Early attempts had produced results that were often unreliable, contaminated by the DNA of the researchers themselves or of the microorganisms that had colonized the bones.

But new techniques, developed primarily by a team of researchers led by Svante Pääbo at the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology in Leipzig, Germany, had transformed the field.

Pääbo — who would eventually win the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine in 2022 for his work on ancient DNA and ancient human genomics — developed methods for extracting, sequencing, and analyzing genetic material from ancient bones that made previously impossible studies routine.

These techniques had been used to sequence the genome of Neanderthals.

To identify a previously unknown archaic human group called the Denisovans, known only from a finger bone and a few teeth found in a Siberian cave.

To trace the migrations of ancient humans across Eurasia with unprecedented precision.

Now researchers wanted to try them on Kennewick Man.

The challenge was enormous.

At 8,400 years old, his bones had been in a riverbank — a warm, wet, biologically active environment ideal for DNA degradation — for most of their time in the ground.

The prospects for recovering usable genetic material were not good.