“Translated, the inscription reads, ‘May this tusk root out the lice of the hair and the beard.’ … This purpose was confirmed when the authors searched for evidence of head lice on the comb under a microscope and found some remains on the second tooth, still in the nymph stage of development.”
(See also the discussion at Language Hat.)
“Over the next 1,500 years, during especially hot summers, the remains and artifacts were partially exposed, which explains the deterioration of the most exposed parts of the body and additional damage to the artifacts. Eventually, around 3,800 years ago, snow and ice finally sealed off the gully until the discovery of the mummified remains in 1991.”
(Ötzi was a recurring interest of my old @sben_links account on Twitter, the predecessor to this microblog. If I had completed my long walk in 2017, I would have passed through the next valley east from where he was found, and would have certainly stopped by his museum when the trail passed through Bolzano.)
“[P]eople who were homozygous (had two copies) of this protective gene variant involved in antigen presentation were 40 percent more likely to survive the plague than those with two copies of a deleterious variant, which encodes a broken protein.”
“The original silphion was said to have appeared suddenly, after a great downpour. Miski observed that, when rains came to Cappadocia in April, Ferula drudeana would spring from the ground, growing up to six feet in just over a month.”
“The 21st-dynasty priests made extensive repairs to Amenhotep I’s mummy. For instance, they reattached the severed head with a resin-treated linen band, reattached limbs and fingers, tightened loose bandages, and placed two new amulets into the mummy.”
“Searle looked at two other locations much further to the south: the Azores and Madeira — and in both places they found mice there carried the same genetic signature as that carried by the Viking mouse. Crucially, they found very few mice that carried genetic signatures like those found in mouse populations in Portugal, whose mariners were also reckoned to be the first to settle on these islands.”
“The Norse may have been at the site slightly earlier, but they were definitely there and cutting down trees by 1021. Based on the development stages of certain cells in the waney layer, Dee, Kuitems, and their colleagues say that one of the trees was cut down in the spring, while another was cut down in the summer or fall.”
“[T]he Iron Age sample also had a high abundance of two species of fungi: Penicillium roqueforti — commonly used in the fermentation of cheese — and Saccharomyces cerevisiae, used for fermenting bread and alcoholic beverages like beer, mead, and wine.”
“The foothold of the new ski shows repairs, so it was well used. A part of the back end of the ski is missing. The missing piece is presumably still inside the ice. Whether it broke when lost or while inside the ice may be possible to say at a later stage based on a careful study of the edge of the break.”
“Settlements typically include a small group — usually a few dozen people — branching off from a larger population on the island of origin. By chance, a few of the genetic variants that are rare in the large population would be common in the settlers.”
“The reverberation time lasted about 0.6 seconds inside [Stonehenge’s] circle for mid-frequency sounds—ideal for amplifying human speech, or the sounds of musical instruments like drums.”
“Using the neural-net tool Artbreeder, Photoshop and historical references, I have created photoreal portraits of Roman Emperors.”
“Dunne and her colleagues found traces of 3,000-year-old fatty acids from ancient milk still clinging to the insides of the vessels. … The amount of material the archaeologists found suggested that the vessels had seen a lot of use—or had been filled with milk before being placed in the children’s graves.”
“The sharp turns and the difference in floor levels at the junction prove conclusively that the tunnel was excavated from both ends. At the junction itself, the floor level drops 60 centimeters from north to south, a discrepancy of less than one-eighth of a percent of the distance excavated.”