World’s oldest mummy is finally laid to rest: Native American tribe reburies 10,600-year-old corpse after DNA tests prove he is one of their ancestors
- The Spirit Cave Man is believed to have died when he was 40 years old
- He was naturally preserved by the heat and aridity of the cave he was found in
- DNA tests show he was an an ancestor of the Fallon Paiute-Shoshone people
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The world’s oldest mummy dating back 10,600 years has been reburied by a native North American tribe after scientists proved the body really does belong to them.
The 40-year-old mummified man was an ancestor of the Fallon Paiute-Shoshone people – the indigenous Native Americans of Nevada.
They fought to have him properly laid to rest as if he was their own ‘father’ because they did not want him turned into a public museum exhibit.
Known as the ‘Spirit Cave Mummy’, he was dug up in 1940 and his origins have been disputed ever since.
The 40-year-old mummified man was an ancestor of the Fallon Paiute-Shoshone people – the indigenous Native Americans of Nevada
WHAT IS THE SPIRIT CAVE MUMMY?
The Spirit Cave Man is the world’s oldest mummy.
Scientists estimate the corpse found in Nevada is 10,600 years old.
The man is believed to have been around 40 years old when he died.
He was naturally preserved by the heat and aridity of the cave it was found in.
In 1997, the Paiute-Shoshone Tribe of Nevada’s Fallon Reservation enacted The Native American Grave Protection and Repatriation Act (NAGPRA) to claim the Spirit Cave Mummy’s remains.
A two-decade battle with the US government followed to grab control of the corpse.
Now a legal battle lasting almost eight decades has finally been resolved after an international team led by the University of Cambridge mapped the man’s genome.
Professor Willeslev from the University of Cambridge said: ‘I assured the tribe my group would not do the DNA testing unless they gave permission.
‘It was agreed that if Spirit Cave was genetically a Native American the mummy would be repatriated to the tribe.’
The mummy was shrouded in a rabbit-skin blanket and reed mats, and was wearing moccasins.
He was also found with the cremated or partial remains of three other individuals.
Researchers painstakingly extracted DNA from the petrus, a small bone inside the skull, which showed the man was related to present day Native Americans.
A private reburial ceremony was held earlier this year which was attended by the geneticist, according to the study published in Science.
Professor Willeslev explained: ‘What became very clear to me was this was a deeply emotional and deeply cultural event.
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‘The tribe have real feelings for Spirit Cave, which as a European it can be hard to understand but for us it would very much be like burying our mother, father, sister or brother.
‘We can all imagine what it would be like if our father or mother was put in an exhibition and they had that same feeling for Spirit Cave.
‘It has been a privilege to work with them.’
The two-year project began in 2016 and the tribe were kept informed throughout.
Two members visited Professor Willeslev’s lab in Copenhagen to meet the team.
They were present when all of the DNA sampling was taken.
The study also analysed the DNA of a series of famous and controversial ancient remains across North and South America. These included skeltons of ‘giant’ men discovered in Lovelock Cave in Nevada, decapitated skulls unearthed in Lagoa Santa in Brazil (pictured)
The Fallon Paiute-Shoshone Tribe said in a statement: ‘The Tribe has had a lot of experience with members of the scientific community, mostly negative.
‘However, there are a handful of scientists that seemed to understand the Tribe’s perspective and Eske Willerslev was one of them.
‘He took the time to acquaint himself with the Tribe, kept us well-informed of the process, and was available to answer our questions.
‘His new study confirms what we have always known from our oral tradition and other evidence – that the man taken from his final resting place in Spirit Cave is our Native American ancestor.’
The genome of the Spirit Cave skeleton has wider significance beyond the legal and cultural dispute between the tribe and the US Government.
It also helped reveal how ancient humans moved and settled across the Americas.
The scientists were able to track the movement of populations from Alaska to as far south as Patagonia.
They often separated from each other and took their chances travelling in small pockets of isolated groups.
The study also analysed the DNA of a series of famous and controversial ancient remains across North and South America.
These included skeltons of ‘giant’ men discovered in Lovelock Cave in Nevada, decapitated skulls unearthed in Lagoa Santa in Brazil, an Inca mummy and the oldest human fossils in Chilean Patagonia.
Professor Willeslev said: ‘Spirit Cave and Lagoa Santa were very controversial because they were identified as so-called ‘Paleoamericans’ based on craniometry – it was determined that the shape of their skulls was different to current day Native Americans.
‘Our study proves that Spirit Cave and Lagoa Santa were actually genetically closer to contemporary Native Americans.
He added: ‘Looking at the bumps and shapes of a head does not help you understand the true genetic ancestry of a population – we have proved that you can have people who look very different but are closely related.’
The researchers also looked at the second oldest human remains from Trail Creek Cave in Alaska – a 9,000 year old milk tooth from a young girl.
The Spirit Cave mummy was unearthed in a small rocky alcove in the Great Basin Desert but not properly understood for 50 years.
The embalmed remains were initially believed to be between 1,500 and 2000 years old.
But during the 1990s new textile and hair testing dated the skeleton to be 10,600 years old.
The Fallon Paiute-Shoshone Tribe, a group of Native Americans based in Nevada near Spirit Cave, claimed cultural affiliation with the skeleton and requested immediate repatriation of the remains under the Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act.
The request was refused because the ancestry was disputed, the tribe sued the federal government and the lawsuit pitted tribal leaders against anthropologists, who argued the remains provided invaluable insights into North America’s earliest inhabitants and should continue to be displayed in a museum.
The deadlock continued for 20 years until the tribe agreed Professor Willeslev could carry out genome sequencing on DNA extracted from the Spirit Cave for the first time.
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