Further to the TRM blog on Sunday explaining the sources of evidence used for the “mockumentary” tale – TONGARIRO Skulduggery – the following is to answer readers’ DNA questions, as an update from ) As some sceptical readers rubbished the ridiculous plot as unbelievable – to find a match for a DNA sample to prove Maori heritage some 800 years later – this is the perfect precedent.
Could this be possible?
Warning – this has nothing to do with our usual fly fishing updates, but answering the non-believers may be more interesting…
Ever since “Tongariro Skulduggery” was published over four years ago, many TRM inmates and other readers have doubted and questioned or even scoffed at the plot – based on the extreme unlikelihood of discovering two identical matching DNA’s after over 800 years? I wonder what the odds would be?
Traditionally, fishos and authors do not reveal the source of any information, but this fantastic story has been questioned so many times that SWMBO (She Who Must Be Obeyed is the Oral History Manager at TRM) agrees that an explanation is needed. This revealing post is to confirm and explain how a similar DNA match has happened elsewhere after 9,000 years! Such is the miracle of DNA. For doubters, this blog could be interpreted as a confession of where such an extremely unlikely plot might have stemmed from?
At some time in 1972-73 we visited the Cheddar Gorge caves near Bristol in Somerset, UK. – where buried amongst numerous skeletal remains in 1903 they discovered a “Mesolithic” human male fossil, a complete skeleton discovered at Gough’s Cave in Cheddar Gorge, near the village of Cheddar. He is famous as being the oldest complete skeleton ever found in the UK. Radiocarbon dating indicated he died around 7150 BC.
“Mesolithic” is the ancient cultural period between the Paleolithic (Old Stone Age), with its chipped stone tools, and the Neolithic (New Stone Age), with its polished stone tools, but I’m sure you knew that.
At that time the British Isles were still linked to Europe by marshes and animals such as wild horses and antelope and bears lived there as confirmed by skeleton remains.
The archaeologists’ analysis decided he was about 23 when he died from a violent blow to the head so that he may have been murdered. Interestingly, they deduced from the pattern of bone cuts that the bone cuts were the same as those on animal bones nearby; these early ancestors were cannibals! This is also why the “Cheddar Man’ discovery was so valuable as most other skeletons from the post-ice-age period had been chopped up to suck the marrow.
Then fast forward to the present. DNA’s (deoxyribonucleic acid) double helix had been discovered in the 1950’s. Now everyone is aware of DNA being used to solve murders, sheep are cloned and crops are genetically modified. People can now predict personal chances of living a long life or suffering from obesity, demystifying what were matters of providence, fate, or even morality.
In 1997 Oxford University Institute of Molecular Medicine finally extracted mitochondrial material from the teeth – a molar from the Cheddar Man. Then after taking swabs from local people they announced they found a complete match, a blood relation after 9000 years. Perhaps just as remarkable, Adrian Targett was a local history teacher who lived less than a mile from the caves.
So suck on that… Tongariro Slulduggery’s DNA plot over 800 years was relatively recent.
