2014
- “Discoveries Challenge Beliefs on Humans’ Arrival in the Americas” by Simon Rommero (The New York Times; 2014.03.27) – http://www.nytimes.com/2014/03/28/world/americas/discoveries-challenge-beliefs-on-humans-arrival-in-the-americas.html?_r=0
- Researchers here say they have unearthed stone tools proving that humans reached what is now northeast Brazil as early as 22,000 years ago. Their discovery adds to the growing body of research upending a prevailing belief of 20th-century archaeology in the United States known as the Clovis model, which holds that people first arrived in the Americas from Asia about 13,000 years ago.
- More recently, numerous findings have challenged that narrative. In Texas, archaeologists said in 2011 that they had found projectile points showing that hunter-gatherers had reached another site, known as Buttermilk Creek, as early as 15,500 years ago. Similarly, analysis of human DNA found at an Oregon cave determined that humans were there 14,000 years ago.
But it is in South America, thousands of miles from the New Mexico site where the Clovis spear points were discovered, where archaeologists are putting forward some of the most profound challenges to the Clovis-first theory.
Paleontologists in Uruguay published findings in November suggesting that humans hunted giant sloths there about 30,000 years ago. All the way in southern Chile, Tom D. Dillehay, an anthropologist at Vanderbilt University, has shown that humans lived at a coastal site called Monte Verde as early as 14,800 years ago.
- In what may be another blow to the Clovis model of humans’ coming from northeast Asia, molecular geneticists showed last year that the Botocudo indigenous people living in southeastern Brazil in the late 1800s shared gene sequences commonly found among Pacific Islanders from Polynesia.
- “Native Americans Descend From Ancient Montana Boy” (Science; 2014.02.12) – http://news.sciencemag.org/archaeology/2014/02/native-americans-descend-ancient-montana-boy
2013
- “DNA reveals details of the peopling of the Americas” by Tina Hesman Saey (Science news; 2013.11.21) – https://www.sciencenews.org/article/dna-reveals-details-peopling-americas
- Migrants came in three distinct waves that interbred once in the New World
- About 15,000 to 18,000 years ago, the first migrant wave spilled from Asia down the Pacific coast and then pushed inland, eventually peopling the land from “the tip of South America all the way to Hudson Bay,” says Andrew Kitchen, a genetic anthropologist at the University of Iowa who was not involved in the new research. That first migrant wave contained the ancestors of all South and Central American tribes, and North Americans, too. But something different was going on in North America, an international team of researchers has discovered.
- A second wave of migration probably left Siberia only a couple thousand years after the first wave. Instead of trickling down the coast, the second group slipped through an ice-free corridor running from Alaska into what is now southern Canada, the team found. The second wave never made it south of the present-day United States. The mixture of first-wave and second-wave genetic signatures in some Native Americans today indicates that the newcomers and existing populations interbred.
- A third wave of migration started around 4,000 years ago in Alaska and swept mostly eastward across Canada.
- Previous studies of human migration into the Americas have sometimes focused on two types of languages that emerged among the tribes: the Na-Dene language family, including Navajo, Apache and Tlingit, and non-Na-Dene languages, including Algonquin, Ojibwe and Chippewa. Scientists had thought the language groups reflected genetic separation, with the second wave being restricted to the Na-Dene language family. But Torroni and his colleagues discovered that second-wave genetic marks occurred in people who spoke languages from both groups. The finding suggests that the languages developed after the people arrived, and gives a more dynamic picture of what was happening in eastern North America, says Kitchen.
- “DNA testing on 24,000-year-old skeleton reveals that Native Americans could have EUROPEAN origins” by Ellie Zolfagharifard (MailOnline; 2013.11.21) – http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-2511172/DNA-testing-24-000-year-old-skeleton-reveals-Native-Americans-EUROPEAN-origins.html
- The genome of the four-year-old boy is the oldest sequenced to date
- DNA from the remains, discovered in Siberia in the 1920s, are thought to contain a third of Native American ancestry’s gene pool
- Interestingly, the boy showed no similarities with populations in East Asia
- “Ancient Bone of 24,000-Year-Old Siberian Youth Shows Native Americans had West Eurasian Origins” by Kathleen Lee (Science World Report; 2013.11.21) – http://www.scienceworldreport.com/articles/11072/20131121/ancient-bone-of-24-000-year-old-siberian-youth-shows-native-americans-had-west-eurasian-origins.htm
- “DNA indicates Eurasian roots for Native Americans, new study says” by Meeri Kim (The Washington Post; 2013.11.20) – http://www.washingtonpost.com/national/health-science/fossil-indicates-eurasian-roots-for-native-americans/2013/11/20/2777ac24-51fa-11e3-a7f0-b790929232e1_story.html
- “24,000-Year-Old Body Shows Kinship to Europeans and American Indians” by NICHOLAS WADE (The New York Times; 2013.11.20) – http://www.nytimes.com/2013/11/21/science/two-surprises-in-dna-of-boy-found-buried-in-siberia.html
- “”Great Surprise”—Native Americans Have West Eurasian Origins” by Brian Handwerk (National Geographic; 2013.11.20) – http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2013/11/131120-science-native-american-people-migration-siberia-genetics
- Oldest human genome reveals less of an East Asian ancestry than thought.
- Nearly one-third of Native American genes come from west Eurasian people linked to the Middle East and Europe, rather than entirely from East Asians as previously thought, according to a newly sequenced genome.
- “Is This Russian Landscape the Birthplace of Native Americans?” by Christine Dell’Amore (National geographic; 2013.11.20) – http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2012/01/120203-native-americans-siberia-genes-dna-science/
- Mountainous region of Siberia gave rise to New World peoples, study says
- Native Americans originated from a small mountainous region in southern Siberia, new genetic research shows. The work is the most targeted study yet to suggest a genetic “homeland” for North America’s indigenous peoples, according to the authors.
- Map of location – http://maps.nationalgeographic.com/map-machine#s=r&c=53.66357154106965,%20106.81719207763672&z=5
- “Upper Palaeolithic Siberian genome reveals dual ancestry of Native Americans” (Nature; 2013.11.20) – http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/vaop/ncurrent/full/nature12736.html
- Abstract: The origins of the First Americans remain contentious. Although Native Americans seem to be genetically most closely related to east Asians1, 2, 3, there is no consensus with regard to which specific Old World populations they are closest to4, 5, 6, 7, 8. Here we sequence the draft genome of an approximately 24,000-year-old individual (MA-1), from Mal’ta in south-central Siberia9, to an average depth of 1×. To our knowledge this is the oldest anatomically modern human genome reported to date. The MA-1 mitochondrial genome belongs to haplogroup U, which has also been found at high frequency among Upper Palaeolithic and Mesolithic European hunter-gatherers10, 11, 12, and the Y chromosome of MA-1 is basal to modern-day western Eurasians and near the root of most Native American lineages5. Similarly, we find autosomal evidence that MA-1 is basal to modern-day western Eurasians and genetically closely related to modern-day Native Americans, with no close affinity to east Asians. This suggests that populations related to contemporary western Eurasians had a more north-easterly distribution 24,000 years ago than commonly thought. Furthermore, we estimate that 14 to 38% of Native American ancestry may originate through gene flow from this ancient population. This is likely to have occurred after the divergence of Native American ancestors from east Asian ancestors, but before the diversification of Native American populations in the New World. Gene flow from the MA-1 lineage into Native American ancestors could explain why several crania from the First Americans have been reported as bearing morphological characteristics that do not resemble those of east Asians2, 13. Sequencing of another south-central Siberian, Afontova Gora-2 dating to approximately 17,000 years ago14, revealed similar autosomal genetic signatures as MA-1, suggesting that the region was continuously occupied by humans throughout the Last Glacial Maximum. Our findings reveal that western Eurasian genetic signatures in modern-day Native Americans derive not only from post-Columbian admixture, as commonly thought, but also from a mixed ancestry of the First Americans.
- “Disputed finds put humans in South America 22,000 years ago” by Bruce Bower (*Science News; 2013.04.20) – https://www.sciencenews.org/article/disputed-finds-put-humans-south-america-22000-years-ago
- Brazilian site may have been home to people before the Clovis hunters
- C. Lahaye et al. Human occupation in South America by 20,000 BC: The Toca da Tira Peia site, Piaui, Brazil. Journal of Archaeological Science. Doi: 10.1016/j.jas.2013.02.019.
2012
- “Early Americans took two tool tracks” by Bruce Bower (Science News; 2012.07.12) – https://www.sciencenews.org/node/15534
- Oregon finds indicate ancient Clovis hunters weren’t alone
- ” Walter Neves: Luzia’s father” by Marcos Pivetta and Ricardo Zorzetoo (Pesquisa FAPESP; Issue 195; 2012.05)- http://revistapesquisa.fapesp.br/en/2012/05/06/walter-neves-luzias-father/
- USP archeologist and anthropologist describes how he developed a theory on man’s arrival in the Americas
2011
- “Stone tools cut swathe through Clovis history” by Matt Kaplan (nature; 2011.03.24) – http://www.nature.com/news/2011/110324/full/news.2011.185.html
- Dig uncovers previously unknown North American culture.
- The long-standing idea that the Clovis people of ancient North America were the first tool-using humans on the continent 13,200 years ago is being overturned by the discovery of human artefacts in a Texan creek bed that are even older.
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