According to new research, house mice (Mus musculus) are ideal biomarkers of humansettlement as they tend to stow away（偷乘） in crates or on ships that end up going where peoplego.The published paper goes on to state that mice hitched a ride（搭便车） with the Vikings and setup colonies in areas such as the British Isles, Faroe Islands, Iceland and Greenland.They may be small, but the information mice can convey about the movements of humansthroughout history is mighty, according to a Cornell researcher. Jeremy Searle, professor of ecologyand evolutionary biology, explores the global distribution of small mammals andhas found that house mice (Mus musculus) are ideal biomarkers of humansettlement as well.

Where people go, so do mice, often stowing away in carts of hay（干草） or on ships. Despite anatural range of just 100 meters (109 yards) and an evolutionary base nearPakistan, the house mouse has managed to colonize every continent, which makes it a useful tool for researcherslike Searle. Previous research conducted by Searle at the University of Yorksupported the theory that Australian mice originated in the British Isles andprobably came over with convicts shipped there to colonize the continent in thelate 18th and 19th centuries.

As an idealbiomarker of human inhabitant, house mice travel with human throughtransportations and convey mighty historical traces, and scattered onalmost every continent along with colonists, which facilitated the researchsuch as the mice migration from British to Australia, tiltingarchaeologists’ study on migration ofother species would be developed through comparing the DNA between ancientmouse and modern mice.