Genetics
nEnter molecular biology. From the early
1990s, the development of modern techniques of DNA
analysis constituted a major break with traditional biological anthropology; the introduction of molecular
techniques in the early 1990s has
largely revolutionised the study of human populations in Africa.
nDNA could potentially be recovered from
archaeological material and analysis
of DNA seemed to offer a way of relating present human populations both to one another and to past materials. The
earliest work concentrated on
mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA) but the analysis of nuclear or paternal DNA is now regarded as of equal significance.
nDNA offered new
insights into the development of modern humans, but its claims have gone further in recent times, to encompass the
interpretation of archaeological
and linguistic data.
nDespite great hopes and even greater
claims, there has been deep scepticism from
other disciplines about genetics. To judge by some of its exponents, the links between language, demographic movement
and genetics in prehistory are
well-established.