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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: 2, Informative) by ese002 on Wednesday July 22 2015, @07:33PM
Considering how widely traveled the Polynesians were, it should surprise no one that they might have carried genes from around the world. What else would you expect from island hoppers? Many of them went out - and never came back. Others went out on the sea, and didn't come back for years. You can bet they were donating DNA samples during those years. Some of those who never did come back probably did the same.
It isn't too hard to come up with a late arrival theory. The Orang Asli are a Australo-Melanesian people from the Malay peninsula. So quite trivially some or the Polynesians would be carrying Australo-Melanesian genes when they started heading East. Further, we know that the Polynesians reached the Americas. Sweet Potatoes have been a staple food in Polynesians culture since before contact with Europeans. But sweet potatoes only grow natively in Central and South America.
Early arrival would mean people carrying Australo-Melanesian genes crossed over the Bearing land bridge. That seems probable though I haven't heard any suggestion that an actual Australo-Melanesian people crossed that way.