A bone or tooth sample from Hauser’s remains would be the most valuable possible substrate. Kaspar Hauser is buried in Ansbach. Whether an exhumation would be authorized by the relevant authorities — and whether the remains are in sufficient condition to yield analyzable nuclear DNA after nearly two centuries in the ground — is unknown. No application for such an analysis has been made public.
If nuclear DNA from Hauser’s remains were ever recovered and analyzed, it could potentially provide a population-level origin estimate with significantly more precision than the mitochondrial haplogroup, could verify the authenticity of the hair and blood samples used in earlier studies, and could, if compared against appropriate reference populations, narrow the geographic and demographic range of possibilities for his actual origins. It could not, without a matching reference sample from a known relative, definitively identify him.
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## The 2024 Study in Context: What Historical DNA Can and Cannot Do
The Kaspar Hauser 2024 paper appeared in *iScience*, a peer-reviewed journal published by Cell Press, as an invited contribution to a special issue on advances in biomolecular and bioelemental archaeology and forensic sciences. Its placement in this context signals something about how the study’s authors and the journal’s editors understood its significance: it is a methodological advance as much as a historical conclusion.
The paper demonstrates what becomes possible when ancient DNA techniques developed for prehistoric specimens are applied to forensic historical questions. The methods that allowed recovery of Neanderthal genomes from specimens tens of thousands of years old are more than sufficient for a sample that is roughly 190 years old. The challenge is not the age but the provenance and authentication of the specific materials.