Mattias Jakobsson together with Jan Storå and Anders Götherström from the Stockholm University were awarded a prestigious grant from the Knut and Alice Wallenberg Foundation to study 1,000 ancient genomes.
The aim is to create a catalog of the genetic variation of people living in Europe and Asia between 1,000 and 50,000 years ago. Skeletal material has been provided by museums and excavations, and originates from the western parts of modern-day Europe, all the way to easternmost China and northern Siberia.
“We know a lot about genetic variation in people of the modern era, but not in those who lived thousands of years ago. There may have been genetic variants that were adapted to a specific environment such as the cold conditions during the Ice Age. Those variants may then have receded when they no longer offered any advantage” (Mattias Jakobsson, 2018)