![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
Car Park Genetics
Feb. 24th, 2014 01:41 pmIn August of 2012, the search for Richard III's remains began, and on the very first day of the dig, his body was discovered underneath a car park in Grey Friars, Leicester (1). I've kept half an eye on this story for a while. Richard III is a fascinating character, and the eponymous play is one of my favourite works by Shakespeare.
The story just became even more interesting for me. An article in Culture24, Richard III DNA tests to reveal hair, eyes and diseases of the King, shows that the genomes of Richard III and one of his proven descendants will soon be mapped. Richard III is lumped in with a Spanish hunter gatherer, a Greenlandic Inuit, some Neanderthals, a Denisovan, and Otzi the Iceman as an elite group of historical/prehistorical figures whose genomes have been studied (2). The story gains publicity because Richard III is a character who captures people's imaginations, because his ignoble resting place beneath a car park seems so anticlimactic, and because the Human Genome Project is a new and exciting area of scientific research.
The article emphasizes the role of DNA in our sense of identity, and how understanding the king's genetics gives us a snapshot of disease and heredity in the fifteenth century. The article, however, is brief and does not go into any real depth. As a result, it raises more questions than it answers. Just how prevalent is genome mapping in archaeology? The Human Genome Project was launched in 1990 (3). How soon afterwards until it was used as an archaeological method? A cursory internet search for genome mapping and archaeology reveals a wide range of results, and they're not all related to human remains. There are plenty of articles which discuss genome mapping in molecular archaeology (eg. Molecular archaeology of the Escherichia coli genome (4)), as well as other studies of ecofacts versus human remains and artefacts (eg. Plant genome archaeology: evidence for conserved ancestral chromosome segments in dicotyledonous plant species (5)).
The article also raises questions about the other people listed whose genomes have been mapped. It contains no links to these studies, which seems like an obvious oversight. Fortunately, another online search reveals more information. I discovered that just as there is a Human Genome Project, there is a Neanderthal Genome Project. You can even search through the data at The Neandertal Genome (6). I learned that Denisovans, a lesser-known peer to Neanderthals and prehistoric humans, may be the first non-Neanderthal archaic humans to be sequenced (7). The genome mapping of the ancient Inuit in Greenland "provides evidence for a migration from Siberia into the New World some 5,500 years ago, independent of that giving rise to the modern Native Americans and Inuit" (8). The study of Otzi the Iceman's cellular mitochondria reveals mutations no longer present in our population, suggesting he belonged to a now-extinct group (9). Lastly, the study of the Spanish hunter-gatherer may help explain why prehistoric hunter-gatherers could coexist with farmers for thousands of years before disappearing (10). This is just a tiny cross-selection of the extant information on these people.
The archaeological data recovered through genetics studies is vast. I never would have suspected that a reviled British king would be the one to demonstrate this to me.
( Works Cited )
The story just became even more interesting for me. An article in Culture24, Richard III DNA tests to reveal hair, eyes and diseases of the King, shows that the genomes of Richard III and one of his proven descendants will soon be mapped. Richard III is lumped in with a Spanish hunter gatherer, a Greenlandic Inuit, some Neanderthals, a Denisovan, and Otzi the Iceman as an elite group of historical/prehistorical figures whose genomes have been studied (2). The story gains publicity because Richard III is a character who captures people's imaginations, because his ignoble resting place beneath a car park seems so anticlimactic, and because the Human Genome Project is a new and exciting area of scientific research.
The article emphasizes the role of DNA in our sense of identity, and how understanding the king's genetics gives us a snapshot of disease and heredity in the fifteenth century. The article, however, is brief and does not go into any real depth. As a result, it raises more questions than it answers. Just how prevalent is genome mapping in archaeology? The Human Genome Project was launched in 1990 (3). How soon afterwards until it was used as an archaeological method? A cursory internet search for genome mapping and archaeology reveals a wide range of results, and they're not all related to human remains. There are plenty of articles which discuss genome mapping in molecular archaeology (eg. Molecular archaeology of the Escherichia coli genome (4)), as well as other studies of ecofacts versus human remains and artefacts (eg. Plant genome archaeology: evidence for conserved ancestral chromosome segments in dicotyledonous plant species (5)).
The article also raises questions about the other people listed whose genomes have been mapped. It contains no links to these studies, which seems like an obvious oversight. Fortunately, another online search reveals more information. I discovered that just as there is a Human Genome Project, there is a Neanderthal Genome Project. You can even search through the data at The Neandertal Genome (6). I learned that Denisovans, a lesser-known peer to Neanderthals and prehistoric humans, may be the first non-Neanderthal archaic humans to be sequenced (7). The genome mapping of the ancient Inuit in Greenland "provides evidence for a migration from Siberia into the New World some 5,500 years ago, independent of that giving rise to the modern Native Americans and Inuit" (8). The study of Otzi the Iceman's cellular mitochondria reveals mutations no longer present in our population, suggesting he belonged to a now-extinct group (9). Lastly, the study of the Spanish hunter-gatherer may help explain why prehistoric hunter-gatherers could coexist with farmers for thousands of years before disappearing (10). This is just a tiny cross-selection of the extant information on these people.
The archaeological data recovered through genetics studies is vast. I never would have suspected that a reviled British king would be the one to demonstrate this to me.
( Works Cited )
