The wonders of DNA testing

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tjj T
tjj Feb 7, 2018 18:00:23
Replying to Monganaut

You cannot help but be fascinated by this story as it all over the newspapers as well as internet (NewsThump having a field day). Found myself looking back to the Paviland 'Lady' whose red ochre covered bones predate Cheddar Man by some 20,000 plus years. Stephen Moss for the Guardian stayed in the cave a few years back and wrote a piece which is still an interesting read.
https://www.theguardian.com/science/2011/apr/25/paviland-cave-red-lady

What jumped out at me while reading was this paragraph ...
The bones, stained red, are laid out in boxes, but you have no sense of the body, which is reckoned to have been 6ft tall, narrow-hipped and gracile – more African than European in body type and typical of a man who had to cover huge distances on foot.

T tomatoman
tomatoman Feb 9, 2018 16:12:32
Replying to tjj

It IS wonderful that, after over 100 years let alone the aeons before, such DNA detail can be extracted. Yes, the media are all over it for obvious reasons. BUT.....the skeleton was a lone individual found with traumatic injuries. Someone will correct me if I'm mistaken, but there's no evidence that the individual was necessarily a "local resident". If I'm correct in this, until another equivalent example is found, we may have all leapt to an understandable, but unjustified conclusion about the nature of our forbears.