Find the origin of the Iceman

The otzi band, the mummy of the Neolithic period was found in the Italian Alps in 1991, in fact a native of Central Europe and not the first generation of immigrants from Sardinia as thought. before. Genetically, Otzi is quite similar to other stone farmers across Europe.

The new discovery, released Thursday (November 8) at the American Society of Human Genetics, supports the theory that prehistoric farmers have expanded. the scope of migration from the Middle East to Finland, carrying their agricultural techniques.

Martin Sikora, a geneticist at Stanford University, said earlier this year scientists had been working on sequencing the Otzi gene sequence and found a surprising result: The iceman has a close relationship with Sardinians today rather than modern Central Europeans. In fact, however, experts have only studied part of the genome and therefore cannot solve the two basic questions: Are most Neolithic people in Central Europe having a special genetic profile? of Sardinians? and is the Otzi family emigrating from southern Europe?

A recent genetic analysis showed that the Otzi Tape is actually
is of Central European descent. (Photo: South Tyrol Archaeological Museum)

Otzi is one of the oldest and most well-preserved mummies in the world, having survived almost intact over the past 5,300 years. Up until now, no one could explain the situation as well as the life of this mummy.'Most likely Otzi is just a remote visitor to this Alps and his parents are Sardinians , ' Sikora said.

To answer this question, the Sikora group not only arranged the sequence of all Otzi genes but also compared it to the genes of four other target groups including (1) hundreds of modern Europeans, (2) one resident. Stone hunter-gatherers with the remaining bone fragments were found in Sweden, (3) a mummy 7000 years discovered in Iberia and (4) an Iron Age man found in Bulgaria.

The research team confirmed that although modern Sardinians are Otzi's closest relatives, in contrast to the prehistoric period, the Otzi gene is quite homogeneous to Bulgarian and Swedish farmers, while Swedish and Iberian residents are in the hunter-gatherers are like the Nordic people today. Thus, it is possible that former Middle Eastern to Northern European migrants brought their agriculture together with native hunter-gatherers, making the region's population increase.

At present, traces of ancient migrations in Europe have disappeared, however, the people of Sardinia today are still isolated from the outside world, thus retaining many genetic characteristics from the colonial population. The first Neolithic period, Sikora said.

This finding once again proves that agriculture plays an important role in shaping European ethnic groups, said Chris Gignoux, a geneticist at the University of California San Francisco.

Reference: Livesicence