full transcript

From the Ted Talk by Svante Pääbo: DNA clues to our inner neanderthal

Unscramble the Blue Letters

There is another thing with those traits that we so easily observe in each other that I think is worthwhile to consider, and that is that, in a very literal sense, they're really on the surcfae of our bodies. They are what we just said — facial features, hair sttuucrre, skin color. There are also a number of features that vary between continents like that that have to do with how we mzbaoitlee food that we isnegt, or that have to do with how our immune systems deal with microbes that try to invade our bodeis. But so those are all ptars of our bodies where we very directly interact with our environment, in a direct confrontation, if you like. It's easy to imagine how particularly those parts of our bodies were quickly influenced by selection from the environment and shifted frequencies of genes that are involved in them. But if we look on other parts of our bodies where we don't directly interact with the eenivonrnmt — our kidneys, our livers, our hreats — there is no way to say, by just looking at these organs, where in the world they would come from.

Open Cloze

There is another thing with those traits that we so easily observe in each other that I think is worthwhile to consider, and that is that, in a very literal sense, they're really on the _______ of our bodies. They are what we just said — facial features, hair _________, skin color. There are also a number of features that vary between continents like that that have to do with how we __________ food that we ______, or that have to do with how our immune systems deal with microbes that try to invade our ______. But so those are all _____ of our bodies where we very directly interact with our environment, in a direct confrontation, if you like. It's easy to imagine how particularly those parts of our bodies were quickly influenced by selection from the environment and shifted frequencies of genes that are involved in them. But if we look on other parts of our bodies where we don't directly interact with the ___________ — our kidneys, our livers, our ______ — there is no way to say, by just looking at these organs, where in the world they would come from.

Solution

  1. bodies
  2. parts
  3. metabolize
  4. structure
  5. environment
  6. hearts
  7. ingest
  8. surface

Original Text

There is another thing with those traits that we so easily observe in each other that I think is worthwhile to consider, and that is that, in a very literal sense, they're really on the surface of our bodies. They are what we just said — facial features, hair structure, skin color. There are also a number of features that vary between continents like that that have to do with how we metabolize food that we ingest, or that have to do with how our immune systems deal with microbes that try to invade our bodies. But so those are all parts of our bodies where we very directly interact with our environment, in a direct confrontation, if you like. It's easy to imagine how particularly those parts of our bodies were quickly influenced by selection from the environment and shifted frequencies of genes that are involved in them. But if we look on other parts of our bodies where we don't directly interact with the environment — our kidneys, our livers, our hearts — there is no way to say, by just looking at these organs, where in the world they would come from.

Frequently Occurring Word Combinations

ngrams of length 2

collocation frequency
modern humans 8
dna sequences 4
genetic variation 4
earlier forms 4
genetic variants 3
common origin 3
humans emerged 3
present day 3
common ancestor 2
million years 2
genetic differences 2
absolute difference 2
live today 2
chinese individual 2
people living 2
neanderthal genome 2
day humans 2

ngrams of length 3

collocation frequency
present day humans 2
modern humans emerged 2

Important Words

  1. bodies
  2. color
  3. confrontation
  4. continents
  5. deal
  6. direct
  7. easily
  8. easy
  9. environment
  10. facial
  11. features
  12. food
  13. frequencies
  14. genes
  15. hair
  16. hearts
  17. imagine
  18. immune
  19. influenced
  20. ingest
  21. interact
  22. invade
  23. involved
  24. kidneys
  25. literal
  26. livers
  27. metabolize
  28. microbes
  29. number
  30. observe
  31. organs
  32. parts
  33. quickly
  34. selection
  35. sense
  36. shifted
  37. skin
  38. structure
  39. surface
  40. systems
  41. traits
  42. vary
  43. world
  44. worthwhile