French revolutionists condemned King Louis XVI to death on 21. January 1793 by means of the guillotine at the Place de la Revolution in Paris (roughly where the Obelisk decorating the Place de la Concorde stands today). After a short but defiant speech he lost his head as the crowd rushed to the scaffold to dip hankerchiefs into his blood as momentos. An ornate gourd decorated with French Revolution themes was recently uncovered which had contained a blood soaked hankerchief dating to this time. The gourd was allegedly a gift to Napoleon Bonaparte who became First Consul of France in 1799 and Emperor in 1804. An anonymous Italian family was in its posession since possibly the late 1800s and came forward with the relic. It bears an inscription that Maximilien Bourdaloue on 21. January dipped his hankerchief in the blood of the king. Dried blood was scraped out and this is the same DNA we present in this DNA spotlight! The sample contains unsually high and rare markers for the Y-DNA haplogroup G2a.

Louis XVI's direct male line ancestor Henri IV was famous for enacting the Edict of Nantes which guaranteed religious liberties to Protestants ending 30 years of fighting between French Protestants and Catholics - he was assassinated in 1610 by a French Catholic zealot. The remains had been presumed lost in the chaos of the French Revolution after a mob of revolutionaries desecrated the graves of French kings in the royal chapel of Saint-Denis in Paris in 1793. However, the head was passed down over the centuries by secretive private collectors and positively identifed in 2010 with a radiocarbon date between 1450 and 1650. The features were consistent with the king's face including a dark mushroom-like lesion near the right nostrial, a healed facial stab wound and a pierced right earlobe. The hair color and moustache and beard on the mummified head fit the appearance of the king at the time of his death as well as matched his portraits. Furthermore cutting wounds were visible corresponding to the separation of the head from the body in 1793 and digital facial reconstruction of the skull matched the plaster mould of his face made just after his death in 1610. The DNA was then tested and compared to the blood from the gourd.

An ancient cemetery was discovered in Hassleben Thuringia which remained the richest ancient grave found in Germany for almost a hundred years. Not only was the oldest written Germanic word ever discovered etched onto a comb, but hundreds of Roman coins, ceramic fragments and Roman-style brooches were also discovered. This is no accident as much of our knowledge regarding Thuringia and broader Germania comes from the Roman historian Tacitus. The Elbe Germanic tribes who moved into this region were allies of the Romans who were trading partners, a buffer to the neighbouring Chatti - sworn enemies of Rome, as well as specialised in metalworking of iron and precious metals.

Here you can see the richly outfitted grave of the Princess of Hassleben which demonstrates the influential noble class who had a very close relationship with the Romans. She was a young woman buried with a choker, golden fibulae, a ring, a collier of roman glass beads, roman coins, pottery plates and vessels. In her mouth was a Roman gold coin - known as Charons obol - which would provide payment to Charon the ferryman to allow her soul to reach the world of the dead. Next to her remains lay the skeleton of a small dog - possibly her personal pet.

On Ridgeway Hill in the County of Dorset, a mass burial was found with the remains of 54 males. These individuals had all been executed in a gruesome manner with their decapitated heads dumped together in a large pit. Interestingly enough all of the sharp blade wounds had been struck from the front, meaning these individuals had faced their enemy. Radiocarbon dating showed the bodies were from 890-1030 AD. Strontium isotopes found in the bones show these individuals were originally from Scandinavia.

The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, which had been written around 890 AD, provides a year-by-year account of all the major happenings in Anlgo Saxon England. Aethelred the Unready had been king from 978-1016 AD - it is quite possible these bodies died during his reign. Initially the king had paid Viking raiders off with over 10,000 pounds to stop raiding their lands. Later they began hiring Norse mercenaries to fight off the invading Vikings - however these mercenaries would switch sides frequently and proved too risky.