Ten years of ancient genome analysis has taught scientists 'what it
means to be human'

Date:
June 16, 2021
Source:
St John's College, University of Cambridge
Summary:
A ball of 4,000-year-old hair frozen in time tangled around a
whalebone comb led to the first ever reconstruction of an ancient
human genome a decade ago. The hair, which was preserved in arctic
permafrost in Greenland, was collected in the 1980s. It wasn't
until 2010 that evolutionary biologists were able to use pioneering
shotgun DNA sequencing to reconstruct the genetic history of the
hair. It sparked a 'decade of discovery.'


FULL STORY ==========================================================================
A ball of 4,000-year-old hair frozen in time tangled around a whalebone
comb led to the first ever reconstruction of an ancient human genome
just over a decade ago.


==========================================================================
The hair, which was preserved in arctic permafrost in Greenland, was
collected in the 1980s and stored at a museum in Denmark. It wasn't until
2010 that evolutionary biologist Professor Eske Willerslev was able to
use pioneering shotgun DNA sequencing to reconstruct the genetic history
of the hair.

He found it came from a man from the earliest known people to settle in Greenland known as the Saqqaq culture. It was the first time scientists
had recovered an entire ancient human genome.

Now a review of the first decade of ancient genomics of the Americas
published in Nature today (June 16 2021) written by Professor Willerslev
a Fellow of St John's College, University of Cambridge, and director of
The Lundbeck Foundation GeoGenetics Centre, University of Copenhagen,
with one of his longstanding collaborators Professor David Meltzer, an archaeologist based at Southern Methodist University, Texas, shows how
the world's first analysis of an ancient genome sparked an incredible
'decade of discovery'.

Professor Willerslev said: "The last ten years has been full of surprises
in the understanding of the peopling of the Americas -- I often feel like
a child at Christmas waiting to see what exciting DNA present I am about
to unwrap! What has really blown my mind is how resilient and capable the early humans we have sequenced DNA from were -- they occupied extremely different environments and often populated them in a short space of time.

"We were taught in school that people would stay put until the population
grew to a level where the resources were exhausted. But we found people
were spreading around the world just to explore, to discover, to have adventures.



==========================================================================
"The last 10 years have shown us a lot about our history and what it
means to be human. We won't ever see that depth of human experience on
this planet again -- people entered new areas with absolutely no idea
of what was in front of them. It tells us a lot about human adaptability
and how humans behave." For decades, scientists relied on archaeological findings to reconstruct the past and theories weren't always accurate. It
was previously thought, that there were early non-Native American people
in the Americas but the ancient DNA analysis so far has shown that all
of the ancient remains found are more closely related to contemporary
Native Americans than to any other population anywhere else in the world.

Professor Meltzer, who worked on the review with Professor Willerslev
while the former was at St John's College as a Beaufort Visiting Scholar
added: "Genomic evidence has shown connections that we didn't know
existed between different cultures and populations and the absence of connections that we thought did exist. Human population history been
far more complex than previously thought.

"A lot of what has been discovered about the peopling of the Americas
could not have been predicted. We have seen how rapidly people were
moving around the world when they have a continent to themselves, there
was nothing to hold them back. There was a selective advantage to seeing
what was over the next hill." In 2013, scientists mapped the genome
of a four-year-old boy who died in south- central Siberia 24,000 years
ago. The burial of an Upper Palaeolithic Siberian child was discovered
in the 1920s by Russian archaeologists near the village of Mal'ta, along
the Belaya river. Sequencing of the Mal'ta genome was key as it showed
the existence of a previously unsampled population that contributed to
the ancestry of Siberian and Native American populations.



==========================================================================
Two years later, Professor Willerslev and his team published the first
ancient Native American genome, sequenced from the remains of a baby
boy ceremonially buried more than 12,000 years ago in Anzick, Montana.

In 2015, their ancient genomic analysis was able to solve the mystery
of Kennewick Man, one of the oldest and most complete skeletons ever
found in the Americas, and one of the most controversial.

The 9,000-year-old remains had been surrounded by a storm of controversy
when legal jurisdiction over the skeleton became the focus of a decade
of lawsuits between five Native American tribes, who claimed ownership
of the man they called Ancient One, and the United States Army Corps
of Engineers.

Professor Willerslev, who has rightly learnt to be mindful of cultural sensitivities when searching for ancient DNA, has spent much of the past
decade talking to tribal community members to explain his work in detail
and seek their support.

This meant he was able to agree with members of the Colville Tribe,
based in Washington State where the remains were found, that they would
donate some of their DNA to allow Professor Willerslev and his team to establish if there was a genetic link between them and Kennewick Man.

Jackie Cook, a descendant of the Colville Tribe and the repatriation
specialist for the Confederated Tribes of the Colville Reservation, said:
"We had spent nearly 20 years trying to have the Ancient One repatriated
to us. There has been a long history of distrust between scientists and
our Native American tribes but when Eske presented to us about his DNA
work on the Anzick child, the hair on my arms stood up.

"We knew we shouldn't have to agree to DNA testing, and there were
concerns that we would have to do it every time to prove cultural
affiliation, but our Council members discussed it with the elders and
it was agreed that any tribal member who wanted to provide DNA for the
study could." The Kennewick Man genome, like the Anzick baby, revealed
the man was a direct ancestor of living Native Americans. The Ancient
One was duly returned to the tribes and reburied.

Cook added: "We took a risk but it worked out. It was remarkable to
work with Eske and we felt honoured, relieved and humbled to be able
to resolve such an important case. We had oral stories that have passed
down through the generations for thousands of years that we call coyote
stories -- teaching stories. These stories were from our ancestors about
living alongside woolly mammoths and witnessing a series of floods and volcanoes erupting. As a tribe, we have always embraced science but
not all history is discovered through science." Work led by Professor Willerslev was also able to identify the origins of the world's oldest
natural mummy called Spirit Cave. Scientists discovered the ancient human skeleton back in 1940 but it wasn't until 2018 that a striking discovery
was made that unlocked the secrets of the Ice Age tribe in the Americas.

The revelation came as part of a study that genetically analysed the DNA
of a series of famous and controversial ancient remains across North and
South America including Spirit Cave, the Lovelock skeletons, the Lagoa
Santa remains, an Inca mummy, and the oldest remains in Chilean Patagonia.

Scientists sequenced 15 ancient genomes spanning from Alaska to Patagonia
and were able to track the movements of the first humans as they spread
across the Americas at 'astonishing' speed during the Ice Age and also
how they interacted with each other in the following millennia.

The team of academics not only discovered that the Spirit Cave remains was
a Native American but they were able to dismiss a longstanding theory
that a group called Paleoamericans existed in North America before
Native Americans.

Spirit Cave was returned to The Fallon Paiute-Shoshone Tribe, a group
of Native Americans based in Nevada, for burial.

Professor Willerslev added: "Over the past decade human
history has been fundamentally changed thanks to ancient
genomic analysis -- and the incredible findings have only just
begun." Video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_OZT75jJ6FI&t=10s ========================================================================== Story Source: Materials provided by
St_John's_College,_University_of_Cambridge. Note: Content may be edited
for style and length.


========================================================================== Journal Reference:
1. Eske Willerslev & David J. Meltzer. Peopling of the Americas
as inferred
from ancient genomics. Nature, 2021 DOI: 10.1038/s41586-021-03499-y ==========================================================================

Link to news story: https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2021/06/210616113824.htm

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