by Martin Jones
It remains to be seen how far biomolecular archaeology will reach beyond population dynamics and ecology; how much it can access the human experience in its totality. I simply close with one prediction. However deeply into new corners of humanity these methods manage to probe, however rich and surprising the novel findings from ever faster methods, various of our long departed cousins will remain curious to our perceptions. For all the detail we add to our descriptions of them, for all the precision we achieve in describing everything from the colour of their eyes to their propensity for poetry, they will somehow manage to remain as enigmatic as they did when they were first encountered, almost two centuries ago, in the Neanderthal Ravine. They will continue to make us think ever harder about who we are and our place in the world.
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