”Hey, I’ve asked a friend to pick you up at the airport, on Sunday we will see where the new ancient DNA laboratory in Ankara will be, it will be great. Oh, and by the way, bring your running gear, I’ve signed us up for 64k in the mountains the day before…”. I’ve got several smaller and larger project running with Mehmet Somel and his group in Ankara, why it is good to come here a few times every year and talk and plan and write together and do a joint check that everything is going according to our planes.
Mehmet getting ready to run
But this visit actually started with a meeting at Hacettepe University; METUS sister university. This is where Yilmaz Selim Erdal is now building a new ancient DNA laboratory. And it is a good organisation to have an aDNA laboratory within, it hosts a large part of Turkeys ancient human remains. Further, the new aDNA laboratory seems to grow in an atmosphere of sincere collaboration rather than competition with the Ankara group. The meeting was actually about a neolithization project we are all involved in, but to be honest, even though I focused as much of my attention as I was able to on the progress in the project, my poor body kept calling for attention by telling me that it was really everything but a good idea to have spent the former day running 64k in the mountains…
Fusun Ozer, Yilmaz Selim Erdal, Mehmet Somel, Cigdem Atakuman, Elif Surer at the neolithization meeting
Ancient DNA Research 