But his genome is a window into connections that extend far beyond the stone slab that covered him.

The Long Road To The 2013 Publication

The analytical work behind the 2013 publication was years in the making, and its success depended on technical advances in ancient DNA research that had only recently made such analysis possible.

The Mal’ta boy’s remains had been in Russian museum collections since the 1920s and 1930s — decades before the development of modern ancient DNA techniques.

The physical remains and the associated grave goods had been studied extensively in the intervening decades from an archaeological and osteological perspective, contributing to the rich literature on Mal’ta that preceded the genomic work.