Whole Genome of Ancient Man is Decoded

I love this stuff:

The genome of a man who lived on the western coast of Greenland some 4,000 years ago has been decoded, thanks to the surprisingly good preservation of DNA in a swatch of his hair so thick it was originally thought to be from a bear.

This is the first time the whole genome of an ancient human has been analyzed, and it joins the list of just eight whole genomes of living people that been have been decoded so far. It also sheds new light on the settlement of North America by showing there was a hitherto unsuspected migration of people across the continent, from Siberia to Greenland, some 5,500 years ago.

The Greenlander belonged to a Paleo-Eskimo culture called the Saqqaq by archaeologists. On the basis of his genome, the Saqqaq man’s closest living relatives are the Chukchis, people who live at the easternmost tip of Siberia. His ancestors split apart from Chukchis some 5,500 years ago, according to genetic calculations, implying the Saqqaq people’s ancestors must have traveled across the northern edges of North America until they reached Greenland.

And finally:

The Saqqaq man’s genome is so complete that the Danish researchers have been able to reconstruct his probable appearance and susceptibility to disease from the genetic information in his genome. They predict he would have had brown eyes because of variations, at four positions along his DNA, that are associated with brown eye color in East Asians.