It has been widely noticed repeatedly that every ancient DNA research result has been a great surprise, starting from our 2008 paper or the first post on this blog back in 2007. The latest is a Science paper today The genetic prehistory of the New World Arctic. The surprises here are 1) again (and again and again.....again....) that there is no genetic continuity between local people living today and those locals in the past(>2000 years old); again and again ... replacement rather than regional continuity, following exactly the footsteps of the Out of Africa model superseding the Multiregional model. 2) no sex between people who lived side by side;"Elsewhere, as soon as people meet each other, they have sex," says Willerslev. "Even potentially different species like Neanderthals [and modern humans] had sex, so this finding is extremely surprising." (3) extreme low genetic diversity in mtDNA in ancient Paleo-Eskimos. "I can't remember any other group having such low diversity," says Willerslev. For quote by Willerslev, see see this news piece.
Well, just like we said in our post on the 400K year old Heidelbergensis DNA, it would be a complete surprise if the field of ancient DNA as it is presently practiced could produce any sensible and non-surprising result consistent with common sense and fossil and cultural records. When you use noninformative DNAs to do your analytic work, what can you expect other than meaningless trash.
Of course we are working hard to reinterpret these newly published DNA sequences and we should soon publish our results (constantly delayed by newly released DNAs needing reinterpretations) that should be a very pleasant and intellectually satisfying surprise to all. For example, as our new analysis shows, the iceman Otzi was indeed most closely related to the local living Italians as common sense would expect, rather than to remote island people the Sardinians as is now mistakenly concluded by the literature.
Well, just like we said in our post on the 400K year old Heidelbergensis DNA, it would be a complete surprise if the field of ancient DNA as it is presently practiced could produce any sensible and non-surprising result consistent with common sense and fossil and cultural records. When you use noninformative DNAs to do your analytic work, what can you expect other than meaningless trash.
Of course we are working hard to reinterpret these newly published DNA sequences and we should soon publish our results (constantly delayed by newly released DNAs needing reinterpretations) that should be a very pleasant and intellectually satisfying surprise to all. For example, as our new analysis shows, the iceman Otzi was indeed most closely related to the local living Italians as common sense would expect, rather than to remote island people the Sardinians as is now mistakenly concluded by the literature.
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