
The ancestry and affiliations of Kennewick Man - shawndumas
http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/vnfv/ncurrent/full/nature14625.html
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The reporting about this over the years has been very confusing, because a lot
of the reporters who were making best efforts to report on this story are
confused by the methods of anthropologists who ascribe population relatedness
to skulls or the methods of genetics who ascribe population relatedness to DNA
samples. The key finding in the article is "We conclude that the currently
available number of independent phenetic markers is too small, and within-
population craniometric variation too large, to permit reliable reconstruction
of the biological population affinities of Kennewick Man." In other words, we
don't have a good enough data set about skull measurement variation in human
populations to assign the Kennewick skull reliably to any population that has
been sampled.

The genetic findings are consistent with those of other studies, for example
the landmark review article "Toward a new history and geography of human genes
informed by ancient DNA" Pickrell, Joseph K. et al. Trends in Genetics ,
Volume 30 , Issue 9 , 377 - 389 DOI:
[http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.tig.2014.07.007](http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.tig.2014.07.007)
which found that every very ancient human DNA samples show patterns of
movement of human beings across long distances and much genetic admixture
between supposedly separated geographic populations.

The chapter about human biodiversity in a general handbook on biodiversity
says it well: "The massive efforts to study the human genome in detail have
produced extraordinary amounts of genetic data. Although we still fail to
understand the molecular bases of most complex traits, including many common
diseases, we now have a clearer idea of the degree of genetic resemblance
between humans and other primate species. We also know that humans are
genetically very close to each other, indeed more than any other primates,
that most of our genetic diversity is accounted for by individual differences
within populations, and that only a small fraction of the species’ genetic
variance falls between populations and geographic groups thereof." Barbujani,
Guido, and Vincenza Colonna. "Genetic basis of human biodiversity: an update."
In Biodiversity Hotspots, pp. 97-119. Springer Berlin Heidelberg, 2011.

