The Swedish scientist Svante Paabo received the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine in 2022 for his discoveries related to the genomes of extinct hominins and human evolution. He decoded the genome of the Neanderthal.
Svante is one of the founders of paleogenetics. This science at the intersection of molecular genetics and archeology is engaged in genetic studies of human ancestors. Paleogenetics is really difficult. It is relatively easy to isolate a whole fragment of the DNA of a modern person, but how can we decode the genome of a creature, that died oud many thousands years ago? Scientists need to develop new methods to solve this problem.
The importance of paleogenetics cannot be underestimated. Its gives us possibility to study human evolution in more detail. Thanks to this, we will be able to predict our development in the future.