Researchers have determined that previous findings concerning the Iceman’s ancestry were likely to be wrong.
Discovered in 1991, Europe’s oldest known natural mummy since dubbed Otzi the Iceman was found in the Tyrolean Alps between Austria and Italy. Thought to have been around 45 years old when he died, Otzi appeared to have succumbed to a lethal combination of injuries including an arrow through the shoulder and a blow to the head.
A new look at the Iceman’s DNA reveals that his ancestors weren’t who scientists previously thought.
In 2012, scientists compiled a complete picture of Ötzi’s genome; it suggested that the frozen mummy found melting out of a glacier in the Tyrolean Alps had ancestors from the Caspian steppe. But something didn’t add up.
The Iceman is about 5,300 years old. Other people with steppe ancestry didn’t appear in the genetic record of central Europe until about 4,900 years ago. Ötzi “is too old to have that type of ancestry,” says archaeogeneticist Johannes Krause of the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology in Leipzig, Germany. The mummy “was always an outlier.”
Krause and colleagues put together a new genetic instruction book for the Iceman. The old genome was heavily contaminated with modern people’s DNA, the researchers report August 16 in Cell Genomics. The new analysis reveals that “the steppe ancestry is completely gone.”
But the Iceman still has oddities. About 90 percent of Ötzi’s genetic heritage comes from Neolithic farmers, an unusually high amount compared with other Copper Age remains, Krause says.
The Iceman’s new genome also reveals he had male-pattern baldness and much darker skin than artistic representations suggest. Genes conferring light skin tones didn’t become prevalent until 4,000 to 3,000 years ago when early farmers started eating plant-based diets and didn’t get as much vitamin D from fish and meat as hunter-gathers did, Krause says.
As Ötzi and other ancient people’s DNA illustrate, the skin color genetic changes took thousands of years to become commonplace in Europe.
“People that lived in Europe between 40,000 years ago and 8,000 years ago were as dark as people in Africa, which makes a lot of sense because [Africa is] where humans came from,” he says. “We have always imagined that [Europeans] became light-skinned much faster. But now it seems that this happened actually quite late in human history.”
Source: Science News
Ron S
The worst kind of scientist to partner up with is the kind that just wants to date everything. Pun absolutely intended here, but I’m only half joking.
Otzi seemed like a cool dude, had what some people would consider some pretty cool tattoos, living off the grid kinda guy (I see nothing wrong with that), had some health issues, a bad back and hip (I can relate), he probably had a crappy job leaned over scraping hides or building hunting gear, who knows right?
Pretty cool to get a peak at what once was. But this article rubbed me the wrong way… so allow me to retort.
In my opinion (I’m forming right now) science is only beginning to discover that there actually can be discrepancies within space travel, speed and how it impacts on things such as time, how it physically changes things and isn’t the same everywhere or in every situation… we’ve all heard it. You go into space, gravity, rate of speed, blah blah blah, come back to earth and you’ve aged more than those that didn’t leave the planet etc.
Scientists don’t any more about time than most people know about Sasquatch.
What if time on Earth throughout history hasn’t always been consistent? What if it’s impossible to understand, comprehend, validate or give a “carbon” date to anything to do with time outside of a few generations or even just one life experience?
Maybe the Earth had a close call at some point with an even larger planet or black hole that altered gravity or affected time, and it’s still affecting us even now?
Maybe time use to be slower, less gravity, whatever (I don’t claim to know how it works).
Wouldn’t that make sense why dinosaurs (giants), megalithic structures and everything thing else were proportionally larger in the past?
Maybe the gravity was different, the growing cycles and lifespans were longer, things were larger and potentially lighter and easier to make and move because time/gravity was different. Maybe a near brush with a planet killer also altered the seasons or climatic conditions.
And what is with this talk about skin tones, hunter gatherer’s, plant eaters and vitamin D?…Are they talking about the depth or darkness of a person’s tan from being outside in the sun? I sure hope not.
Ever see a professional body builder in a competition and how dark their skin is from tanning no matter who they are or where their from? Good grief Charlie Brown:/
If we’re only on the fringe of understanding that time isn’t always the same, I feel like I’m being fed horse poop and they’re telling me it’s peanut butter, just so somebody can feel validated with an expensive degree and the investment of their own precious time. Science is fine, just don’t time stamp things when you don’t have an actual grasp of time itself. Seems fair to me.
But Otzi is cool, I hope he rests in peace someday if he isn’t already:)
I hope everyone has a wonderful week and finds their own inner peace within their own time. 🌞🙏🏼
Ron S
Ya know, I bet that’s why scientists are so obsessed with chiseling a time into stone and everything else. It’s basically a starting point but also quite possibly a desperate attempt to grasp onto or create a foundation of what some wish to call reality.
If you point out how frail of a grasp we have on the fluctuations and concept of time, gravity, mass and the universe…without a solid footing in that I bet all of our complicated mathematics and a chunk of how we define history would immediately become only theory or even irrelevant and be just one big waste of time. Possibly?
Daren c
Something else that everyone Should have noticed, is not all but the majority of “Scientists” will always come to the conclusion of what the person, group or entity , is paying them to conclude. Follow the Money.
Raymond D
i’ve always said that myself.
Daren c
And the narrative.
Jeff B
Exactly Daren
Bill F
Next thing they will be telling us is that he was dragged there behind a pickup truck by some Alabama rednecks..KKK members..
bullshit.. these people are out of control, constantly trying to change history according to their virtue signalling racism.
Bill F
AND… the whole “out of africa ” THEORY has been debunked many times by many anthropologists. Problem is they get “black” listed and censored for not parroting the narrative and agenda.