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After DNA testing indicates that the 10,600-year-old corpse is one of their ancestors, a Native American tribe reburyes him.
It's thought that the Spirit Cave Man passed away at the age of 40.
The cave's natural preservation was aided by its heat and dryness.
According to DNA testing, he was a Fallon Paiute-Shoshone ancestor.
A native American tribe in North America has reburied the world's oldest mummy, which dates back 10,600 years, after experts have shown that the body actually belonged to them.
The 40-year-old guy who had been mummified belonged to the Fallon Paiute-Shoshone tribe, which is Nevada's native Native American population.
They did not want him to become a museum exhibit open to the public, so they battled to have him buried in a fitting manner as if he were their own "father."
Disputing with his origins ever since his 1940 discovery, the 'Spirit Cave Mummy' has had his origins questioned.
Now that the man's DNA has been mapped, an international team led by the University of Cambridge has successfully concluded a court struggle that lasted nearly eight decades.
University of Cambridge Professor Willeslev stated: "I promised the tribe my group wouldn't do the DNA testing unless they gave permission."
"It was decided that the mummy would be returned to the tribe if Spirit Cave had Native American ancestry."
The mummy wore moccasins and was covered in reed mats and a blanket made of rabbit'skin.
Three additional people's cremated or partially cremated remains were also discovered with him.
The petrus, a tiny bone inside the skull, contained DNA that researchers painstakingly retrieved and revealed the man's ancestry to modern Native Americans.
The geneticist was present at a private reburial ceremony earlier this year, according to the study that was published in Science.
"What became very clear to me was that this was a deeply emotional and deeply cultural event," said Professor Willeslev.
It can be difficult for a European to comprehend the tribe's genuine feelings for Spirit Cave, but for them, it would be like burying their mother, father, sister, or brother.
We can all picture how it may feel if our parents were featured in an exhibition and shared our affection for Spirit Cave.
"It has been an honour to collaborate with them."
The tribe was informed at every stage of the two-year project, which started in 2016.
To meet the team, two members went to Professor Willeslev's lab in Copenhagen.
They were there when every DNA sample was collected.
"The Tribe has had a lot of experience with members of the scientific community, mostly negative," the Fallon Paiute-Shoshone Tribe stated in a statement.
Eske Willerslev was one of the few scientists, meanwhile, who appeared to comprehend the viewpoint of the Tribe.
He was available to answer our inquiries, kept us informed of the progress, and took the time to get to know the Tribe.
"His new study confirms that the man taken from Spirit Cave is our Native American ancestor, as we have always known from our oral tradition and other evidence."
The Spirit Cave skeleton's genome holds greater relevance than the legal and cultural conflict between the US government and the tribe.
Furthermore, it shed light on how prehistoric people travelled and settled throughout the Americas.
The migration of inhabitants from Alaska to Patagonia in the south was followed by the scientists.
They frequently drifted apart and travelled in small, solitary groups, taking their chances.
Additionally, the study examined the DNA of some well-known and contentious prehistoric remains from North and South America.
These included the oldest human fossils in Chilean Patagonia, a mummy from the Incas, skeletons of "giant" men found in Nevada's Lovelock Cave, and skulls with beheadings found in Brazil's Lagoa Santa.
According to Professor Willeslev, Spirit Cave and Lagoa Santa were the subject of intense controversy since, via the use of craniometry, it was established that the shape of their skulls differed from that of modern Native Americans, leading to their classification as so-called "Paleoamericans."
Our research establishes that Spirit Cave and Lagoa Santa belonged to a genetically closer group of Native Americans than those living now.
It has been demonstrated that individuals who appear unlike to one another can nonetheless be closely related. Therefore, examining a population's bumps and shapes does not provide a whole picture of its genetic heritage, the speaker continued.
The second oldest human remains from Alaska's Trail Creek Cave, a young girl's 9,000-year-old milk teeth, was also examined by the researchers.
It took fifty years for the Spirit Cave mummy, which was discovered in a little rocky cove in the Great Basin Desert, to be fully comprehended.
The initial estimate for the age of the embalmed remains was 1,500–2000 years.
However, additional textile and hair tests conducted in the 1990s determined the skeleton's age to be 10,600 years old.
Under the Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act, the Fallon Paiute-Shoshone Tribe, a tribe of Native Americans residing in Nevada close to Spirit Cave, claimed cultural association with the skeleton and asked for the remains to be returned to their homeland right away.
The request was denied because the ancestry was contested. The tribe then sued the federal government, and in that lawsuit, tribal leaders faced off against anthropologists who maintained that the remains should remain on display in a museum since they offered priceless insights into the earliest inhabitants of North America.
After twenty years of impasse, the tribe finally agreed that Professor Willeslev may sequence the genome using DNA taken from the Spirit Cave for the first time.
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