In a long list of hypotheses going back decades, researchers have tried to explain the peopling of North and South America as a series of separate waves of immigration by ancient people from Siberia. For decades, in fact, researchers have been arguing about how many distinct peoples walked over the massive, 600,000-square-mile land bridge that once connected Siberia and Alaska and, also, how many thousands of years ago each of those migrations occurred.
In the last few years, some researchers have begun to suspect that a single group of Siberians may have walked onto that land bridge and became marooned there for several thousand years before traveling the rest of the way into the Americas. But others have been holding out for a two-wave hypothesis, with a first wave of Asians from as far away as India and a later wave of people from farther north.
Today, in Science, an international team of geneticists, evolutionary biologists, and statisticians concluded that all Native Americans descended from a single immigration event out of Siberia. The team looked at the DNA from 110 modern Native Americans and 23 who died 200 to 6,000 years ago and compared their genomes to those of more than 3,000 individuals from around the world.
One of the lead authors is María Ávila-Arcos, PhD, a postdoctoral researcher in the lab of Stanford professor of genetics Carlos Bustamante, PhD. Ávila-Arcos led many of the statistical analyses for the paper, including comparison of whole human genomes from diverse Native American populations—both modern and ancient. Bustamante is also a co-author, along with Stanford professor of structural biology and of microbiology and immunology, Peter Parham, PhD, five other Stanford researchers, and dozens of researchers from around the world.
“For a long time,” said Bustamante, “we’ve sought to understand the genetic history of the first people to populate the Americas and how they relate to modern day populations. This project brought together a large interdisciplinary team and amassed the largest data set to date on this problem. We found strong evidence for a single major wave and subsequent divergence of the founding population.”
The new genetic analysis suggests that the first immigrants to America left Siberia no more than 23,000 years ago, and then lived in isolation on the grassy plains of the Beringia land bridge for no more than 8,000 years. Those plains disappeared beneath rising seas 10,000 years ago.
Once in the Americas, ancient Native Americans split into two major lineages about 13,000 years ago. One lineage populated both North and South America and one stayed in North America.
Previously: Kennewick Man’s origins revealed by genetic study, Using genetics to answer fundamental questions in biology, medicine and anthropology, Melting pot or mosaic? International collaboration studies genomic diversity in Mexico
Movie by: National Climatic Data Center/NOAA via DarthMaximolonus
- See more at: http://scopeblog.stanford.edu/2015/07/21/genetic-study-supports-single-migratory-origin-for-aboriginal-americans-2/#sthash.9wHC2O0P.dpufMovie by: National Climatic Data Center/NOAA via DarthMaximolonus
Genetic study supports single migratory origin for aboriginal Americans - See more at: http://scopeblog.stanford.edu/2015/07/21/genetic-study-supports-single-migratory-origin-for-aboriginal-americans-2/#sthash.9wHC2O0P.dpuf
Notes for Louis Sheehan
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