Americas’ Genomic Headline (no replies)

Quote

”All genomic studies rule out the possibility that the First Peoples mixed with Europeans or Africans or any other populations before 1492.

Our species, Homo sapiens, emerged in Africa hundreds of thousands of years ago. From there modern humans followed in the steps of other kinds of humans—Homo erectus, Neandertals, Denisovans, and others—as they slowly spread across the planet. But the first H. sapiens who entered the Americas went somewhere no member of the human family had ever gone before. The process by which people explored, populated and adapted to the many different environments found across these continents was a momentous undertaking, one which began the rich and complex histories of thousands of different nations and communities.

In their journey into the Americas, the ancestors of present-day Indigenous peoples overcame extraordinary challenges. They survived the bitter cold and arid conditions of a global climatic event between 26,000 and 20,000 years ago known as the Last Glacial Maximum (LGM). They developed relationships with unfamiliar lands and their flora and fauna...

…in the past few decades genetics has also been brought to bear on this chapter of the human story. It is no exaggeration to say that insights from genome studies have revolutionized our understanding. Although many gaps remain in our knowledge, these genetic findings, along with recent archaeological discoveries, have shown that the process of populating the Americas was far more complex than previously understood. Significantly, we now know that multiple ancient populations contributed to the ancestry of Indigenous peoples, not just one...

Singling out any specific moment as the “origin” of “a people” is arbitrary and oversimplified to the point of absurdity. Throughout time, human populations have been composed of people with complex mixtures of different ancestries, each with their own histories. But we have to start this genetic story somewhere, so we will begin it in the Upper Paleolithic period. Approximately 36,000 years ago, a group of people living in what is now East Asia became increasingly isolated from the broader population living in the region. It was a very slow process: they continued to exchange mates with their parent population for more than 11,000 years. By about 25,000 years ago, however, they were genetically distinguishable from the ancestors of contemporary East Asians. This isolated group of Ancient East Asians contributed the majority of ancestry to the First Peoples of the Americas...”