Greenlander's DNA Sequenced, After 5,000 Years

TinFinger writes "The genome of a 5,000-year-old man from Greenland has been sequenced from scalp hair remains. He belonged to the now-extinct Saqqaq, who are genetically more closely related to east Asians than to contemporary Native North Americans. Although both contemporary Inuit and the extinct Saqqaq migrated from Siberia across the Bering Straits, the Saqqaq migration was a much later one (5,000-10,000 years ago, compared with 20,000 for the Inuit). All that is left of the Saqqaq today are a few archaeological sites in Greenland. Genetic analysis revealed that 'Inuk' was stocky, possibly with a receding hairline, had a cold-adapted metabolism, A+ blood type, and possibly a rather bad haircut. The hair sample from which the DNA was sequenced was excavated in 1986 and was archived at the National Museum of Denmark. It was only recently rediscovered by a research team who spent a fruitless three months at Saqqaq sites looking for hair samples for genome analysis."

Re:and now for a god test

[Kartoffel]

A genetic bottleneck is one way to look at it, but diseases that developed in one isolated population can wreak havoc in a different isolated population regardless of the 2nd groups genetic diversity. Look at what happened when Central Asian plague reached Europe in the middle ages... a huge portion of the European population had no resistance and got wiped out. So: bottlenecked low-diversity population, or isolated population with no exposure to the pathogen?

He was 4,000 years old.

[dsanfte]

Not to nitpick, but come on. It's the first line of the article, guys.