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Fnord666 writes:

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

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