Reconstructing native American population history
The peopling of the Americas has been the subject of extensive genetic, archaeological and linguistic research; however, central questions remain unresolved1–5. One contentious issue is whether the settlement occurred by means of a single6–8 migration or multiple streams of migration from Siberia9–15. The pattern of dispersals within the Americas is also poorly understood. To address these questions at a higher resolution than was previously possible, we assembled data from 52 Native American and 17 Siberian groups genotyped at 364,470 single nucleotide polymorphisms. Here we show that Native Americans descend from at least three streams of Asian gene flow. Most descend entirely from a single ancestral population that we call ‘First American’. However, speakers of Eskimo–Aleut languages from the Arctic inherit almost half their ancestry from a second stream of Asian gene flow, and the Na-Dene-speaking Chipewyan from Canada inherit roughly one-tenth of their ancestry from a third stream. We show that the initial peopling followed a southward expansion facilitated by the coast, with sequential population splits and little gene flow after divergence, especially in South America. A major exception is in Chibchan speakers on both sides of the Panama isthmus, who have ancestry from both North and South America.
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Format: | Article biblioteca |
Language: | English |
Published: |
NATURE
2012-08-16
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Subjects: | POBLACIÓN NATIVA AMERICANA, HISTORIA, |
Online Access: | http://repositorio.umsa.bo/xmlui/handle/123456789/8045 |
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Summary: | The peopling of the Americas has been the subject of extensive
genetic, archaeological and linguistic research; however, central
questions remain unresolved1–5. One contentious issue is whether
the settlement occurred by means of a single6–8 migration or
multiple streams of migration from Siberia9–15. The pattern of
dispersals within the Americas is also poorly understood. To
address these questions at a higher resolution than was previously
possible, we assembled data from 52 Native American and
17 Siberian groups genotyped at 364,470 single nucleotide
polymorphisms. Here we show that Native Americans descend
from at least three streams of Asian gene flow. Most descend
entirely from a single ancestral population that we call ‘First
American’. However, speakers of Eskimo–Aleut languages from
the Arctic inherit almost half their ancestry from a second stream
of Asian gene flow, and the Na-Dene-speaking Chipewyan from
Canada inherit roughly one-tenth of their ancestry from a third
stream. We show that the initial peopling followed a southward
expansion facilitated by the coast, with sequential population splits
and little gene flow after divergence, especially in South America. A
major exception is in Chibchan speakers on both sides of the
Panama isthmus, who have ancestry from both North and South
America. |
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