Slashdot Mirror
Greenlander's DNA Sequenced, After 5,000 Years
TinFinger writes "The genome of a 5,000-year-old man from Greenland has been sequenced from scalp hair remains. He belonged to the now-extinct Saqqaq, who are genetically more closely related to east Asians than to contemporary Native North Americans. Although both contemporary Inuit and the extinct Saqqaq migrated from Siberia across the Bering Straits, the Saqqaq migration was a much later one (5,000-10,000 years ago, compared with 20,000 for the Inuit). All that is left of the Saqqaq today are a few archaeological sites in Greenland. Genetic analysis revealed that 'Inuk' was stocky, possibly with a receding hairline, had a cold-adapted metabolism, A+ blood type, and possibly a rather bad haircut. The hair sample from which the DNA was sequenced was excavated in 1986 and was archived at the National Museum of Denmark. It was only recently rediscovered by a research team who spent a fruitless three months at Saqqaq sites looking for hair samples for genome analysis."
Clone the guy and see if he is capable of learning and living in this more advanced human environment.
5,000 years are not much of a difference. As it says in the article, the Innuit diverge from the "Eurasia" Genepool by more than 10,000 years, and the entire population of the Americas does as well. Though it would still be interesting if both populations had homologous adaptations to cold weather or already had them in Siberia.
if he can then there will be a lot to say about god and darwin.
No. Again, it is survival of the fittest, for whatever fitness function the environment, inter and intraspecies competition sets up for you.
What is being worked on is cloning a Neanderthal human, which went extinct about 50,000 years ago - some think we were the cause (well, "we" being what later became part of the European population). And some think homo neanderthalensis might have been smarter than homo sapiens, but again, fitness doesn't necessarily take that into account.
Really quite impressive how far reading the the mutations have come along in the DNA world. National Geographic has a really awesome ancestor research project that will trace your own gene mutations back- in some cases to when we all came out of Africa. While it's not much good for the more recent history (last 1000 years) it's fascinating to think back to 5 or 10k. I hear they are going to work on samples from some mummies they found in South America and hopefully shed light on the puzzle of where they originated.