Your Father was an Iceman…

…but the olfactory resemblence of your mother to elderberries remains unverified by modern science.
Here’s a rare gem from this week’s local news.
A few years ago, a body emerged from a melting glacier in Northern BC. When I first heard this story I inevitably thought of Oetzi, the Austrian iceman, but the BC remains turned out to be much more contemporary. Kwaday Dan Ts’inchi (“long-ago person found” in the local language) may have been born as recently as the early 18th century.
So what can this find tell us about the life and times of Kwaday Dan Ts’inchi?

Well, probably not much that wasn’t already recorded in local oral traditions, or in the accounts of the first European visitors to the region. Weapons, diet, seasonal migration etc. But the relative recency of the remains allowed scientists to perform some genetic analyses that their Austrian counterparts would have died for.
Using (presumably) mitochondrial DNA sequencing, the team has been able to identify 17 living local people who are related to Kwaday Dan Ts’inchi through their maternal line.
The response from the local First Nations people seems to have been very positive. However, I found the following quote very interesting:
“We want to be able to use the science to confirm our cultural knowledge, our beliefs and our family relationships”.
Lawrence Joe, Champagne and Aishihik First Nations heritage director.
I wonder what will happen if future scientific analysis does not confirm those beliefs.
I’ll keep an eye out for further developments, for those poor souls who don’t have access to the Vancouver Sun.