanists Thomas Gann and J. E. S. Thompson. In The Great Maya Droughts, Richardson Gill gathers and analyzes an array of climatic, historical, hydrologic, tree ring, volcanic, geologic, lake bed, and archeological research, and demonstrates that a prolonged series of droughts probably caused the Classic Maya collapse. The drought theory provides a comprehensive explanation, because non-environmental and cultural factors (excessive warfare, foreign invasion, peasant revolt, less trade, etc.) can all be explained by the effects of prolonged drought on Classic Maya civilization."

Mystery Of The Basel Papyrus Solved

"Since the 16th century, Basel has been home to a mysterious papyrus. With mirror writing on both sides, it has puzzled generations of researchers. A research team from the University of Basel has now discovered that it is an unknown medical document from late antiquity. The text was likely written by the famous Roman physician Galen." Source: University of Basel.

Note: "Galen, of Pergamum (AD 129 - ?199/216) in a spectacular career rose from gladiator physician in Asia minor to court physician in the Rome of Marcus Aurelius." Source: Oxford Classical Dictionary (OCD, 3rd ed. revised).

Galen was a major figure in the development of medicine in particular and science in general. "Arguably the most accomplished of all medical researchers of antiquity, Galen influenced the development of various scientific disciplines, including anatomy, physiology, pathology, pharmacology, and neurology, as well as philosophy and logic." (Wikipedia) According to the OCD, "his major enterprise to create a logic of scientific demonstration, surviving only in fragments, went beyond Artistotle and the Stoics in both the range and precision of its arguments."

Pliny The Elder - "Life Is Being Awake"

Pliny the Elder was what we would now call a workaholic, totally absorbed in his writing. According to his nephew, Pliny the Younger, "the only time he took from his work was for his bath, and by bath I mean his actual immersion, for while he was being rubbed down and dried he had a book read to him or dictated notes. When traveling he felt free from other responsibilities to give every minute to work; he kept a secretary at his side with book and notebook; and in winter saw that his hands were protected by long sleeves, so that even bitter weather should not rob him of a working hour. For the same reason, too, he used to be carried about Rome in a chair. I can remember how he scolded me for walking; according to him I need not have wasted those hours, for he thought any time wasted which was not devoted to work. It was this application which enabled him to finish all those volumes of the Natural History." Source: Livius.

According to the Oxford Classical Dictionary (OCD, 3rd ed. revised), "Pliny was no philosopher. It may indeed be thought refreshing to have a view of the ancient world from an author who did not have some claim to the philosophical viewpoint ... there is an engaging personality at work..." Pliny's writing in the Natural History is "highly individual: as is the style and the imagery, which was often misunderstood in later antiquity, and can still baffle today." An ancient encyclopedia may sound dry, but the Natural History is an absorbing mixture of facts and fantastic stories. I first read the Penguin Classics selection from the encyclopedia on a cross-country flight years ago and couldn't put it down.

Here's a typical entry:

"Beyond the Scythian Cannibals, in a certain large valley in the Himalayas, there is a region called Abarimon where some forest-dwellers live who have their feet turned back behind their legs; they run with extraordinary speed and wander far and wide with the wild animals. Baeton, Alexander the Great's road-surveyor, states that these people could not breathe in another climate, and for that reason none had been brought to the neighboring kings, or to Alexander himself." -- Natural History. Source: Strange Science.

The Natural History is a monumental achievement that opens a window into the ancient world as seen by an educated Roman. Pliny himself was the model writer and researcher and no matter what your personal interests might be his life represents a practical philosophy well-worth emulating today. In fact, I'd say that Pliny the Elder's approach to life is still the best philosophy available anywhere:

"Life is being awake. The Natural History is a monument to keeping alert, and to the useful employment of time. Pliny's energy and diligence astonished his nephew, were intended to impress his contemporaries, and still amaze today; they were, moreover, not a contingent habit of mind, but intended as an ethical statement. For all his defects of accuracy, selection, and arrangement, Pliny achieved a real summation of universal knowledge, deeply imbued with the mood of his time, and the greatness of his work was speedily recognized. It was a model for later writers ... and attained a position of enormous cultural and intellectual influence in the medieval west." -- OCD.

Oldest Bubonic Plague Genome Decoded

"Nearly 4,000 years ago, a woman and a man were buried together just east of the Volga River in modern-day Russia, with a secret locked away in the pulp of their teeth." Source: Stat News.

"The bodies were uncovered just a few years ago, the teeth pulled and sent westward to the Max Planck Institute in Germany, where Maria Spyrou was working on a Ph.D. in paleogenetics. When she subjected the pulp to a bevy of genetic tests, she found something surprising: an ancestor of the bacteria responsible for the Black Death."

The bacillus Yersinia Pestis is thought to cause the plague. Maria Spyrou, in a paper published in Nature, argues that the discovery of a Y. Pestis ancestor in these prehistoric teeth shows that "the bacteria has origins at least 800 years earlier than scientists had previously thought." The find "suggests a Bronze Age origin for the Bubonic Plague."

Note: "Although prior studies had identified a single lineage of Y. pestis to be present across Eurasia during the Bronze Age, the current study suggests that there were at least two plague lineages circulating contemporaneously, and that they may have encompassed different transmission and virulence characteristics." Source: Archaeology News Network.

Related: Plague Likely a Stone Age Arrival To Central Europe (2017).

Johannes Myronas & The Archimedes Palimpsest

Part Two. Part Three.

The Archimedes Palimpsest is "...a manuscript of extraordinary importance to the history of science ... This thirteenth century prayer book contains erased texts [by Archimedes of Syracuse and others] that were written several centuries earlier still." Source: The Archimedes Palimpset.

Note: A palimpsest is a manuscript with hidden writing.

"In Jerusalem in 1229 AD the greatest works of the Greek mathematician Archimedes were erased and overwritten with a prayer book by a Christian priest/scribe named Johannes Myronas. In the year 2000 a project was begun by a team of experts at the Walters Art Museum to read the original erased text. By the time they had finished, the team that worked on the book had recovered Archimedes' secrets, rewritten the history of mathematics and discovered entirely new texts from the ancient world." Source: Walters Art Museum.

Comment: The priest who erased the text, Johannes Myronas -- whoever he was -- apparently did it because he didn't have anything else to write on:

"A parchment shortage is to blame for the overwriting. The original text apparently sat in a library in Constantinople until 1229 A.D. Then a scribe erased it; he needed someplace to write a prayer book." Source: NPR (2006)

Myronas probably had no idea what he was doing, but this small episode is a perfect example of the Christian attitude towards -- and ignorance of -- the achievements of the classical pagans. I can picture this priest looking for some parchment to use for his prayer book and coming up empty-handed. So he rummaged around in the old manuscripts, pulled one out, sat down and casually erased the works of the brilliant Archimedes.

The ironic thing is that we probably wouldn't even know Myronas' name if he hadn't committed this sacrilege against knowledge.

Gruesome Ancient Medicine

Note: "Doctors are supposed to operate under the maxim 'do no harm,' but history shows this has sometimes been easier said than done. While the ancients were surprisingly sophisticated in their knowledge of injury, sickness and disease, they often resorted to some downright bloodcurdling methods in their misguided attempts to heal their patients." Source: 7 Unusual Ancient Medical Techniques, The History Channel.

Related: 9 Gruesome Medical Treatments in the Middle Ages

Ancient Observatory Found In Cusco

Vilcabamba, aka Espiritu Pampa, Peru

"Research works at Espiritu Pampa archaeological site in Southern Cusco region led to the discovery of an astronomical observatory, massive stone walls, as well as ceramics and other pieces of evidence of pre-Hispanic Wari and Inca cultures presence." Source: Archaeology News Network.