Native americans came from Sibiria

Written by Dr. H. P. Bustami

Sunday, 25 November 2007

Native americans came from Sibiria with one migration wave. (Painting from the early 20th century, public domain from: Nordisk familjebok)

All along it has been approved knowledge that the first americans came during the last Ice Age via Bering street to the new world some 10.000-15.000 years ago. But conflicting archaeological findings and ideological discussions had been questioning this established scientific view recently: Several migrations waves, european origin from ice age hunters, contact between ancient middle eastern cultures and other doctrines try to explain the origin of native americans next to the Bering street hypothesis containing political conflicts against the background of ongoing disputs between indian tribes and governments in Canada and especially in the USA about land property and claims. Now - 120 years after Geronimo and his Apache Guerilla ended their grim and longstanding armed struggle against white mans land conquest - numerous native americans try to get their rights in front of US-courts. Now an international group of genetical scientists seem to confirm the one migration-wave theory saying that all native americans stem from Sibiria.

Comparing the genes of 24 indigenous people from North and South America they found out that one migration founder population from Sibiria coming some 11.000 ago via the Bering street (which was not under water like nowadays) is the origin of all first humans in the Americas.

The comparison between the tested 24 native tribes revealed a decreasing genetical variety between Alaska (the place of arrival of the first immigrants from Sibiria) and Patagonia suggesting one migrations wave with decreasing numbers of ancestors of each group which settled within generation farer in the South. The less genetical variety the researchers found among tribes in amazon bassin. Important contributions were made by Laurent Excoffier and Nicolas Ray, Zoological Institute, University of Bern, Switzerland.
Several studies further suggest that the initial migratory waves spread along the coasts like it was known from the out-of-africa migration of early Homo sapiens some 100.000 years ago.

Thus with the new findings once more modern biomedical methods could confirm earlier findings of archeological sciences.

Source: Sija Wang, Cecil M. Lewis Jr., Mattias Jakobsson, Sohini Ramachandran, Nicolas Ray et al., Genetic Variation and Population Structure in Native Americans, PLoS Genetics, 2007, 3(11):e185. doi:10.1371/journal.pgen.0030185

Tag it:

Add as favourites (16) |

Quote this article on your site | Views: 338 | E-mail

Be first to comment this article

Only registered users can write comments.
Please login or register.

Related Items \|
Wind-powered migration Climate change has severe consequences for egg-laying and migration in birds European languages and genetic ancestry of european men are closely combined