Tea at Trianon: Oldest Human DNA Ever Found

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, June 18, 2025

Oldest Human DNA Ever Found

From Earth:

About 45,000 years ago, something unusual happened in Ice Age Europe. A new wave of modern humans wandered in from the southeast and found a continent already home to a very different kind of human: the Neanderthals.
These early modern people looked a lot like us, but they weren’t alone. For around 5,000 years, the two species shared this chilly landscape – and occasionally, shared genes.
That ancestry is still written into our DNA. If your family roots lie outside Africa, about 2–3% of your genes probably came from Neanderthals. The legacy of that ancient interaction lives on in almost everyone alive today.
But until recently, scientists didn’t know much about those early human groups who first set foot in Europe. A new study is now shedding light on their lives, their tools, and their surprising family connections. (Read more.)