A beginner’s guide to historical investigation
DNA and blood groups
A United Kingdom? Maybe
www.nytimes.com/2007/03/06/science/06brits.html?
pagewanted=2&ei=5070&en=b644b89173
abbca0&ex=1175572800
(You will have to register – at no charge – with the New York Times to read this.) NYT article that presents a number of alternative genetic readings of the development of the Britons.
Forensics, DNA fingerprinting and human origins
www.thenakedscientists.com/HTML/podcasts/show/2005.12.04/
From The Naked Scientists: you can download a podcast with: Detective Inspector Alan Cook about how DNA is used to solve crimes; the inventor of DNA fingerprinting, Professor Sir Alec Jeffreys of Leicester University, who describes how it works; and Dr Tamsin O'Connell of Cambridge University who reveals how archaeologists extract DNA from old bones and how it can be used to help to track down human origins.
DNA evidence calls Irish potato famine theory into question
www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2001/06/010611071858.htm
An article from Science Daily about the discovery of the true pest that caused the blight that caused the famine that, in the 1840s, led to the deaths of a million and the migration of two million more.
Distribution of blood types
http://anthro.palomar.edu/vary/vary_3.htm
Short but fascinating article with maps showing how tracking the distribution of different blood types reveals where various populations migrated from and to in the distant past.
