Topic: Ancient DNA

This EMBO-EMBL symposium joins population genetics, bioinformatics, microbiology, anthropology, archaeology, and history to study human variation, ancient pathogens, domestication, analytical methods, and ethics in paleogenomics.

David Reich examines how sequencing DNA from ancient human remains has changed the reconstruction of population history. Genetic evidence from past cultures can reveal relationships and movements that are difficult to infer from living populations alone, sometimes challenging interpretations based on archaeology, language and written history. The lecture explores what these discoveries imply for understanding shared and complex human ancestries, and how knowledge of the past could inform the study of human health. A discussion with Carl Zimmer connects the research to the interpretation and co

Svante Pääbo explains how DNA recovered from ancient remains opened an experimental route to studying extinct human relatives. The lecture follows the technical challenge of extracting reliable genetic information from small, degraded and contaminated samples, through the reconstruction of Neanderthal genomes and the identification of Denisovans. Comparisons with living people reveal interbreeding between archaic hominins and the ancestors of present-day humans. Pääbo connects those findings to questions about human origins, the genetic changes that distinguish modern humans, and the continuin