Too bad, Mormons. Your fake book and fake history is no more real than the fantasies of Erich von Däniken and Immanuel Velikovsky.


https://www.theguardian.com/science/2017/nov/15/no-lost-tribes-or-aliens-what-ancient-dna-reveals-about-american-prehistory

Genetics research has transformed our understanding of human history, particularly in the Americas. The focus of the majority of high profile ancient DNA papers in recent years has been on addressing early events in the initial peopling of the Americas. This research has provided details of this early history that we couldn’t access though the archeological record.

Collectively, genetics studies have shown us that the indigenous inhabitants of the Americas are descended from a group that diverged from its Siberian ancestors beginning sometime around 23,000 years before present and remained isolated in Beringia (the region of land that once connected Siberia and North America) for an extended period of time. When the glaciers covering North America melted enough to make the Pacific coast navigable, southward travel became possible, and patterned genetic diversity across North and South America reflects these early movements.


Recent ancient DNA studies indicate that approximately 13,000 years ago, two clades (genetic groups) of peoples emerged; one exclusively consisting of northern Native Americans, and one consisting of peoples from North, Central, and South America, including the 12,800 year old Anzick child from a Clovis burial site in Montana. All genetics research to date has affirmed the shared ancestry of all ancient and contemporary indigenous peoples of the Americas, and refuted stories about the presence of “lost tribes”, ancient Europeans, and (I can’t believe that I actually have to say this) ancient aliens.

Events that occurred after people first entered the Americas – how they settled in different parts of the continents, adapted to local environments, interacted with each other, and were affected by European colonialism – have received somewhat less attention in the press, but as can be seen in the links above, there have been some very significant research papers published on these topics. One such paper that I’ve recently found very interesting (in fact, I wrote up a short article for Current Biology that discusses its significance), Genetic Discontinuity between the Maritime Archaic and Beothuk Populations in Newfoundland, Canada by Duggen et al. (2017), explores the genetic diversity within three different ancient groups who lived in Newfoundland and Labrador.


https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Settlement_of_the_Americas#Source_populations

https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/c/ca/World_Map_of_Y-DNA_Haplogroups.png

There is general agreement among anthropologists that the source populations for the migration into the Americas originated from an area somewhere east of the Yenisei River. The common occurrence of the mtDNA Haplogroups A, B, C, and D among eastern Asian and Native American populations has long been recognized, along with the presence of Haplogroup X. As a whole, the greatest frequency of the four Native American associated haplogroups occurs in the Altai-Baikal region of southern Siberia. Some subclades of C and D closer to the Native American subclades occur among Mongolian, Amur, Japanese, Korean, and Ainu populations.



https://www.cam.ac.uk/research/news/direct-genetic-evidence-of-founding-population-reveals-story-of-first-native-americans

Direct genetic traces of the earliest Native Americans have been identified for the first time in a new study. The genetic evidence suggests that people may have entered the continent in a single migratory wave, perhaps arriving more than 20,000 years ago.



Edited 2 time(s). Last edit at 12/14/2018 11:20PM by anybody.

His DNA was shown to belong to a population that was ancestral to all Native Americans in both North and South America...

As far as their arriving here 20,000 years ago, there's the small matter of the Ice Age...

It is strongly indicated by the science that the ancestors of today's Native Americans did originate among the Altai people near Lake Baikal.

Here's a regular poster who's a former bishop and a PhD geneticist.

http://simonsoutherton.blogspot.com/2016/02/response-to-claim-13-of-native-american.html



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 12/15/2018 09:49AM by SL Cabbie.

Current Biology?

Anybody is clearly somebody!

The lead researcher, Willerslev, puts the entrance into the Americas of the ancestral Beringian population between 25,000 and 20,000 years ago--well before the ice sheet opened.

In his words, “We were able to show that people probably entered Alaska before 20,000 years ago. It’s the first time that we have had direct genomic evidence that all Native Americans can be traced back to one source population, via a single, founding migration event.”

The basic timeline, summarized in the Cambridge article, is that "the ancestral population first emerged as a separate group around 36,000 years ago, probably somewhere in northeast Asia. Constant contact with Asian populations continued until around 25,000 years ago, when the gene flow between the two groups ceased. This cessation was probably caused by brutal changes in the climate, which isolated the Native American ancestors. 'It therefore probably indicates the point when people first started moving into Alaska,' Willerslev said."

So the Beringians entered North America around 25,000 years ago, perhaps a little later. The researchers believe that groups of these proto-Native Americans then migrated south of the ice sheets before the inter-glacial corridor appeared. Thus. . .

"the researchers established that the Northern and Southern Native American branches only split between 17,000 and 14,000 years ago which, based on the wider evidence, indicates that they must have already been on the American continent south of the glacial ice. . . The divide probably occurred after their ancestors had passed through, or around, the Laurentide and Cordilleran ice sheets – two vast glaciers which covered what is now Canada and parts of the northern United States, but began to thaw at around this time."

Later there was a "back-migration" of the peoples south of the ice sheet into their earlier territories in Alaska. Stepping back from the Willerslave analysis, it is tempting to think that this back-migration may have been part of the wave out of Beringia into the Yenisei valley of north central Asia, which would explain the intriguing similarities between the Dene family of Native American languages and the Ket and related tongues in north central Asia.

And here we are back at Vadja's work.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 12/15/2018 02:05AM by Lot's Wife.

I read this too from the Cambridge article

“One significant aspect of this research is that some people have claimed the presence of humans in the Americas dates back earlier – to 30,000 years, 40,000 years, or even more,” Willerslev added. “We cannot prove that those claims are not true, but what we are saying, is that if they are correct, they could not possibly have been the direct ancestors to contemporary Native Americans.”
https://www.cam.ac.uk/research/news/direct-genetic-evidence-of-founding-population-reveals-story-of-first-native-americans

Yes. The Cambridge piece was, I thought, the most rigorous and hence the most enlightening.

The old consensus (Clovis First) was that there were no Native Americans south of the ice sheet before about 13,000 years ago. The new consensus is that there were almost certainly peoples south of the glaciers before then although almost certainly not before 25,000 years ago.

It's fascinating stuff!

"It's fascinating stuff!"

I agree. The published report is behind a paywall https://www.nature.com/articles/nature25173 but I did find this from one of the researchers, Dr. Ben Potter.
https://sites.google.com/a/alaska.edu/dr-ben-a-potter/ancient-beringians

Thank you for adding that. The nuance seems a bit different from what Willerslev says, which is interesting.

It is interesting to me that the mormons are so gung-ho about genealogy and now DNA testing. I'm sure back in the day that all of this keen interest was so they could show without a shadow of a doubt that their stupid BOM stories were oh-so-true. Kinda backfired.

Is there any evidence of interbreeding with the vikings 1000 years ago?