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DNA Link Found Between Frozen Aboriginal Man and 17 Living People
The Globe and Mail is reporting that scientists claim to have found a DNA link between the frozen remains of an aboriginal man and 17 living people. "While the work on the human DNA project has opened new doors and work will continue on establishing a fuller family tree, Long Ago Person Found's descendants said they finally have the opportunity to give their ancestor a proper burial. Because his lineage had never been established, no memorial potlatch could be held. Of the 17 people linked through DNA, 15 self-identify with the Wolf Clan, meaning the young man was most likely Wolf as well."
The Globe and Mail isn't exactly Science. It's not even Scientific American.
The article focus almost exclusively on the reactions of people to the news. It mentions a "symposium" but not the name of it or who was holding it.
Presumably, there will be a journal article out of it, and if that article passes peer review, you'll hear from it again. Meantime, dismiss anything scientific you read in the daily papers. They're just astonishingly bad at reporting science.
A bit of googling on the name of the one scientist mentioned in the article suggests that this is the lecture they're talking about.
Well, given that the body's only 150-300 years old, and was found in a remote, sparsely-populated, and geographically isolated area, it's not really all that surprising that some sort of chain of ancestry was able to be established linking him to the present-day natives of that area.
In fact, I'd be more surprised if a link wasn't found.
-- If you try to fail and succeed, which have you done? - Uli's moose