New Ancestral Native American Population Discovered

Science Alerts is running a story about genetic research done to reveal ancestral populations.  Peter Dockrill writes:

Sunrise girl-child ("Xach'itee'aanenh T'eede Gaay") lived some 11,500 years ago in what is now called Alaska, and her ancient DNA reveals not only the origins of Native American society, but reminds the world of a whole population of people forgotten by history millennia ago.

"We didn't know this population existed," says anthropologist Ben Potter from the University of Alaska Fairbanks.

"It would be difficult to overstate the importance of this newly revealed people to our understanding of how ancient populations came to inhabit the Americas."

When I was in graduate school, the common understanding was that Meadowcroft Rockshelter was occupied as early as 23ky. Although this date was disputed, on the basis of presumed groundwater contamination, a paper by Paul Goldberg and Trina Arpin, from 1999, seems to confirm the early date. Meadowcroft is in Pennsylvania and likely was within 50 miles of the maximum edge of the Cordilleran Ice sheet.

Still, this is a neat find.

Native American Migrations

USA Today reports on genetic research indicating three separate waves of migration out of Asia into the New World beginning around 15 ooo years ago. Dan Vergano writes:

North and South America were totally empty of people until the first arrivals from Siberia crossed a land bridge into Alaska, spreading in a few thousand years to the tip of South America. The genetic study may help settle a debate between a long-held view that the populating of the continents came as one event instead of the more recently supported notion, backed by this study in the journal Nature, that the migration happened in three distinct waves.

"Our study makes clear that mixing of these three ancient populations is the story of Native American arrival," says geneticist David Reich of Harvard Medical School, lead author of the study.

As far back as I can remember in graduate school, I was taught that there were at least two, probably three migrations. The two that I remember studying were from the Lena River Basin in Siberia and the Amur River basin, on the border of Russia and China. There were probably more than that, as there are some Native American populations that have gene fixation for certain blood types, a situation that would only occur in a drift/founder effect situation. I remember Dick Jantz teaching us this twenty years ago, at UT.

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