Scientific Studies of Our Past

We will open our session in upcoming 2018 Indopacific Prehistory Association (IPPA) congress. We already had our paleopathology session in previous 2014 IPPA meeting (“Recent Progress in Paleopathology of Asia” session). This session is the update of our paleopathological studies in Asia Pacific region.


Reported in PPA Newsletter
(Venue: Huong Giang Hotel)
The Indopacipic Prehistory Association Congress will open on Sunday 23 September and sessions will run on Monday 24, Tuesday 25, Thursday 27 and Friday 28 September, 2018. The venue is Hue, the famous medieval capital city of Vietnam.

Organizers: Drs. Hisashi Fujita (Niigata College of Nursing, Japan) and Dong Hoon Shin (Seoul National University, South Korea)

Session Title: Recent Progress in Paleopathology of Asia

Abstract: Recently, paleopathology has been established in Asia as the indispensable research for revealing ancient people’s health and disease status by studies on the tissues remnant in archaeologically obtained biological…

I am organizing the physical anthropology session for upcoming The 8th Asia Pacific International Congress of Anatomists (APICA)that will be held in Busan, Korea in October 28-31, 2018.

Session Title: Physical Anthropology
Day 2, Oct. 29, 2018;

Organizers: 
Hisashi Fujita (Niigata College of Nursing, Japan)
Dong Hoon Shin (Seoul National University, South Korea)
Myeung Ju Kim (Dankook University, South Korea)

Schedule: 
13:30-13:45Kim Kyung Yong(Chungang university, Korea)
"mtDNA haplogroup prediction tool for fragmented DNA samples"

13:45-14:00Dong Hoon Shin (Seoul National University, Korea)
"Arctic mummies in Salekhard of Russian Federation"

14:00-14:15Jong Ha Hong (Seoul National University, Korea)
Parasite aDNA of Korean mummies

14:15-14:30Hisashi Fujita (Niigata College of Nursing, Japan)
"Artificial Trepanations found in the human skulls in ancient Egyptian"

14:30-14:45Shiori Fujisawa (Aomori Chuo Gakuin University, Japan)
"Famine and Stress Marke…

On Sep 14 to Oct 26, the clothing and textiles collected from a Joseon grave are displayed in a university museum. A symposium commemorating this event was held in the same museum. At the same grave, very well preserved mummy was also found; and we also examined the Korean mummy, getting plenty of biomedical information from the case. I made a speech about the academic meaning of this case from the perspective of Korean mummy studies (Sep 14, 2018). 

Our review article, "Mummification in Korea and China: Mawangdui, Song, Ming and Joseon Dynasty Mummies" is published in Biomed Research International.

Over the decades, mummy studies have expanded to reconstruct a multifaceted knowledge about the ancient populations’ living conditions, pathologies, and possible cause of death in different spatiotemporal contexts. Mainly due to linguistic barriers, however, the international knowledge of East Asian mummies has remained sketchy until recently. We thus analyse and summarize the outcomes of the studies so far performed in Korea and China in order to provide mummy experts with little-known data on East Asian mummies. In this report, similarities and differences in the mummification processes and funerary rituals in Korea and China are highlighted. Although the historical periods, the region of excavation, and the structures of the graves differ, the cultural aspects, the mechanisms of mummification, and biological evidence appe…

Our paper, "Archaeoparasitological Strategy Based on the Microscopic Examinations of Prehistoric Samples and the Recent Report on the Difference in the Prevalence of Soil Transmitted Helminthic Infections in the Indian Subcontinent" is published in Ancient Asia, the official journal of the Society of South Asian Archaeology. 

Archaeoparasitology is a study to acquire data concerning the parasite infection of ancient people through the examination of the specimens obtained in the excavation sites. Although this research has achieved many successes worldwide, there has been few noteworthy reports from South Asia countries. In 2011 to 2016, we thus conducted parasite examinations on Indian archaeological specimens (n = 247) collected at excavation sites of Mature Harappan period (4600–3900 BP) and their contemporary rural Chalcolithic sites. To derive effective strategy of archaeoparasitological works in Indian Subcontinent, our data were analyzed together with previous clinica…

I joined in the publication of "Genetic Resolution of Applied Biosystems™ Precision ID Ancestry Panel for Seven Asian Populations" (authors: Ji Hyun Lee; Sohee Cho; Moon Young Kim; Dong Hoon Shin; Allah Rakha; Vasant Shinde; Soong Deok Lee) in Legal Medicine.

Massively parallel sequencing (MPS) offers additional information in cases that lack reference samples for comparison. The HID-Ion AmpliSeq Ancestry Panel is a forensic multiplex platform consisting of 165 autosomal markers designed to provide biogeographic ancestry information. We analyzed seven different population groups from Asia to assess the accuracy and reliability of analysis, using this panel. In this study, we have designated 750 unrelated Asians, from southern China (n = 99), Beijing (n = 100), Japan (n = 101), Korea (n = 100), Vietnam (n = 100), Nepal (n = 100), India (n = 51), and Pakistan (n = 99). The likelihood ratios of 750 Asians were calculated, using the Torrent Server and the HID SNP Genotyper Plugi…