The hair also provided biological material for the mitochondrial DNA analysis.

The hair shaft itself contains a limited amount of DNA — less than the tooth root or bone, but potentially sufficient for mitochondrial analysis under good preservation conditions.

The DNA recovered from Kwäday Dän Ts’ìnchi’s hair contributed to the characterization of his mitochondrial sequence, supplementing the data from other tissue sources.

The hair, in its sequential dietary record and its DNA, is a direct physical connection between the man who died in the mountains several centuries ago and the scientific methods of the twenty-first century.

It carries, encoded in its protein structure, a month-by-month record of where he had been and what he had eaten in the period before his death.