In 1985, geneticists achieved a major archeological breakthrough after they successfully extracted partial DNA from ancient Egyptian skeletal remains. Almost exactly four decades later, researchers have sequenced the first whole genome from an individual who lived amid the civilization’s earliest eras. But while experts now know a fair amount about ancient Egyptian life, they still understand very little about the population’s genetic makeup. Researchers have genomically analyzed three specimens to date, but in each case, poor DNA preservation resulted in only partial sequences. “We hope that future DNA samples from ancient Egypt can expand on when precisely this movement from West Asia started.”