Scientists sequence 4,000-year-old human genome from Greenland

An international team of researchers, led by experts from the Natural History Museum of Denmark, has successfully sequenced the nuclear genome of a human who lived 4,000 years ago. Using a single hair found frozen in Greenland, scientists reconstructed approximately 80% of the genome of a male individual nicknamed ‘Inuk’ from the extinct Saqqaq culture.

The findings, published in Nature, reveal that the Saqqaq people were more closely linked to tribes from northwestern Siberia than to the modern Inuit populations. The study indicates that Inuk’s ancestors migrated from northeastern Siberia to the New World between 4,400 and 6,400 years ago in a migratory wave independent of Native Americans and Inuit ancestors.

Genetic analysis also provided physical descriptions of the individual, noting dark skin, brown eyes, a stocky build, a predisposition to baldness, and A-positive blood type. The research utilized advanced genomic sequencing technologies, including contributions from China.