Mesopotamian cylinder seal from Lori Berd (Armenia): An object in an unusual location?

Archaeological Site: Lori Berd (Northern Armenia); cemetery, dating from Middle Bronze Age till Achaemenid period.Tomb No. 106: stone chamber. Ceramic and part of the finds date to Achaemenid period. Also a pinkish chalcedony cylinder seal with gold caps on gold pin. Iconography: standing figure, seizing two upstanding caprids surrounded by symbolic fillings.Dating: a Neo-Babylonian cylinder seal of late 8th till 7th century BC.Similar example: usage of Neo-Assyrian/Babylonian cylinder seal by Irtashduna (wife of Darius I) around 500 BC.Interpretation: suitable for reciprocity of gifts in prestige-goods system of Achaemenid period. Perhaps a gift from satrap to local chief

AI is a viable alternative to high throughput screening: a 318-target study

: High throughput screening (HTS) is routinely used to identify bioactive small molecules. This requires physical compounds, which limits coverage of accessible chemical space. Computational approaches combined with vast on-demand chemical libraries can access far greater chemical space, provided that the predictive accuracy is sufficient to identify useful molecules. Through the largest and most diverse virtual HTS campaign reported to date, comprising 318 individual projects, we demonstrate that our AtomNet® convolutional neural network successfully finds novel hits across every major therapeutic area and protein class. We address historical limitations of computational screening by demonstrating success for target proteins without known binders, high-quality X-ray crystal structures, or manual cherry-picking of compounds. We show that the molecules selected by the AtomNet® model are novel drug-like scaffolds rather than minor modifications to known bioactive compounds. Our empirical results suggest that computational methods can substantially replace HTS as the first step of small-molecule drug discovery

The genetic history of the Southern Arc: A bridge between West Asia and Europe

Materials and Methods The materials and methods described here are for the combined study of the population history of the Southern Arc and pertain to the present study (which describe the entire dataset and analytically focuses on the Chalcolithic and Bronze Age periods), and two studies on Neolithic populations and the more recent history of the Southern Arc which employ the same analysis dataset and method

Female with Ankylosing Spondylitis from the 7th–6th century BCE Lori Berd burial (Armenia)

A female skeleton from the Lori Berd archaeological cemetery, located near the city of Stepanavan (Lori Province of Armenia) is described. Palaeopathological analysis revealed a variety pathology (ankylosis of the sacroiliac joints, ankylosis of the vertebrae, syndesmophytes, ankylosed of the costovertebral and costotransverse joint fusions, kyphosis, lordosis, fracture of the anterior inferior iliac spine and traumatic lesions). This paper reports a new case of ankylosing spondylitis in a skeleton and a differential diagnosis performed to determine the etiology of the condition. The vertebral bodies remodel and together with the associated syndesmophytes form a continuous, smooth bone surface that is sometimes referred to as “bamboo spine”. In this skeleton changes in the spine, ribs, the sacrum, acetabulum, head of the femur and greater trochanter, as well as the anterior inferior iliac spine are typical of ankylosing spondylitis in advanced stage. Addtionally, there were signs of a traumatic death with injuries sustained to the scapula and vertebra. Using osteological markers in combination with the reconstruction of the archaeological context, the burial pattern suggests that the pathology the female suffered was likely due to her physical deficiencies

A genetic probe into the ancient and medieval history of Southern Europe and West Asia

Literary and archaeological sources have preserved a rich history of Southern Europe and West Asia since the Bronze Age that can be complemented by genetics. Mycenaean period elites in Greece did not differ from the general population and included both people with some steppe ancestry and others, like the Griffin Warrior, without it. Similarly, people in the central area of the Urartian Kingdom around Lake Van lacked the steppe ancestry characteristic of the kingdom’s northern provinces. Anatolia exhibited extraordinary continuity down to the Roman and Byzantine periods, with its people serving as the demographic core of much of the Roman Empire, including the city of Rome itself. During medieval times, migrations associated with Slavic and Turkic speakers profoundly affected the region

Ancient DNA from Mesopotamia suggests distinct Pre-Pottery and Pottery Neolithic migrations into Anatolia

We present the first ancient DNA data from the Pre-Pottery Neolithic of Mesopotamia (Southeastern Turkey and Northern Iraq), Cyprus, and the Northwestern Zagros, along with the first data from Neolithic Armenia. We show that these and neighboring populations were formed through admixture of pre-Neolithic sources related to Anatolian, Caucasus, and Levantine hunter-gatherers, forming a Neolithic continuum of ancestry mirroring the geography of West Asia. By analyzing Pre-Pottery and Pottery Neolithic populations of Anatolia, we show that the former were derived from admixture between Mesopotamian-related and local Epipaleolithic-related sources, but the latter experienced additional Levantine-related gene flow, thus documenting at least two pulses of migration from the Fertile Crescent heartland to the early farmers of Anatolia

A genetic probe into the ancient and medieval history of Southern Europe and West Asia

Literary and archaeological sources have preserved a rich history of Southern Europe and West Asia since the Bronze Age that can be complemented by genetics. Mycenaean period elites in Greece did not differ from the general population and included both people with some steppe ancestry and others, like the Griffin Warrior, without it. Similarly, people in the central area of the Urartian Kingdom around Lake Van lacked the steppe ancestry characteristic of the kingdom's northern provinces. Anatolia exhibited extraordinary continuity down to the Roman and Byzantine periods, with its people serving as the demographic core of much of the Roman Empire, including the city of Rome itself. During medieval times, migrations associated with Slavic and Turkic speakers profoundly affected the region