Human history through DNA: an overview of (some) recent papers

by Erik Aurell (KTH)

Thursday 23 Oct 2025, 13:00 → 15:00 Europe/Stockholm

Albano 3: 5230 - Xenon (12 seats) (Albano Building 3)

The last decade has seen a revolution in the understanding of human history through ancient DNA. With no claim of completeness of the presentation or special expertise in the area I will review some recent, especially striking, papers.

I will highlight the extensive use of the (old) statistics tool of principal component analysis (PCA) in this field: the relationship of one individual or set of individuals in a larger community is often visualized by projecting on the first and second principal component in that larger community.  

I will also discuss in some more detail a paper by Mathieson and Terhorst [1] on how (at least sometimes) fitness and selection can be inferred from ancient DNA data.

[1] Mathieson, I and Terhorst, J "Direct detection of natural selection in Bronze Age Britain", Genome Res 32:2057 (2022)