Bering Strait – nowadays
The accepted theory for decades. The logic escaped those who crave alternatives – including the inevitable small arrivals of adventurers from Polynesia becoming predominant.
Did a relatively small number of people from Siberia who trekked across a Bering Strait land bridge some 12,000 years ago give rise to the native peoples of North and South America?…
University of Michigan scientists…have produced new genetic evidence that’s likely to hearten proponents of the land bridge theory. The study is one of the most comprehensive analyses so far among efforts to use genetic data to shed light on the topic.
The researchers examined genetic variation at 678 key locations or markers in the DNA of present-day members of 29 Native American populations across North, Central and South America. They also analyzed data from two Siberian groups. The analysis shows:
* genetic diversity, as well as genetic similarity to the Siberian groups, decreases the farther a native population is from the Bering Strait – adding to existing archaeological and genetic evidence that the ancestors of native North and South Americans came by the northwest route.
* a unique genetic variant is widespread in Native Americans across both American continents – suggesting that the first humans in the Americas came in a single migration or multiple waves from a single source, not in waves of migrations from different sources. The variant, which is not part of a gene and has no biological function, has not been found in genetic studies of people elsewhere in the world except eastern Siberia.
A collateral discovery that I find interesting from my interest in the etymology of ethnology is that groups that are similar genetically turned out to be linguistically similar.
Why is it so alarming to find out that one’s people came from a place further back? I think that the Irish know their ancestors, the Celts, came from East of the Urals, some 4000 or more years ago, then pushed to the edge of Europe. I cannot really grasp that the local natives of the USA and CAnada would NOT want to know their origins and long-lost “cousins”, out of sheer curiosity. Why such obstinate resistance? In my tourbus business in San Francisco, I meet people from all over the world. Yesterday’s computer-conference group had one Southern lady, spit and image of a classic Japanese painting – she was very overweight but her face was beautiful. I asked her if she were part Japanese. She said, “No, I’m a white Southerner!” with a quite offended tone. Later I thought about it= she was probably part American Indian far back, but her family had obliterated any records or discussion of it. Japanese people themselves also descend from Mongolia and Siberia, so no wonder! But yes, she was “white” (VERY pale!), only Asian.
awesome man