Studying ancient human DNA has unlocked our origins — but the ethics are hazy

Illustration of Cave Dwellers Outside Their Cave with Dogs. Illustration credit: Bettmann via Getty Images. Published in Inverse on January 29, 2023. Original article by Emiliano Rodríguez Mega via Knowable Magazine (Q&A — Anthropologist Alyssa Bader).

Who gives consent for study participants long gone — and who should speak for them today?

The 2022 Nobel Prize in physiology and medicine has brought fresh attention to paleogenomics, the sequencing of DNA of ancient specimens. Swedish geneticist Svante Pääbo won the coveted prize “for his discoveries concerning the genomes of extinct hominins and human evolution.” In addition to sequencing the Neanderthal genome and identifying a previously unknown early human called Denisova, Pääbo also found that the genetic material of these now-extinct hominins had mixed with those of our own Homo sapiens after our ancestor migrated from Africa some 70,000 years ago. […]

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