Remains from Neanderthal sites in Europe, from Bronze Age Central Asian burial mounds, from Ice Age Siberia, from the caves of South Africa, from the highlands of South America — all of these yielded genuine ancient genomic data as the technology improved.

But Egypt remained largely closed.

The warm climate continued to work against preservation.

The extensive handling of Egyptian museum collections over the decades since their excavation had contaminated many specimens.

The mummies that everyone wanted to study were, often, among the least genetically tractable specimens — their elaborate preparation for burial having involved processes that may have further damaged or altered biological material.

The breakthrough for NUE001 came partly from the specific characteristics of the burial — the factors described above that preserved the tooth root unusually well — and partly from the application of what co-senior author Pontus Skoglund, Group Leader of the Ancient Genomics Laboratory at the Francis Crick Institute, described as “new and powerful genetic techniques” that allowed the team to extract usable DNA and to rule out contaminating sequences with confidence.