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The exact process by which humanity introduced itself to the Americas has always been controversial. While there's general agreement on the most important migration—across the Bering land bridge at the end of the last ice age—there's a lot of arguing over the details. Now, two new papers clarify some of the bigger picture but also introduce a new wrinkle: there's DNA from the distant Pacific floating around in the genomes of Native Americans. And the two groups disagree about how it got there.
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The Athabascans and Aleutian islanders also have a rather unexpected contribution from Australo-Melanesians, the natives of Australia, New Guinea, and the Andaman Islands. That, this study found, was absent in populations farther south.Not so, says the study that focused on South American groups. Here, a strong signal from Australo-Melanesians was present in a number of Amazonian tribes; weaker affinities are scattered through South and Central America. At the same time, there are other groups in this region with no affinity to Australo-Melanesians.
It will be interesting to see if migration paths can be reconstructed as DNA from more locations in the Pacific can be sequenced.
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday July 22 2015, @04:38PM
the peoples that came across the bering land bridge didn't ALL go across the bering land bridge. those people had the 'australian gene' before they ever went to australia.
some ancient group of people dispersed themselves by land to the north and by sea to the west and south. some went across the land bridge. some scattered out among the south pacific islands.
the more interesting and big mystery to me, then, is what caused this massive population to scatter? were they fleeing some great natural disaster?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday July 22 2015, @06:52PM
No doubt it was the 1% of their time fleeing high taxes.
(Score: -1, Troll) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday July 22 2015, @07:12PM
yeah, just 1% that went on to populate the half the world. get your head out your ass.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday July 22 2015, @09:57PM
Not likely. That doesn't fit what is known from genetic studies. Australia was peopled a long time ago, before the folks who populated northern Asia arrived.
I still think there's room for an early trans-Pacific migration route. It's just hard to fit into the combination of the archaeological record and the genetic info that's available. There is evidence of a late trans-Pacific migration, but not much for an early one.
(Score: 1, Touché) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday July 22 2015, @10:11PM
So, if they came over the Bering land bridge, why are they clustered in South America, rather than evenly dispersed across the New World?