From the New York Times, I'm Sabrina Taverny Sea, and this is the Daily.

In a major new advance in science, DNA from Bronze Age skeletons is providing new clues to modern day medical mysteries.

Today, my colleague Carl Zimmer explains how a new field of science is

changing the way we think about treatments for devastating diseases.

It's Wednesday, January 31st. So Carl you are a science reporter as our listeners will know and you write about evolution and the origins of life And you've recently written a story

that really piqued my interest.

It was about a major new discovery

in our understanding of ancient people.

And it's leading to some big advances,

as I understand it in modern medicine so tell me about it.

Well scientists have been wondering about two big questions for a long time

one of them is why do we get sick? The other question is where do we come from?

And they seem like they should have two very different answers, but now scientists are starting to realize maybe the two questions

actually have the same answer. The same answer how, Carl? Well, it's possible that in order to treat the diseases we have to

deal with today, diseases often that have no treatment yet, it may be necessary to go back thousands of years and look at how our

ancestors lived then. What were the challenges they faced? What was their health like? What kind of genes did they carry and maybe we can then come back to the present

and start to be able to make our own health better and now researchers have just made some really big

discoveries both about human history and about our diseases at the same time and

this history actually lives inside of us right now in our own genes and has big

implications for our health.

Okay, so two branches of science coming together as you say making some major new discovery. So

tell me about this first field of science Carl, what's happening there?

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