Tea at Trianon: A Mysterious Lineage of Hominins

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

Wednesday, December 4, 2024

A Mysterious Lineage of Hominins

From SciTechDaily:

Denisovans interbred with early humans multiple times, leaving genes that helped modern humans adapt to varied environments, such as high-altitude and cold climates.

Scientists believe that members of the recently discovered hominin group known as the Denisovans interbred with early humans in multiple, distinct events, passing on genes that influenced the course of early human history.

In 2010, the first draft of the Neanderthal genome was published, and comparisons with modern human genomes revealed that Neanderthal and modern humans had interbred in the past. A few months later, analysis of a genome sequenced from a finger bone excavated in the Denisova cave in the Altai mountains in Siberia revealed that this bone fragment was from a newly discovered hominin group that we now call Denisovans, who also interbred with modern humans.

“This was one of the most exciting discoveries in human evolution in the last decade,” said Dr Linda Ongaro, Postdoctoral Research in Trinity College Dublin’s School of Genetics and Microbiology, and first author of a fascinating new review article published in leading international journal Nature Genetics.

“It’s a common misconception that humans evolved suddenly and neatly from one common ancestor, but the more we learn the more we realize interbreeding with different hominins occurred and helped to shape the people we are today.

“Unlike Neanderthal remains, the Denisovan fossil record consists of only that finger bone, a jawbone, teeth, and skull fragments. But by leveraging the surviving Denisovan segments in Modern Human genomes scientists have uncovered evidence of at least three past events whereby genes from distinct Denisovan populations made their way into the genetic signatures of modern humans.” (Read more.)