This was a pretty cool find because it sort of refutes a common misperception (common among the general public anyway). A lot of people think that Native Americans were run of the mill Eastern Asians who crossed the land bridge and then, once geographically isolated, diverged into a genetically distinct group. What this and other findings show is that the progenitors of the Native Americans were actually genetically distinct from the main East Asian population prior to migrating to the new world. This finding in particular shows that this group of "proto-Native Americans" moved more extensively across Siberia, to the East across the land bridge where they remained for thousands of years, but also to some degree to the West reaching at least the Lake Baikul region. Even though these "proto-Native Americans" didn't last long in the region, they at least had the opportunity to be there for long enough to produce at least one offspring with a person of characteristically Western European heritage. That this Western European person made it that far East was also smewhat of a surprise. It suggests that at least some individuals during that time period were travelling pretty far from their better established homelands.Originally Posted by sancho
Reply With Quote