Death and destruction.
- Resource Type
- Article
- Authors
- Gilbert, Tom
- Source
- New Scientist. 5/31/2003, Vol. 178 Issue 2397, p32. 4p. 4 Color Photographs, 1 Map.
- Subject
- *VIKINGS
*GENETIC mutation
*MITOCHONDRIAL DNA
- Language
- ISSN
- 0262-4079
Archaeological and historical records tell much about Viking history, but some mysteries remain. Analysis of 1000-year-old mitochondrial DNA from Vikings in England and elsewhere seemed to show that a third or more of them had Middle Eastern ancestry. A better understanding of which positions are prone to chemical change after death will allow us to make more accurate analyses of the distribution of past mitochondrial genomes, and how populations have changed to give the haplotype distributions we see in people alive today.