MULTIPLE TEXT READING-INTO-WRITING PROJECT: OUR PREHISTORIC ANCESTORS

This activity involves three texts highlighting the latest findings concerning the genetic inheritence of modern humans. The texts come up with some remarkable information concerning our Neandertal, African and as yet ,mystery ancestors. It is recommended that you listen to the podcasts and read the related articles before embarking on the writing task ,where you will be required to bring everything together.

BEFORE YOU READ

·         What do you know about the origins homo sapiens?

·         What methods have been used to unearth the information we now have?

·         What are the advantages of this branch of anthropology?

NOW CHECK OUT THE FOLLOWING

The human family tree  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yN9_z1-azIQ

The human story https://genographic.nationalgeographic.com/   

TEXT ONE: ANCIENT EUROPEAN GENOMES REVEAL JUMBLED ANCESTRY

“Mysterious peoples from the north and Middle Easterners joined prehistoric locals”

By:Ewen Callaway

Published: Nature; January 2, 2014; www.nature.com

Level of Difficulty: **

Note to the student: this activity is a difficult level two but and easy level three so don’t make this the first reading task in this category that you do.

QUESTIONS

1.       What conclusion can we draw from the first two paragraphs of the text?

2.       The studies involving 8000 year old hunter-gatherers and the 7500 year old German woman prove that modern humans are related to………………………………………………………………………………

3.       What surprising discovery did  Carles Zalueza-Fox and his team make?

4.       What conclusion can be drawn from the fact that the German woman and the Luxembourg hunter gatherer had multiple copies of a gene that breaks down starches? Use your own words.

5.       Did the early humans mentioned above consume dairy products or not? How do you know?

6.       The study described above also came up with a surprise possibility as far as our ancestors go. It is the fact that………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………

7.       The examples concerning the Scots, the Estonians and Sardinians. The reason for their genetic inheritence may be

·         Geographical location

·         Interbreeding

·         Livelihoods

·         All of the above

·         None of the above

·         Other: please specify

8.       What does “these sites in the phrase “Many researchers assumed that these sites…” refer to?

9.       What discovery has been made concerning the Middle Eastern farmers? What is this discovery based on?

10.   According to the text, which of the alternatives below best describes the findings discussed in the text? They are:

·         Conjecture

·         Suppositions

·         Facts

·         Speculation

·         All of the above

·         None of the above

·         Other please specify

TEXT TWO: AMERICA’S NATIVES HAVE EUROPEAN ROOTS

“The oldest known genome of a modern human solves long standing puzzles about the New World’s genetic heritage”

By: Ed Yong

Published: Nature; November 20, 2013; www.nature.com

Level of Difficulty: **

QUESTIONS

1.       What does “new root” in the phrase beginning “The 24.000 year old remains  of a young boy from a Siberean village…” refer to?

2.       What does “This mixing” in the phrase “This mixing , he says, created Native Americans” refer to?

3.       Willerslev had difficulty accepting the strange result of his analysis of Mal’ta boy’s arm bones because ………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………….

4.       What does “This signal” in the phrase “This signal is consistent among peoplesfrom across the Americas” refer to?

5.       How is the fact that Native Americans can trace 14% to 38% of their ancestry back to western Eurasia explained in the text?

6.       The above theory concerning Mal’ta boy could help explain the following annomalies identified by previous research:

7.       The data in this recent study proves that their is a link between Native Americans and …………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………..

TEXT THREE: SEX WITH NEANDERTALS INTRODUCED HELPFUL AND HARMFUL DNA INTO HUMAN GENOME

By: Kate Wong

Published: Scientific American; January 30, 2014; www.scientificamerican.com

Level of Difficulty: **

Note to the student: read the whole text – which is very short – first.

QUESTIONS

1.       What two conclusions have been reached thanks to recent studies concerning our ancestors?

2.       Did Sriram Sankararaman and David Reich’s findings confirm or disprove previous conclusions concerning the presence of Neandertal DNA?

3.       How does the writer reach the conclusion that Neandertal DNA is not distributed evenly across the genome?

4.       Which Neandertal genetic contributions don’t appear to have any evolutionary value?

5.       Why is there no, or very low Neandertal contribution to the X chromozome?

6.       How much of the Neandertal genome exists in modern humans?

7.       What might be the possible significance of the lack of Neandertal contribution to gene FOXP2?

8.       What does “this approach” towards the end of the text refer to?

WRITING TASK

Write a short narrative in which you tell the story of mankind using the information in these three texts and the podcast. You will need to reorganize the information so that it is in cronological order. You will also need to select information. The resulting narrative will also end up being a summary.

MULTIPLE TEXT READING-INTO WRITING PROJECT: OUR PREHISTORIC ANCESTORS KEY AND TEACHER’S NOTES

These wonderful texts have been a very lucky find on numerous levels: first of all, they definitely have a wow factor second of all, they allow for some super comprehension questions. Add to all that the writing task that brings everything together and you have a winner, I think.

TEXT ONE: KEY

1.       Europe was once a melting pot.

2.       Blue eyed hunter gatherers that arrived from Africa (the rest is not needed), Middle Eastern farmers (the rest is not needed) and a novel, mysterious population (the rest is not needed).

3.       The genome of a 7000 year old hunter gatherer from North West Spain bore little resemblance to modern Spaniards.

4.       They had starch in their diets. Anything else is conjecture not fact.

5.       No they did not. Neither of them had the ability to digest sugar lactose.

6.       A third population contributed to the gene pool of contemporary Europeans.

7.       Other: 1+2

8.       100.000-120.000settlements in Israel and the Arabian peninsula

9.       They split off from African ancestors earlier than did European and Asian groups; the new European ancient genomes

10.   Other: 1+2+4

TEXT TWO: KEY

1.       One third of the ancestry of indigenous Americans can be traced back to Europe

2.       The mixing of a branch East Asians and a branch of Western Eurasians

3.       The DNA from the boy’s mitochondria belonged to a lineage called haplogroup U, which is found in Europe and West Asia but not in East Asia.

4.       The signatures you only see in today’s Native Americans

5.       After the ancestors of Native Americans split off from those of East Asians, they moved north. Somewhere in Siberia, they met another group of people coming east from western Eurasia. The two groups mingled and..

6.       Ancient skulls found in both north and south America have features that do not resemble those of East Asians. They also carry the mitochondrial haplogroup X, which is related to Western Eurasian lineages.

7.       The same Siberian gene pool

TEXT THREE: KEY

1.       Early human species interbred; people today carry DNA from archaic humans, including Neanderthals.

2.       Confirm

3.       Somes genes have a high proportion of Neanderthal ancestry while some other regions have no or very low Neanderthal contribution.

4.       Genes that are associated with diseases like Crohn’s, type 2 diabetes, lıpus

5.       Male hybrids who inherited a Neanderthal X chromozome were infertile

6.       20%

7.       Possible answers: Neanderthals couldn’t speak; had a simpler language

8.       By analyzing the genomes of people alive today, scientists will be able to discover and describe extinct human species that mated with homo sapiens but that unlike Neanderthals, unknown from the fossil record.