A baby girl who died in Alaska some 11,500 years ago belonged to a formerly-unknown population group whose discovery has shed light on the peopling of the Americas, a study of her genome revealed Wednesday. By decoding the child’s genetic fingerprint, scientists could look back on the history of the first people to conquer the New World, and conclude they likely arrived from Siberia some 20,000 years ago. “The study provides the first direct genomic evidence that all Native American ancestry can be traced back to the same source population during the last Ice Age,” researcher Ben Potter of the University of Alaska told AFP. Potter and a team analysed the DNA of an infant whose remains were unearthed at the Upward Sun River archaeological site in Alaska in 2013. She was named Xach’itee’aanenh T’eede Gaay (Sunrise Girlchild) by the indigenous community, and her genome “provided an unprecedented window into the history of her people”, said Potter.

Anyone having their portrait done by Madame d’Ora (1881–1963) could be confident they were lending themselves a touch of French elegance. Her sitters included writers such as Arthur Schnitzler, the composer Alban Berg, and the cultural critic Hermann Bahr. And she also produced portraits of the Wiesenthal sisters and Anna Pavlova, action shots of the scandalous nude dancer Anita Berber, and likenesses of operetta star Fritzy Massary and of famous figures like Josephine Baker and Coco Chanel. From 1910 to the 1950s, Madame d’Ora was the portraitist of choice for Viennese and Parisian society as well as for Bohemian artists. People flocked to her studios in Vienna and Paris to take home aesthetically sophisticated and captivating portraits of themselves that exuded a contemporary look and underpinned their claim to a place in high society, the world of the beautiful, well-educated, and famous. The retrospective at the

Israeli archaeologists unveiled on Monday a 2,700-year-old clay seal imprinted with images and Hebrew words that may have belonged to a biblical governor of Jerusalem. The round button-sized seal was found in a building in Jerusalem’s Old City near the Western Wall and dates back to the 7th century BC, from the time of the First Jewish Temple, said the Israel Antiquities Authority. The artefact bears an engraving showing two men wearing robes and facing each other in a mirror-like manner. Below them is an inscription in ancient Hebrew that reads “to the governor of the city”, or mayor. “It’s a very rare find,” said Shlomit Weksler-Bdolah, excavator of the Western Wall plaza for the Israel Antiquities Authority.