Origin: A Genetic History of the Americas

point of a fight between some archaeologists and the Indigenous-led
movement (which also included non-Indigenous scientists and bioethicists)
for control over their ancestors’ remains. The fight would be a hugely
significant event in the history of anthropological and Native relationships.
Its effects are still felt today (7).
After extensive legal wrangling, the scientists won the case. They were
allowed to study the remains and produced a detailed, 670-page book on
their research (8). From their work, we learned much about the life of an
ancient person from this era.
The Ancient One’s body reflected the wear and tear of a hard life. His
teeth were worn and damaged from a lifetime of eating abrasive food,
possibly dried fish (he had eaten a lot of salmon in his lifetime). He had
some small bony growths in his ear canals (called auditory exotoses), which
suggests that he had been exposed repeatedly to cold and wet environments.
They would have slightly damaged his hearing.
The man was almost certainly a hunter: His spine and joints showed
early stages of arthritis and attested to rigorous activity since childhood. His
right shoulder resembled that of professional baseball players: extremely
developed, damaged with stress fractures, and probably chronically sore
from years of throwing a spear using an atlatl (a spearthrower).
Several of his ribs had been broken from a hard blow to his right chest.
Was the blow delivered by a kick from an animal he was dispatching? Was
it caused by an accident? It’s impossible to tell. The ribs healed in a way
that shows he was unable to rest comfortably following the injury—a
testament to a life of activity. Another event early in life caused a small
depression fracture to his skull. It had long since healed. Sometime when he
was a teenager, the man had been impaled by a spear, possibly a hunting
accident or violent attack. The spear had been thrown with such force that
its stone tip broke off in the man’s hip. He’d been lucky—the spear missed
his organs and did minimal damage (although he would have taken a long
time to recover from the injury, and the stone point would remain in his
bone forever). Or perhaps it wasn’t luck, but rather his own skill at hunting
that caused him to pivot in time to successfully minimize the damage. ii
He was likely between 35 and 40 years old when he died. We don’t
know what killed him. It’s possible that he died from an infection, but he
could equally likely have died from something else that left no trace on his