A team of researchers has conducted a new study to determine the origins of the Native American people and where they came from. The scientists analyzed the genomic data and found that Native American ancestors came from Siberia in a single wave approximately 23,000 years ago.
The study suggests that the Native American ancestors stayed in the north for thousands of years before something happened and some of them moved south, leading to two different populations, the North and the South Americans.
According to the scientists, this is the most comprehensive research on Native Americans based on genetic analysis. The results of the study confirm a popular theory which says that the Americas were populated by a single wave of migratory people.
The findings of the new study were published in the journal Science.
There have been many controversial theories which argued about the number of migratory waves that came to the Americas and populated them. Previous genetic studies, including the recent one, have linked both modern and ancient humans living in the Americas to the early populations from Eurasia.
The initial migration took place 23,000 years ago, when the Native American ancestors started splitting into two different branches about 13,000 years back. The groups began separating when the glaciers started retreating and opened new possibilities for migration routes to North America.
The anthropologists call the two groups Amerindians- Native Americans- and Athabascans- people that are native to Alaska. Previous studies have shown that the ancestors of these two groups traveled to the Americas crossing over the Siberian land bridge. However, the new study suggests a different theory.
According to Maanasa Raghavan, one of the lead authors of the research, this is the most comprehensive genetic study on the origins of the Native American ancestors. Raghavan said the new study suggests that all Native Americans come from the same migration wave that came from Siberia to the Americas.
Previous studies have raised other questions and suggest the possibility of more than one population that came to the Americas. A team of scientists from Harvard University wrote a report in which they reported finding DNA evidence of a “ghost population” that has vanished a long time ago from the Amazonian regions of South America.
Also, previous studies suggest that two groups of people from Amazon, the Karitiana and the Surui are related to the Aboriginal Australians and Papua New Guineans.
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