Ancient remains

Extraction from ancient remains is a completely destructive process and, as such, this process might not be permitted, for example, on extremely rare samples. Likewise, in the United States, Native American human remains that are to be repatriated to their descendants (Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act, or NAGPRA) may be unavailable for study. 

The bomb pulse method is now considered to be one of the most useful techniques for distinguishing between modern and ancient remains (Geyh 2001 Ubelaker, Buccholz, and Stewart 2006 Wild et al. 1998). Attempts to improve the accuracy of the technique have demonstrated the importance of analyzing a bone fraction that contains a rapid turnover rate (Wild et al. 1998). Analysis of the collagen fraction of recent bone has been shown to be less accurate as a result of its relatively long carbon turnover rate compared with other bone fractions (Ubelaker 2001). Lipids from bone and bone... 

It is often observed that when PCR products from ancient remains are cloned, they contain a large number of random substitutions which are believed to be due to damage present in extracted DNA.10 When this error frequency is compared to that of a control template of modem, presumably undamaged DNA, the increased number of errors itself may indicate that the PCR products stem from a damaged template and thus that it likely represents an old sequence.13 However, it should be remembered that if the presumed ancient sequence in reality stems from a contaminating modem sequence present in only a few copies, the PCR product will have gone through many more cycles of polymerization before the plateau phase of the amplification is reached. For example, if an amplification product contains twice as many errors as a control DNA amplified for 30 cycles, that result could be due to errors in the initial template or to the presence of template in a 10- to 100-fold lower concentration (A. von Haeseler and S. Paabo, unpublished, 1991). Thus, because the concentration of ancient DNA is hard or impossible to determine accurately, error rates in amplification products may be difficult to use as a criterion of authenticity. 

Carbon-14 dating (Willard F. Libby) Libby uses the half-life of carbon 14 to develop a reliable means of dating ancient remains. Radiocarbon dating has proven to be invaluable to archaeologists. 

HISTORY OF FISHING. Fishing is one of the oldest and most important activities of man. Ancient remains of spears, hooks, and fishnets have been found in ruins of the Stone Age. The people of early civilizations drew pictures of nets and fishermen lines in their art. Through the ages, men wrote about fishing, used fish in exchange for services, and even learned to fish farm. 

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