Face of Greenland

The 4,000-year-old face of an ancient Greenlander has been revealed after scientists deciphered about 80 per cent of the man’s genome using DNA found by archaeologists. ” He had brown eyes, non-white skin, ‘shovel-shaped’ front teeth and was at high risk of going bald and suffering ear infections. Oh, and he lived 4,000 years ago and nothing remains except a clump of his thick, dark hair. The first, almost complete genome of an ancient human being has revealed some of the traits of a man living in the high Arctic of western Greenland at the time of the pharaohs of Egypt. Scientists have deciphered about 80 per cent of the man’s genome by extracting DNA from hair excavated from an archaeological site in north-western Greenland that was home to the ancient Saqqaq culture, the first known people in the New World Arctic. He was male with an A+ blood group. He was short, an adaptation to the cold weather, and had dry earwax, which made him prone to infections. Scientists also found “Inuk” was more closely related to the modern tribes of eastern Siberia than to present-day Inuits or native North Americans. This suggests a hitherto-unknown migration from Siberia to Greenland about 5,000 years ago, said Professor Eske Willerslev of Copenhagen University, whose study is published in Nature.”