A new genome found in the analysis of a 24,000-year-old arm bone contradicts previous theories about the native American origins. Researchers suggest that they are not exclusive descendants of East Asians but also of West Eurasians.
This new genome, found in a 3-year-old boy’s arm bone excavated in the Mal'ta site along Siberia’s Lake Baikal coast, is said to be the oldest modern human genome ever found and analyzed.
After the genome was sequenced, the scientists discovered that it seemed unlikely to come from the same family as East Asians. Instead, the remains’ DNA match those of western Eurasians in Europe and the Middle East, and also a third of the DNA attributes of Native Americans.
"It's approximately one-third of the genome, and that is a lot. So in that regard I think it's changing quite a bit of the history," said DNA Specialist and co-author of the study Eske Willerslev of Denmark’s University of Copenhagen.
It was previously believed that the Native Americans came from people from East Asia who migrated to the Bering Sea through the land bridge more than 16,500 years ago.
According to Willerslev, "This study changes this idea because it shows that a significant minority of Native American ancestry actually derives not from East Asia but from a people related to present-day western Eurasians.”
Based on this new genome sequence, the native Americans may be an interbreed of two distinct groups of people, the East Asian’s ancestors and the Western Eurasians’.
"The meeting of those two groups is what formed Native Americans as we know them. Although we know that North Americans are related to East Asians, it's striking that no contemporary East Asian populations really resemble Native Americans. But this (new) result makes a lot of sense regarding why they don't fit so well genetically with contemporary East Asians—because one-third of their genome is derived from another population," explained Willerslev.
Aside from this new revelation, the researchers trust that their work will pave the way in answering other genetic and archaeological questions about how people came about in the New World.
The study was published in the Nov. 20 issue of Nature.
