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Unexplainable

Skeleton Lake

Unexplainable

Vox

Life Sciences, Science, Natural Sciences

4.62.4K Ratings

🗓️ 19 January 2022

⏱️ 30 minutes

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

When scientists examined the DNA of ancient bones found near a Himalayan lake, they were forced to confront a seemingly impossible conclusion. *This episode has been updated. In the original version, we mixed up carbon isotopes with carbon isotope ratios. For further reading, go to http://vox.com/unexplainable It’s a great place to sign up for our newsletter, view show transcripts, and read more about the topics on our show. Also, email us! unexplainable@vox.com We read every email. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Transcript

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0:00.0

Support for the show comes from Into the Mix, a Ben and Jerry's podcast about joy and

0:07.8

justice produced with Fox Creative.

0:11.1

Florida School teacher Andrea Phillips always loved her job, and she spent years collecting

0:16.2

hundreds of books to help struggling readers discover new possibilities.

0:21.0

But then her district informed her and her colleagues that their classroom libraries were

0:25.2

off limits until every book was approved, all because of an intentionally vague new law.

0:31.6

Here her story on the latest episode of Into the Mix, subscribe now.

0:55.2

And then, Nicaret gum fights cravings fast to help give more power to your willpower.

1:01.6

Find out more at nicaret.co.uk, Nicaret 2 milligram gum contains nicotine, stop smoking

1:06.6

aid, requires willpower, always read the label.

1:26.2

It's unexplainable, I'm know I'm hasn't felt.

1:29.4

For most of human history, which goes back hundreds of thousands of years, our past has

1:34.8

been close to a black box.

1:37.4

Fossils and archaeological evidence tell us a little about the deep past, carbon dating

1:42.2

can tell us about a rough age of something, but altogether the story they tell is incomplete.

1:48.9

Then just about a decade ago, scientists came up with a new tool.

1:53.6

After drilling into 40,000 year old bones, they were finally able to sequence the entire

1:58.5

genome of an ancient person.

2:01.4

This was an earthquake.

2:03.1

All of a sudden there was a brand new way of analyzing our past, our extremely ancient

2:07.9

past, and it gave us a huge amount of new information.

2:12.4

But it also just blew up a lot of what we thought we understood.

...

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