12,000-Year-Old Human Hair DNA

Earth Files ^ | 10-30-2001 | Linda Moulton Howe

[blam]

Please click on the site to view this article. They have some pretty serious sounding, 'Don't reproduce' verbage on that page. Thanks.

[blam]

DNA does not match any humans alive today. (Now, I wonder if it matches the human DNA from Australian that claims the same) The original Americans are now extinct?

[blam]

FYI.

[error99]

It is not clear from reading the article how the investigators ever got the notion that these were "human" hairs in the first place.

[Ratatoskr]

Professor Orr has even considered the possibility that the black hairs could come from a hominoid such as the mysterious Sasquatch long associated with the northwest.

Ohhhhhhkay. I thought bigfoot was a brunette?

[VadeRetro]

Interesting, but it might only mean that some human subgroups have gone extinct or diffused into much larger populations. I'd be surprised if that had never occurred.

[blam]

"You can identify human hair, forensic criminologist types, can identify human hair from a single strand because of the granules and color and all that kind of stuff. You can distinguish human hair from all other hair just from a little piece of follicle."

Doesn't sound overwhelmingly scientific, huh? "Stuff?"

[ARCADIA]

From an isolated population that died out. They don't say how exactly how different it is from humans that exist today.

[blam]

Bump.

[rolling_stone]

Don't get excited, I heard the same thing about OJ's hair samples...

[LTCJ]

Doesn't sound overwhelmingly scientific, huh? "Stuff?"

Stuff - it's not a scientific term. Stuff is a technical term. Everybody knows that.

[Question_Assumptions]

Yet more possible evidence that the "Native Americans" are carpet baggers just like the Europeans. People need to be very careful before they start playing "We were here first!" games.

[RightWhale]

IT'S ALMOST AS IF THEY WERE QUICK FROZEN

That's a Linda Moulton Howe quote of Dr Orr. That ties in with the quick-frozen animals in interior Alaska as far as the time scale. It has something to do with the last ice-age, almost as if the earth tipped on its axis and dumped whole geographic regions into arctic cold momentarily.

LMH has a good reputation as a reporter of Fortean-type events.

[machman]

I don't know if it is junk science here or not. But the fact that the first "amercians" were killed off or simply replaced by later arrivals. Just as most of what are "Europeans" today were not "native" to their lands several thousands of years ago. This is natural, population migrations must have happened all the time with the local populations getting replaced in the process.

But if the scientist are right and we are all came out of Africa, we here is the US are all "African-Americans". I call those with with dark skin "Americans of recent African decent". ;^)

[stumpy]

it's bigfoot.

[PatrickHenry]

From the article:

We found several strands of human hair, long pieces a foot and a half long, black, long pieces of hair.

According to persistent rumors, what they found seems to match Hillary's pubes.

[Verginius Rufus]

Very interesting. This could mean that the Paleo-Indians are off the hook for causing the extinction of the paleo-horses and other paleo-megafauna.

Is the Woodburn longhaired man/woman/sasquatch any relation to Kennewick Man? The Clintonistas did their best to see to it that Kennewick Man would be buried away and lost to science, but I think the bones are still in someone's safekeeping.

[longshadow]

According to persistent rumors, what they found seems to match Hillary's pubes

In the future, could you please hold all such posts like this until well after dinner time? The mere thought of Her Royal Arrogance's nether region is enough to ruin any meal.

[sawsalimb]

Good point. I'd be interested in knowing just how much divergence there is,and how much divergence(or whatever the term is)is normal. I don't know enough about DNA analysis to talk intelligently about it: can anyone point me at some place that gives some basic overviews of the subject?

[white rose]

OK, I realize this will probably sound like a stupid question to you science mavens out there, but here goes: If the hair does not match any known human DNA, what makes them think it's human?

[PatrickHenry]

If the hair does not match any known human DNA, what makes them think it's human?

Not a stupid question at all. (Because I was wondering the same thing.) The article really doesn't go into enough detail for us to evaluate their conclusion.

[blam]

"Is the Woodburn longhaired man/woman/sasquatch any relation to Kennewick Man?"

Probably another human species. See the book, Extinct humans." The Kennewick case is still in court and DNA samples were reported as 'inconclusive.'

[blam]

Mungo Man could be African: scientists

By Richard Macey

Scientists expressed caution yesterday over claims by Australian researchers that cast doubt over the theory that modern man emerged from Africa.

Dr Alan Thorne, an anthropologist with the Australian National University, scored headlines around the globe with findings suggesting that modern humans evolved everywhere.

His claims are based on DNA recovered from the skeleton of Mungo Man, who lived and died about 60,000 years ago near South Australia's Lake Mungo.

That makes the DNA about 32,000 years older than any human DNA found before.

Mungo Man, said to have been physically similar to people living today, had one significant difference. Within his DNA, the scientists found a gene that Dr Thorne described as "unlike any alive today".

The scientists argue that had Mungo Man descended from modern humans flowing out of Africa, his genetic line should have also flowed on, rather than become extinct.

They believe the discovery backs the theory of "regional continuity" that says modern man evolved around the world as people interbred.

They argue that Mungo Man's ancient gene, responsible for supplying energy to the brain, probably became extinct as his descendants mingled with new arrivals.

Scientists around the world lauded the team's success in extracting 60,000-year-old DNA.

But Dr Peter Underhill from California's Stanford University said Mungo Man's ancestors "could have originated in Africa".

"It doesn't mean out of Africa is kaput," he said. "The problem with such ancient DNA is such specimens are few and far between ... it would be nice to see it reproduced independently elsewhere.''

The Australian Museum's head of evolutionary biology, Dr Don Colgan, said there could be another theory on why Mungo Man's gene had become extinct: "Maybe if you looked hard you might find it. It's still one individual."

[Verginius Rufus]

I don't know if I follow the argument. If Mungo Man had a gene which is not found among any living human beings, he was probably not the only person in Australia at that time with the gene, but if the gene died out in Australia for whatever reason, it could have disappeared likewise in whatever part of the world his ancestors came from. I don't see how Africa can be ruled out.

Have they tried to compare Mungo Man's DNA with a sample from Mungo Jerry?

[blam]

I think they are suggesting that his ancestors originated in Australia. There is an 'out of Asia' group out there that do not subscribe to the 'out of Africa' theory. I'm in the Milford Wolfpoft 'multi-regional' camp.

[Cogadh na Sith]

I always look forward to your interesting posts on stuff like this, 'the flood', etc.

LOL, I dunno about Linda Molting Owl, though...

[blam]

"LOL, I dunno about Linda Molting Owl, though..."

Yeah, I know. I was intrigued by the subject though.

[AndrewC]

Not a stupid question at all. (Because I was wondering the same thing.)

The obvious conclusion being that the hair is non-human. From the article--

You can distinguish human hair from all other hair just from a little piece of follicle. ....

... And then if you can find the root of the hair that still has a follicle, you can do DNA on it. So researchers immediately sent the (Ice Age) hair off to a lab and they began to extract the DNA. Some of it was not so good, but a lot of it was well preserved in the oxygen-poor bogs of Woodburn. The geneticists found the hair didn't match any Asian hair DNA. It didn't match African, European. It didn't match anything.