This document discusses human evolution and molecular archaeology. It begins by outlining key events in human evolution such as diverging from apes 5-7 million years ago in Africa. Early hominid fossils like Lucy provided evidence that upright walking evolved 3.2 million years ago. DNA and fossil evidence support humans and apes sharing a common ancestor. The document then discusses how molecular archaeology uses proteins, lipids, carbohydrates and nucleic acids preserved in ancient remains to study prehistoric peoples. Molecular archaeology helped prove Darwin's theory of humans evolving in Africa. It provides insights into ancestry, disease, and past human migrations.

1. BY
Rakesh H
Research Scholar
Department of Biotechnology
Sahyadri Science College, Shivamogga.
KUVEMPU UNIVERSITY
E-mail-rocky.devrath@gmail.com

3. 1. How we evolved from ape-like ancestors to modern
humans, including, when did we diverge from apes,
who were the early hominids, and when did modern
humans spread out of Africa?
2. What makes us human - what are some of the
adaptations that evolved as humans migrated around
the globe and established new cultures? In what ways
are we still evolving?

4. In 1871 Charles Darwin proposed in his book “The
Descent of Man” that humans evolved in Africa and
shared a common ancestor with great apes. This
showed remarkable foresight as at that time there were
no early human fossils and no DNA evidence.

5. In the case of human evolution, Charles Darwin noted that
 humans and apes share many biological features .
 He hypothesized that humans and apes share a common ancestor.
 If this hypothesis is true then humans and apes should share a high
percentage of their DNA,
 and there should be fossils with humans and ape-like features.
 Darwin wasn’t able to gather this sort of evidence to test his hypothesis
in his time, but many studies since then have tested these predictions .
Both DNA and fossil evidence support the hypothesis of humans and
apes sharing a common ancestor, and the idea that humans evolved
from ape-like creatures is now an accepted theory.

7. Who is more closely related to who?

8. The hominoids are descendants of a common ancestor.

9. Louis Leakey examining skulls
First fossils: the 1920s when such fossils were discovered in Africa, that
intermediate species began to accumulate. In 1925, Raymond Dart described
Australopithecus africanus.

10.  The earliest human-like fossils
have been found in Africa and
date back to 4-8 million years
ago.
 One of the most important
hominid fossils ever discovered
is that of “Lucy”.
 Lucy was discovered by Donald
Johansson in Hadar, Ethiopia.

11.  Lucy belongs to the species
Australopithecus afarensis,
and lived 3.2 million years
ago.
 She stood around 1.1
metres (3.5 feet) tall and
she walked upright on two
legs, although
 she probably had a less
graceful gait than us, since
she walked with her legs
bent.

14.  humans belong to a group of mammals called
primates
 our closest living relative is the chimpanzee, our
evolutionary paths separated 5-7 million years ago
 the human fossil record is quite good and reveals how
and when ‘human traits’ evolved
 modern humans evolved in Africa and migrated
around the world
 DNA evidence supports these conclusions and is
beginning to reveal changes in genes important to
human evolution

15.  Mesopotamia
 Egypt
 Indus River
 China
 Mesoamerica
 Andes
 hunter-gatherers:
 Southern Africa
 Australia / New Guinea
 Northern / Western Europe
 North Asia
[See tables: Earliest Domestication of Animals/Plants]

16. Begins….

17.  ARCHAEOLOGY: The branch of anthropology that
studies prehistoric peoples and their cultures through
their material remains.
 MOLECULAR ARCHAEOLOGY: “Molecular
archaeology is, basically, the study of ancient
molecules. Archaeological studies which include the
study of ancient molecules include DNA recovered
from human skeletal remains and the mummified
bodies of humans

18.  Proteins
 Lipids
 Carbohydrates
 Nucleic acids

19.  Proteins play structural and functional roles in living
organisms.
 Structural proteins, such as collagen and osteocalcin, which are
found in all vertebrate bones, are relatively stable and can often
be identified in preserved material.
 Other proteins, usually ones that are less stable, have more
limited distributions. Casein, for example, is found only in milk,
and can therefore be used as a marker for the presence of milk
residues in cooking or storage vessels. By showing that certain
vessels once contained milk products, the development of
dairying in prehistory can be followed .
 The blood protein, hemoglobin, has a slightly different structure
in different species, and with modern material these differences
can be used to identify the origin of a bloodstain.

20.  Lipids are a diverse group of macromolecules,
 the major biochemical classes being fatty acids and their derivatives (which
include substances commonly referred to as fats and oils), waxes, steroids, and
terpenes.
 These compounds have various biological functions, both structural (some
fatty acids are important components of cell membranes) and functional
(some lipids are hormones).
 Lipids are so hugely diverse that many are species specific – they are found only
in a single or small group of species and so can be used as markers for those
species.
 Analysis of lipids in organic residues from cooking vessels can therefore
identify the type of vegetable or meat that was being prepared, and similar
studies with storage vessels can show if they were used to hold, for example, a
particular type of oil .
 Identification of the terpenes in the adhesives used to attach flint arrow heads
to wooden shafts can reveal which trees were exploited as sources of tar and
pitch, taking biomolecular archaeology into the area of prehistoric technology .

21.  Carbohydrates are important structural and storage
compounds in living organisms, and include starch
and cellulose in plants, and glycogen in animals.
 carbohydrates are the least studied by biomolecular
archaeologists because, although they are stable over
long periods, it is difficult to obtain useful information
from them.
 One exception is the examination of starch grains in
archaeological deposits, which can indicate the types
of plants that were present at a particular site .

22.  Two types, deoxyribonucleic acid (DNA) and , ribonucleic acid (RNA).
 Three features of DNA make this molecule valuable in biomolecular
archaeology.
 First, in the cell, DNA acts a store of biological information, which
means that DNA can be used to identify at least some of the biological
characteristics of an archaeological specimen, such as the sex of a
human skeleton .
 Second, the DNA of different species can be distinguished, enabling
DNA from a pathogen such as Mycobacterium tuberculosis to be
detected in human bones .
 Third, DNA is a record of ancestry, and so can be used to deduce if two
human skeletons could be related , and to map the evolutionary
relationships between domesticated animals and their wild progenitors
.

23.  RNA molecules are copies of parts of the cell’s
DNA, and could, theoretically, be used in a similar
way to DNA, but RNA has not been extensively
studied in biomolecular archaeology. This is
because RNA molecules are relatively unstable,
and it has been assumed (perhaps incorrectly) that
RNA is rarely present in human, animal or plant
remains.

24.  one human genome differs from the other, the
evolutionary past that gave rise to it, and its current
effects.
 Differences between genomes have anthropological,
medical and forensic implications and applications.
 Genetic data can provide important insight into
human evolution.

25.  In the late 1980s that ancient DNA is sometimes preserved in human
bones that marks the true beginning of biomolecular archaeology .
 DNA is the genetic material of living cells,
 DNA contains a vast amount of information that, if accessed in
preserved specimens, could be of immense value in addressing
archaeological questions
 the discovery of ancient DNA in archaeological specimens was made
possible by the invention of the polymerase chain reaction (PCR)

26.  Extraction and purification of ancient DNA from
archaeological remains.
 The polymerase chain reaction is the key to
ancient DNA research.
 Examining the sequences of cloned PCR
Products.
 New methods for high throughput DNA
sequencing.

27.  a two-stage process,
 the first stage involving extraction of all the soluble
molecules from the specimen and
 the second resulting in purification of the DNA
molecules from this mixture.

28.  . DNA is readily soluble and can be extracted from
most materials simply by resuspending a ground or
pulverized sample in water or a weak buffer.
 After leaving the suspension for an hour or so to allow
the soluble component to leach out, the preparation is
briefly centrifuged so that the remains of the sample
are discarded as a pellet at the bottom of the centrifuge
tube, with the dissolved biomolecules retained in the
supernatant.

29.  ancient DNA is contained in crystalline deposits within the
bone matrix, which are not accessed when the bone is
ground into a powder.
 Soaking the bone powder in a chelating agent such as
EDTA, which removes calcium ions .
 the main constituents other than DNA are protein and
RNA.
 The traditional way to remove these contaminants and
hence purify the DNA is to add phenol or a 1 : 1 mixture of
phenol and chloroform,
 as these organic solvents precipitate proteins and some
types of RNA but leave the DNA in solution.
 Any remaining protein and RNA can be digested by
treatment with protease and ribonuclease enzymes
FOSSIL BONES

33.  PCR products obtained from ancient DNA should be
cloned prior to sequencing .
 The central feature of a cloning experiment is the
vector, a DNA molecule, often based on a naturally
occurring plasmid, that is able to replicate inside a cell
of the bacterium Escherichia coli.

34.  DNA typing
 BIO-editing
 Representing different mitochondrial DNA haplotypes
 Primer library
 Unknown sequence- Blast ,Databases.
 THIRD generation

35.  The objective of an ancient DNA project is to understand
the evolutionary relationship between an archaeological
specimen and modern organisms.
 The tree comprises a set of external nodes, each
representing one of the sequences that has been compared
 each representing one of the sequences that has been
compared, linked by branches to internal nodes
representing ancestral sequences.
 . The lengths of the branches indicate the degrees of
difference between the sequences represented by the
nodes.
 the main differences between them being the way in which
the multiple alignment of the sequences is converted into
numerical data that can be analyzed mathematically in
order to produce the tree.

36. Phylogenetic Tree

37.  The origins of modern humans.
 DNA analysis has challenged the multiregional
hypothesis.
 DNA analysis shows that Neanderthals are not
the ancestors of modern Europeans.
 DNA can also be used to study prehistoric
human Migrations.
 Using mitochondrial DNA to study past human
migrations into Europe.
 Studying Disease in the Past.

39. END