The Atacama skeleton
- Garry Nolan1,3 and
- Atul Butte2,3
- 1Baxter Laboratory for Stem Cell Biology, Department of Microbiology and Immunology, Stanford University, Stanford, California 94305, USA;
- 2Institute for Computational Health Sciences, University of California San Francisco, San Francisco, California 94158, USA
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↵3 These authors have equal senior authorship.
This extract was created in the absence of an abstract.
The recent publication of the genetic analysis of the so-called Atacama skeleton (Bhattacharya et al. 2018) has raised important questions in the biological, archaeological, and anthropological communities. We have clearly stated previously that this skeleton should be repatriated and accorded proper respect as human remains and we echo recent demands for its repatriation.
Further, we feel that our results call for immediate and more urgent attention to the many complex issues related to the study of human remains. A recent editorial in Nature (Callaway 2018) that relates to studies of ancient humans, poignantly speaks to the respect that is called for when studying any human remains, and our recent communications with scientists, especially Chilean researchers, have deepened our insight into the need to incorporate cultural, historical, and political perspectives when studying ancient (or non-ancient) human DNA.
There are varying accounts regarding the original discovery of the skeleton, including some that state the skeleton was originally found in 2003 on a shelf in a building near a church in La Noria. It was then reportedly sold at least twice in Chile, and is now privately …
