DNA reignites Kennewick Man debate

[ornotna]

They found Captain Picard or maybe Shinzon got blasted back in time.



http://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-33170655

The 9,000-year-old was claimed as an ancestor by Native Americans, who called for his remains to be reburied.

However, a group of anthropologists said the specimen's features were not similar to people from local tribes and won a legal bid to study the bones.

Now a genetic analysis has revealed his DNA is more closely related to modern Native Americans than to anyone else.

[6chars]

1. Kennebunk man?

[Warpy]

2. Jeez, it does look like Picard

It's great that the whole thing is settled, but a little ironic that it took science to prove what the tribes were saying all along.

Time to return the bones to them, I guess.

[Igel]

3. "Closer to them than anybody else" is the problem.

One report said that the law needs to have the tribe the remains belong to take receipt.

But (a) not all tribes have had their DNA sequenced, (b) there's a really good chance that at 9k BCE his genetic make-up won't match any tribes closely enough. Lot of time for founder effects and genetic drift, even natural selection, to work their magic.

At the same time, it really looks like he's a bit of an outlier, perhaps from a group that was genocided along the way.

[MisterP]

4. Y-haplogroups Q and R are so close anyway ...