Keeping a close watch on media representations of the new Nature paper on the ancient Siberian genome. Here's The New York Times, 24,000-Year-Old Body Is Kin to Both Europeans and American Indians. I don't have a problem with the title, but the roll-out isn't totally accurate in what it will connote to the audience in my opinion:
he genome of a young boy buried at Mal’ta near Lake Baikal in eastern Siberia some 24,000 years ago has turned Tout to hold two surprises for anthropologists. The first is that the boy’s DNA matches that of Western Europeans, showing that during the last Ice Age people from Europe had reached farther east across Eurasia than previously supposed. Though none of the Mal’ta boy’s skin or hair survive, his genes suggest he would have had brown hair, brown eyes and freckled skin. The second surprise is that his DNA also matches a ...
