Tea at Trianon: Neanderthal DNA

John Wilson Croker on Marie-Antoinette

"We have followed the history of Marie Antoinette with the greatest diligence and scrupulosity. We have lived in those times. We have talked with some of her friends and some of her enemies; we have read, certainly not all, but hundreds of the libels written against her; and we have, in short, examined her life with– if we may be allowed to say so of ourselves– something of the accuracy of contemporaries, the diligence of inquirers, and the impartiality of historians, all combined; and we feel it our duty to declare, in as a solemn a manner as literature admits of, our well-matured opinion that every reproach against the morals of the queen was a gross calumny– that she was, as we have said, one of the purest of human beings."

~from History of the Guillotine by John Wilson Croker, 1844

Edmund Burke on Marie-Antoinette

"It is now sixteen or seventeen years since I saw the queen of France, then dauphiness, at Versailles; and surely there never lighted on this orb, which she hardly seemed to touch, a more delightful vision. I saw her just above the horizon, decorating and cheering the elevated sphere she had just begun to move in, glittering like a morning star full of life and splendor and joy. Oh, what a revolution....Little did I dream that I should have lived to see such disasters fall upon her, in a nation of gallant men, in a nation of men of honor and of cavaliers! I thought ten thousand swords must have leaped from their scabbards, to avenge even a look which threatened her with insult. But the age of chivalry is gone; that of sophisters, economists, and calculators has succeeded...."

~Edmund Burke, October 1790

Friday, June 14, 2024

Neanderthal DNA

Interesting and not unbiblical. From Live Science:

To solve this mystery, researchers analyzed more than 300 modern human genomes spanning the past 45,000 years. These included samples from 59 individuals who lived between 2,200 and 45,000 years ago and 275 diverse present-day modern humans. The scientists posted their findings on the BioRxiv preprint database. (As the study is currently under review for potential publication in a scientific journal, the study's authors declined to comment.)

The scientists focused on how much Neanderthal DNA they could see in these modern human samples. By comparing how the level of Neanderthal ancestry varied in modern human DNA across different locations and times, they could estimate when Neanderthals and modern humans interbred, and for how long.

The best explanation for most Neanderthal DNA seen in the modern human genome was a single major period of interbreeding about 47,000 years ago that lasted about 6,800 years, the researchers found. (Read more.)