Joining the ancient DNA revolution - How we got here, and I got there

Alumni Think and Drink Harald Ringbauer, PhD Group leader, Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology

Within the last decade, the newly developing Archaeogenetics field has revolutionized the  understanding of human prehistory. Sequencing the genomes of thousands of ancient humans has generated new evidence regarding longstanding Archeological questions. Here, I will give an overview over key results, and outline how my own ongoing work fits into this bigger picture. Continuing previous work that started during my PhD at IST, I develop new computational methods that identify close and distant relatives within human ancient DNA data. Application of those methods reveals new insight into past human mobility, population sizes and social behavior. I will summarize some of the findings.