As reported by Sciencemap.com, the ancestral heritage of Native Americans looks to be more-and-more complex than anything than was assumed just a few decades ago. It looks as if the colonization of the Americas and the migratory patterns of ancient humans goes far beyond anything we have generally given them credit for.
Where did the first Americans come from? Most researchers agree that Paleoamericans moved across the Bering Land Bridge from Asia sometime before 15,000 years ago, suggesting roots in East Asia. But just where the source populations arose has long been a mystery.
The new findings are consistent with a report published in Genetics last year (and almost entirely ignored at the time) that used modern DNA to conclude that Native Americans have significant—and ancient—ties to Europeans. "Our group is very excited to see this," says Alexander Kim, who works with geneticist David Reich at Harvard Medical School in Boston and represented the group at the meeting. Reich's team found that populations they identified as Native American ancestors in Asia apparently also contributed genes to populations in northern Europe. Thus, both studies suggest a source population in Asia whose genes made their way east all the way to the Americas, and west, all the way to Europe.
What else do we not know or just take for granted as truth?
Where did the first Americans come from? Most researchers agree that Paleoamericans moved across the Bering Land Bridge from Asia sometime before 15,000 years ago, suggesting roots in East Asia. But just where the source populations arose has long been a mystery.
Now comes a surprising twist, from the
complete nuclear genome of a Siberian boy who died 24,000 years ago—the
oldest complete
genome of a modern human sequenced to date. His DNA
shows close ties to those of today's Native Americans. Yet he
apparently
descended not from East Asians, but from people who
had lived in Europe or western Asia. The finding suggests that about a
third of the ancestry of today's Native Americans
can be traced to "western Eurasia," with the other two-thirds coming
from
eastern Asia, according to a talk at a meeting*
here by ancient DNA expert Eske Willerslev of the University of
Copenhagen. It also implies that traces of European ancestry
previously detected in modern Native Americans do
not come solely from mixing with European colonists, as most scientists
had assumed, but have much deeper roots.
The new findings are consistent with a report published in Genetics last year (and almost entirely ignored at the time) that used modern DNA to conclude that Native Americans have significant—and ancient—ties to Europeans. "Our group is very excited to see this," says Alexander Kim, who works with geneticist David Reich at Harvard Medical School in Boston and represented the group at the meeting. Reich's team found that populations they identified as Native American ancestors in Asia apparently also contributed genes to populations in northern Europe. Thus, both studies suggest a source population in Asia whose genes made their way east all the way to the Americas, and west, all the way to Europe.
What else do we not know or just take for granted as truth?
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