Ancient Etruscans are unlikely the ancestors of modern Tuscans, study finds

Ancient Etruscans are unlikely the ancestors of modern Tuscans, study finds: "Rigorous tests used by the researchers have ruled out a genetic link between ancient Etruscans, the early inhabitants of central Italy, and the region's modern day residents."

This piece came in the Stanford newsletter, and I thought it was quite interesting. It's kind of a blast from the past, because I had actually met with the researcher to try and see if it might make sense to be a research assistant for her as an undergrad, but it didn't work out. Largely, there were departmental disagreements about how anthropology was being done, and there were major fights between the quantitative/science side versus social/cultural (and they've since split into two departments: cultural and social anthropology and anthropological sciences).

Now, it all looks interesting to me -- I guess when you're not in the midst of tense disagreements and tenure fights, it's easier to ponder different approaches to interesting questions. Of course, the genetic research is a far cry from the work that some of the professors "on the other side" were doing which involved seriously questionable activities such as categorizing Native Americans into different typologies. One of the professors actually showed a film in the first class that talked about what America got from different Native Americans and then played the U.S. National Anthem at the end.

Funny enough, I did end up in Stanford's Human Population Genetics Laboratory for one summer part time doing genetic anthro, although I was doing mostly gruntwork like copying files and scouring journals for certain repeating DNA sequences. The researchers were looking at repeating patterns in the structure of DNA (which did not code for any cellular activity but simply served to maintain the DNA's shape if I remember correctly) in human populations to try and trace changes by groups over time.