Earliest Americans Arrived In Waves, DNA Study Finds

NotSanguine writes "Nicholas Wade of the New York Times has written an article about a new DNA study that suggests the earliest Americans arrived in three waves, not one. 'North and South America were first populated by three waves of migrants from Siberia rather than just a single migration, say researchers who have studied the whole genomes of Native Americans in South America and Canada. Some scientists assert that the Americas were peopled in one large migration from Siberia that happened about 15,000 years ago, but the new genetic research shows that this central episode was followed by at least two smaller migrations from Siberia, one by people who became the ancestors of today's Eskimos and Aleutians and another by people speaking Na-Dene, whose descendants are confined to North America.' The study, published online (paywalled), investigated geographic, linguistic and genetic diversity in native American populations."

Comments

Re:Not surprising

[Black Parrot]

The only thing I question is they are still sticking by the Clovis dogma and insisting that the two other waves were later.

I think the field of anthropology is finally abandoning the Clovis-first model that was believed for so long. There have been too many anomalous findings that challenge it, mostly in the past 15-20 years I think.

There's a pretty good summary of the evidence on Wikipedia, if you're interested.

Interestingly, a bit further down in that article they mention a publication that firmly established a single-wave model. Looks like there's some reconciliation to be done.

IMO the most interesting thing about settlement of the Americas is the whole haplotype X thing, which strongly suggests a genetic relation between the early peoples of northern North America and Europe or the Middle East. Though that fact is well established, I recommend skepticism when reading interpretations of what it means, because a lot of people take that ball and run a long way with it. However, as best I can tell it can't simply be dismissed as a parallel mutation, because of the way X is embedded down at a specific point in a whole tree of haplotypes.

The problem is that any interpretation of what haplotypes mean tends to get very political very fast, especially with people who want to use it to support crank claims or religious/nationalist primacy fantasies.