SKIN IN THE GAME: Parchment manufacture marks in a church register from 1853–1858 (left), and a sewn repair in an even older manuscript from 1306–1311 (below)BY PERMISSION OF THE BORTHWICK INSTITUTE FOR ARCHIVES
The Borthwick Institute for Archives, housed at the University of York in the U.K., boasts thousands of church documents, some of which date back to before 1300, as well as troves of medical illustrations, architectural drawings, and records of the British-Caribbean slave trade. But recently, a team of biologists began digging into the Borthwick’s records in search of a different sort of information: genetic material that is yielding insights into the selective breeding of farm animals.
Rather than rely solely on scarce, weather-beaten bones to reconstruct the animals’ genetic histories, the researchers decided to extract DNA from pieces of 17th- and 18th-century parchment. Produced from the skins of sheep, goats, and cattle, parchment was commonly used as a writing substrate until paper came into wide ...
