In the project of decoding entire human genomes, eight living people have had their DNA put through the wringer so far. Now we can add to that list the genome of one dead person. One very, very dead person.
“Greenland Man,” who lived in western Greenland around 4,000 years ago, has become the most recent subject of this scientific innovation. A swatch of his hair was incredibly well preserved, so scientists were able to recover and analyze his DNA, according to the New York Times. Apparently people had thick hair back then, at least in Greenland; at first researchers thought it was a bear’s fur.
It is absolutely remarkable what you can discover about someone from his hair, even when the sample is 4 millenia old. University of Copenhagen researchers have released an estimation of his appearance (including brown eyes) and have passed judgment on his susceptibility to disease. They also found that his DNA contain the East Asian version of a gene called EDAR, which gives people particularly thick hair.
Not only that, but the researchers have concluded that Greenland Man was part of a Paleo-Eskimo culture that archaeologists call Saqqaq, who were closely related to the Chukchi people of eastern Siberia. Around 5,500 years ago, Greenland Man’s kin split off from the Chukchis and traveled across the northern reaches of North America to Greenland.
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