[ad_1]
Researchers recently concluded that a 10,000-year-old Nevada skeleton, believed to belong to the world's oldest naturally preserved mummy, is the ancestor of a modern-day Native American tribe.
according to SlashGear, the so-called "Spirit Cave Mummy" was originally thought to be the skeleton of an individual belonging to the "Paleoamerican" group that preceded Native Americans in North America. However, this theory was refuted by the scientists behind the new research, which extracted DNA from the prehistoric skull and concluded, based on its analysis, that the mummy was actually an ancestor of the tribe Fallon Paiute-Shoshone of Nevada.
A report from the guardian He further noted that the Spirit Cave mummy, which was first discovered in 1940, was the skeleton of an adult man who died around the age of 40. The person, who was wearing moccasins at the time of his burial, was wrapped in reed mats and a rabbit-skin blanket. The mummy research was conducted with the assistance and approval of the Fallon Paiute-Shoshone tribe, who re-buried the skeleton this summer after "a decades-long legal dispute" with scientists on the fact of the keep in a museum or let it enter a museum. reburial.
"[It] confirms what we have always known from our oral tradition and other evidence – that man taken from his last resting place at Spirit Cave is our Native American ancestor, "said Fallon Paiute-Shoshone tribe in a statement.
The DNA of the world's oldest natural mummy has shed new light on the history of Native Americans https://t.co/xrAnO6IvLl pic.twitter.com/K8EeY2JrU3
– Newsweek (@Newsweek) November 9, 2018
The evolutionary geneticist of the University of Cambridge, Eske Willerslev, who was leading the team that performed the DNA sequencing on the Spirit Cave mummy, attended the reburial ceremony earlier this year. year and was reminded at the guardian that there was a lot of "crying, singing and prayers" involved, as well as the placement of farewell gifts. He described the experience as just as moving as burying a close relative, even though the mummy had been buried about 10,000 years ago.
Willerslev also stated that his team's analysis proved that it was too simplistic to base one's ancestors on the shape of the skull, since the aforementioned theory that Spirit Cave's mummy was Paleo-American was based on how its skull was different from that of the Amerindians.
"Looking at the bumps and shapes of a head does not help you understand the true genetic heritage of a population – we have proven that you can have people who have a very different look but who are closely related . "
The above research was part of a larger multinational project on the ancestry of North Americans and South Americans of today, documented in various studies published in journals. Science, Progress of science, and Cell. In addition to determining that the world's oldest natural mummy shares its DNA with an existing Native American tribe, the project also revealed that there were two migrations to South America that were not documented in previous studies.
Similarly, researchers found evidence of Australasian ancestry among Native South Americans, but found no evidence of this type among North American Indians. Both guardian and SlashGear pointed out that this could suggest that modern humans arrived on the American continent about 30,000 years ago, much earlier than expected.
[ad_2]
Source link
