The Tlingit Nation has stewarded the land in and around Wrangell since time immemorial, and new biological research from the University at Buffalo New York adds further proof of the genetic continuity of coastal people over thousands of years.
A 3,000-year-old bone fragment found years ago near Wrangell was recently identified as the remains of a woman. Researchers studying paleogenetics in the region collaborated with the Wrangell Cooperative Association to learn more about the early history of the Tlingit and their relationships to other Alaska Native, First Nations and Indigenous groups in the area.
The bone fragment was excavated from Lawyers’ Cave on the mainland east of Wrangell Island in the 1990s, but it wasn’t until 2019 that University at Buffalo biologists started analyzing it. “My adviser, Charlotte Lindqvist, she usually works with bears in Southeast Alaska,” explained Alber Aquil, a Ph.D. student and first author on the study. The team initially assumed the fragment belonged to a bear, but “when we did some basic genetic analysis, we found that, wait a minute, this is a human.”
The team reached out to Tribal Administrator Esther Aaltséen Reese of the Wrangell Cooperative Association to request permission to move forward with research on the tribe’s ancestors. “It was appropriate and respectful to come to the tribe and request permission to move forward,” she said. “It’s a really good representation of what it looks like to collaborate with researchers and with Alaska Natives in a respectful manner.”
Reese and Tlingit language teachers Virginia Oliver and Ruth Demmert worked together to name the ancestor that the fragment came from — Tatóok yík yées sháawat, or young lady in cave. In academic papers, her name is sometimes abbreviated as “TYYS.”
Last August, Reese, Oliver and tribal council member Luella Knapp visited Lawyer’s Cave with drums to sing a song for the ancestor. The experience was “really powerful, very emotional,” said Reese, “and just a wonderful collaboration with the Forest Service to be able to end this whole process that we had gone through with Charlotte (Lindqvist.)”
Plans are underway to repatriate the ancestor’s remains to the WCA in the future.
TYYS is the second such thousands-year-old human remain genetically confirmed from Southeast Alaska, explained Aquil. The first human bone fragment ever found in the region is called “939,” and it also supports genetic continuity.
The two fragments both provide clues about the region’s early history, but on different geographic scales. Thanks to TYYS, researchers have learned that “the same people have been living in Southeast Alaska for at least 3,000 years,” Aquil said. Because of Fragment 939, they discovered that “if you zoom out and look at the coastal region as a whole, the coastal people have been living on the coast for 6,000 years.”
There are two main populations of ancient people in the Pacific Northwest — interior and coastal. Since both bone fragments are more related to the coastal nations than they are to the interior nations, the divergence between the two groups must have happened at least 6,000 years ago.
“The first people to live in the Americas migrated from Siberia across the Bering land bridge more than 20,000 years ago,” the University at Buffalo news service reported in an April 24 article about the female bone fragment. As they slowly made their way across what is now Alaska and down the coast, even as far as South America, some settled in areas along the way.
The research would not have been possible just 20 years ago, Lindqvist told the University at Buffalo News Center. In 2010, Swedish geneticist Svante Pääbo won the Nobel Prize after sequencing the entire genome of an early human. He is known as one of the fathers of paleogenetics. Aquil and Lindqvist relied on his findings when analyzing the genetics of Tatóok yík yées sháawat.
The findings coincide with Tlingit oral histories, which describe the eruption of Mount Edgecumbe. According to geological research, the last major eruption was 4,500 years ago, placing the Tlingit in the region during that time. Since his research suggests 3,000 years of genetic continuity in the region, “the genetic data and the oral traditions are consistent with each other,” explained Aquil.
“Our people have been stewards of the land, we have been historians of this area,” said Reese. “We have been here since time immemorial and the fact that science is upholding our stories is not surprising at all.” She expressed appreciation for Lindqvist’s work and for Jane Smith of the U.S. Forest Service, who was also involved in the project.
Working with Tatóok yík yées sháawat has been “probably one of the most exciting projects I’ve done in my Ph.D.,” he continued. “The thing about human stories is that we find them intrinsically interesting.”
The research was funded by the National Science Foundation. Reese is listed among the authors of the paper. It was recently published in iScience, an open-access journal.
To read the study, visit sciencedirect.com and search for the article’s title: “A paleogenome from a Holocene individual supports genetic continuity in Southeast Alaska.”
Reader Comments(0)