World's Largest DNA sequencing of Viking Skeletons - They Were Not All Scandinavian

[Biblioteque]

"The results change the perception of who a Viking actually was. The history books will need to be updated." - according to Professor Willesliv.

[KATM]

Do you have a link to share?

[Biblioteque]

https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2020/09/200916113544.htm

Mea Maxima Culpa! My cognitive skills have been compromised!

[John McCoy]

The press release turned up on Science Daily News today: https://www.sciencedaily.com/release...0916113544.htm

As this is a press release, not the formal abstract, it leaves many questions unanswered. Among those that come to mind, were isotopic ratios measured for each of the skeltons whose DNA was sequenced, in order to gain information about the geographic origins of these individuals? How many of the genomes produced informative Y DNA sequences? MtDNA sequences? How good was the sequencing?

[Biblioteque]

Sorry, John, but I beat you to the buzzer by 4 minutes. Thanks for having my back, and for your comment!

[KATM]

A link to the abstract and references of the paper, but you'll need to pay to view the entire thing, unless you can use an institution to do so: "Population genomics of the Viking world," https://www.nature.com/articles/s415...iWzMXPLNXycnoA

[Biblioteque]

https://dna-explained.com/2020/09/18...-updates-here/

More on the subject from Roberta Estes, National Geographic, et al.

[ewd76]

One thing from the start is that not all Scandinavians have blond hair now and I doubt did then either. That seems to have come as a surprise to them.

[barbarychutney]

In the popular imagination, Vikings were fearsome blonde-haired warriors. But now the longstanding legend is wrong, large genetic analysis of over 400 Viking skeletons scattered across Europe weren't of Scandinavian ancestry, and many would have had dark hair, not blonde.