establish the presence of a more ancient ERV component in the murine genome, comprised of isolated, highly degraded insertions. These sequences evidence a transition in murine evolutionary history, beginning about one million years ago, wherein the ancient ERV families that have counterparts in humans and other large mammals were overtaken by a wave of newly acquired and/or transpositionally ac...

establish the presence of a more ancient ERV component in the murine genome, comprised of isolated, highly degraded insertions. These sequences evidence a transition in murine evolutionary history, beginning about one million years ago, wherein the ancient ERV families that have counterparts in humans and other large mammals were overtaken by a wave of newly acquired and/or transpositionally ac...

Identifying general patterns of colonization and radiation in island faunas is often hindered by past human-caused extinctions. The insular Caribbean is one of the only complex oceanic-type island systems colonized by land mammals, but has witnessed the globally highest level of mammalian extinction during the Holocene. Using ancient DNA analysis, we reconstruct the evolutionary history of one ...

The recent recovery of ancient DNA from a growing number of human samples shows that mitochondrial DNA haplogroup I was introduced to Europe after the end of the Last Glacial Maximum. This paper provides a spatio-temporal analysis of the various subhaplogroups of mitochondrial DNA I. The study suggests that haplogroup I diversified into haplogroups I1, I2’3, I4 and I5 at specific regions in Eur...

This article deals with the history of Indian Alchemy and surveys its gradual and fertile growth in ancient India.

Phylogenetic analyses of ancient DNA data can provide a timeline for evolutionary change even in the absence of fossils. The power to infer the evolutionary rate is, however, highly dependent on the number and age of samples, the information content of the sequence data and the demographic history of the sampled population. In this issue of Molecular Ecology, Sheng et al. (2014) analysed mitoch...

long one, dating back to ancient Egypt. Five thousand years of recorded history reveal the chronicles of those who labored to care for victims of this catastrophic injury. In this chapter, advances in the care of spinal cord injury are related in chronological order, from ancient times to the present. In addition, special attention is paid to subjects such as surgery, rehabilitation, education,...

While our knowledge about ancient civilizations comes mostly from studies in archaeology and history books, much can also be learned or confirmed from literary texts. Using natural language processing techniques, we present aspects of ancient China as revealed by statistical textual analysis on the Complete Tang Poems, a 2.6-million-character corpus of all surviving poems from the Tang Dynasty ...

The Han Chinese are the largest ethnic group in the world, and their origins, development, and expansion are complex. Many genetic studies have shown that Han Chinese can be divided into two distinct groups: northern Han Chinese and southern Han Chinese. The genetic history of the southern Han Chinese has been well studied. However, the genetic history of the northern Han Chinese is still obscu...

The divergence between the two textual variants of Dan 7:13 (“Old Greek” and “Theodotion”) and their distinct ways of understanding the relationship between Daniel’s “Ancient of Days” and “Son of Man” is insufficiently studied by scholars of the Book of Daniel, and is neglected by translators of the LXX. This article offers a critical examination of the status quaestionis and a discussion of th...