August
23
/ 2023
DNA testing in an archaeological context has been improving by leaps and bounds, resulting in many new discoveries relating to ancient human, animal and plant genetics. New ground in DNA analysis of the past is being broken all the time. In a prime illustration, a team of scientists from Denmark and the United Kingdom extracted intact ancient plant DNA from a clay brick used during the construction of a grand palace in the Assyrian capital of Nimrud in the ninth century BC. This is the first time such a feat has ever been accomplished. “With this research we have made the pioneering discovery that ancient DNA, effectively protected from contamination inside a mass of clay, can successfully be extracted from
