The Genome of a Human From an Unknown Population Has Been Recovered From Cave Dirt

A cup of mud that has been buried beneath the floor of a cave for millennia has just yielded up the genome of an ancient human.

Analysis reveals traces of a woman who lived 25,000 years ago, during the last ice age; and, although we don’t know much about her, she represents a significant scientific achievement: the feasibility of identifying ancient human populations even when there are no bones to recover.