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In the local people's tongue, her name means 'sunrise girl-child', and even though she only lived for six fleeting weeks, she's already told scientists more than we ever knew about the very first Native Americans.
Sunrise girl-child ("Xach'itee'aanenh T'eede Gaay") lived some 11,500 years ago in what is now called Alaska, and her ancient DNA reveals not only the origins of Native American society, but reminds the world of a whole population of people forgotten by history millennia ago.
"We didn't know this population existed," says anthropologist Ben Potter from the University of Alaska Fairbanks.
"It would be difficult to overstate the importance of this newly revealed people to our understanding of how ancient populations came to inhabit the Americas."
[...] "[This is] the first direct evidence of the initial founding Native American population," Potter says. "It is markedly more complex than we thought."
Source: http://www.sciencealert.com/dna-11-000-years-ago-reveals-origins-native-americans-ancient-beringians
J. Víctor Moreno-Mayar, et. al. Terminal Pleistocene Alaskan genome reveals first founding population of Native Americans. Nature, doi:10.1038/nature25173
(Score: 3, Informative) by Arik on Tuesday January 09 2018, @05:15AM (2 children)
"other people found their way here by different routes."
"There is nothing to indicate that all Native American's ancestors came across from Siberia."
At this point there's a fairly strong absence of evidence argument. Of course it's perfectly possible that Polynesians, Phoenicians, and whoever else actually set foot on the continent at some point in time (we can be pretty sure the vikings and chinese did of course,) but there's a pretty complete lack of any evidence for most of it. I'm not aware of any proof that Polynesians made it west of Easter Island, are you? Genetically if any of those groups did exist on the continent in the past they appear to have died out without leaving recognizable descendents, or artifacts, much like the settlers in Vinland (and more recently Roanoke.)
If laughter is the best medicine, who are the best doctors?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday January 09 2018, @06:27AM (1 child)
But what about that "lost tribe" of Israel that sailed from Egypt to the New World and build paramids to God under their leader Nephi and his bothers until they all fell away from the Heavenly Father and got turned Red because Lamanites, and then got all saved by a bunch of white people with Golden Plates handed down by the angel Morony, and a White Salamander with a Seer-Stone. Totally legit.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday January 09 2018, @12:32PM
LOL sure, and next you'll be saying Jesus wasn't blond and white skinned!