How to Build an Ancient Man

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Description

All that remains of "Inuk" are a few tufts of tangled human hair dug out of Greenland's permafrost, yet as scientists rebuild the identity of this 4,000-year-old arctic hunter, they rewrite the history of Greenland and the New World's settlement. From these threads of evidence, scientists attempt the impossible: to be the first to reconstruct the identity of a Stone Age human being. In this program, Professor Eske Willerslev and his colleagues analyze DNA using Illumina technology. After washing the sample in bleach, adding enzymes, and baking it, a concentrated sample of almost perfectly preserved genetic material emerges. The team identifies genetic markers that point toward an Asian origin, a finding they claim overturns mainstream theory about how humans populated the Earth. According to Willerslev, these scraps of DNA will enable sequencing of the first ancient genome, marking a new beginning for science.