June 18, 2015

Kennewick Man was a Native American

Nature (2015) doi:10.1038/nature14625

The ancestry and affiliations of Kennewick Man

Morten Rasmussen, Martin Sikora, Anders Albrechtsen, Thorfinn Sand Korneliussen, J. Víctor Moreno-Mayar, G. David Poznik, Christoph P. E. Zollikofer, Marcia S. Ponce de León, Morten E. Allentoft, Ida Moltke, Hákon Jónsson, Cristina Valdiosera, Ripan S. Malhi, Ludovic Orlando, Carlos D. Bustamante, Thomas W. Stafford Jr, David J. Meltzer, Rasmus Nielsen & Eske Willerslev

Kennewick Man, referred to as the Ancient One by Native Americans, is a male human skeleton discovered in Washington state (USA) in 1996 and initially radiocarbon-dated to 8,340–9,200 calibrated years before present (BP)1. His population affinities have been the subject of scientific debate and legal controversy. Based on an initial study of cranial morphology it was asserted that Kennewick Man was neither Native American nor closely related to the claimant Plateau tribes of the Pacific Northwest, who claimed ancestral relationship and requested repatriation under the Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act (NAGPRA). The morphological analysis was important to judicial decisions that Kennewick Man was not Native American and that therefore NAGPRA did not apply. Instead of repatriation, additional studies of the remains were permitted2. Subsequent craniometric analysis affirmed Kennewick Man to be more closely related to circumpacific groups such as the Ainu and Polynesians than he is to modern Native Americans2. In order to resolve Kennewick Man’s ancestry and affiliations, we have sequenced his genome to ~1× coverage and compared it to worldwide genomic data including the Ainu and Polynesians. We find that Kennewick Man is closer to modern Native Americans than to any other population worldwide. Among the Native American groups for whom genome-wide data are available for comparison, several seem to be descended from a population closely related to that of Kennewick Man, including the Confederated Tribes of the Colville Reservation (Colville), one of the five tribes claiming Kennewick Man. We revisit the cranial analyses and find that, as opposed to genomic-wide comparisons, it is not possible on that basis to affiliate Kennewick Man to specific contemporary groups. We therefore conclude based on genetic comparisons that Kennewick Man shows continuity with Native North Americans over at least the last eight millennia.

Link

55 comments:

ron quiroriano said...

Well then, isn't that interesting Hg X2a.
But he was not born nor raised in Columbia drainage, but from much further north, as he drank glacial melt water most of his life.
And this paper says something a couple of people have been saying lately, namely that the thick bodied points of mesa/sluiceway/hasket and agate basin represent a population moving north from south America into clovis territory.

The last sentence of paper pretty much says that"

Finally, it is clear that Kennewick Man differs significantly from the Anzick-1 child who is more closely related to the modern tribes of Mesoamerica and South America12, possibly suggesting an early population structure within the Americas."

I'm glad this has finally been put to rest, as the whole episode was a shamefull drama among the professionals.

Being part Native American,(mono or miwok, maybe yokut) I, myself, want my ancestors storys to be told and not lost to past like the people and languages have.

I know ill get flamed but people have been in central cal for at least 60 k years, shell midden on west shore of ancient Tulare lake, SE fresno county, with clovis in the very top layer a 15k year old human femur and 60 k year old mammoth teeth at the bottom.


laudyms said...

After 400 to 450 generations it would probably also be correct to say he is quite unlike any current human group...at least more unlike than like. And with people moving around so much and trading gene pools, that difference is only going to increase.

Why can't we all just claim him as an interesting forebear even if there is no direct descent? 75,000 years ago the world's population was down to @ 10,000 due to a super volcano in SE Asia. We all certainly come from survivors of that event.

Unknown said...

i hope these results will finally put to rest the myth of racial head-shape. it's embarrassing to read it being taken seriously in the 21st century. it was debunked more than half a century ago.

all humans are born premature vis a vis othe mammals. all humans are born premature so that their skulls are small enough and maleable enough to slide through the birth canal without killing the mother. this results in a brain case with a a high degree of
lasticity that does not fuse completely until the 20s-30s.

the plasticity of the human skull is sometimes shaped to extremes by practices such as head binding, but it is more typically shaped by both intentional (ex rounding the newborns head as soon as it pops out) and unintentional cultural practices (ex currently a whole generation of american parents who left their kids on their backs all night while they were sleeping have flat-back-headed kids walking around 24 hours a day in rounding helmets to get the head back to a sort of normal shape). even the grittiness of your food can shape you head shape. gritty food thats takes a lot of chewing results in broad faces with perfectly occlused teeth. the length and roundness of those broad faces are the result of other shaping influences.

the only skull shapes that are meaningful genetically are those caused by malformations, such as dwarfism.

on another note, over on john hawks, he has a post discussing the msa excavations at lake victoria--key take away: the tool kit and cultural assemblage had migrated south to the dig site from some location above the equator between 45k -90k yrs ago. at some point some one is going to have to nut-up like stephen j gould did, and seriously denounce ooa.

he was taking on darwin. here, you'd only be taking on a discreted nobody whose own co-authors admitted a few years after she published that the study was a sham. and that was in the early 1990s! but the meme had already taken hold...ooa is unasailable dogma, even though the real study of and use of snps- the only foot ooa has to stand on (otherwise it's just covert racism based on the notion that africa is primitive, bootstrapped by chimps and gorillas and and millions of yr old hominids being found there)--is on the predictive and explanatory role snps play in untangling population susceptibilities to disease (just like every other non-human study and use of them).

if msa people were crossing and periodically being cut off by jungles, their disease load was substantial, as is ghat of most modern day africans. for being our homeland and all, africa isnt very nice to us....

andrew said...

The results confirm a pre-publication release of the news in January 2015.
http://dispatchesfromturtleisland.blogspot.com/2015/01/kennewick-man-has-native-american-dna.html

AKAgron said...

I humbly submit the hypotheses that genetic material of Ainu-type people from Japan from 8.000 YBP should be compared with the current Kennewick Man's DNA to rule out the close relationship many believe can be seen in skull shapes. If the Ancient One and his people were circum-Pacific nomads who contributed their genes to current USA Pacific Northwest peoples, his distant cousins back on the western side of the Pacific (like Hokkaido) would have continued to diverge genetically to the present. Hence, ancient Ainu DNA, not modern, is needed to make a comparison. Meantime, the DNA of peoples such as the Ancient One's group became part of the local gene pool over some 300 generations. This makes it difficult to separate the genetic input of any minority circum-Pacific nomads from the majority of the ancestors of the current local peoples, whose ancestors are commonly thought to have walked from Beringia.

eurologist said...

I guess the early European fringe hypothesis has gotten another blow.

German Dziebel said...

So, tribes, with their folk traditions, mythological beliefs and food stamps, were right and science, with all its data, methods and funds, was wrong. It takes more data, more methods and more money to actually catch up with what the tribes were saying from the beginning. Pretty funny!

Anonymous said...

I'm glad this has finally been put to rest, as the whole episode was a shamefull drama among the professionals.




vimax tangerang

Rokus said...

'It takes more data, more methods and more money to actually catch up with what the tribes were saying from the beginning.'
Since their only purpose remains to undermine science and to destroy evidence in the name of their share of religious fundamentalism, I would say the Native American tribes are as wrong as ever.

Jim Bowery said...

At the link below is a copy of the first legal demand for DNA testing of the Kennewick Man's remains to prevent their reburial under NAGPRA. I was subsequently libeled by The Seattle Times, Tri Cities Herald and others when they put words in my mouth that were clearly irrational: that I had said that I was more closely related to Kennewick Man than "anyone else". My actual words "any other claimant to come forward" are below and are clearly a maneuver to ensure that NAGPRA was not invoked and that DNA testing would be done.

What was shameful about this episode was not the demand for DNA testing, nor the allowance of cranial anatomy data into the investigation, but rather the attempt to rebury the remains without DNA testing, not to mention repeated libelous statements by the press leveled against those attempting to prevent a travesty of law and science from prevailing.

http://unauthorised.org/anthropology/sci.anthropology/november-1996/0520.html

capra internetensis said...

@eurologist

I don't think this affects the Solutrean hypothesis (if that is what you had in mind), because with Anzick-1 the supposed admixture between the Solutrean and Siberian migrants has to go back to the Clovis period anyway.

But if you meant the Viking/St Brendan/Basque fishermen type stuff, yeah, X2a didn't come over from Europe recently, which is expected because it isn't very close to European X.

@AKAgron

There is Jomon aDNA (though not that old). It would be interesting to see a direct comparison between them and Kennewick Man, but I doubt there'd be any connection. The Jomon were modelled as having branched off the East Eurasian lineage after Oceanians but before the divergence of other East Asians and Karitiana (from the Amazon).

Kennewick Man was actually the *least* Ainu-related of any of the ancient or modern Amerindians in the sample (though I doubt any of it was statistically significant). Since this comparison was of the form D(CHB, Ainu; X, Karitiana) it ought to pick up any Paleo-Japanese ancestry very well. He just looks straightforwardly Amerindian.

Both of Kennewick Man's uniparental lineages are West Eurasian (sensu lato) as well. Jomon mtDNA has turned up mostly N9 and M7, the only connection with Amerindians being D4h (but even then a different branch).

Unknown said...

The ancestors of the Native Americans were a mixture of West and East Asian populations so it shouldn't be any surprise that some Native Americans including Kennewick Man would have had a few western features.

pconroy said...

I also wish they had included Jomon and also Lezgin samples.

My mother is Irish from Ireland, yet her DNA shows that she is up to 4% Lezgin (NE Caucasus) and when analysed for Minor Allele Frequencies (MAFs), specific to certain ethnic groups, is positive for ancestry from:

1. Chukchi - Kamchatka Penninsula
2. Salish - Pacific North West

Thus spanning the length of the hypothesised Dene-Caucasian language group!

Jim said...

ron quiroriano,

"Being part Native American,(mono or miwok, maybe yokut) I, myself, want my ancestors storys to be told and not lost to past like the people and languages have."

Then you may be a descendant too. The Penutian languages are thought to have originated in Oregon, or at least that Oregon was a major point of diffusion. these include the Chinookan languages at the mouth of the Columbia and pretty clearly the Tsimshianic languages in coastal Alaska.

There are two main groups of Pentuian languages in Califonia - the Utian languages, which include the Ohlone,Miwokan and Yokutsan groups of languages, and then the Wintuan-Maiduan group. There is evidence that Maidu groups lived in the Greta Basin before various Uto-Aztecan groups moved in.

Of course you probably know all tis already, but I thought it might not hurt to mention it.

"But he was not born nor raised in Columbia drainage, but from much further north, as he drank glacial melt water most of his life."

So that is a piece of evidence supporting the link with coastal Alaska. I had heard that analysis showed he came inland form the coast. that would support the link with Chinookan groups.

The Penutian proposal is still not demonstrated after more than a hundred years, but for reasons that oddly enough fit very neatly with this finding. One reason is that the languages have remained in such proximity that there is no principled way to interpret the striking similarities (supposedly, though they've been in the same proximity with clearly unrelated languages for the same length of time with no similar assimilation). The other is that the common ancestor existed so deep in the past that too much evidence has been lost to language change. The time depth people posit is 9,000 years.

Jim said...

"So, tribes, with their folk traditions, mythological beliefs and food stamps, were right and science, with all its data, methods and funds, was wrong"

As unknown points out, that earlier science was quite shaky.

bill said...

When the Kennewick man was first found, the sheriff was called. The body was so caucasoid that it was thought someone had recently been murdered. Hair, skin, and features were that intact. Then, they tried to sequester the body. And, they dumped thousands of tons of gravel over the area so that no other bodies could be found. Now, it's just another Indian. Something similar happened when soft tissue was found connected to the bones of a 60,000,000 year old dinosaur. Always a relief to have facts that don't fit explained away.

Fiend of 9 worlds said...

All this proves is the bias that anyone but modern europeans, are natives. If he had been found to be 'white' then he would not be a native of course.

If solutreans came across to eastern US/Canada 20k years ago, clearly they are not necessarily going to be remotely like modern europeans, and probably only partially related to them. Since much of europe gets scores for 'native american' something is going on.

On this blog some time ago 'migrationism' was cried out as being correct due to some genetic changes in denmark over the last 1000 years. A time where there were no migrations to denmark! A migration being the displacement of entire groups of peoples of course. Migrationism is mostly a crock, but whatever your views you have to believe there's been big changes over the last 20k years. No one really knows what the genetics of people were like back then in europe, or exactly how and when it got like it is today.

As someone pointed out in the comments here, there is also seldom any distinction between 'asian' and 'native american' even by supposed scientists running these studies. So I don't take any of this too seriously aside from the raw haplotypes.

I also find it funny skull shape is supposed to be meaningless, or racist. Of course it's going to change over many thousands of years, though. You can't look at skulls from 30-100k years ago and tell how much ancestry it shares with a modern population. But you can get some rough ideas.

To really test this you would need to test some 'basal european'/solutrean DNA and compare it directly to the sample, without any preconceived bias about which genes originate where. Looking at ancient samples and trying to put them into components that represent modern populations that probably don't even originate in their current locations or even exist at all yet in their current form, is just completely worthless. Especially when the less ephemeral haplotypes tell another story. And indeed this shows the haplotype that somehow made it to east coast america and europe but completely missed all of asia.

Unknown said...

People hear what they want to hear.

He was almost most likely to be closely related to Native Americans. He was found in pre-Columbian America. His people were most likely part of the American mix whoever he was.

The tribes based their claims on politics and wishful thinking, not any kind of inside knowledge.

The paper states

"These results are interpreted as indicating that Kennewick Man was a descendant of a population that migrated earlier than, and independently of, the population(s) that gave rise to modern Native Americans2."

So not a typical modern Native American after all. Or is he?

The main thing is that because of the scientific analyses we now know a lot more about native Americans than we would have otherwise. Modern Native Americans benefit most IMO.

Clay said...

There needs to be a detente between Native American nations and scientists regarding human remains. If this evidence had been available to the court the Colville people may have won the lawsuit. I am very glad we got to study these remains but now they should be returned to the Colville people. Minimal testing and then return of human remains seems like a good compromise.

Neanderthal Hybrid said...

AKAgron, The Ainu are technically a modern people. Their ancestors, the original inhabitants of all of Japan were the Jomon people. Ancient Jomon genomes exist as do computer programmes to compare genomes based on a selection of SNPs. So both the data and software for comparing Jomon to Kennewick are already available. Someone just needs to take the time to do it. Below is a link to an english language blog entry on Jomon research:

http://dispatchesfromturtleisland.blogspot.com/2015/01/ancient-jomon-dna.html

Niineta said...

Rokus said... 'It takes more data, more methods and more money to actually catch up with what the tribes were saying from the beginning.'
Since their only purpose remains to undermine science and to destroy evidence in the name of their share of religious fundamentalism, I would say the Native American tribes are as wrong as ever.

Seems you missed the point. . . . The scientists were the ones who were wrong.

Kennewick man is of little significance in the peopling of the Americas. He’s not that old compared to other ancient DNA samples.

His X2a mtDNA, is only "one" ancient X2a sample found along the West coast. X2a has been found in ancient samples from Florida, Ohio and Illinois. Given X2a is found in the greatest frequency in tribes on the East coast. X2a was likely common and wide spread. In the Americas Q-M3 is common as dirt. After 20 years of countless studies, scientific opinions and published books; there was no great breakthrough in knowledge.

The only value Kennewick man had was that he was reported to be Caucasoid.

After every article people complained the tribes only wanted to bury him to cover up that they were not the first to inhabit the Americas, and to suppress the accomplishments of Caucasians-White people-Europeans.

Now, the comment sections associated with this news is simply people socializing and talking about unrelated topics such as changing parts on their car. That just shows that now Kennewick man has been proven to be Native American he has lost all value.

One commenter said “What a colossal waste of money” . . . That, certainly sums it up.

As ancient DNA shows Kennewick Man is fairly low on the totem pole.

12,710 - Arlington Springs Woman - B
12,600 - Anzik-1 - D4h3a, Q-L54*(xM3)
12,000 - Hoyo Negro Girl - D1
10,300 - On Your Knees Cave - D4h3a, Q1a3a1a
10,250 - Wizard’s Beach - C1d
8,358 - Kennewick Man - X2a, Q-M3
8,000 - Hourglass Cave - B2
7,400 – Windower - X2a

In spite of ALL evidence against it; the "Caucasoid" Pre-Contact America wishful thinking is still well and alive.

ron quiroriano said...

Jim,
I appreciate the comment, I usually get no response other than negative.
I am only a very interested amateur in the world of anthropology and what not, so i tend to leave the nuts and bolt of the genetics/linguistics side to those who know, and form my own opinions based on the literature.
Now, that being said, I think the penutian question is a good example of a language group that has been uncoupled from its original source population, and that the yokutsan group should be a distinct family. Yokuts languages were almost impossibly divergant, among themselves, given that there were no natural barriers to account for their internal differences. There were more than thirty "dialects" within a days walk of each other, and in some cases those dialects were infact completely different languages. In the studies of old world languages, such divergance is usually attributed to an extreme depth of time of occupation.
Back to the Kennewick/penutian connection, his diet was shown to be primarily pinnepeds and salmon, so I was expecting his MtDna to HgA. Remains from burials on the monterey penninsula, that are contemporaneous to Kennewick, have a clear delineation between Hg's A and D, All of the Hg A people had a diet consisting of pinnepeds and fish, while the diet of Hg D individuals was primarily terrestrial mammals.
Its with this idea that i see problems with the penutian hypothesis, the maidu/wintuan group are clearly descended from a great basin derived people, as illustrated by the large number of words for desert plants and animals that are not found west of the crest of the sierra and the fact that their territories are at the base of the easiest passes across the sierra.
When you look at the distribution and lifestyle of the Costanoan/Ohlone/miwok/chinookan and tmishnian people its clear they were salmon fisherman, as their ranges do not extend much further than the spawning beds on the rivers.
Here is another interesting coincidence, when you look at the distribution of Hg X, it is found in people who lived in areas with salmon runs, The orkneys, the caucuses, the mountains of coastal north africa and the levant, and the algic speakers of north america, whose ancestral range and lifestyle was the columbia/snake drainages and they were salmon fishermen.

Slumbery said...

Clay

This data makes the Kennevick man as much of a personal ancestor of the local tribe as the Mesolithic Carpathian-Basin HGs are ancient Hungarians or ancestors of a particular Hungarian village. Claiming that you have special right over a 9000 years old dead body (that happened to turn up in the neighbourhood) as your ancestor does not make sense for any sane people, the DNA results have no effect on this fact whatsoever.

CleverPrimate said...

Kenniwick man has as much in common genetically with modern Native Americans as the residents of Europe from 9000 years ago have in common with modern Europeans, which is in short, very little. The unfortunate result of this study is that no future studies will likely be done on these remains.

aeolius said...

Isn't it a great coincidence that Kennewick man from say 9000 years ago and having lived at least part of his life elsewhere turns out to be of the same tribal group as the modern Coville people,
Haven't we seen on these very pages how unlikely it is that ancient and modern populations are related. But in Coville that seems to be the case. I, for one would love to see some informed discussion on the Kennewick-Coville connection.

terryt said...

"The ancestors of the Native Americans were a mixture of West and East Asian populations so it shouldn't be any surprise that some Native Americans including Kennewick Man would have had a few western features".

That was my first reaction too.

"Of course you probably know all tis already, but I thought it might not hurt to mention it".

I didn't know it and so thanks for mentioning it.

Simon_W said...

I don't think this proves that cranial shapes are completely malleable and not heritable, at least to some degree. This would be a laughable idea. Probably the problem's just that cranial morphology is influenced by a small percentage of the genome, similar to pigmentation. You can't infer relationship between groups based on their skin pigmentation. And presumably similar cranial shapes can even be caused by different genes, like lactase persistence, light skin or many other phenotypical traits are. But these are nonetheless heritable.

Niineta said...

Clay said...

There needs to be a detente between Native American nations and scientists regarding human remains

FYI
The “Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act” is a “law” that establishes the ownership of cultural items excavated or discovered on FEDERAL or TRIBAL land after November 16, 1990. The act also applies to land transferred by the federal government to the states under the Water Resources Department Act.[3]

However, the provisions of the legislation DO NOT apply to PRIVATE LANDS.

FACTS
1 - It’s a LAW
2 – ONLY applies to FEDERAL or TRIBAL lands
3 - Does NOT apply to PRIVATE LANDS

Simple; follow the Law. . . . It’s ridiculous that anyone can break the law simply because they have a false sense of entitlement.

This would not happen in any other US law. But, no one really cares as this law only applies to Native Americans.

The ONLY knowledge gained from Kennewick Man is that in the United States not all are equal under the law.

n/a said...

aeolius,

Isn't it a great coincidence that Kennewick man from say 9000 years ago and having lived at least part of his life elsewhere turns out to be of the same tribal group as the modern Coville people,

No, he doesn't. Kennewick Man is equally close to large numbers of Central and South American tribes. Colville happen to be one of the few North American tribes tested. The authors's (as they acknowledge, ultimately unsupportable) attempts to link Kennewick Man and Colville appear to be motivated by politics. There are a variety of possible scenarios. Colville could descend from the same population as Kennewick Man (with later admixture from other sources). Or they could descend from populations that diverged from Kennewick Man's close to a millenium before he lived. The same could probably be said for a large fraction of other Amerindian tribes.


Niineta,

The “Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act” is a “law” that establishes the ownership of cultural items excavated or discovered on FEDERAL or TRIBAL land after November 16, 1990. The act also applies to land transferred by the federal government to the states under the Water Resources Department Act.[3]

NAGPRA specifies remains can be claimed by tribes who are direct lineal descendants or with demonstrable cultural affiliations to the remains. No such links have been demonstrated in the case of Kennewick Man, nor is it plausible any particular tribe could demonstrate such an affiliation across the span of time in question.

German Dziebel said...

@Rokus

"Since their only purpose remains to undermine science and to destroy evidence in the name of their share of religious fundamentalism, I would say the Native American tribes are as wrong as ever."

Nah. Scientists shouldn't create a fictitious tribe of their own to flight over human remains with real tribes. There must be flexible, respectful and intelligent arrangements re: DNA samples and skulls and bones. Otherwise, scientists will see fewer and fewer of those.

Fiend of 9 worlds said...

Who cares about the law compared to right and wrong? A few accusations of racism and McCaine and others have pandered to the squeaky wheels like always, without caring about what's right.

Like I claimed before, and like the guy who wanted the testing claimed, KenneWick man is not related to the current locals at all. He came from thousands of miles away.

Story of human origins is much more important than some political BS. This kind of crap is why half the studies today are so stupid and pander to political correctness so much.

capra internetensis said...

@Niineta

Kennewick Man doesn't tell us anything new about the first peopling of Americas, but that doesn't mean his genome is without value in learning about the prehistory of North America itself.

It's hard to say with the relatively limited data we have from living North American populations, but Kennewick Man is slightly more East Asian like than Anzick-1, and is also further from South Americans, so he may be carrying Beringian ancestry post-dating the arrival of the First Americans.

@aeolius

Kennewick Man did not "belong to the same tribal group" as the Colvilles. It was made quite clear in the paper and even in the press that they didn't have enough data to say who were his closest living relatives.

In fact, going by the D statistics, he shared the most ancestry with the Diaguita people of Chile and Argentina. He was about as close to the Colville as he was to most Central and South Americans.

He was most closely related to the Colville out of all the samples from the US and Canada, but hardly any US tribes were included in the analysis. The other North Americans, apart from Mexicans and the Pima of Arizona, were northern Northwest Coast Indians, Algonkian speakers from the Great Lakes area, boreal forest Athapaskans, and Arctic people, so the result is hardly surprising.

Of the tribes in the area the Colville alone were willing to donate their DNA to be tested for the study. The only other Plateau people in the sample were from further north in Canada, and they too were quite close to Kennewick Man - in fact looking at the confidence intervals the Stswecemc of central British Columbia are not significantly less related to him than are the Colville.

The Colville could be modelled as largely but not entirely descended from Kennewick Man's population, which is a priori plausible.

lucia said...

Niineta,
"Does NOT apply to PRIVATE LANDS"

Are you under the impression Kennewick Man was found on private lands? I've been to Columbia Park, which is a lovely spot on the banks of the Columbia River. I don't actually know whether it's owned by the city of Kennewick, WA state or the Feds, but I'd be stunned if it turns out to be "private land". My impression-- having been there-- has always been it's either owned by Kennewick, WA state or the Feds.

What "private" party do you believe owns that Columbia Park?

Hector said...

Q is not a "West Eurasian Y marker" and Native Americans are not a mix of "East and West Asians", not even "East Asians and West Eurasians".
ANE's being classified as West Eurasian stems from misunderstanding of statistics. ANE's affinity with West Eurasians is an accident of demographic history, not an indication of population origins.

Alashire said...

" Back to the Kennewick/penutian connection, his diet was shown to be primarily pinnepeds and salmon, so I was expecting his MtDna to HgA. Remains from burials on the monterey penninsula, that are contemporaneous to Kennewick, have a clear delineation between Hg's A and D, All of the Hg A people had a diet consisting of pinnepeds and fish, while the diet of Hg D individuals was primarily terrestrial mammals."

you know that they still don't know why mtdna chances , why it mutates or back mutates. if they do they aren't talkin . they probably ain't asking either. that would take all that fun out of it and all that tea leaf magic too.
so the real question still might be what does X change into in a few thousand years with environmental pressures ? it may stay x without any kind of environmental pressure if it moved locations it most likely got some environmental pressures. .. like maybe he just got there from the east of there or his parents did. so what can X2 change into ? because they is proven back mutations and on going changes.
it is just theory that Mtdna haplogroups never change. sorry but that is not proven nor is that even provable .

so what is X2 in the pacific north west? but they want to know what the mannequin in the works really is !

Unknown said...

It's interesting how the Kenwick man shows less genetic similarity with Native Americans, and more similarity to other groups. I wonder what his Mitochondrial and Y-DNA haplogroup was.

Gary said...

@Rokus -

"Since their only purpose remains to undermine science and to destroy evidence in the name of their share of religious fundamentalism, I would say the Native American tribes are as wrong as ever."

I'm of Native American heritage myself and, although I personally don't have a problem with aDNA studies, some of my relatives are adamant in their insistence that Native American remains should not be disturbed. It's not that they are simply "anti-science": they just don't like Native Americans being "objectified" and their ancestors treated as "subjects" or "specimens". It's a question of moral values and spiritual beliefs and like the ethical concerns about scientific experimentation on humans without informed consent. To Native Americans, the right to privacy extends to beyond the grave. Note that even in modern societies, exhuming a corpse requires a good justification, a court order, and usually the family's permission.

The scientific community has not always had a good track record in dealing with Native Americans. The use of genetic data collected for one purpose and then used for another without explicit consent is problematic. Native Americans have legitimate concerns that their genomic data will be misused, or exploited for commercial purposes without their permission.

terryt said...

"Q is not a 'West Eurasian Y marker'"

How do you come to that conclusion? Native American Q is mostly Q1a2a1a1-M3, just one branch within Q1a2a1. Other Q1a2a branches are present in the Kets and Selkups (West Eurasian? Central Eurasian certainly) and in Mongolians. Deeper branches are found as far west as Iran. Its origin is way west of East Asia.

"Native Americans are not a mix of 'East and West Asians', not even 'East Asians and West Eurasians'".

Almost certainly a mix of East Asians and Central Asians. In fact they probably had already formed a stable hybrid population before they entered America although there have been some later additions.

Unknown said...

Dear friends,
I know nothing of genetic science. I belong to the uppercaste hindu brahmin community. The theory of Aryan migration has always intrigued me. Dna test was done by my cousin. I have the raw data. Can someone help me the implication of the results?
Thank you
Srivatsan

Niineta said...

lucia said... What "private" party do you believe owns that Columbia Park?

Kennewick Man was discovered on “FEDERAL LAND” exactly where the ACT states the LAW applies.


n/a said... NAGPRA specifies remains can be claimed by tribes who are direct lineal descendants or with demonstrable cultural affiliations to the remains

The Act does NOT state . . DIRECT lineal descendants or DEMONSTRABLE cultural affiliations.

The Act specifies . . a RELATIONSHIP of lineal descent or cultural affiliation.

Where human remains and funerary objects are concerned, the Committee is aware that it may be extremely difficult, unfair, or even impossible in many instances for claimants to show an absolute continuity from present day Indian Tribes to older, prehistoric remains without some reasonable gaps in the historic or prehistoric record.

In such instances, a finding of cultural affiliation should be based upon an overall evaluation of the totality of the circumstances and evidence pertaining to the connection between the claimant and the material being claimed and should not be precluded solely because of gaps in the record (Senate 1990:9).

Whether new discoveries from Federal or Tribal land . . IT IS NOT NECESSARY for the agency, museum, lineal descendent, Indian Tribe . . TO ESTABLISH BEYOND ALL DOUBT which descendent or Native American group is a proper claimant for purposes of repatriation.

Hector said...

@TerryT LOL if you think Mongols are "West-Eurasians" I have nothing more to say to you. Kets and Selkups had originally lived much further East, Yenisei river and all the way down to Lake Baikal. In fact M Hammer discussed this in one of his earliest papers.

There are some West Eurasian remains found in this area. But Kets and Selkups were not among them. sorry.

terryt said...

"LOL if you think Mongols are 'West-Eurasians'"

Where did I claim Mongols were 'West Eurasians'? As far as I can tell it is fairly well-established the Mongoloid phenotype developed somewhere near the borders of modern China, Tibet and Mongolia. Y-DNA Q as a whole is certainly not 'Mongolian'. I was simply suggesting that basal Q can hardly be said to have originated in 'East Asia'.

"Kets and Selkups had originally lived much further East"

Absolutely. But they do not contain basal Q. Just derived forms.

CleverPrimate said...

I don’t believe any modern ethnic group should have a legal claim to human remains that are thousands of years old based upon geography and tenuous genetic connections, and through those claims attempt to forbid the scientific study of those remains simply to assuage political sensitivities.

Hector said...

@TerryT Likewise(just as you accuse me of saying something you didn't), when did I say anything about Mongoloid phenotype?
Being non-West Eurasian means being Mongoloid?

And what does Mongoloid phenotype have to do with East-West Eurasians? Mongoloid phenotype does not go back more than 20000 years but populations ancestral to East Asians clearly had existed before that time.

If by "basal Q" you mean Q1b, your terminology is primitive and the academic consensus is that that lineage was spread relatively recently by Turkic people from Central Asia. Many ancient remains found in China exhibit that haplotype(specifically Q1b, not Q1a-M120). If you are referring to Q* or Q1* claimed to have been found by various no-name ethnocentric scientists(most South Asian), you are quite gullible.

terryt said...

"Mongoloid phenotype does not go back more than 20000 years"

I'm pretty sure the EDAR370A mutation has been dated to 35,000 years. That provides a good proxy for the appearance of the Mongoloid phenotype.

"If by 'basal Q' you mean Q1b, your terminology is primitive"

My phylogeny is based on the latest ISOGG set. Basically that set has Q1b as basically west Eurasian and Q1a as east. In fact they claim:

"Y-DNA haplogroup Q arose in Central Asia and migrated through the Altai/Baikal region of northern Eurasia into the Americas".

That sounds as though the compilers see it as having originated west of the Altai.

terryt said...

I see that Q1b has now been divided into Q1b1 (further split into Q1b1a and Q1b1b) and Q1b2. Where are each of these three centred? Turning to Q1a we have Q1a1 (further divided into Q1a1a and Q1a1b) and Q1a2 (further divided into Q1a12a, Q1a2b and Q1a2c). That gives us five haplotypes to place geographically. Care to elaborate?

terryt said...

Sorry for a third post but I found this:

http://www.google.co.nz/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=web&cd=2&ved=0CCEQFjABahUKEwj59KHP3pjHAhWnxqYKHS3lATQ&url=http%3A%2F%2Frjgg.molgen.org%2Findex.php%2FRJGGRE%2Farticle%2Fdownload%2F153%2F176&ei=qpHFVfl3p42bBa3Kh6AD&usg=AFQjCNFwdEZr7QHd4eWVHlA3Xzgz_q7QBg&sig2=8NQUmxLq0mNPyLmg10132A&bvm=bv.99804247,d.dGY

Unequivocal. Q1b1a1a-Y2220 is almost entirely 'Jewish' with Q1b1a1a1 Ashkenazi and Q1b1a1a2 Jews from North Africa. The split dated at 4000 years. Of course this sort of dating is unreliable but is certainly too early to be from Turkic people. Q1b1b2a-L301 is centred on southwest Persia and Arabia, especially in the 'Marsh Arabs'. That suggests a deep relationship with Q11b1a1a, all from roughly the same region. And not from 'East Asia'.

Hector said...

TerryT : Once again I really do not want to be bothered with the native view that EDAR solely or even in the main represents the Mongoloid phenotype. Just ask population geneticists why. But this actually is beside the point. Even if it does you have a hilarious notion of the division between East and West Eurasians.

You have an unrealistically broad definition of "West Eurasians" and an unrealistically narrow definition of "East Eurasians", often confusing it with "East Asians" with the definitive Mongoloid phenotype. Your definition of the former is even paraphyletic; you want to include just about everthing that becomes convenient to you.

Both Ust-Ishim and Oase now appear to be K2a, the latter with a particular shift toward East Eurasians(or even East Asians) in overall genetics and Oase was found in Europe. But of course Oase lacks EDAR but that does not make him "West Eurasian".

You make far too liberal generalizations to suit your agenda. Such as assuming West Eurasian genetic continuity in Central Asia. Last year I spent a lot of time explaining basic uniparental phylogenetic principles but that was way beyond your head and quite frankly you don't know who I am, what are my academic credentials etc. and think very lowly of me. The feeling is mutual and I don't see any possibility of productive discussion between us.

But thanks for the paper. I am now convinced that some Q1b's may not be of Turkic origin and pre-historical Q1b's found in Western China may have had Indo-European intermediate carriers. But the paper is Russian with well known agenda and one should read it with a grain of salt. Even if Q1b is "West Eurasian"(it probably isn't) it is a long way to go from there to claiming Q1 or Q is West Eurasian because it is not even certain R is West Eurasian and R and Q together DEFINITELY are not West Eurasian if you have to go back at the root of the division between East and West Eurasians(a fictitious division anyway).

One last note is on these DNA testing companies. You cannot rely too heavily on their data. Enormous sampling biases. If you go to YFull tree you will see that N or even C2 can be made "European". In fact Igmayka is comically claiming it(incredibly he even claims NO and the whole K clade as West Eurasian but wait that was your claim too. LOL).

terryt said...

Hector, I think your idea of differences between East and West Eurasians is not closely related to reality. For example:

"Both Ust-Ishim and Oase now appear to be K2a, the latter with a particular shift toward East Eurasians(or even East Asians) in overall genetics and Oase was found in Europe".

Thanks for that information. I did not know Oase's Y-DNA. But you find that surprising? Why? K2a is indisputably East Eurasian and so it is obvious that Oase would be shifted in that direction. K2a is an early branch within the NO clade and so almost certainly indicates an early movement west through Central Asia from East Eurasia. Certainly there was considerable movement both east and west through Central Asia during much of human history. Far more than occurred through South Asia. But in effect both Ust-Ishim and Oase are 'East Eurasian' in origin although not actually living there. And both are earlier than the EDAR370A mutation and are unlikely to have been Mongoloid-looking (in spite of your views on that mutation).

"Igmayka is comically claiming it(incredibly he even claims NO and the whole K clade as West Eurasian but wait that was your claim too. LOL)".

Where did I ever claim either NO or K to be West Eurasian? I presume you are getting confused there.

terryt said...

"the root of the division between East and West Eurasians(a fictitious division anyway)".

I have always regarded the boundary between East and West Eurasia to be the Hindu-Kush/Altai mountain axis. To the east people tend to look 'Mongoloid', to the east 'White'. Around the boundary they are mixed, which make sense.

"often confusing it with 'East Asians' with the definitive Mongoloid phenotype".

That's because most East Eurasians tend to look Mongoloid. Through much of it anyway. Southeast Asia is a little different. Have you seen this:

http://www.nature.com/ncomms/2014/140819/ncomms5689/full/ncomms5689.html

It's the best analysis I've yet seen of the late genetic history of the southern portion of East Asia. It shows a deep split between Philippine Negrito and New Guinea populations, but unfortunately does not include Australian Aborigines.

Fiend of 9 worlds said...

Hector, anybody can make up any BS they want with autosomals. You can unscramble an egg any way you want so to speak.

EDAR is not the end all of east vs west and some in the west have it as well, but things like sundadonty in kennewick man puts him into a whole different continuum than 99.9% of what people call native americans. Little details like how many teeth you have go back millions of years and are not some little hiccup you can poopoo away.

Unknown said...

Hector, although a Y Chromosome Hg Q isn't a West Eurasian Y marker, you can't denied when a Y Hg Q and R (Western Eurasian Marker) have a common ancestor a Y Hg P - M45 or Y Hg K2b2. A Parental ancestors of a East Asian (Y Hg O), Native American (Y Hg Q), European (Y Hg R) share a common ancestors: a Y Hg K2* M526. So, whathever do you like it or not, technically a Chinese and Malay men, a Native American men, majority European men and a Northern Indian / IndoAryan men in Kashmir and Hindukush Mountain quite similar to each other. See Wikipedia, ISOGG, Family Tree TDNA, etc.

Unknown said...

Dear Srivastan, I'm Adrian from Indonesia and I want to help you furthermore. I have a questions: Are your cousins tested his DNA to The Genographic Project Geno 2,0 NG or another Human Genealogy company like Family Tree DNA, 23andMe, or another else? Do you lives in Northern Indian like Kashmir or Hindukush Mountain? Generally, a Northwest Indian have a Y Hg P, R1a, R2, l* and even J* + mtDNA Macrohaplogroup N and R. But a South Indian have more mtDNA Macrohaplogroup (around 68% - 70%) - M* like M2, M3,...M6, etc and a Y Hg F*, H*, J*, K*, L* and even O2a* and O3*. And if i correct, a Veddoid men have a rare Y Hg C* M130 and C5*, Hg H*, and (probably) L*.

Unknown said...

Hector, Mongols are an East Eurasians, actually an Old East Asians. It shows with mostly a Mongolian men have an "original" Y Hg C3* M217, descendant of Y Hg C* M130 and mtDNA Hg CZ, C, Z and G (M Type) but a modern Mongolian today have around 6% - 17% a European and a Middle Eastern aDNA. They're got a Western Eurasians aDNA from a Silk Road and then intermarriage with a Western and Eastern Eurasian People.

Unknown said...

So, what's the think who can make you believe about Human Genealogy? An old "Racial" concept like Caucasoid, Mongoloid, Negroid, Australoid and Khousanid? Or another else?