Papers Ancient DNA reveals population history and burial practices in Bronze Age Gansu Across the crossroads of ancient Gansu Northwest China looks like a margin on modern maps, but in deep history it was anything but. Gansu sat at a great hinge of the ancient world, where landscapes, peoples, crops, animals, metals, and ideas met. Long before formal roads or caravans, this was By Sven • 5 min read
Papers Genetic Study of Iranian Sayyed Ancestry Lineage, Memory, and the Long Shadow of the Prophet's Family Across Iran, lineage is public identity, social inheritance, and sacred claim. The title of Sayyed marks those who identify as descendants of the Prophet Muhammad through the male line, connecting households, shrines, and reputations to the founding figures By Jamie L • 5 min read
Papers Ancient DNA and Cerny Culture Ancestry in Neolithic France Monuments of Earth and Timber: The Astonishing World of Cerny Burials Across the river valleys of northern France, communities of the Middle Neolithic raised some of western Europe's earliest monumental burial structures. Long before famous stone tombs appeared elsewhere, people of the Cerny world were already building vast By Caterina • 6 min read
Papers Khazar Frontier Graves and Saltovo-Mayaki Diversity The Khazar Frontier and the World of the Forest-Steppe Between the seventh and tenth centuries, the Khazar Khaganate dominated the lands north of the Black Sea, connecting steppe, Caucasus and Caspian trade routes. This was no empty expanse but a vibrant contact zone of movement, negotiation and cultural exchange. The By Caterina • 5 min read
Papers Bronze Age Reuse of Neolithic Tombs in Southwestern Britain Ancient tombs, new people, and an old sacred landscape Southwestern Britain in later prehistory was already crowded with monuments and memories made powerful by vanished generations. Across Dorset and Gloucestershire, great burial mounds had been raised by the first farming communities centuries before metal arrived. These long barrows were bold By Sven • 4 min read
Papers Iceland’s Pangenome Reveals Hidden Disease Variants Iceland's Hidden Genomic Landscape A remarkable scientific expedition unfolded across the human genome much as an archaeological survey unfolds across a buried landscape. For years, many studies had relied on a single standard human genome as though it were one master map of a vast ancient world. But By Sven • 5 min read
Papers Genetic origins and isolation of the Agotes in the Basque region The Last Agotes of Bozate: A People Set Apart In the Baztan Valley of northern Navarre lies Bozate, a small settlement where centuries of exclusion, fear, and survival played out. This is where the last descendants of the Agotes endured as a distinct community — not among grand ruins, but in By Caterina • 3 min read
Papers Neolithic Tomb Kinship in Northern Scotland Stone Tombs in the Far North Along Scotland's northern edge, early farming communities built remarkable stone tombs in Caithness and Orkney. These carefully constructed monuments featured dry-stone walls, arranged chambers and piled cairns. More than containers for bodies, they were places where ancestry and belonging were physically built By Jamie L • 4 min read
Papers Late Iron Age Mobility and Burial Practices in Celtic Switzerland Mobility Across the Alpine World Late Iron Age Switzerland was a world in motion. People moved across valleys, plateaus, and mountain corridors — sometimes locally, sometimes across remarkable distances. Hilltop strongholds, busy settlements, and busy trade routes linked Central Europe to the Mediterranean. Rather than imagining mass migrations, the evidence reveals By Caterina • 5 min read
Papers Balkan Hunter-Gatherers Shaped Post-Ice Age Europe The Balkan Refugium: Europe's Ice Age Heartland When ice and bitter cold gripped most of Europe during the last Ice Age, the Balkans emerged as one of prehistory's great human refuges. River valleys, caves, and sheltered landscapes allowed people to endure where others could not. Far By Sven • 5 min read
Papers Ancient DNA and matrilineal kinship in Iron Age Britain The Arras world: square barrows, chalk hills, and striking funerals In Iron Age Britain, one burial tradition stands out with unusual clarity: the cemeteries of East Yorkshire, spread across the Yorkshire Wolds. Here, the dead were laid beneath square barrows, small ditched monuments that from the air appear like geometric By Sven • 8 min read
Papers Medieval Paleogenomics in Northern Latium Medieval Northern Latium: Coast, Hills, and New Towns North of Rome, medieval Latium offered three strikingly different communities: Santa Severa on the Tyrrhenian coast, Allumiere-La Bianca in the mineral-rich Tolfa Mountains, and Leopoli-Cencelle, a planned papal town. Together they reveal a medieval society that was busy, adaptive, and deeply connected. By Caterina • 1 min read
Papers Genomic evidence for female exogamy in a Tang Dynasty clan The Naobaowan Cemetery on the Tang Frontier On the southern bank of the Yellow River, near the Kubuqi Desert in Inner Mongolia, the Naobaowan cemetery is not simply a cluster of old graves. It is a family landscape frozen in brick, dust, and memory. The dead belonged to an elite By Sven • 4 min read
Papers Ancient DNA and Migrations in the Northern Black Sea Region Frontier of Empires and Riders: The Northern Black Sea as a Living Crossroads The Northern Black Sea region in the first millennium CE was where history never sat still. Sea met steppe, Greek-speaking town met horse-borne nomad, and every generation inherited a landscape layered with ruins, graves, old loyalties, and By Caterina • 6 min read
Papers Ancient DNA Reveals Mixed Origins of Gothic Communities in Late Antique Bulgaria Frontier Cemeteries on the Black Sea and the Danubian Plain Late antique Bulgaria offers two vivid windows into a world often flattened under a single label: "the Goths." Two burial sites linked with Gothic-associated customs stand at the centre of this landscape. One lies at Aquae Calidae near By Sven • 4 min read
Papers Paleogenetics of Princess Maria Shvarnovna, wife of Grand Prince Vsevolod the Big Nest Princess in the Monastery: The Burial at Vladimir In medieval Vladimir, the Knyaginin Monastery served as both a religious house and a dynastic resting place for the women of Rus' ruling families. Within its cathedral, beneath layers of centuries of rebuilding, lay remains that brought a forgotten princess vividly By Sara V • 4 min read
Papers Integer Partitions Reveal Super-Archaic Gene Flow in Human Ancestry Hidden ancestors in the human story Long before farming or cities, there were meetings between different kinds of people—preserved not in words, but in human ancestry. Modern humans did not emerge from a neat, isolated line. Their story includes contact with a deeply ancient population so old that no By Caterina • 5 min read
Papers Ancient Leprosy Genomes and the Origins of Branch 0 Ancient Leprosy Emerges from the East For a long time, the story of ancient leprosy seemed written mainly in Europe. Medieval cemeteries and hospital burial grounds gave scholars a dramatic archive of suffering and exclusion. But that picture was incomplete. Vast eastern lands had yielded almost no ancient genetic evidence By Caterina • 4 min read
Papers Regional adaptation to Neolithic farming in ancient Western Eurasian genomes The Iron Gates: Where Farmers Met Hunter-Gatherers Along the Danube's great gorge, prehistoric Europe produced one of its most extraordinary landscapes. Lepenski Vir, the region's best-known site, challenges old assumptions about hunter-gatherers as scattered nomads. Here stood communities with architecture, monuments, and elaborate burials suggesting deep By Sven • 5 min read
Papers Scottish Traveller Genetic Origins and Founder Disease Risk Scottish Travellers: A Distinct People with Deep Scottish Roots Who are the Scottish Travellers, and where do they come from? For generations, answers were shaped by myth and prejudice rather than evidence. What emerges from research is something far more grounded: Scottish Travellers have overwhelmingly Scottish ancestry, yet form a By Jamie L • 6 min read
Papers Neolithic DNA, Admixture, and Plague on Gotland Farmers and Foragers on an Island Frontier In the middle of the Baltic Sea, Gotland became one of the most intriguing stages of the Neolithic world. For more than five centuries, two very different ways of life existed side by side. One group were farmers linked to Funnel Beaker communities By Sven • 5 min read
Papers Post-Viking Early Christian DNA of Children in Scandinavia Children in the Christian Graveyard Children's bones are notoriously difficult to interpret—smaller, more fragile, and resistant to the methods that reveal sex, age, and status in adults. Yet without children, no picture of past society is complete. In early Christian Scandinavia, this challenge intensifies: the spread of By Sven • 4 min read
Papers DNA and Contamination Analysis of the Turin Shroud Samples A Famous Cloth Through Fire, Chapels, and Courts The Turin Shroud sits at the crossroads of faith, power, and disaster. It is a long linen cloth marked with the front and back image of a man bearing brutal wounds. For centuries it has drawn pilgrims, doubters, rulers, and scientists. What By Caterina • 6 min read
