In the 1970s, a 400-year-old grave was found at Lake Kitka in Kuusamo, containing a silver brooch and a bird-shaped pendant. The deceased was thought to have been a shaman – but who he really was remained a mystery for decades.
The answer finally came from a tooth. Professor Päivi Onkamo of the University of Turku, an expert in evolutionary genomics, and her research group determined the individual’s genetic makeup, and even what they had eaten and drunk during their lifetime – uncovering a surprising connection all the way to Iceland. The Kuusamo shaman is just one of many ancient Finns whose lives Onkamo’s group has uncovered through DNA over the past decade.
This kind of ancient DNA research, however, cannot be done with lab work alone. Samples are often degraded and contaminated, and the genetic material within them has to be sifted out using high-performance computing. Even then, the result reveals nothing on its own without extensive reference data: a single analysis draws on dozens of international databases and substantial computing capacity.
“Without these databases, doing this work would be impossible,” Onkamo says.
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ELIXIR is partly funded by the European Commission