I was called in to a meeting a few days ago. When I arrived, there was a good friend who is working with documentaries (Henrik Silver), a leader from the enterprise sphere with a lot of experience from Asia and Africa (Marcus Skinnar), and an archaeologist active in Africa (Mohammed Mohammed). “We walked in to something really cool”, they said. “This stuff has been there for ages, and people in the neighborhood are well aware of it, but we don’t find it in any of the archaeological literature”. With that kind of comment there are only two answers, of which one is “Let’s go and check it out”, and the other… Well, actually I cannot think of any other answer.
The archaeological research has so far been pretty Eurocentric. And this is not so strange, one works with things that are practical and easy to work with, thus things not too far away. And for quite some time there were many more archaeological researchers in Europe than anywhere else. However, today it is easier to bring your research to distant places, and so much remains to be discovered on other continents (for example, when a few ancient individuals from Africa that were not even super-old were studied, the deeper history of our species changed completely). Lets see what this brings in the future, but it would be stupid not to size such opportunities when it appears.
Marcus Skinnar and Mohammed Mohammed flanking me
Ancient DNA Research 