On scraps of DNA of one of the most famous Indians, his living great-grandson was found

US citizen Ernie Lappoint turned out to be the great-grandson of the leader of the Sitting Bull - he became one of the most famous

Indians and was a key figure in historyindigenous resistance to the US military. He became one of the leaders of the tribal union in the early 1860s. The Sioux tribes have won several battles against the US regular army and volunteer troops.

It is known that the funeral of the leader was held in secret,the ceremony was attended only by an undertaker and a military doctor, since he was killed by a lieutenant and a police sergeant. Relatives later exhumed the alleged remains and reburied the body closer to their homeland. As a result, the exact location of the grave could not be found.

To learn more about the personality of the leader and hisdescendants, scientists launched a project to extract DNA from his scalp. As a result, paleogenetics were able to restore only 0.8% of the genome, but this was enough to clarify its relationship with living people.

We have extracted a fairly large amount of DNA from the hair.Sitting Bull and compared them with modern Sioux genomes. The results show that Ernie Lappoint is indeed Sitting Bull's great-great-grandson and his closest living relative.

Eske Villerslev, professor at the University of Cambridge

As a result, it was revealed that Lappoint and his four sisters are the closest modern descendants of Sitting Bull.

The authors hope that their work will help find the exact location of the Sitting Bull's grave and resolve the serious controversy that still persists in American history.

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