What Genes Can Tell Us — An Old Book Copied Down the Generations

A Book Found in the Attic

Let us say you are cleaning out the attic of a country house and find an old, hand-copied book. This book was not originally composed and written by someone from the start. It is a copy that was newly copied down each time it was passed down through generations in the family.

The paper has rotted to a yellowish color and tears easily into tiny pieces when touched. Along the torn edges, ink has blurred, making a few letters look like different letters. Looking at this sight, no one suspects that the book is fake. The torn and faded appearance itself is proof that this book is truly old. A book copied yesterday does not tear or blur like this.

When you count the scraps of paper swept up from the attic floor, there are 100 sheets in total, of which about 1 sheet belongs to that book, and the rest are advertising flyers, receipts, and snack bag fragments. Mixed in between are someone's notes that someone tucked in. Some were tucked in yesterday, and others quite a long time ago.

This book, the 100 sheets, and the 1 sheet are examples created for explanation. We will carry this book with us to the end of the article. This is because a book just like this is contained even inside the bones of a person buried thousands of years ago. This article deals with how to read that book, and what is not written in that book.

The Book in the Bone

How to build our body is written in letters in our DNA. Those letters are inherited from our parents, and some of them remain inside bones and teeth even after a person dies and only bones are left. Ancient DNA is genetic material extracted and read in fragments from bones and teeth thousands of years old.

There is a name for the collection of letters written in a person's DNA from start to finish. The genome is the entire set of letters written in a person's DNA, also called the genome. To put it in terms of a book in the attic, it is one entire copy inherited by that person. The hand that copies the book in the bone is not a person's, but the body's. It is text handed down from a parent's body to a child's body, and that person merely carries the copy they received.

The reason ancient DNA from people of the past is precious is because it is a copy from that exact point in time. If we only look at the DNA of people living today and reconstruct the past backward, we can get a false impression even about the near past (DOI: 10.1098/rspb.2004.2813). Ancient bones show past people right there at that time, and if we collect bones from each era, we can follow the flow of time directly (DOI: 10.1093/sysbio/syw059).

The problem is just as we saw in the attic. Among the DNA extracted from bone, the person's own DNA is around 1% or less in most fossil specimens (DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0129102). The rest is mostly DNA that entered from the outside, such as microbes from the surrounding environment (DOI: 10.1093/bioinformatics/btr347). The example that out of 100 pages about 1 page is a book fragment translates this proportion. This proportion varies greatly depending on which bone is chosen, a story we will cover later.

Therefore, the work of reading ancient DNA begins with sorting out that person's book fragments from the pile of debris inside the bone.

Torn and Smeared Pages

How do we pick out book fragments? In the attic, we look for tears and smudges. DNA inside bones carries the exact same traces.

Postmortem damage is the change where DNA is cut into tiny pieces after an organism dies and the letters at the ends are chemically altered. DNA in old bones is severely fragmented, and the amount we can recover is also very small (PMID 15748652).

There are rules to that shattered shape. Neanderthals are an ancient human lineage that lived in Eurasia and vanished, separate from modern humans like us. They were in Eurasia from at least 230,000 years ago, and disappear from the fossil record around 30,000 years ago (DOI: 10.1038/nature09710). When we read the DNA of Neanderthals, mammoths, and cave bears, there were unusually many spots where one letter was misread as another, and those spots were concentrated at both ends of the fragments (DOI: 10.1073/pnas.0704665104). Speaking of books, it looks like ink smudged only on the torn edges.

The authors of the same analysis built a model of this damage pattern, and wrote that it suggests we can obtain reliable genomes even from organisms tens of thousands of years ago (DOI: 10.1073/pnas.0704665104). This means that damage with rules can be filtered and read.

And this pattern becomes a marker that sifts the real from the fake. Because ancient DNA fragments have a unique damage pattern that today's DNA lacks, if we score each fragment for the likelihood of carrying this pattern, we can sort out fragments that are unlikely to have come from today's DNA. Using this method on Neanderthal bones from Siberia's Okladnikov Cave—which were contaminated with modern human DNA—researchers singled out the Neanderthals' own fragments (DOI: 10.1073/pnas.1318934111).

Tears and smudges are traces that ruined a book, but they are also markers that the book is truly old.

The Inserted Note

In a pile of attic fragments, the easiest thing to be fooled by is someone else's note slipped in between. A flyer is recognized as not being part of the book at once, but someone else's note is written in the same letters, so it reads like a page from that book.

Contamination is when DNA that does not belong to the ancient person being investigated mixes into the sample. When studying ancient bones, the easiest contamination to be fooled by is today's human DNA. It mixes in during the process of excavating, lifting, and handling specimens, and also from the reagents used in experiments (DOI: 10.1073/pnas.1318934111; DOI: 10.1080/20548923.2016.1258824). Because it is human DNA just like the subject being investigated, it is hard to tell apart by appearance alone.

In the early days of this field, mistaken reports that underestimated contamination came out repeatedly (DOI: 10.1098/rspb.2004.2813). Opinions are divided on how much contamination can be filtered out using the damage patterns from the previous section.

On one side, there are cases where pieces belonging to the Neanderthal itself were sorted out using damage patterns, as seen in the previous section. The other side views that damage patterns alone cannot filter everything out. To see the basis for that, we must first understand that there are two branches of methods for measuring contamination. One is a method of inferring indirectly using traits such as how short the fragment is and how much the end letters have changed, based on the idea that "if it is ancient DNA, it should be like this." The other is a method of directly looking into positions where the letters of Neanderthals and today's humans differ from each other. If a fragment has today's human letters printed at that position, it has mixed in.

In 2009, a review article dealing with the Neanderthal genome considered that human DNA contamination could not be measured reliably using the former method, that is, indirect markers. It stated that the only reliable method is directly checking positions where Neanderthals differ from all people today. However, it added that large-scale decoding could begin using other temporary methods even before finding enough such positions (PMID 19661919).

There is another loophole to damage patterns. DNA that has mixed in can also develop its own damage patterns if it stays in the bone for a long time. For this reason, some argue that preventing contamination must remain at the center until the two can be reliably separated through calculation (DOI: 10.1080/20548923.2016.1258824). In terms of the attic, if a note was slipped in by someone a long time ago, that note might have turned yellow as well. Judging solely by the degree of yellowing, it can be hard to tell for sure whether it is a page of the book or someone else's note.

Prevention begins at the excavation site. There are minimum rules to follow at every stage of excavating, lifting, and handling specimens, and in the laboratory, dedicated facilities and strict procedures are used to monitor and reduce mixed-in DNA (DOI: 10.1080/20548923.2016.1258824). So many guidebooks have come out detailing how to build separate laboratories that handle only ancient DNA that reducing contamination and verifying results are counted as core tasks of this field (PMID 21514120).

The easiest enemy to be fooled by in reading ancient people is the DNA of the people who handled those bones, and because a single damage pattern does not filter everything out, it is prevented from the start.

Deep Inside the Cover

Even for the same book, the pages pressed tightly inside the thick cover decay less. Bones have such a spot as well.

The petrous bone is a very dense bone encasing the inner ear, located on either side of the skull inside the temporal bone. Among skeletal parts, this petrous bone has been confirmed to consistently yield more of a person's own DNA than other regions (DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0129102).

Even within the petrous bone, the differences are large. Ten petrous bones from various Eurasian archaeological sites were read by dividing them into three regions. The best spot was the densest inner part encasing the inner ear. The proportion of the person's own DNA was up to 65 times higher than in the outer dense part, and up to 177 times higher than in the spongy, porous part (DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0129102). These multiples are values compared between regions within the same bone. The authors concluded that the dense part of the petrous bone can yield a large amount of the person's own DNA (DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0129102).

In this study, bones from hot regions—whether dry or humid—failed to exceed 1% even in this best part. Still, looking at the damage patterns, at least some fragments were truly ancient DNA (DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0129102). This means a way to read them can open up even for bones from hot places. Today, the petrous bone and the thin layer covering the tooth roots are considered the best specimen parts in both ancient bone research and forensic identification (PMID 40869920).

Which bone you choose determines the number of pages you can read, and the dense bone inside the ear leaves the most behind.

Comparing Copies from Multiple Families

A single copy belongs to one person. Placing copies from multiple families side by side reveals something else. If a sentence that usually appeared in the book of one family suddenly pops up in the book of another family that had lived apart for a long time, the two families may have formed a marital alliance at some point. However, the reason two books share the same sentence could also be that both copied it from an older, identical original. Calculations of reading admixture are easily swayed by complex demographic histories (PMID 40671036).

Admixture is when two groups of people who lived apart for a long time meet and have children, leaving shares from both sides in the genomes of their descendants. The most distant admixture is the one between us and other ancient humans. According to a 2018 review, modern humans who entered Europe roughly 45,000 years ago were still mixing with Neanderthals even at roughly 39,000 years ago, when they are first confirmed by genetics (PMID 29960127).

Human groups that could not be recognized by bone shape alone have also been discovered through genetics. Reading the genome of a single finger bone fragment from Denisova Cave in Siberia revealed a previously unknown group. Denisovans are an ancient human group that split roots with Neanderthals, first identified through the genome of this finger bone. The first analysis in 2010 estimated that this group left behind 4 to 6% of the genomes of today's Melanesian people (DOI: 10.1038/nature09710). According to a compilation in a 2024 review, the bones classified as Denisovan were 10 fragments from two sites, and that classification relied entirely on molecular information (PMID 37723347).

Movement from the more recent past is also visible. Ancestral components are the shares coming from each branch when a person's genome is divided as a mixture of several ancient branches. Because this is a share divided by calculation rather than a name tag attached to a lineage, even the share of the same person changes depending on which ancient groups are placed as candidates for comparison. Those ancient groups are themselves each the result of mixing older groups.

There is a study that read the genomes of 69 ancient Europeans. Roughly 4,500 years ago, Corded Ware people living in present-day Germany had roughly 75% of their ancestral components come from the pastoralist group of the steppes north of the Black Sea. The authors read this as a record of large-scale migration into the middle of Europe (PMID 25731166). Corded Ware is a name attached to a pottery style, and the term referring to the steppe pastoralists also comes from archaeological names attached to the styles of sites and artifacts (DOI: 10.1038/s41586-024-08531-5). Neither side is the name of an ethnic group.

Comparing the genomes of multiple people reveals who mixed with whom and in which directions people moved. Comparing DNA is also used to distinguish close relatives, and the kinship relationships of four 5th to 6th-century skeletons were confirmed in this way (PMID 41866900).

What Was Stuck Between the Pages

Suppose an old medical record turns up from a pile of book scraps you were sorting through and getting ready to throw away. It is not a page of that book, but it is a piece of paper that tells you what the book's owner suffered from.

The pile of DNA inside bone is much the same. The DNA of a pathogen that infected a person can remain in their remains long after they die, and now even the genomes of those pathogens are read. At first, this was a result rarely obtained from a few historically important pathogens, but now it has expanded to bacteria, viruses, and other pathogens. It has become possible to trace the process by which pathogens have changed over long periods of time through samples from that point in time (PMID 41249624).

The Yersinia pestis bacterium is a representative example. How this bacterium has changed through pandemic outbreaks of plague in history has been revealed by ancient DNA (PMID 39613690). When looking for bacteria traveling through the blood, the soft pulp in the very center, namely dental pulp, is a good sample. In dental pulp studies summarized by a 2020 review, the bacterium most frequently dealt with was Yersinia pestis, and 27 of its genomes were restored. For tracking infections spreading via blood, teeth were better than bones (PMID 32233019).

There are limitations as well. To broadly understand how plague pandemics started, spread, and what damage they left behind, samples must be gathered from more diverse regions and more diverse hosts (PMID 39613690). This means the samples read so far do not represent everywhere.

Inside bones and teeth, along with that person's DNA, the DNA of pathogens that made that person sick also remains, making it possible to read ancient infectious diseases at that point in time.

What Is Not Written in the Book

Here the attic book metaphor stops. A book copied by a person carries the copyist's tone, but the book inside bone is a text passed down from body to body without passing through anyone's hands. What is written in that book is how to build a body, and that person merely inherited it rather than writing it themselves. Which neighborhood's accent that person learned, or which region's person they considered themselves to be, is not written there. That is because language and customs are learned after birth.

Therefore, what a genome measures is no more than the ancestors' shares and the direction those shares moved. The language that person spoke, the customs they kept, and the belonging they felt for themselves are not written in the genome. Part of a custom remains separately in bones and graves, which "What Bones Tell — One Person's Diary, Split Between Teeth and Bone" covers.

Even so, genetics papers sometimes talk about the origin of languages. That is not something the genome reads directly, but an inference made by placing genome results side by side with linguistic and archaeological data. The authors of a 69-person study writing that the results "support" a steppe origin for at least some European Indo-European languages is one such inference (PMID 25731166). This means the genomic result that people moved in large numbers from the steppe matches the linguistic hypothesis that Indo-European languages spread from the steppe. It does not mean their language was written in the genome.

The Iberian Peninsula shows that gap. There is a study that read the genomes of 271 ancient individuals. Up until about 4,000 years ago, 40% of the ancestral shares inherited by the people of this peninsula had changed to the shares of newcomers possessing steppe-side ancestry. Yet by the Iron Age, this steppe-side share had spread not only to regions speaking Indo-European languages but also to regions not speaking Indo-European languages (DOI: 10.1126/science.aav4040). Because people with the same ancestral composition spoke different languages, ancestral composition does not tell you what language a person spoke.

Ancient DNA research has actually been misused. There is a commentary criticizing far-right activists for taking ancient DNA research results and using them to prop up the picture of "Europe threatened by biologically different outsiders." The authors stated that they wrote in a deliberately provocative style because they felt researchers were too quiet about such appropriation. At the same time, they acknowledged that such interpretations are unlikely to be what the researchers intended, yet wrote that its power must be acknowledged first (DOI: 10.1080/00438243.2019.1627907). It has also been pointed out that genetic research targeting Native Americans may not have brought substantial benefits to the communities that gave up their DNA, and many rather perpetuated stereotypes and harm (PMID 32721847). When inferring mixing and migration, the quality of data, complex demographic history, and representativeness of samples are cited as challenges, which is why recommendations emerge to put genetic, archaeological, and historical data together (PMID 40671036).

It also asks whose bones to read. In 2021, archaeologists, anthropologists, museum curators, and geneticists from 31 countries released five guidelines. They are: obey regulations where the bones came from, establish a detailed plan before research, minimize damage to remains, make data public after publication so it can be re-verified, and communicate with stakeholders from the beginning and respect their perspectives (DOI: 10.1038/s41586-021-04008-x).

Counterarguments to these guidelines also emerged. This is the criticism that the interests of descendant communities were not sufficiently considered, and that the principle of making all data public ignores the right of Indigenous people to decide on their own data themselves (DOI: 10.1016/j.xhgg.2022.100161). Indigenous people have criticized that it is research taking away bodies and heritage without consent or benefit, and a study reading the genomes of 9 ancient Puebloans from Chaco Canyon in New Mexico, USA, was analyzed as a controversial case. The authors of this analysis concluded that a revolution in ethics is needed in this field (DOI: 10.1177/1469605321991600). In a province of Patagonia, Argentina, a provincial law was enacted recognizing the right of Indigenous communities to participate in decisions concerning their ancestors, and ancient DNA research continued on top of the relationships built that way (PMID 37525572).

Genomes tell us about ancestral shares and migrations but do not speak of language, culture, and identity, and deciding whose ancestors to read must incorporate the voices of their descendants.

One News Title

Now let's read a hypothetical title: "5,000-Year-Old Remains Revealed to Be Migrants from a Distant Steppe".

The first question is whether this DNA really belongs to that person. While "Is it real?" when reading records asks about forgery, "Is it real?" here asks about someone else's DNA that got mixed in. We look at whether the fragments had damage patterns typical of ancient DNA, and whether modern human DNA was prevented from mixing in during excavation and experimentation. We also keep in mind that the damage pattern alone does not filter out all contamination.

The second question is from which bone and how much was read. If it was read from a petrous bone, it is very likely that more was recovered than from other bones of the same remains. The age of 5,000 years is a value measured separately by another method, not DNA, and that method is covered in "Dating with Carbon — Radiocarbon Dates, Read with an Hourglass and Tree Rings".

The third question is how many people were compared. One person's genome tells us the ancestral components of that individual, and how a group moved around becomes visible only when comparing multiple people.

The fourth question is what the word "migrant" points to. It goes only as far as meaning that a large share of this person's ancestral components connects to a group from the distant steppe. Whether the person themselves traveled a long way, or was born on the spot as a descendant a few generations later from ancestors who came from the steppe, cannot be distinguished by ancestral components alone. That question is answered by other evidence such as traces left in teeth, which is covered in "What Bones Tell — One Person's Diary, Split Between Teeth and Bone". What language this person spoke and which group they considered themselves a member of do not come from that share.

The fifth question is whose permission was received. It asks whether there is a descendant community connected to these bones, and whether that community was talked to before the research.

Before reading a book, all you have to do is ask whether the book really belongs to that person, how many books were compared, and whether the title is speaking in place of what the book does not say.

Where to Look Next

How calculations that read mixing and movement are swayed by data quality and sample representativeness remains an ongoing challenge to untangle (PMID 40671036).

How ancient DNA has entered actual historical debates continues in "Where Did Indo-European Come From? What the Genomes Answered, and What They Did Not". It covers to what extent the migration from the steppe has been confirmed, and where that migration diverges from the spread of horses.

Try placing the other tools of the same series side by side, too. "Reading Historical Records — Grandmother's Diary and That Day's Newspaper" deals with what text-based evidence tells and what it leaves out. The diaries and letters in that box are words written by grandmother herself, so they reveal her tone of thought, whereas this article's book is text inherited by the body, so it reveals the ancestors' share. "What Bones Tell — One Person's Diary, Split Between Teeth and Bone" covers the traces a person left in their bones and teeth while living, and "Dating with Carbon — Radiocarbon Dates, Read with an Hourglass and Tree Rings" covers the method of measuring when those bones are from. Genomes speak of ancestors and movement, carbon speaks of age, bones speak of the traces of a life, and records speak of the words people left behind themselves.

Source Papers

• "Optimal Ancient DNA Yields from the Inner Ear Part of the Human Petrous Bone" (2015) — DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0129102 — Most fossil specimens contain less than about 1% of their own DNA, and only the petrous bone is systematically higher than other bones. Comparing 10 petrous bones by region, the inner dense part of the petrous bone showed up to 65 times higher yield than the outer dense part and up to 177 times higher than the spongy part; specimens from hot regions showed less than 1%, but damage patterns confirmed some genuine ancient DNA.
• "Review Paper. Ancient DNA" (2004) — DOI: 10.1098/rspb.2004.2813 — This field has been repeatedly marred by erroneous reports that underestimated contamination in both the laboratory and the specimens themselves. Ancient genetic information shows that phylogeographic studies based solely on modern data can give a misleading impression even for the recent past.
• "Evolutionary Patterns and Processes: Lessons from Ancient DNA" (2016) — DOI: 10.1093/sysbio/syw059 — Specimens collected in chronological order allow direct access to time, the most important dimension of evolution (review).
• "mapDamage: testing for damage patterns in ancient DNA sequences" (2011) — DOI: 10.1093/bioinformatics/btr347 — Ancient DNA extracts are typically a mixture of contaminating molecules from environmental microbes and damaged fragments of the organism's own DNA, and damage patterns can be used to argue for the authenticity of sequences (software paper).
• "Patterns of damage in genomic DNA sequences from a Neandertal" (2007) — DOI: 10.1073/pnas.0704665104 — DNA from Neandertals, mammoths, and cave bears showed an overwhelming excess of misread cytosine substitutions concentrated at the molecular ends. It states that these patterns were modeled, suggesting that reliable genomes can be obtained even from Pleistocene organisms.
• "Separating endogenous ancient DNA from modern day contamination in a Siberian Neandertal" (2014) — DOI: 10.1073/pnas.1318934111 — Modern human DNA mixing into specimens and reagents is a major obstacle. Using post-mortem damage scores to select fragments unlikely to be of modern origin, the endogenous DNA of the Okladnikov Cave Neandertal was isolated.
• "The Neandertal genome and ancient DNA authenticity." (2009) — PMID 19661919 — It argues that the only reliable way to estimate human DNA contamination is to directly identify positions where the Neandertal differs from all modern humans, and that indirect indicators such as fragmentation and misincorporation are untrustworthy. It adds that large-scale sequencing was feasible even before then using transitional methods.
• "From the field to the laboratory: Controlling DNA contamination in human ancient DNA research in the high-throughput sequencing era" (2016) — DOI: 10.1080/20548923.2016.1258824 — Until contaminating DNA bearing damage patterns can be reliably separated by calculation as an independent decay process, contamination prevention must remain central. Protocols and authenticity criteria from excavation to the laboratory were updated.
• "Setting the stage - building and working in an ancient DNA laboratory." (2012) — PMID 21514120 — With contamination reduction and result verification remaining the most critical tasks, it provides practical guidance for building and operating dedicated ancient DNA facilities.
• "Bone Type Selection for Human Molecular Genetic Identification of Skeletal Remains." (2025) — PMID 40869920 — A review on DNA preservation in bone and teeth. The petrous bone and tooth cementum are recognized as the optimal specimen parts for both ancient DNA research and forensic identification.
• "Genetic history of an archaic hominin group from Denisova Cave in Siberia" (2010) — DOI: 10.1038/nature09710 — Using the genome from a Denisova Cave finger bone, an archaic human group that diverged in origin from Neandertals was identified, and it was estimated that this group contributed 4-6% of modern Melanesian genomes. Neandertals and others were present in Eurasia from at least 230,000 years ago and disappear from the fossil record around 30,000 years ago.
• "More than a decade of genetic research on the Denisovans." (2024) — PMID 37723347 — As of the 2024 review, remains classified as Denisovan numbered only 10 fragments from two sites, and the classification relied entirely on molecular data (review).
• "The evolutionary history of human populations in Europe." (2018) — PMID 29960127 — Anatomically modern humans arrived in Europe about 45,000 years ago and were already interbreeding with Neandertals by about 39,000 years ago, the earliest time confirmed genetically (review).
• "Massive migration from the steppe was a source for Indo-European languages in Europe." (2015) — PMID 25731166 — 69 ancient Europeans from 8,000 to 3,000 years ago. About 4,500 years ago, Germany's Corded Ware people derived about 75% of their ancestry from the Yamnaya. The results support a steppe origin for at least some European Indo-European languages.
• "Ancient DNA studies performed in the forensic genetic laboratory in Slovenia: a narrative review." (2026) — PMID 41866900 — Reliable data were obtained from ancient skeletal remains using forensic laboratory techniques and strict contamination control, confirming the kinship of four individuals from the 5th to 6th centuries.
• "Insights into infectious diseases through ancient pathogen genomics." (2026) — PMID 41249624 — Ancient pathogen genomics research has expanded from the rare discovery of a few pathogens to genome-wide analysis across bacterial, viral, and eukaryotic pathogens, enabling the tracking of pathogen evolution over long periods (review).
• "Historical plague pandemics: perspectives from ancient DNA." (2025) — PMID 39613690 — Ancient DNA has illuminated the evolutionary history of Yersinia pestis during historical plague pandemics, and to broadly understand the initiation, spread, and impact of pandemics, samples must be collected from more diverse regions and hosts (review).
• "Ancient dental pulp: Masterpiece tissue for paleomicrobiology." (2020) — PMID 32233019 — Ancient dental pulp is an excellent specimen for finding infections that spread via the bloodstream, and 27 ancient Yersinia pestis genomes were reconstructed. Teeth were more advantageous than bones for diagnosing septic infections (review).
• "The genomic history of the Iberian Peninsula over the past 8000 years" (2019) — DOI: 10.1126/science.aav4040 — 271 ancient Iberians. Around 2000 BCE, 40% of ancestry (and nearly 100% of Y chromosomes) was replaced by people bearing steppe ancestry components, and by the Iron Age this component had spread even to regions not speaking Indo-European languages.
• "Damage and repair of ancient DNA." (2005) — PMID 15748652 — The primary obstacles in ancient DNA research are extremely low yields, modern DNA contamination, and severe degradation (review).
• "The genetic origin of the Indo-Europeans" (2025) — DOI: 10.1038/s41586-024-08531-5 — The Yamnaya archaeological complex appeared around 3300 BCE in the steppe north of the Black and Caspian Seas. Its formation was tracked using DNA from 435 ancient individuals.
• "Present pasts in the archaeology of genetics, identity, and migration in Europe: a critical essay" (2019) — DOI: 10.1080/00438243.2019.1627907 — An intentionally provocative commentary criticizing that far-right activists are exploiting ancient DNA research results for "Fortress Europe" narratives while researchers remain silent about it.
• "Generations of genomes: advances in paleogenomics technology and engagement for Indigenous people of the Americas." (2020) — PMID 32721847 — Genomic research targeting Indigenous peoples may not have provided significant benefits to the source populations and many perpetuated stereotypes and harms, requiring greater efforts toward ethical collaboration with communities (review).
• "The genomic footprints of migration: how ancient DNA reveals our history of mobility." (2025) — PMID 40671036 — It summarizes the principles and case studies of admixture analysis, emphasizing issues of data quality, the complexity of demographic history, and sample representativeness, alongside the importance of integrating genetic, archaeological, and historical data (review).
• "Ethics of DNA research on human remains: five globally applicable guidelines" (2021) — DOI: 10.1038/s41586-021-04008-x — Researchers from 31 countries proposed five guidelines: regulatory compliance, prior planning, damage minimization, data sharing, and stakeholder participation from the outset.
• "Community partnerships are fundamental to ethical ancient DNA research" (2023) — DOI: 10.1016/j.xhgg.2022.100161 — A counterargument to the above guidelines. It criticizes that the interests of descendant communities were not sufficiently considered and that the principle of data sharing ignores Indigenous data sovereignty.
• "An ethical crisis in ancient DNA research: Insights from the Chaco Canyon controversy as a case study" (2021) — DOI: 10.1177/1469605321991600 — It analyzes the controversy surrounding the genomic study of nine ancient Pueblo individuals from Chaco Canyon and concludes that an ethics revolution is needed in the field.
• "Towards an ethical and legal framework in archeogenomics: A local case in the Atlantic coast of central Patagonia." (2023) — PMID 37525572 — A provincial law was enacted on the Atlantic coast of Patagonia recognizing the right of Indigenous communities to participate in decisions regarding their ancestors, making ancient DNA research possible on the foundation of that relationship.