Ancient 'Kennewick Man' skeleton was
Native American: study
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[June 20, 2015]
By Julie Steenhuysen
CHICAGO (Reuters) - The much-anticipated
results of a study of DNA taken from the hand bone of the so-called
Kennewick Man, a 8,500-year-old skeleton discovered in Washington state
in 1996, suggest the man was most closely related to Native American
populations, a team of international researchers said on Thursday.
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The DNA findings, published online in the journal Nature,
contradict a 2014 study based on anatomical data that suggested the
skeleton was most closely related to Polynesian or indigenous
Japanese populations.
The Kennewick Man, named for the site of his discovery near the
banks of the Columbia River in Kennewick, Washington, has been at
the center of a bitter legal dispute between scientists, who want to
study the remains, and a coalition of Native American tribes, which
is arguing for their reburial.
The dispute ended in 2004 with a ruling in favor of more research.
A study published in 2014 concluded that the Kennewick Man's anatomy
was more similar to Japan's indigenous Ainu and Polynesian
populations.
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The latest research reports on an analysis of ancient DNA from the
skeleton. Dr. Eske Willerslev, a University of Copenhagen geneticist
who led the research, said he believes the findings settle the
argument over the Kennewick Man's origins.
"The Kennewick Man's closest living relatives are Native Americans,"
Willerslev said in an email to Reuters.
The researchers compared DNA extracted from a hand bone of the
skeleton to that of modern Native American tribes and other world
populations and concluded the Kennewick man was only distantly
related to populations other than Native Americans, such as the Ainu
of Japan or peoples from Polynesia, rejecting the earlier
hypothesis.
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"The Kennewick Man is more closely related to Native Americans than
any other population," said the study's co-author Morten Rasmussen,
a research fellow in genetics at Stanford University.
In fact, the skeleton's DNA most closely matches some members of the
Confederated Tribes of the Colville Reservation, which have been
arguing for rights to the remains. However, the study could not
offer a conclusive match, and the authors said more modern ancestors
could surface as more Native American groups' DNA is sequenced.
It is not clear whether the findings will be sufficient to resolve
the conflict over the disputed remains, one of just a few
well-preserved North American skeletons older than 8,000 years and
one of the only good examples from the Pacific Northwest.
(Reporting by Julie Steenhuysen, editing by G Crosse)
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