An artist's impression shows how Inuk might have looked in life 4,000 years ago. (Nuka Godfredsen)
Here’s a very interesting article by Alan Boyle about research of the DNA from hair found in Greenland:
Some excerpts:
Thanks to the rapid advance of gene-sequencing technology, researchers could tell the hair belonged to a brown-skinned man whose ancestors came to the New World from Siberia around 5,500 years ago, during a previously unknown migration.
The four hair samples were retrieved from Greenland’s permafrost, along with four bits of bone, during a Danish-led excavation in 1986. They were placed in a plastic bag, filed away in Denmark’s National Museum, and largely forgotten about.
“The closest contemporary population he is associated with is in fact not Inuits or Greenlanders or Native Americans in the New World, but three Siberian populations,” Willerslev said.
Very interesting research, that raises a few questions:
- How did he get to Greenland from Siberia?
- What was the climate like then?
- What does this imply about early settlement of North America?
This is the kind of science I enjoy. It also doesn’t appear to involve politics.
