MACEDONIAN DNA-WE WERE HERE YOU WERE NOT
Dirty Harry
1997 WL 9684427
Popular Science
COPYRIGHT 1997 Times Mirror Magazines Inc.
Sunday, June 1, 1997
Vol. 250, No. 6, ISSN: 0161-7370
Stone age kin. (a Briton's relationship with a 9,000-year-old skeleton is
established through mitochondrial DNA)
Adrian Targett can trace his family tree back to a 9,000-year-old
skeleton.
Adrian Targett teaches modern history, and now he has become part of
it: Genetics testing recently revealed that the 42-year-old
schoolmaster is related to a famous 9,000-year-old skeleton known as
Cheddar Man .
Cheddar Man was a Stone Age hunter-gatherer. When he died, he was
buried in a limestone cave in what is now the town of Cheddar, in
southwest England. Ninety centuries later, a TV team making a local
history program asked: Could there be a modern descendant of Cheddar
Man ?
To search for a genetic match, researchers from Oxford University and
London's Museum of Natural History extracted DNA from a tooth cavity in
Cheddar Man , and determined the sequence of base pairs - the chemicals
that are the building blocks of the genetic code - in a section of the
DNA. "By looking at the sequence," says Bryan Sykes, a human geneticist
at Oxford, "we can easily see the relationships between individuals."
After sequencing Cheddar Man's DNA, the researchers visited the Kings
of Wessex School to obtain cell samples from children and teachers
whose families had lived in the area for a long time. Toothbrush-like
devices collected cells from the insides of the volunteers' cheeks.
Later, the TV crew returned with the news. Recalls Targett: "The
announcer said, 'There is one match - and it's you!"'
The researchers used mitochondrial DNA, which is found in the
energy-producing parts of cells and is easier to recover than DNA from
the cell nucleus. "There's just a lot more of it," explains Sykes.
Nuclear DNA - the type used in criminal cases like the O.J. Simpson
trial - comes from both parents. But mitochondrial DNA is passed
virtually unchanged from mother to daughter.
That means Cheddar Man and Targett shared a female ancestor. In the
sequences of 300 base pairs that were compared, there was only one
difference between the skeleton and the history teacher. "That's about
what can be expected from natural mutation over 10,000 years," says
Sykes.
Targett lives just a half mile from Cheddar Man's burial cave. "I've
no knowledge that any of my ancestors lived here," he says, however.
Targett is probably not the only living relative of the
9,000-year-old skeleton. One percent of all Britons and many Europeans
may be related to Cheddar Man , according to Sykes.
The research on Cheddar Man's genes strengthens the idea that modern
Britons are descended from hunter-gatherers. Stone Age England was
forested with fruit and nut trees, and had lots of game. "It was quite
a pleasant environment," says Chris Stringer, a human origins
researcher at the museum who collaborated on the work. Middle Eastern
farmers brought agriculture - and their genes - to Britain about 6,000
years ago. But Britons like Targett are from far older stock.
TABULAR OR GRAPHIC MATERIAL SET FORTH IN THIS DOCUMENT IS NOT DISPLAYABLE
photograph map illustration
---- INDEX REFERENCES ----
KEY WORDS: MITOCHONDRIAL DNA GENETIC MARKERS HUMAN GENETICS
Word Count: 469
6/1/97 POPLRSCI 90
END OF DOCUMENT
Copr. (C) West 1999 No Claim to Orig. U.S. Govt. Works
Term
3/9/97 Orange County (Cal.) Reg. A20
1997 WL 7420184
The Orange County Register
Sunday, March 9, 1997
NEWS
British teacher adds caveman to his family tree // GENEALOGY: Adrian
Targett lives less than a mile from the caves where 'Cheddar Man ' was
found in
1903.
JILL SERJEANT: Reuters
British scientists Saturday celebrated their feat in
tracing a living descendant of a 9,000-year-old skeleton and
establishing the world's oldest known family tree.
In an astonishing piece of detective work, they matched DNA
material extracted from the tooth cavity of Britain's oldest
complete skeleton with that of a 42-year-old history teacher.
The genetic material showed without doubt that teacher Adrian
Targett is a direct descendant through his mother's line of the
skeleton known as "Cheddar Man " _ found in 1903 in caves in Cheddar
Gorge in southwest England.
"It is extraordinary that the DNA survives at all, but we were
able to extract it and sequence it," said Bryan Sykes of Oxford
University's Institute of Molecular Medicine.
"They would have shared a common ancestor about 10,000 years
ago, so they are related," Sykes added.
The results of the tests, carried out for a television program
on archaelogy, were announced Friday and published in Saturday
newspapers.
Targett lives less than a mile from the caves where Cheddar
Man was found. Previous tests have shown that Cheddar Man suffered
a violent death at the age of about 23 in 7150 B.C.
The Oxford University team spent months analyzing samples from
the skeleton before taking DNA swabs from about 20 local people
whose families had lived in the Cheddar area for generations.
Targett, who teaches modern history, said he took part only to
make up the numbers.
"I was astonished when the scientists said I was the
descendant," he told reporters. "Appropriately enough, I am a
history teacher, but I have to admit I know next to nothing about
Cheddar Man . I suppose I really should try to include him in my
family tree."
Targett can now boast a lineage centuries older than that of
Britain's royal family, which traces its heritage back to 829 A.D.
The oldest previously recorded relative was the great-great
great-great-grandfather of Confucius, who lived in the eighth
century B.C.
Scientists said the odds on finding a match were not as
enormous as might appear because of the relatively small number of
people who lived in Britain's Stone Age.
Sykes said the discovery strengthened the theory that the
ancestors of modern-day Britons were hunter-gatherers rather than
farmers.
"There has been an idea that most modern Europeans are
descended from farmers that came in from the Middle East about
10,000 years ago, reaching Britain about 6,000 years ago.
"This kind of evidence shows that is probably not true and
that modern Britons are in fact descended from the earlier
inhabitants like Cheddar Man who existed on hunting and gathering
and who were not farmers," Sykes told BBC radio.
Scientists said they were now hoping to use the same DNA
sampling technique to prove whether Neanderthal man, which died out
about 25,000 years ago, was linked to homo-sapiens humans or was a
completely different species.
Professor Chris Stringer, a researcher at the Natural History
Museum, said, "This work may finally let us end a 150-year-old
argument which has existed since a Neanderthal man fossil was first
found."
Targett, an only child who has no children himself, was still
coming to terms with the idea of having a caveman as a relative.
But his wife, Catherine, said, "Maybe this explains why he
likes his steaks rare."
---- INDEX REFERENCES ----
KEY WORDS: EUROPE; ARCHEOLOGY; FOUND; UNUSUAL; FAMILIES; HISTORY
NEWS SUBJECT: Science & Technology (SCN)
STORY ORIGIN: LONDON, ENGLAND
REGION: Europe (EU)
EDITION: MORNING
Word Count: 544
3/9/97 OCREG A20
END OF DOCUMENT
Copr. (C) West 1999 No Claim to Orig. U.S. Govt. Works
June R Harton
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Aryan666
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