One day in 1996, on the banks of the Columbia River near Kennewick, Washington, two men found a human skull about ten feet from shore. Eventually, the nearly complete skeleton of an adult man was unearthed and found to be nearly 9,000 years old.
Since that find, controversy has swirled as to whether the man was an ancestor of Native American tribes living in the area, or was more closely related to other population groups around the Pacific Rim. A study published in 2014, based in part on anatomical measurements, concluded that the skeleton, known as the Kennewick Man, was more likely related to indigenous Japanese or Polynesian peoples.
Now Stanford geneticists Morten Rasmussen, PhD, and Carlos Bustamante, PhD, working with Eske Willerslev, PhD, and others at the University of Copenhagen's Centre for GeoGenetics have studied tiny snippets of ancient DNA isolated from a hand bone. They've compared these DNA sequences with those of modern humans and concluded that the Kennewick Man (known to many Native Americans as the Ancient One) is more closely related to Native American groups than to any other population in the world.
The findings are published today online in Nature, and they're likely to reignite an ongoing controversy as to the skeleton's origins and to whom the remains belong.
As Rasmussen said in our press release:
Due to the massive controversy surrounding the origins of this sample, the ability to address this will be of interest to both scientists and tribal members. [...]
Although the exterior preservation of the skeleton was pristine, the DNA in the sample was highly degraded and dominated by DNA from soil bacteria and other environmental sources. With the little material we had available, we applied the newest methods to squeeze every piece of information out of the bone.
Increasingly, such methods of isolating and sequencing ancient DNA are being used to solve millennia-old mysteries, including those surrounding Otzi the Iceman and a young child known as the Anzick boy buried more than 12,000 years ago in Montana.
Bustamante explained in the release:
Advances in DNA sequencing technology have given us important new tools for studying the great human diasporas and the history of indigenous populations. Now we are seeing its adoption in new areas, including forensics and archeology. The case of Kennewick Man is particularly interesting given the debates surrounding the origins of Native American populations. Morten's work aligns beautifully with the oral history of native peoples and lends strong support for their claims. I believe that ancient DNA analysis could become standard practice in these types of cases since it can provide objective means of assessing both genetic ancestry and relatedness to living individuals and present-day populations.
Previously: Caribbean skeletons hold slave trade secrets, Melting pot or mosaic? International collaboration studies genomic diversity in Mexico and On the hunt for ancient DNA, Stanford researchers improve the odds
Photo, of bust showing how Kennewick Man may have looked, by Brittany Tatchell/Smithsonian (bust by StudioEIS; forensic facial reconstruction by sculptor Amanda Danning)
