DNA Link Found Between Frozen Aboriginal Man and 17 Living People 128
The Globe and Mail is reporting that scientists claim to have found a DNA link between the frozen remains of an aboriginal man and 17 living people. "While the work on the human DNA project has opened new doors and work will continue on establishing a fuller family tree, Long Ago Person Found's descendants said they finally have the opportunity to give their ancestor a proper burial. Because his lineage had never been established, no memorial potlatch could be held. Of the 17 people linked through DNA, 15 self-identify with the Wolf Clan, meaning the young man was most likely Wolf as well."
Re:He's my great^^27 grandpa! (Score:5, Informative)
Here's an article abstract. [mrc.ac.uk]
For the lazy, they tested his mitochondrial DNA (he turned out to be a member of mtDNA haplogroup A [wikipedia.org]), and compared that to a number of living people. None of the 17 matches are his direct descendants, but have a common matrilineal ancestry.
Re:He's my great^^27 grandpa! (Score:4, Informative)
A second, and probably more typical approach for archaeological DNA work, is to not bother with such details and just go for a handful of markers, just sufficient to identify the basic group of individuals the person belonged to. Ken Nordvedt has produced a nice set of diagrams [bresnan.net] showing [bresnan.net] how different branches of the I haplogroup are related, with emphasis on the so-called "ultraNorse" group, which appear to have had two founding families.
If you can identify a specific set of genetic markers that is common to a set of verifiably related individuals that do not occur in verifiably unrelated individuals, then those markers can be used to identify a loosely-defined group. Loosely, because you're only using a few markers and therefore know only limited information about the general deep ancestory, you know very little about the specifics and certainly don't have enough information to get a timeframe. But it's enough to establish a relationship of sorts.
(A great many English people belong to genetic groups associated with the Anglo-Saxons, for example, but would not necessarily regard themselves as meaningfully related, even though if you go far enough back, they probably are.)
The Genography project uses 12 Y-DNA markers and Hyper Variable Region 1 from the Mitochondrial DNA. This will tell you something about relationships in the order of a thousand to ten thousand years past. I would not regard this as a good test for this aboriginal man who was only a few hundred years old. 67 markers would be considered adequate for genealogy on the same timeframe because almost all will be exactly the same. The differences over such small timeframes will be only just measurable on a 67-marker comparison.
The Famous DNA [isogg.org] listings are probably not much better, mostly because they're often reconstructions. Pick N people believed to be descended from X, then find the markers all have in common. Those markers are then assumed to have also been present in X and so if you are a descendent of X. Well, all it actually tells you is if you belong to the same genetic grouping, but that group may be a thousand years prior to X, the common ancestor may have been X's brother/sister (depending on the DNA tested), etc. It can tell you if there's a rough match, but that's it.
Yukon (Score:4, Informative)
This would be the Wolf Clan of the Champagne and Aishihik First Nations in Yukon, Canada. Their traditional territory is about an hour and a half from Whitehorse, around Haines Junction. I live in Whitehorse but I'm not of this first nation. I believe they had strong trade ties with coastal first nations, I want to say Tlingit but I'm probably wrong.
It's an interesting discovery and an interesting moment for that first nation.
Re:wolf clan ? (Score:5, Informative)
Re:well, we tried damn hard... (Score:4, Informative)
I am a specialist in North American indigenous languages. I work with multiple reservations on language and cultural revitalization, and while I do not work with any of the Alaskan communities, we attend the same symposiums, training sessions, conferences, etc.
You say the natives of Alaska have never been beaten or suppressed? Then why don't they have local sovereignty? They used to. Why are the lands of culturally distinct bands like the Tlingit and Haida controlled by Corporations (albeit natively owned), like Sealaska Inc.? Are you suggesting they asked for that socio-political structure? Just because we didn't just flat-out kill 95% of them (like in California), we didn't beat or suppress them? If there was no issue, why have there been two major acts of Congress designed to fix the situation?
Russia, Canada, and the United States took their lands, and changed their entire system of social organization, politics, and economics. (Only the last was inevitable.) They didn't get the same level of warfare, forced boarding schools, and outlawed religions as other groups further east and south, but to say that equals "not suppressed" doesn't follow. We forced upon them a socio-economic system that discourages the continuation of their ways and language. That's suppression, even if it is a "nicer" form of it than often otherwise practiced.
Re:wolf clan ? (Score:2, Informative)