At the University of Sheffield, UK, Eran Elhaik and colleagues have invented a tool to detect a group of mutations called Ancient Ancestry Informative Markers (aAIMs)—which contain enough information to identify ancient populations. Discovering ancestry is baffling, to say the least. It requires tons of information to trace a skeleton to its origin. However, scientists have recently devised a DNA tool that can accurately identify ancient civilizations, and may be used to test an individual's similarity to these.
Health and forensic experts have used Ancestry Informative Markers (AIMs) since a decade; though their accuracy to detect ancient DNA is low with traditional methods. According to Elhaik, “Ancient populations are much more diverse than modern ones. Their diversity was reduced over the years following events such as the Neolithic revolution and the Black Death. Although we have…
