Comment by hx8
1 year ago
A simple DNA test should tell us. Roman soldiers were recruited from a diverse gene pool and fought far from their birthplace in mixed groups. A simple test to determine the average variance of genetics will let us know if they were a single ethnicity. Further cross references to compare similarity to other known genomes can tell us which region an individual was from.
Whole genetic sequencing cost about $500. So <$75,000 for the sequencing of the entire 150, plus scientist time to gather samples and process results. Answering the question through genetics probably costs more than $250,000 even with cheap grad student labor, so it's probably just not worth it, especially when the moral high ground is to let the dead rest.
Sequencing 2K years old material is not that easy, specially WGS. From what I've been told, both from degradation and contamination, you're going to need much, much more samples and work than when doing a regular $500 sequencing.
You can do simpler procedures to find their general regional origin, although it always requires more work in those conditions.
Edit: Wien Museum press release says they're doing DNA and isotope analysis, but doesn't say the concrete techniques applied.
Thanks for lifting me above the Dunning-Kruger threshold so that I understand there is more to archaeological genetics then I previously conceived of.
DNA in the ground has a half-life of ~500 years. After 2000 years, ~6% of the DNA remains. More crucially, there will not be a single complete chromosome left, it's all a jumbled, mixed mess of DNA fragments.
This can be reconstructed, but it requires a much larger sample than normal DNA analysis. (You need to get enough fragments to get a whole genome, with enough overlap everywhere that you can reassemble the pieces.)
The largest problem after that is that the vast majority of DNA in all your samples will not be human DNA, but DNA of the various bacteria that live in the soil. This doesn't ruin the sample, because you can just reconstruct everything and then discard all the things that are not human chromosomes or mitochondrial DNA, but it does greatly increase the workload when compared to a pure human DNA sample.
There are a lot of smaller problems that I am eliding here. But amazingly, all the problems are solvable, and the progress in this field in just the past decade is staggering. We have usable fragments that teach us new things that are >500kyr old, the oldest complete human genome we now have is ~45kyr old, and more recent samples are solving hundred-years-old historical debates, and new ones are done almost daily. We are living in the golden age of archaeogenetics, and many papers published today on it will be cited for a hundred years or more.
... but all the solutions to those problems create a lot more work, and thus a lot more cost than those $500 gene sequencing kits.
Most likely They are not going to be allowed to rest at all. Especially western humanity is basically sanitizing the whole earth below them of human culture and history and storing it away in boxes and vaults, and ephemeral digital files of dubious quality, centralized for some Library of Alexandria or Dresden Bombing atrocity to totally erase all the centralized records of humanity.
No one seems to think of these types of things, especially in todays world where everything is digital and even in places like America there will be nothing left but rather uninteresting rubbish piles of plastic and other toxic remains left where stick and drywall houses and junky metal warehouses used to be.
There will be no silver lined sheathes of common soldiers, no coins of any kind, let alone gold ones, there will be no hidden manuscripts, not even charred scrolls that could be recovered with the use of AI. There will not even be any buildings and castles that stood the test of time for 1000 years, or any new pyramids because it rich and successful don’t build grand and permanent anythings. Humanity will effectively have not only left a huge hole in history starting in about the 1980s, but there won’t even be anything left to discover in the ground from the past the way we are going. And worst, even the digital history is clearly starting to come under attack with censorship and deletion and even the IP rules where corporations just get to delete what they dem you should no longer have.
TBH I agree that we Americans are going to leave behind some really lame plastic artifacts. But I’m trying not to worry about that sort of thing too much, it doesn’t seem healthy to worry too much about what’ll happen long after we’re dead. If we do, we might forget to live, right?
Despite all that it has become much easier to copy vast quantities of information. A modest effort to archive by future generations could deliver far more than was previously possible through discovery of antiquities. And paper products are still produced in vast quantities.
Sir, this is a Wendys.
We are on the precipice of a new space age.
Where you should put your horizon is Psyche 16.
Space-factories building Starships for everyone. New iPhones dropping from the sky.
Earth, returned to Eden.