New Archaeogenetic Study Published in Nature: International Research Group with the participation of Eötvös Loránd Research Network and Eötvös Loránd University Researchers Analyzes Bronze and Iron Age Populations of Europe

Recently, the genomes of nearly 800 prehistoric human individuals were successfully analyzed as part of a large-scale archaeogenetic program carried out in an extensive European and American collaboration. The results of the research were published in Nature on December 22, 2021.

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The colleagues of RCH IAG at the HunLifeSci2021 international conference

Six members of RCH IAG participated in the Hungarian Molecular Life Science Conference from November 5th to 7th, 2021, in Eger where projects of the Institute of Archeogenomics were presented to representatives of the life sciences.

Through lectures by Dániel Gerber and Bea Szeifert and posters presented by Noémi Borbély and Erzsébet Fóthi, researchers and students gained insights into the population genetics research conducted at our institute, spanning prehistoric, early medieval, and present-day periods.

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Origin of domestic horses finally established

• The modern horse was domesticated around 2200 BCE in the northern Caucasus.
• In the centuries that followed it spread throughout Asia and Europe.
• To achieve this result, an international team of 162 scientists collected, sequenced and compared 273 genomes from ancient horses scattered across Eurasia.

Horses were first domesticated in the Pontic-Caspian steppes, northern Caucasus, before conquering the rest of Eurasia within a few centuries. These are the results of a study led by paleogeneticist Ludovic Orlando, CNRS, who headed an international team including archaeologist, archaeozoologist and geneticist researchers of the Research Centre for the Humanities. Answering a decades-old enigma, the study is published in Nature on 20 October 2021.

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An ethical statement on DNA testing of human remains has been published in Nature

The statement, compiled and signed by 68 researchers from 31 countries, was initiated by David Reich's laboratory at Harvard Medical School. The starting point was an online, global, and multidisciplinary workshop in November 2020 focused on discussing ethical issues and guidelines for archaeogenetic research.

The rapid growth of ancient DNA and its impact on archaeology (and other fields) has led to calls for a discussion about the ethical standards to govern such research. Best practices for sampling human remains for scientific analysis and engaging with stakeholder groups are key ethical discussions among researchers studying ancient DNA. While some guidelines have been previously proposed, there is no "one-size-fits-all" approach to ancient DNA ethics because of the notable variation in research contexts worldwide. What has been missing is a set of principles that can apply universally and are agreed upon by a substantial number of researchers from different disciplines and locations.

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