European mummy not our daddy

2008-10-30 22:22

Paris - Gene scientists delving into the 5 300-year-old remains of Oetzi the Iceman, the mysterious mummified man found high in the Alps, say he most likely has no modern-day relatives.

Italian and British experts looked into the mitochondrial DNA - genetic material handed on down the maternal line - teased from Oetzi's body at the South Tyrol Museum of Archaeology in Bolzano, Italy.

Mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA) is very stable, changing only gradually as it is handed down the generations, which means it is an excellent yardstick for genealogy.

Oetzi's mtDNA belonged to a broad genetic category called K1, which is still common in Europe today, the investigators said on Thursday.

However, modern Europeans belong to three sub-lineages of K1, whereas Oetzi's sub-lineage has most probably petered out.

"Our analysis confirms that Oetzi belonged to a previously unidentified lineage of K1 that has not been seen to date in modern European populations," said Martin Richards, a professor of biology at the University of Leeds in northern England.

"The frequency of genetic lineages tends to change over time, due to random variations in the number of children people have - a process known as genetic drift - and as a result, some variants die out. Our research suggests that Oetzi's lineage may indeed have become extinct."

Oetzi, found in the eastern Alps near the Austrian-Italian border in 1991, was preserved over the millennia thanks to deep chill and layers of snow.

His body was found to be in an astonishing state of conservation, along with clothes and weapons that have given many clues into how people lived in the Late Neolithic age.

Scientists believe Oetzi was around 46-years-old when he died. He had been severely wounded by an arrow and possibly dispatched with a blow to the head by a cudgel.

In 1994, a probe into his mtDNA suggested that descendants of Oetzi may be alive today in Europe, but Richards said that this was based only on a small section of the telltale gene sequence.

Richards did not rule out the possibility that the samples of mtDNA from contemporary Europeans had failed to provide a full picture, which meant that Oetzi's lineage could still be around today.

But only a fuller sampling among the inhabitants of the Alpine valleys where Oetzi was born could provide the answer.

The latest investigation, led by Franco Rollo and Luca Ermini of the University of Camerino in Italy, was published in a British journal, Current Biology.

- SAPA