The Stories Science Tells

I watched a fascinating documentary the other night, "Stories From the Stone Age: The Human Adventure." In this fascinating film, scientists track the spread of humanity out of Africa and across the globe. The part of this epic story that keeps tickling my mind is the bit about Native Americans.

In 1968 the skeletal remains of an ancient child were unearthed in Montana, and dated to over 12,000 years ago. Known as the "Anzick Child," it is the only human remains we've ever found from the Clovis Period, when Native Americans were first colonizing North America. Scientists have long thought that Native American peoples crossed the land bridge from Asia. And Native Americans have always maintained that they originated in North America, and were NOT Asian.

With the Anzick Child, science had a chance to really discover the truth about the ancestry of the native peoples of North and South America. This is thanks to our newfound ability to sequence the human genome, even from the DNA of ancient samples like this one. It was touching to watch the sensitive interaction of the leading scientist with local native tribes around this inquiry. Many of the tribal members supported the scientific investigation - others felt strongly that digging up the graves of their ancestors is wrong, and cannot be justified. Nevertheless the scientists went forward, and discovered something very interesting about the true origins of Native Americans. It turns out Native American people are 1/3 Siberian, and 2/3 East Asian.

This is where this becomes very interesting to me as a storyteller. The lead scientist, Sarah Anzick, delivered the results of the genome sequencing to Crow tribal member Shane Doyle at the site of the discovery of the Anzick Child. He became very emotional, and began drumming and singing. Then he expressed his belief that the scientific results do not conflict with Native belief about their origins - in fact they support it. This is why: the unique blend of Siberian and Asian genetics exists nowhere else in the world. You could say that Native Americans "came from" North America.

Somewhere across the Bering land bridge into Canada, on an epic human journey of survival and discovery, Siberian peoples and Asian peoples mingled and merged until they were one unique race of people. The genetic code of more than 80% of Native North Americans come from this lineage. The percentage is even higher for Native South Americans.

Many tribal people expressed gratitude to the child for telling us this important story about their ancestral roots. But as Shane Doyle put it, "Now it's time to put him back where his parents left him, and where his grandparents shed tears for him. It's just the right thing to do." The Anzick Child was reburied by local Montana tribal leaders, with much ceremony to honor their oldest known ancestor.

At only a little over a year old, the Anzick Child had a short life on earth, but thousands of years later made a big impact on our understanding of the human story.