Genome of the Ancient One (a.k.a. Kennewick Man).

Abstract

A little over a year ago the complete genome sequence of a Clovis individual, the 12,500 Anzick child, was published (Rasmussen et al. 2014). His genome gave us a fascinating glimpse of ancient Native American genetic diversity, and new insights into the early peopling of the Americas. At the time, however, I was critical about media coverage. Several press reports chose to fijind controversy in a decidedly non-controversial story by giving undue weight to problematic “alternative” explanations of Native American origins, including the Solutrean Hypothesis, and other “European contributions” to Native American ancestry. The press did a much better job this summer in discussing the publication of the ancient American genome from the 8,500-year-old burial from Washington popularly called “Kennewick Man,” or “The Ancient One.” Analyses of Kennewick Man’s genome showed that he was closely related to other Native Americans, both ancient and contemporary, and shared genetic ancestry with Northern Native Americans, including the Colville Tribe (the extent to which he is related to other North American tribes is yet unknown as we have very little genetic data from Native Americans in the United States). The DNA fijindings refute older hypotheses that Kennewick Man was variously of European, Ainu, or South Asian or Polynesian afffijiliation. As with Anzick and every other ancient American individual that have been sequenced, the genetic evidence from Kennewick Man is unequivocal: he is closely related to contemporary Native Americans (Rasmussen et al. 2015). The press’ treatment of the results from the Kennewick Man genome paper was considerably better than that of the Anzick genome paper for several reasons. First, there was very little talk about the long-discredited “Solutrean hypothesis” (which, if it weren’t already in its cofffijin, would have taken a further hit with the revelation that Kennewick Man’s genome showed absolutely no evidence of ancient European admixture), and no emphasis on any “European connections” (which is good because there weren’t any!) (Rafff and Bolnick 2015). Furthermore, several journalists provided careful, nuanced discussions of the long and contentious history of research and litigation surrounding Kennewick Man, which is critically important for understanding his signifijicance to indigenous Americans (Meltzer 2015). An excellent example is the article written by Ewen Callaway for Nature, which went through the history of the controversy and also noted how the discipline has changed in recent years: