Tuft of Hair Used to Reconstruct Ancient Greenlander
11.02.2010 - Human Dimension, Arctic
Scientists at the University of Copenhagen have done the first reconstruction of the nuclear genome of an extinct human using DNA retrieved from tufts of hair and bone fragments from a man who lived in Greenland some 4,000 years ago. Besides the four small pieces of bone and hair, no human remains of the first people to settle the Arctic in North America have been found, making this a particularly important find.
Using the genomic sequences, the team was able to reconstruct the man’s appearance and determine that he belonged to the first culture to settle in the New World Arctic. The team behind the study was also able to figure out that he was unrelated to modern Greenlanders and that his closest modern relatives are the Chukchi in northeastern Siberia. The man’s ancestors are believed to have crossed into North America from Siberia between 4,400 and 6,400 years ago during a migration wave independent from the crossings the ancestors of Native Americans and Inuit made.
The researchers believe that the innovative new techniques they developed could be of significant use to disciplines such as archaeology. While older techniques required that DNA be either frozen or stored in permafrost, the new technique developed at the University of Copenhagen allows researchers to use organic material such as bones or hair - something one can find in archeological digs and museums. It makes it possible to determine what contemporary populations are most closely related to extinct cultures, revealing how ancient human populations expanded and migrated. The discovery also improves our understanding of heredity and the disease risk passed down from our ancestors. The new technique takes only a few months to reconstruct and entire genome, not several years as with previous techniques.
Findings will be published in the journal Nature.
