Ice Age Lineage Detected in Genetic Study of Blackfoot Peoples

URBANA, ILLINOIS—Science Magazine reports that the analysis of DNA samples from six living members of the Blackfoot Confederacy, and samples taken from the remains of four ancestors held at the Blackfeet Tribal Historic Preservation Office and three ancestors held by the Smithsonian Institution, supports Blackfoot oral history and archaeological evidence indicating that Blackfoot people have occupied areas of what are now Montana, Alberta, and Saskatchewan for more than 10,000 years. The Blackfoot Confederacy is made up of the Blackfeet, Kainai-Blood, Peigan-Piikani, and Siksika nations. Radiocarbon dating of the ancestors’ remains in the study shows that they are between 100 and 200 years old. Information on the provenance of the remains held at the Smithsonian is incomplete, but they are thought to have been stolen from burials on Blackfoot land in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. The results of the study, which was conducted as a collaboration between the Kainai-Blood Nation and geneticists at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, indicate that modern Blackfoot people are closely related to these ancestors. The study has also determined that modern Blackfoot people descended from a previously unknown genetic lineage. This lineage split from the major known lineage, the ancestors to all other studied Indigenous people living in North and South America, about 18,000 years ago. The researchers also noted that the ancestors’ remains that were sampled as part of the study may be repatriated in the future. Read the original scholarly article about this research in Science Advances. For more on the Blackfoot, go to "Letter From Montana: The Buffalo Chasers."