DNA testing of skeletal remains?

Keith Livingstone Australia · Mon Apr 17, 2006 2:16 pm

A thought. Wiltshire's "Cheddar man" was DNA tested and lo and behold a direct descendant turned up 12000 years and a few miles away in a little village! Are there any skeletal remains from archaeological excavations in the Loch Linne region? If so, could they be tested?

Andrew Lancaster4 · Post by **Andrew Lancaster4** » Mon Apr 17, 2006 6:44 pm

Hi Keith Generally old skeletons fail to give good samples for Y-DNA testing. Mitochondrial DNA *does* often work, but is only useful for tracing maternal lines and ancient broad connection at that. So there is an enormous literature on such test results and the implications for theories about how people were related to each other in very ancient times, but not much success yet in using mt DNA for genealogy. Regards Andrew