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."
wolf clan ? (Score:3, Funny)
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"...meaning the young man was most likely Wolf as well."
Geezus... and they are hyping up the DNA as the amazing thing here? come on!...
Re:wolf clan ? (Score:5, Funny)
"There castle" --->
(roll, roll, roll in ze hay)
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Regards,
Anthony Bernard Normal
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Took me a bit to get that...
Very clever
PS. PUT THE CANDLE BACK
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Oblig: (Score:3, Funny)
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Re:wolf clan ? (Score:5, Informative)
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For a great many Aboriginal peoples, Clans or, in my language, Dodems [the source of the English word "Totemic"], are a very important part of family relationships and identity.
I am Bear Dodem - that's what my screen name here at SlashDot means, "Bear."
I can understand how people who don't know very much about Indigenous traditions - and the beauty which we have with the enduring wisdom of our ancient legacy - might think that our sacred relationships with wolves and bears and eagles... and lots of other animals... are HaHaHa funny.
To us, they are sacred. If you'd like to read more, several years ago my (now-deceased) husband, Wub-e-ke-niew, wrote an article explaining some of our culture and its value for us. It's online at http://www.maquah.net/AhnishinahbaeotjibwayReflections/1996/1996-02-11_Ahnishinahaeotjibway_Dodems.html [maquah.net]
I followed the link, and more, spent an hour or so and have ordered at least one book. Obviously this has touched a chord for me although I certainly belong to the Anglo-European "invader" group.
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Are you aware of the joke that I am referring to? If you're not, you could be confused. If you are indeed aware of the joke, then that reveals something about you which is also interesting to me: you take
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http://message.snopes.com/showthread.php?t=2834 [snopes.com]
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He's my great^^27 grandpa! (Score:3)
There is no mention of the methodology of the study, particularly on how the samples were chosen, or if there was a control group.
Did they decide how close was close enough and then go looking for DNA? Or did they look first and then say "That seems close enough."? To me, the only intellectually honest way to do it would be the former. There has to be a possibility of the answer being "Nobody that we found was close enough".
I don't wish to criticize these researchers based on the absence of information, but it is remarkably convenient for them that they came up with the politically correct and properly ethnically sensitive result. It makes a cynic like me suspicious.
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The article focus almost exclusively on the reactions of people to the news. It mentions a "symposium" but not the name of it or who was holding it.
Presumably, there will be a journal article out of it, and if that article passes peer review, you'll hear from it again. Meantime, dismiss anything scientific you read in the daily papers. They're just astonishingly bad at reporting science.
A bit of googling on the name of the one s
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.
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> study, particularly on how the samples were
> chosen, or if there was a control group.
Control group for DNA analysis?
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This can be used to establish what 'close enough' means.
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For this you don't need control groups. In fact in DNA analysis control groups are rarely used at all any more. It is not necessary. You can read up on DNA analysis here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DNA_analysis [wikipedia.org]
Further, there is no indication that any of the 17 distant relatives "Wanted" anything, or even knew what there DNA sample was used for.
Re:He's my great^^27 grandpa! (Score:5, Insightful)
In fact, I'd be more surprised if a link wasn't found.
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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.
Re:He's my great^^27 grandpa!... (Score:2)
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> more impressed if he'd been dead for thousands of
> years.
Exactly so.
This hardly qualifies as Archeology at all.
Further, in spite of the hand wringing in TFA, is does nothing but discredit native verbal traditions as a source of scientific information.
First, no verbal traditions provided the slightest clue as to his id or even his clan/tribe. The fact that he was extracted from a glacier, reasonably intact, and NOBODY could pin down his tribe/clan fr
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> more impressed if he'd been dead for thousands of
> years.
Exactly so.
This hardly qualifies as Archeology at all.
Not long ago at all, probably had a milk carton with his picture on it printed somewhere.
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Inuit/Inupiat and Eskimo people have never had their culture attacked, discredited or suppressed. They have never been defeated in battle, and never have been made war upon.
Not in Alaska and not in Canada. If anything, native cultures of the far north are celebrated far in excess of their actual accomplishments.
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The language is dyeing because it is largely useless to them, preserved mostly for historical purposes.
It is still taught, both at home, and in schools. You can even enroll in college courses teaching these languages.
Just as Norwegian is lost to by the second generation after immigration from Norway, so too is Inuit. Not by suppression. Simply thru disuse. A choice made by the peoples themselves.
These people have never bee
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.
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Where there's a will there's a way. No need to give up one's language just because English or some other majority language is useful or indeed necessary.
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Additionally, your use of the phrase "These people" leads me to believe that you aren't "one of them" so then the other question I have is: How can you be so familiar with another person's culture that you feel it's acceptable to speak on their behalf?
Assuming that you're a "white guy" (I know I could be wrong...), I'd say that many of "us black folks" speak of and about "white people" in ways that y
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When someone asks me that question I respond with, "The Allies - Great Britain, the US, the Soviet Union, Canada, China, Australia, New Zealand, France, and Poland."
I don't take credit for accomplishments that I didn't make, and I don't t
Was his name... (Score:1)
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I will say though that I do have respect for Genome Alberta, though none whatsoever for facebook.
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Great summary (Score:2, Interesting)
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Yes I read the article, about 4 hours after my first post on it, all I want is that a summery contain, you know, a condensed set of facts?
Anywho, burning karma for knowledge
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These people did not have horses, and walked most places except along rivers and coasts. They did not go far to find a wife, and individual villages were often deeply inbred. Everybody within 100 miles was kin in one way or another, and usually closer kin than would be accepted in anywhere in the rest of North America.
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Also according to the article I read about half of these relatives were in BC and half in the Yukon. The paper left you with the impression that he had a wife in each locality.
Of course this is a tabloid type paper so I wouldn't trust the science reporting to far.
Kwaday Dan Ts'inchi....Get some, Dude!x17!! w00t!! (Score:1)
He HAD to have crawled out of his Mom's basement to get this lucky!
Who on
Damn, you Canucks are a lusty lot! If your winters weren't so cold, I'd move up there!
P.S. Can you all tell I've been drinking and posting tonight?!?!?
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Of course I've pulled those numbers out of thin air and they could b
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Go back and re-read TFA. There have been no descendants identified.
He shares ancestors with 17 people, through his mother's side.
Re-read tfa!!! (Score:2)
Bad joke on my part...sorry to disturb you.
See here:http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=537124&cid=23232364 [slashdot.org]
*voice over: Foghorn Leghorn: I made a funny son, now that 4-legged dog-looking critter over there is a CHICKEN and you are a Chicken Hawk-get it?*
Has everyone here lost their sense of humour but me, or am I just not PC?
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I know who they are (Score:1)
Of course he would have relatives living today. They all work in advertising at Geico. =)
Sorry. No Refunds.
just curious.... (Score:1)
Here's the complete fossil relatives list: (Score:1)
16. Donald Trump
15. Susan Powter
14. Dennis Kucinich
13. Ron Popeil
12. Helen Thomas
11. Steven Segal
10. Courtney Love
9. Rob Schneider
8. Neil Bush
7. John Ashcroft
6. Dan Quayle
5. Gene Simmons
4. Kevin Federline
3. Crispin Glover
2. Ann Coulter
1. Cowboy Neal
DNA... which database...? (Score:1, Interesting)
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Somewhat scientifically interesting (Score:2)
The bigger part of the article is
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Unfortunately... (Score:3, Funny)
Perhaps a win for genetics (Score:2)
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Suppose each generation has two children who live to reproduction. That's 4096 descendants alive today. Considering the world's population is now over 6 gigapersons, that's pretty remarkable that 17 of those 4096 descendants (I know they're only matrilineally related and not true descendants, but I'm fudging for the sake of simple math) ha
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No trolling of databases involved
Nice use of Scientist's time (Score:2)
Like seriously... we could spend time either using DNA sequencing to help solve cold-case murders, or we could sequence this ancient dead guy and a whole pile of people, and see if any of '
Two words, repeated three times: (Score:2)
Actually, this could be very useful (Score:2)
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.
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I think its a fascinating development. Anytime we can fit things together like that, there must be more interesting science just around the corner.
...laura whose ancestors came to Canada relatively recently (Loyalists on one side, circa 1900 on the other)
ATA Gene (Score:1)
Now on Google (Score:1)
Kevin Bacon? (Score:5, Funny)
In related news... (Score:2)
Ironically, all 17 people have GEICO for their auto insurance.
Chief Strand and LaTeX (Score:2)
What?! Most other "oral histories" have been written down by now. Hey, you! Chief Strand! Get yourself a laptop and start write! If you also install LaTeX you won't have to worry about not being scientific, as "LaTeX is the de facto standard for the communication and publication of scientific documents." as read on http://www.latex-project.org/ [latex-project.org].
It's time for a change (Score:1)
Can't we come up with a better phrase to describe them. Why do we need to describe them at all, anyway. Isn't the label part of what makes segregation and discrimination work.
What happens when their ('First Person' tribes) claim as the first settlers is found to be incorrect; and evidence is uncovered showing that - actually - a Previous People (let's call them that already) were established in central and south Americ
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Can't we come up with a better phrase to describe them. Why do we need to describe them at all, anyway. Isn't the label part of what makes segregation and discrimination work.
I don't think WE need to describe them at all or give them a name, THEY are perfectly within their rights to name themselves however they want to. I agree that labeling people could help discrimination, but at the same time it is a way of preserving culture. We don't all have the same cultural backgrounds and I for one celebrate diversity and learn from it.
Wolf Clan (Score:1)