The development of next-generation sequencing (NGS), a technology coincidentally well-suited to highly fragmented, low copy number DNA sources, spawned a rapid expansion in the field of ancient DNA (aDNA). It has gathered a reputation as a sexy subject, quite literally. Some of the headlines targeted to the public: ‘Mystery humans spiced up ancients' sex lives’ in Nature News or ‘Viking sex tourists lived happily ever after with Britons’ from The Independent, would make any scientist blush and probably want to bang their head against a brick wall. As problematic as these headlines are, people keep writing them because sex sells and while aDNA might not tell us exactly what our ancestors were into, it has and will continue to provide other unique insights regarding our reproductive past.

This content is only available as a PDF.
2020 © The Authors
2020
Published by Portland Press Limited under the Creative Commons Attribution License 4.0 (CC BY-NC-ND)