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In the late 1880s, Swedish archaeologists excavated a well-furnished 10th century Viking burial site where they discovered the skeletal remains of a warrior. Cradled against a sword, the mysterious Viking was entombed with all the equipment required for battle, including a spear, an axe, armor-piercing arrows, shields, two horses, and gaming pieces, which suggested to the archaeologists that the Viking was a high-ranking military strategist.
For decades, experts assumed this grave contained the remains of a man. It wasn’t until multiple independent investigations reported the skeleton was female that modern scholars attempted a DNA analysis to know for sure. Researchers analyzed DNA samples from the Viking’s teeth and arm bone, but could not detect any trace of a Y chromosome: this warrior was a woman. Their work also revealed the northern European ancestry of the Viking and uncovered her mitochondrial haplogroup, T2b.
Both you and this viking warrior are descendants of a woman who lived in Europe around 10,000 years ago at the end of the ice age and the beginning of the Neolithic Revolution.
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