The MA-1 analysis succeeded, and that success produced one of the most consequential ancient genomes yet analyzed.

The Emotional Core Of The Discovery

Science has a way of presenting its findings in a form that is stripped of the emotional dimensions that made the investigation meaningful in the first place.

Papers in Nature present results in structured, impersonal prose.

The excitement, the frustration, the moments of disbelief, the gradual recognition that a finding was significant — all of this tends to be removed in the process of formal scientific communication.

The MA-1 result was, by the accounts of researchers who have described their responses to the findings, genuinely astonishing.