The tantalizing idea of extracting DNA from an Egyptian mummy has been a little like trying to suck dinosaur DNA out of an insect in amber; however, a scientist at the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology has found analyzing mummy DNA is actually scientifically possible in a new field known as archaeogenics.
In the process, Johannes Krause discovered a new subspecies of human, identified from a bone fragment in a European cave. He also identified the disease behind the infamous Black Death in 16th century Europe by examining dug-up plague victims, adding another ancient secret to his list: mummies.
Some experts have questioned whether it was even possible to extract usable DNA from mummies, long weathered by the hot, dry Egyptian climate. Advances in DNA sequencing technology in the past eight years reopened the possibility that Egyptian mummies could give up their genetic secrets.
In the 8th century BCE, waves of migration and conquest from Rome and farther south in Africa shook the region. Drawing on two mummy collections from German universities, Krause’s team analyzed more than 150 mummies recovered from an ancient city along the Nile River where many Egyptians were buried starting in 1500 BCE.
The mummies, ranging in age from 2,000 to 3,000 years old, were “middle-class” people, buried in simple painted wood coffins. Using new techniques, Krause found complete mitochondrial genomes in the tissues of 90 mummies and also learned the bones and teeth of the mummies best preserved the people’s DNA.
So how did the genetic makeup of the people living Abusir el-Meleq change in these turbulent centuries? “Nothing really happened. It was very boring,” Krause says. Apparently, all that conquering didn’t significantly change the genetics of this Egyptian population which was a surprise.
Next, Krause compared what he found in the ancient DNA to the genetics of modern Egyptians, drawing on a genetic survey in 2015 that looked at human migration out of Africa. Predominantly, the modern people sampled appeared to share the most genetic ties with people today living in the Arabic countries of the Middle East. This contrasts with modern Egyptians, Krause says, who now appear to have more genetic origins from sub-Saharan Africa.
This suggests that the invading peoples from Nubia and Rome didn’t significantly intermix with the ancient Egyptians during the centuries before the year 0 AD—but that sometime since, a mass influx of African genes entered the Egyptian population.
From Smithsonian.com