India has been underrepresented in genome-wide surveys of human variation. We analyse 25 diverse groups in India to provide strong evidence for two ancient populations, genetically divergent, that are ancestral to most Indians today. One, the ‘Ancestral North Indians’ (ANI), is genetically close to Middle Easterners, Central Asians, and Europeans, whereas the other, the ‘Ancestral South Indians’ (ASI), is as distinct from ANI and East Asians as they are from each other. By introducing methods that can estimate ancestry without accurate ancestral populations, we show that ANI ancestry ranges from 39–71% in most Indian groups, and is higher in traditionally upper caste and Indo-European speakers. Groups with only ASI ancestry may no longer exist in mainland India. However, the indigenous Andaman Islanders are unique in being ASI-related groups without ANI ancestry. Allele frequency differences between groups in India are larger than in Europe, reflecting strong founder effects whose signatures have been maintained for thousands of years owing to endogamy. We therefore predict that there will be an excess of recessive diseases in India, which should be possible to screen and map genetically.
Northeastern Siberia has been inhabited by humans for more than 40,000 years but its deep population history remains poorly understood. Here we investigate the late Pleistocene population history of northeastern Siberia through analyses of 34 newly recovered ancient genomes that date to between 31,000 and 600 years ago. We document complex population dynamics during this period, including at least three major migration events: an initial peopling by a previously unknown Palaeolithic population of ‘Ancient North Siberians’ who are distantly related to early West Eurasian hunter-gatherers; the arrival of East Asian-related peoples, which gave rise to ‘Ancient Palaeo-Siberians’ who are closely related to contemporary communities from far-northeastern Siberia (such as the Koryaks), as well as Native Americans; and a Holocene migration of other East Asian-related peoples, who we name ‘Neo-Siberians’, and from whom many contemporary Siberians are descended. Each of these population expansions largely replaced the earlier inhabitants, and ultimately generated the mosaic genetic make-up of contemporary peoples who inhabit a vast area across northern Eurasia and the Americas. Analyses of 34 ancient genomes from northeastern Siberia, dating to between 31,000 and 600 years ago, reveal at least three major migration events in the late Pleistocene population history of the region.
P. D. Groot, Myrthe N. Frissen, N. D. Clercq
et al.
ABSTRACT The history of fecal microbiota transplantation (FMT) dates back even to ancient China. Recently, scientific studies have been looking into FMT as a promising treatment of various diseases, while in the process teaching us about the interaction between the human host and its resident microbial communities. Current research focuses mainly on Clostridium difficile infections, however interest is rising in other areas such as inflammatory bowel disease (IBD) and the metabolic syndrome. With regard to the latter, the intestinal microbiota might be causally related to the progression of insulin resistance and diabetes. FMT in metabolic syndrome has proven to be an intriguing method to study the role of the gut microbiota and open the way to new therapies by dissecting in whom insulin resistance is driven by microbiota. In this article we review the history of FMT, the present evidence on its role in the pathophysiology of metabolic syndrome and its efficacy, limitations and future prospects.
Abstract In 1956, Riker Laboratories, Inc., (now 3 M Drug Delivery Systems) introduced the first pressurized metered dose inhaler (MDI). In many respects, the introduction of the MDI marked the beginning of the modern pharmaceutical aerosol industry. The MDI was the first truly portable and convenient inhaler that effectively delivered drug to the lung and quickly gained widespread acceptance. Since 1956, the pharmaceutical aerosol industry has experienced dramatic growth. The signing of the Montreal Protocol in 1987 led to a surge in innovation that resulted in the diversification of inhaler technologies with significantly enhanced delivery efficiency, including modern MDIs, dry powder inhalers, and nebulizer systems. The innovative inhalers and drugs discovered by the pharmaceutical aerosol industry, particularly since 1956, have improved the quality of life of literally hundreds of millions of people. Yet, the delivery of therapeutic aerosols has a surprisingly rich history dating back more than 3500 years to ancient Egypt. The delivery of atropine and related compounds has been a crucial inhalation therapy throughout this period and the delivery of associated structural analogs remains an important therapy today. Over the centuries, discoveries from many cultures have advanced the delivery of therapeutic aerosols. For thousands of years, therapeutic aerosols were prepared by the patient or a physician with direct oversight of the patient using custom-made delivery systems. However, starting with the Industrial Revolution, advancements in manufacturing resulted in the bulk production of therapeutic aerosol delivery systems produced by people completely disconnected from contact with the patient. This trend continued and accelerated in the 20th century with the mass commercialization of modern pharmaceutical inhaler products. In this article, we will provide a summary of therapeutic aerosol delivery from ancient times to the present along with a look to the future. We hope that you will find this chronological summary intriguing and informative.
The thought of Niccolò Machiavelli (1469-1527) in the history of political ideas is regarded as the beginning of modern political theory, which abandons the classical Socratic view of politics condensed in the virtue of citizens as the foundation of the polis (the state), as well as the medieval Christian worldview of Thomas Aquinas, where the state and politics are subordinated to religion and Christian morality. Politics becomes distinguished as public as opposed to private, and into political theory Machiavelli introduces the concepts of power, force, strength, and violence as legitimate political notions-a kind of Copernican turn away from the classical political theory of antiquity, where "trust in mute force, which the ancient Greeks considered a non-political instrument…" (Tadić, 1996: 56), now becomes axiomatic. In political reality, new rules apply-the virtuous citizen is replaced by homo politicus. Machiavelli, in the reality of politics, analyzes concrete political phenomena from the perspective of realism and the application of the empirical method. Among other things, Machiavelli says that "many have imagined republics and principalities that never actually existed" (Machiavelli, 2012: 65). Machiavelli's concept of the state and power is founded on the experience of the Florentine friar Savonarola and the famous dictum that unarmed prophets have failed: "It is necessary to know that there are two ways of fighting: by law and by force" (Machiavelli, 2012: 73). In The Prince, Machiavelli emphasizes that "there can be no good laws without a good army, and where there is a good army, there must be good laws" (Machiavelli, 2012: 53). In this paper we analyze the concept of a "good army" in Machiavelli as an unclear and disputable term. By applying methods of content and discourse analysis of Machiavelli's works, we will demonstrate his understanding of a good army within the framework of his theoretical innovation, his new method, through the research question of whether it means a well-armed army, a standing army of monarchical states (France, Spain), the adventurer companies, compagnie di ventura, hired by Italian city-states, or an army that, in the spirit of Augustine, wages war in good faith-or something else? Machiavelli criticizes mercenary warfare and introduces the notion of an armed people, a citizen militia, into his teaching. We will explain the concept of the armed people through his republicanism, his view of the people as the pillar of preserving the state, of the political community in freedom, and the category of friendship between ruler and people. In addition, the paper will address the reach of Machiavelli's idea of the "good army" in the political thought and practice of contemporary society, namely, how far his idea corresponds with the concept of total defense, which in various forms is practiced in a number of states around the world.
Despite ongoing calls for inclusive and culturally responsive pedagogy in computing education, the teaching of algorithms remains largely decontextualized. Foundational computer science courses often present algorithmic thinking as purely formal and ahistorical, emphasizing efficiency, correctness, and abstraction. When history is mentioned, it usually centers on the modern development of digital computers, highlighting figures such as Turing, von Neumann, and Babbage. This narrow view misrepresents the origins of algorithmic reasoning and perpetuates a Eurocentric worldview that undermines equity and representation in STEM. In contrast, algorithmic thinking predates electronic computers by millennia and has deep roots in ancient civilizations including India, China, Babylon, and Egypt. Our work responds to this gap by embedding algorithm instruction in broader historical and cultural contexts, with particular attention to classical Indian contributions.
Chinese ancient documents, invaluable carriers of millennia of Chinese history and culture, hold rich knowledge across diverse fields but face challenges in digitization and understanding, i.e., traditional methods only scan images, while current Vision-Language Models (VLMs) struggle with their visual and linguistic complexity. Existing document benchmarks focus on English printed texts or simplified Chinese, leaving a gap for evaluating VLMs on ancient Chinese documents. To address this, we present AncientDoc, the first benchmark for Chinese ancient documents, designed to assess VLMs from OCR to knowledge reasoning. AncientDoc includes five tasks (page-level OCR, vernacular translation, reasoning-based QA, knowledge-based QA, linguistic variant QA) and covers 14 document types, over 100 books, and about 3,000 pages. Based on AncientDoc, we evaluate mainstream VLMs using multiple metrics, supplemented by a human-aligned large language model for scoring.
Mahsa Mousavi‐Derazmahalleh, Niels Haue, Marie Kanstrup
et al.
Abstract An excavation of an Early Iron Age village near Aalborg in Denmark uncovered the jaws and skull fragments from a small mammal that were morphologically identified to the genus Crocidura (white‐toothed shrews). Three Crocidura species are known from prehistoric continental Europe but none of them are distributed in Scandinavia, which is why this surprising finding warranted further analyses. The bone was radiocarbon‐dated to 2840–2750 calibrated years before present (cal. BP), corresponding to the Late Bronze Age and hence earlier than the Iron Age archeological context in which it was found. Using highly optimized ancient DNA protocols, we extracted DNA from one tooth and shotgun‐sequenced the sample to reconstruct a near‐complete mitochondrial reference genome (17,317 bp, 32.6× coverage). Phylogenetic analyses determined this specimen as a bicolored shrew (Crocidura leucodon) but with a phylogenetic position basal to the clade of known sequences from this species. The confirmation of Crocidura presence in Denmark by the Late Bronze Age sheds new light on the prehistoric natural history of Scandinavia. We discuss the implications of this finding from both zoo‐archeological and ecological perspectives. Furthermore, the mitochondrial genome reconstructed in this study offers a valuable resource for future research exploring the genetic makeup and evolutionary history of Eurasian shrew populations.
This work explores a possible course of evolution of mathematics in ancient times in India when there was no script, no place-value system, and no zero. Reviewing examples of time-reckoning, large numbers, sacrificial altar-making, and astronomy, it investigates the role of concrete objects, natural events, rituals and names in context-dependent arithmetic, revealing its limited scope confined to counting, addition and subtraction. Higher operations, namely, multiplication, division and fractional calculations had to wait until the advent of symbolic numerals and procedures for computation. It is argued that the impression of these higher operations in a period usually known as the Vedic times is caused by inadvertent interpolation of present knowledge of mathematics in modern readings of the ancient texts.
We study ancient solutions to discrete heat equations on some weighted graphs. On a graph of the form of a product with $\bb Z,$ we show that there are no non-trivial ancient solutions with polynomial growth. This result is parallel to the case of finite graphs, which is also discussed. Along the way, we prove a backward uniqueness result for solutions with appropriate decaying rate based on a monotonicity formula of parabolic frequency.
Joseph H. Marcus, C. Posth, Harald Ringbauer
et al.
The island of Sardinia has been of particular interest to geneticists for decades. The current model for Sardinia’s genetic history describes the island as harboring a founder population that was established largely from the Neolithic peoples of southern Europe and remained isolated from later Bronze Age expansions on the mainland. To evaluate this model, we generate genome-wide ancient DNA data for 70 individuals from 21 Sardinian archaeological sites spanning the Middle Neolithic through the Medieval period. The earliest individuals show a strong affinity to western Mediterranean Neolithic populations, followed by an extended period of genetic continuity on the island through the Nuragic period (second millennium BCE). Beginning with individuals from Phoenician/Punic sites (first millennium BCE), we observe spatially-varying signals of admixture with sources principally from the eastern and northern Mediterranean. Overall, our analysis sheds light on the genetic history of Sardinia, revealing how relationships to mainland populations shifted over time. Ancient DNA analysis of early European farmers has found a high level of genetic affinity with present-day Sardinians. Here, the authors generate genome-wide capture data for 70 individuals from Sardinia spanning the Middle Neolithic to Medieval period to reveal relationships with mainland European populations shifting over time.
I. Vecchio, C. Tornali, Nicola Luigi Bragazzi
et al.
The discovery of insulin represents an authentic breakthrough, characterized, at the same time, by contrasts, controversies and disputes among scholars, as well as by great disappointments, failures and hopes. It is the story of famous, almost famous and little known people, of serendipities, discoveries and re-discoveries. The discovery of insulin has been a milestone and has truly revolutionized both the therapy and the prognosis of the diabetes, one of the diseases most studied in the history of medicine, whose first mentions trace back to a collection of ancient Egyptian, Indian and Chinese textbooks. As stated by Colwell, the introduction of insulin has heralded the end of the so-called “pre-insulin era” or “frustration era”, paving the way for a new era and clinical advancements. The current review offers a broad, comprehensive overview of main steps culminating into insulin discovery, including recent advancements such as personalized and individualized insulin therapy.
We analyzed genome sequences from 6 baboon species and found evidence of ancient and recent hybridization among divergent species. Recent studies suggest that closely related species can accumulate substantial genetic and phenotypic differences despite ongoing gene flow, thus challenging traditional ideas regarding the genetics of speciation. Baboons (genus Papio) are Old World monkeys consisting of six readily distinguishable species. Baboon species hybridize in the wild, and prior data imply a complex history of differentiation and introgression. We produced a reference genome assembly for the olive baboon (Papio anubis) and whole-genome sequence data for all six extant species. We document multiple episodes of admixture and introgression during the radiation of Papio baboons, thus demonstrating their value as a model of complex evolutionary divergence, hybridization, and reticulation. These results help inform our understanding of similar cases, including modern humans, Neanderthals, Denisovans, and other ancient hominins.
Choongwon Jeong, O. Balanovsky, E. Lukianova
et al.
The indigenous populations of inner Eurasia—a huge geographic region covering the central Eurasian steppe and the northern Eurasian taiga and tundra—harbour tremendous diversity in their genes, cultures and languages. In this study, we report novel genome-wide data for 763 individuals from Armenia, Georgia, Kazakhstan, Moldova, Mongolia, Russia, Tajikistan, Ukraine and Uzbekistan. We furthermore report additional damage-reduced genome-wide data of two previously published individuals from the Eneolithic Botai culture in Kazakhstan (~5,400 bp). We find that present-day inner Eurasian populations are structured into three distinct admixture clines stretching between various western and eastern Eurasian ancestries, mirroring geography. The Botai and more recent ancient genomes from Siberia show a decrease in contributions from so-called ‘ancient North Eurasian’ ancestry over time, which is detectable only in the northern-most ‘forest-tundra’ cline. The intermediate ‘steppe-forest’ cline descends from the Late Bronze Age steppe ancestries, while the ‘southern steppe’ cline further to the south shows a strong West/South Asian influence. Ancient genomes suggest a northward spread of the southern steppe cline in Central Asia during the first millennium bc. Finally, the genetic structure of Caucasus populations highlights a role of the Caucasus Mountains as a barrier to gene flow and suggests a post-Neolithic gene flow into North Caucasus populations from the steppe. Genome-wide data for 763 individuals from inner Eurasia reveal 3 admixture clines in present-day populations that mirror geography, illuminating the historic spread and mixture of peoples across the Eurasian steppe, taiga and tundra.
Spanish epic legends, which originated in ancient times in the oral tradition, have come down to us in various written forms — from historiography (prose chronicles) and major epic poems to small folklore lyric-epic genres, such as the Spanish “old” romance (romancero viejo). The question of the genesis, the method of composition and distribution of such plots is one of the most important now. First of all, it’s connected with the problem of stadial or parallel origin of the texts. The article is devoted to the reconstruction of the ancient Spanish plot about Rodrigo, the last king of the Visigoths, in Latin and Old Castilian historiography, including in the “History of Spain” by Alfonso X the Wise. In addition, the reconstructed plot is compared with the folk epic romance about Rodrigo’s last battle with the Moors and the loss of Spain. The cycle of romances formed in the 14th–16th centuries has several separate plots about Rodrigo. The most interesting question here is which of the plots is the principal one in the cycle and goes back to the authentic folk epic text formed in the oral environment. The analysis undertaken in this article allows us to show, on the one hand, how the plot lives and develops in the tradition and what changes it suffers. On the other hand, comparing the reconstructed plot in the chronicle with the text of the romance allows us to try to identify the original text that is the foundation of the cycle and try to prove the parallel development of plots in romances and chronicles.
(AR)
تًمثل دراسات التاريخ الاجتماعي ومنها موضوع الدراسة (الإرث عند العرب قبل الإسلام)، جانباً مهماً من حياة الأمم والشعوب؛ ونظراً لاختلاف طريقة كسب العرب (البدو – الحضر) للأموال، اختلف نظام الإرث بينهم، بالرغم من اتفاقهم على توزيع الإرث وفق الأعراف والتقاليد القبلية إما للنسب أو السبب.
ولرسوخ هذا العُرف القبلي نجد أن العمل به قد استمر بالرغم مما ألحقه من أضرار في حياة بعض فئات المجتمع العربي قبل الإسلام حتى السنة الثالثة من الهجرة النبوية، وتحديداً بعد غزوة أحد عندما نزلت آيات المواريث، حيث نجد أن الشرع الحكيم يذكر تفاصيل الميراث في القرآن الكريم، في حين كانت أغلب الأحكام الشرعية تُذكر في القرآن مجملة وتبينها السنة بالتفصيل.
وبالتالي فإن هذه الدراسة سوف تخدم أحد أحداث السيرة النبوية، وما يتعلق بأموال خديجة بنت خويلد رضي الله عنها التي توفيت في السنة العاشرة من البعثة.
وستعتمد هذه الدراسة على نصوص مختارة، سواءَ أكانت نقوشاً أو شعراً جاهلياً، أو ما تم ذكره في المصادر والمراجع العربية والمعربة والأجنبية.
(EN)
Studies of social history, including the subject of the study (Heritage in Arab regions before Islam), are an important aspect of the life of all peoples. Due to the different ways of earning money by Arabs (Bedouins - urban), the heritage distribution method differed among them, despite their agreement to distribute heritage according to the tribal customs and traditions, either in ancestry or effect.
Concerning the consolidation of this tribal custom, we find that it continued despite its damages that inflicted on the life of some groups of Arab society before Islam until the third year of the Prophet's migration, specifically after the Battle of Uhud when the Quranic verses of heritage were revealed. We find that the Sharia mentions the details of heritage in the Holy Quran. Most of the Islamic Shariah provisions were generally mentioned in the Quran and clarified in detail in Sunnah.
Therefore, this study will discuss an important point in the biography of the Prophet Muhammad related to the wealth of Khadija bint Khuwaylid, may Allah be pleased with her, who died in the tenth year of the Prophet's Messengership.
This study will depend on selected texts, whether they were inscriptions or pre-Islamic poetry, or what was mentioned in Arabic, translated, and foreign sources and references.