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History => Ancient and Medieval History => Topic started by: Duncan Head on January 04, 2018, 08:09:25 AM

Title: New Alaskan DNA evidence on peopling of the Americas
Post by: Duncan Head on January 04, 2018, 08:09:25 AM
Abstract of the original Nature article - https://www.nature.com/articles/nature25173 - full text needs payment.

The NY Times article is probably the best version - https://www.nytimes.com/2018/01/03/science/native-americans-beringia-siberia.html

https://www.theguardian.com/science/2018/jan/03/ancient-dna-reveals-previously-unknown-group-of-native-americans-ancient-beringians
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-42555577
Title: Re: New Alaskan DNA evidence on peopling of the Americas
Post by: Andreas Johansson on January 04, 2018, 08:58:04 AM
Interesting, thanks  8)

From some brief Googling it appears to be distinctly unclear if they bearers of the Denali complex lithic culture died out or simply adopted new tool traditions.
Title: Re: New Alaskan DNA evidence on peopling of the Americas
Post by: Andreas Johansson on January 04, 2018, 09:29:50 AM
Reading the Nature abstract, it says "Our findings further suggest that the far-northern North American presence of northern Native Americans is from a back migration that replaced or absorbed the initial founding population of Ancient Beringians." So unlike the impression I got from the NYT piece, it seems far from clear that the "Ancient Beringians" disappeared - it may be their genes simply got swamped by back migrants from the "northern" group, but their lineal descendants are alive and well today.