From this, they extracted everything from leaf waxes and soot particles to the microscopic fragments of genetic material known as sedimentary ancient DNA, or sedaDNA. This marks the first time such metagenomic data has been used to study a lake in the central Himalayas. This makes such ancient lake beds natural archives of the environment and ecosystems that existed millennia ago. It was during this fertile window, around 8,300 years ago, that the researchers detected the first traces of human DNA. However, the researchers note that they only analysed a small number of samples for ancient DNA, which limits the temporal resolution, or the frame-by-frame detail of the genetic record.