The Roman conquest of Britain began in 43 AD but resistance in the north was fierce. Roman General Quintus Petillius Cerialis led the 9th Legion into the north and founded Eboracum in 71 AD (which became York) Originally Eboracum was intended to be a military fortress aligned along the river Ouse measuring about 50 acres in size. This wooden camp was upgraded to stone in 108 AD and garrisoned by the 6th Legion. The famous Emperor Hadrian reportedly visited Eboracum in 122 AD in order to plan his great walled frontier, which would be named after him. Emperor Septimus Severus visited in 208 AD and made it his private base while campaigning against Scotland, and he became the first of three Roman Emperors who would die in Eboracum. In 237, the town became a colonia, the highest legal status any Roman city could attain as Eboracum was the largest town in the north and the capital of Britannia Inferior. This is exactly the time period from when these 7 gladiators hailed.

Detailed analysis of these gladiators from York revealed some fascinating results. The bones showed various degrees of wear and tear as one might expect from the dangerous sport: 6DRIF-18 revealed a spinal fracture of the first vertibrae, 6DRIF-21, 6DRIF-3, and 3DRIF-16 meanwhile have fractured forearms, ankles and wrists. 6DRIF-22 has a skull injury as well as a stab to the neck - his extra vertebrae did not seem to assist with his fate. 6DRIF-23 meanwhile had 4 cuts to his jaw and was fully decapitated - clearly not the best fate to have. Last but not least 3DRIF-26 is fascinating indeed - he had a left shoulder injury, fractured ribs, damage wrists - and from a genetic standpoint is a deviation from the rest. His background compared to ancient samples from the time period matches very close to Ptolemaic Egyptians or the Near East.

In 1907, two mummies were discovered in Deir Rifeh Egypt in a tomb belonging to a governor and his sons from the 12th Dynasty (almost 4000 years ago). The tomb group is one of the best preserved and best known burials of the Egyptian Middle Kingdom. Although the mummies were heavily decayed, the skeletons were still preserved. Khnum-Nakht was about 40 years old and Nakht-Ankh about 60.

The two mummies were found to be brothers with the same mother but different fathers. This is confirmed by identical mtDNA and the detected differences in the Y chromosomes. Both suffered from osteoarthtritis and dental attrition. Khnum-Nakht had kyphoscoliosis and Nakht-Ankh had lung lesions from sand pneumoconiosis.

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.