The Study of Adoption in Archaeological Human Remains

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

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Comments for author File: Comments.pdf

Author Response

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Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Reviewer 2 Report

This review studies how adoption may be deduced in archeological contexts by genetic analyses, an interesting point of view. A few revisions can be made in order to improve this paper’s quality:

In Abstract and Introduction, it should be clearly stated that this article is a review.

L75: Spelling should be revised (“genetic analysis”).

L98: How DNA databases help to do that? I understand that it talks about DNA databases as a tool, however it is not clear.

L116, L155, L488: references to these facts are not stated.

L410, L422: Reference 6 and its citation should be revised.

L466: This mtDNA analytical advantage may be moved to 4.2.1 (mitochondrial DNA) for better impact.

L483: The different types of SNPs (identification, biogeographical, phenotypic, lineage) and how they are used in Archeology may improve this point.

L515: This point should be reconsidered since if different mtDNA haplogroups are observed in the same family burial, adoption hypothesis is strengthened, as in L639 figure and in the same way as it is explained in Y-chromosome (4.2.2).

L661: Discussion should be numbered as number 6. instead of 3. In this point, ancient human remains analytical difficulties (DNA degradation and low copy number, ancient DNA methods) may be mentioned, as well as how massive parallel sequencing/next generation sequencing helps to improve this issue (however it has been mentioned across the paper).

L761, L788: These references seem to be in another citation format.

Author Response

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Author Response File: Author Response.doc