800-year-old remains of witch discovered in a graveyard in Tuscany, Italy. By Nick Pisa Updated: 18:20 GMT, 25 September 2011 Macabre: Archaelogists believe this is the skeleton of a woman who was thought to be a witch These are the 800 year old remains of what archaeologists believe was a witch from the Middle Ages after seven nails were found driven through her jaw bone. The grim discovery was made during a dig on what is thought to be a 'witches graveyard' after another woman's skeleton was found surrounded by 17 dice - a game which women were forbidden from playing 800 years ago.
Experts say they believe the women are aged around 25 - 30 years old and were found buried in a simple shallow grave in the ground with no coffin or shroud. The macabre remains were found during a dig close to the sea at Piombino near Lucca in Italy's Tuscany region and the woman had seven nails through her jaw as well as another 13 nails surrounding her skeleton. He said: 'It's a very unusual discovery and at the same time fascinating. Piombino in Italy: Where the graves were found. Asia was settled in multiple waves of migration, DNA study suggests.
An international team of researchers studying DNA patterns from modern and archaic humans has uncovered new clues about the movement and intermixing of populations more than 40,000 years ago in Asia. Using state-of-the-art genome analysis methods, scientists from Harvard Medical School and the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology in Leipzig, Germany, have found that Denisovans -- a recently identified group of archaic humans whose DNA was extracted last year from a finger bone excavated in Siberia -- contributed DNA not just to present-day New Guineans, but also to aboriginal Australian and Philippine populations.
The study demonstrates that contrary to the findings of the largest previous genetic studies, modern humans settled Asia in more than one migration. According to David Reich, a professor of genetics at Harvard Medical School, "Denisova DNA is like a medical imaging dye that traces a person's blood vessels. Genetic footprints The researchers concluded that: DNA's Hidden Code. A "hidden" code linked to the DNA of plants allows them to develop and pass down new biological traits far more rapidly than previously thought, according to the findings of a groundbreaking study by researchers at the Salk Institute for Biological Studies. The study, published in the journal Science, provides the first evidence that an organism's "epigenetic" code - an extra layer of biochemical instructions in DNA - can evolve more quickly than the genetic code and can strongly influence biological traits.
While the study was limited to a single plant species called Arabidopsis thaliana, the equivalent of the laboratory rat of the plant world, the findings hint that the traits of other organisms, including humans, might also be dramatically influenced by biological mechanisms that scientists are just beginning to understand. In fact, many of the major discoveries that led to these conclusions were based upon studies in plants. Writing -> Papers -> Rant.04. Skinner on Campus.