In spite of past controversies, the field of ancient DNA is now a reliable research area due to
recent methodological improvements. A series of recent large-scale studies have revealed …

Niche construction is the process by which organisms construct important components of
their local environment in ways that introduce novel selection pressures. Lactase …

The Neolithic is a key period in the history of the European settlement. Although
archaeological and present-day genetic data suggest several hypotheses regarding the …

The contribution of palaeogenetic data to the study of various aspects of hominin biology
and evolution has been significant, and has the potential to increase substantially with the …

The Etruscan culture is documented in Etruria, Central Italy, from the 8th to the 1st century
BC. For more than 2,000 years there has been disagreement on the Etruscans' biological …

The Roman conquest of Italy was facilitated by the disunity of the peninsula's inhabitants,
divided into myriad autonomous regional groups that failed to mount an effective unified …

Umbria is located in Central Italy and took the name from its ancient inhabitants, the Umbri,
whose origins are still debated. Here, we investigated the mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA) …

The genetic composition of the medieval populations of Central Europe has been poorly
investigated to date. In particular, the region of modern-day Slovakia is a blank spot in …

The analysis of ancient DNA in a population genetic or phylogeographical framework is an
emerging field, as traditional analytical tools were largely developed for the purpose of …

The ancient inhabitants of a region are often regarded as ancestral, and hence genetically
related, to the modern dwellers (for instance, in studies of admixture), but so far, this …