Ötzi the Iceman and his neighbors had totally different ancestors, discovers the old DNA study
A new analysis of the old DNA of 15 people who lived in the Italian Alps at the same time as Ötzi the Iceman shows that Ötzi’s ancestry was decidedly different from that of his neighbors.
“We have analyzed 15 additional individuals from the copper age and they have the same genetic structure as the” “” ” Valentina CoiaA researcher at the Mummy Studies Institute in Bolzano, Italy, told Live Science in an email. But by looking more closely at DNA to understand the lines, “we were able to compare the results with those of the Iceman and found that it differs from the other alpine samples in the region.”
In a study published on July 11 in the journal Nature communicationsCoia and his colleagues analyzed the genomes of 47 people who lived in the Tyrolean Alps between the Mesolithic and the Average Bronze Age, around 6,400 to 1300 BC, to learn more about their ancestry.
The most famous individual they examined was Ötzi, who lived 5,300 years ago in the Alps before he was murdered in mysterious circumstances. Her mummified And a frozen corpse was discovered by tourists in 1991. Because a previous study noted that Ötzi had “Listence of unusually high anatolian farmers“The researchers wanted to determine if the neighbors of the ice – who lived in the Alps at the age of the copper, between 3368 and 3108 BC – had similar ancestry or if they were more closely linked to hunter groups of the Eurasian steppe.
The analysis of researchers of ancient genomes revealed that most prehistoric alpine people had high proportions of ancestry of Anatolian farmers (80% to 90%) and low proportions of hunter hunter ancestry. Most of these people also had a similar genomic structure and ancestry, they wrote in the study.
For example, the Y-Chromosomes data, which helps to draw the paternal line, revealed that almost all the men who were tested shared a similar ancestry which was found in prehistoric Germany and France. Ötzi, on the other hand, had a different paternal line that was more widespread, the researchers wrote.
In relation: Ötzi The Iceman used an surprisingly modern technique for his tattoos 5,300 years ago, the study suggests
While the paternal lines of prehistoric alpine men were generally similar, their maternal lines were diverse, which suggests that women can get married in a group of very unrerse men.
But the maternal line of Ötzi has never been identified in other ancient or modern people, the researchers wrote, and it was not found in any of the other alpine people analyzed in the study.
“As the kindergarten has never been found, it could suggest its extinction,” said Coia. But she warned that the data is somewhat difficult to interpret.
“Perhaps the ICEMAN, compared to other individuals from the same period, comes from a different group of farmers, but that can only be discovered if we have more data on Neolithic individuals in Anatolia and North of Italy,” she said.
Because a previous study had revealed Ötzi had black hair and dark eyesThe researchers also looked for these traits in six individuals whose genomes were complete enough to predict the color of the hair and eyes. “These [people] He probably had brown eyes associated with dark brown color with black hair (in the same way as the Iceman), “they wrote. And their genomes also revealed that all prehistoric alpine people were intolerant to lactose, Just like Ötzi.
Before this study, only two genomes of people from the copper age of the eastern Italian Alps had been analyzed. The 15 new additional genomes from Ötzi’s “neighbors” improve the understanding of researchers in the life of people who lived in this cold and high altitude region.
“We have no information on the cultural group to which the Iceman may have belonged,” wrote the researchers, so “our results leave open questions on the genetic origin and cultural affiliation of this enigmatic individual”.
