DNA reveals that Native Americans came from Central Russia!

[snagglepuss]

snip

In the Y chromosome DNA, the researchers found a unique mutation shared by Native Americans and people from southern Altai.

The findings are published today in the American Journal of Human Genetics.

Calculating how long the mutations they noted took to arise, Schurr's team estimated that the southern Altaian lineage diverged genetically from the Native American lineage 13,000 to 14,000 years ago, a timing scenario that aligns with the idea of people moving into the Americas from Siberia between 15,000 and 20,000 years ago.

Though it's possible, even likely, that more than one wave of people crossed the land bridge, Schurr said that other researchers have not yet been able to identify another similar geographic focal point from which Native Americans can trace their heritage.

Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-2092258/Native-Americans-actually-came-tiny-mountain-region-Russia-DNA-research-reveals.html#ixzz1kclGQ9Fx

[Warpy]

1. I can't wait to tell my friends they're a bunch of Russkies.

This is all very interesting stuff. I always expected them to be a mix of northern coastal people like the Ainu and Pacific Islanders who had island hopped all the way around the Pacific Rim. That they left the Russian interior for greener pastures doesn't come as too much of a shock, though.

[snagglepuss]

2. I find it shocking that they moved so far North. I wonder if they were running from

ruthless enemies. It doesn't seem rational to move to frigid climates at a time when the world was so lightly populated.

[Amonester]

16. There were (and still are) a lot less predatory beasts in frigid climates.

And a lot less insects also. Might have been a factor.

[snagglepuss]

25. THat would make sense but then why wouldn't all early people move into the far North why only

those from Central Asia?

[jpak]

29. Not so - grizzlies, polar bears and especially the now-extinct short-faced bear were there

The short-faced bear was a bad-ass

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arctodus...

and some researchers suggest that its extinction opened the door to human migration across the Eurasian Land Bridge

Wolves were present too.

[truebrit71]

33. That maybe so...but it ain't got SHIT on the Honey Badger...

..the Honey Badger don't give a shit...

[Bolo Boffin]

19. I saw a special on Netflix (I think from NatGeo) that suggested

the ancestors of today's Native Americans were following the migration of their food, the reindeer. Because that's what they do today. In winter, they've got no choice but to follow the herd as it scrapes the ice and snow looking for its food. Follow the herd or die.

Once they got across the Bering Strait, they would eventually find extant sources of food, and they would naturally spread out and down.

[Warpy]

31. I think most migrations were to get away from enemies

even when the enemy was just a change of tribal leadership that stuck in enough craws that the tribe split up and part went to an unknown area to establish their own hunting and gathering territory.

[moriah]

13. Mitochondral DNA shows migration from South America to the South Pacific, not much vice-versa.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/science/science-news/8582150/Kon-Tiki-explorer-was-partly-right-Polynesians-had-South-American-roots.html

Current patterns seem to make it easier to cross westward down there, rather than eastward.

[PotatoChip]

20. This seems to support an earlier (3 or 4 years ago)

study w/the same conclusion based on mitochondrial DNA. Like you, I remember being suprised at the time. I had made assumptions similiar to yours prior to that.

Interesting stuff. I love how we can now more conclusively follow human migrations thanks to all of the advances made in the study of human genomes.

If it were more affordable, I'd have my family's lineage traced in a heartbeat. Maybe over time, it will be a much less costly test, with even better accuracy.

[Warpy]

32. My family ran to sailors, scholars and itinerant musicians

who all married women who took a chance on a foreigner rather than end up with their mothers' lives. Since we're all peripatetic, some of us have wondered about how much Gypsy there is in the family genome.

My own genome would drive them around the bend, I think.

[PotatoChip]

40. Ha, you may well be right, about that...

... 'driving them around the bend' if your ancestors are as you describe, I mean. I bet it'd be an extremely interesting lineage! Yet that would be the fun of it... to see how random they could get!

Currently though (unless you are Oprah, or part of a study) it'd be very hard to find out anything more than what haplogroup you may be in, which would encompass huge groups of people.

Nothing against Oprah btw- just pointing out that they were able to pinpoint for her some obscure S. African tribe, and also Cherokee ancestry... IOW it can be done, (which is the good news) but would take a LOT of time and money under current circumstances.

Still, I hope both you and I get to see ours someday.

[starroute]

30. There's a lot of evidence for different waves of migration

The earliest skulls -- like that of Kennewick Man -- are quite different from modern ones and are generally said to resemble those of Ainu, Polynesians, or Australians. And there is also linguistic, genetic, and even cultural evidence for a relatively late migration that may have come from Japan and moved down the Pacific coast of North America.

But the main migration -- which came in between those other two and made the largest contribution to the population -- does seem to have been Central Asian.

Since they also recently identified the 33,000 year old skull of an early domesticated dog from the Altai, I can't help wondering if that dog's descendents also made the hop to the Americas. The articles on it say that the line of those early dogs must have died out, because all present-day dogs are descended from a common ancestor that was domesticated in the Middle East about 14,000 years ago. But the only American dogs whose DNA they've tested are ones whose ancestors were brought over by the Europeans, so they don't really know about the ones who were already here.

There are still a lot of surprises coming.

[Broderick]

3. So I an part Russian

I do have a kinship with vodka. Hmmm

[glinda]

4. hehe. My great-grandparents were from Russia and I married an Am. Indian. Woot!

[snagglepuss]

5. That is really quite something.

[glinda]

42. Hope we are not related. Perhaps too many people are related already and the IQ level is suffering.

[xchrom]

6. Du rec. Nt

[niyad]

7. I didn't realize this was anything new. learned decades ago that they had crossed the land bridge

from russia.

[snagglepuss]

8. I had always heard they came from China and the Pacific Ring.

[eShirl]

26. this is a relatively small, specific location near the center of Asia

[flamingdem]

9. So the term will be

Somewhat Native American but really Russky Underneath?

[Lydia Leftcoast]

10. That area is not ethnic Russian or any other kind of European

It's between Kazakhstan and Mongolia. I once saw a movie made in Kazakhstan and was surprised to see how East Asian the people looked.

Altai is the source of the term Altaic language, and Altaic is a language family that includes everything from Turkish to Kazakh to Mongolian to Manchu, all Asian languages (the Turks used to live much farther east than they do now).

Russians speak, well, Russian, an Indo-European language distantly related to English.

The standard theory used to be that all Native Americans came over the land bridge from Siberia 13,000 years ago. However, archeological findings considerably older than that in South America suggest that there were other migrations from elsewhere.

By the way, people, this is the Daily Mail, not exactly the most reliable source for scientific information.

[RZM]

15. Beat me to it :) n/t

[snagglepuss]

24. Interesting post but comments about fact this link is from the DM is

irrelevant as the article is quoting from findings published "today in the American Journal of Human Genetics".

[AverageJoe90]

39. I'll have to agree with you on that.

One interesting case is that of the Athabaskan ethnic people. They are mainly in northern Canada and amongst the Navajos and certain others in the Southwest, yet there appears to be a few really old groups in what is now......southwest Oregon, and far northwest California(although, sadly, some of their languages appear to have gone extinct). I do wonder if perhaps they arrived in that part of the country, or somewhere relatively close, and then many of them spread outwards, with some going southward and the others northward where they would then meet the Inuits and related peoples(although not necessarily at the same time)? IMO, it's a valid theory worth researching.

[mike_c]

41. the genetics is right (presumably)-- it's just a crappy report....

The author of the Daily Mail piece probably looked at a map of modern political boundaries ala 1980 or so and noted that the Atlai were in the former Soviet Union, hence somewhere in "central Russia."

I'll bet that's EXACTLY where that headline came from!

[Jean V. Dubois]

11. It makes perfect sense, but try telling it to Creationists.

Mind you, I'm speaking of Native American Creationism as well as Christian Creationism:

http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/wic.html#nonchris

[moriah]

12. Wasn't this obvious to those who knew human migration patterns?

Like the whole crossing the Bering Strait?

[RZM]

14. Hate to rain on parades here

But this isn't actually all that new in an ethnic sense, as some seem to be interpreting it. It's not evidence that American Indians are descended form the Russians we think of today. Those people originated further West and didn't spread into 'European Russia' until relatively recently, something more like 1500 years ago. And the Altai region isn't even part of European Russia. It's more like Central Asia (it's nestled between what are now Mongolia, China, and Kazakhstan).

People may be getting tripped up because it's part of the Russian Federation, which is the largest country on earth and includes a myriad of ethnic groups. But the enormous Russia we think of controlled by ethnic Russians is a relatively recent phenomenon, especially considering the time scales we're talking about here.

Ethnic Russians didn't expand there until the early modern period, when they colonized Siberia and slowly took control of land that had once been part of the Mongol hordes. The core of Russian civilization as we know it was still a relatively modest tract of land centered around Muscovy/Ukraine until they began expanding after the end of Mongol rule there. That's one of the biggest ironies of Russian history. Popular opinion holds that Russia has frequently been a target of invasions, but in fact it's always been highly expansionist. From roughly the 17th-19th centuries, Russia grew by about the size of a Holland every single year, when you average the gains over the entire period.

I'm not sure exactly when the Altai region was firmly under Russian control (and colonized with ethnic Russians, who comprise a little over half of the population there today) but it probably wasn't until the 18th century at the very earliest. Some areas in Central Asia held out until the late 19th century.

Bottom line, if you have Native American blood, this study doesn't mean you're all that closely related to Putin. More like you're related to the non-Russians who live in Altai, who look a lot more like Sitting Bull than they look like Putin

[snagglepuss]

23. Thanks for such an insightful post. What I find fascinating is that they have

been able to pinpoint an area and a particular group which is very different than simply saying Asians crossed the Bering Strait. Though disappointing to know those early nomads weren't humming The Volga Boatman

[RZM]

28. I agree. It is fascinating what we're learning about our early history n/t

[AverageJoe90]

38. Unfortunately, this article isn't exactly 'insightful', IMO.

I hate to sound confrontational, but maybe no one here has heard valid alternate theories of the ancestry of the Natives?
I may be busy but I'll try to dig up a few URLs sometime for you good people to look at.

[vaberella]

17. Well really what was formerly part of Mongolia. n/t

[AsahinaKimi]

18. My friend who is

Lakota says his people believe that they came from the Black Hills. I don't think you will ever
convince him otherwise.

[pampango]

22. Good news. My wife's from Asia. Some her ancestors populated the Americas.

That does help explain why she is mistaken for being Mexican so often. They have the same ancestors.

[AverageJoe90]

36. Mistaken for Mexican? She shouldn't be.

Do you live in a place with a lot of very stupid and ignorant people, btw? That would help explain why they mistook your wife for a Mexican when she most certainly isn't.
TBH, I know what indigenous Siberians look like and the fact is, they are very different from indigenous Mexicans, I can tell you that much; Does she have some Native blood as well? Because if not, they would not, in fact, have the same ancestors.

[AngryAmish]

27. But, but ,but the Great Spirit created them right here!

People can believe whatever shit they want, but Native American creation myths are enshrined into law and really screw up real science.

[link:http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kennewick_Man|

[Sheepshank]

34. Someone should tell the Mormons

For a century they had been preaching that American Indians are descentants of the Jews.

Of coures, I hearing rumblings that they are revising and reinterpreting that language haa haa. They did try unsuccessfully to imply that the Jewish genetic code was non existant, because it had been so diluted within their current gene pool. Gawd, the stupid.........

[AverageJoe90]

35. Not really buying this, tbh.

It certainly is quite likely, even probable that certain Natives' ancestors did truly and legitimately come from Siberia, but when you really think about it, many of these peoples are just too far removed from the Siberians to even be distantly related.
I have seen some evidence that suggests that not only were there earlier waves(no, not the unproven 'Solutrean' theory, mind you!)of immigration, but that these waves likely came from other parts of the world: Two areas of particular interest have been Oceania and, believe it or not, possibly even what are now the Japanese home islands(courtesy of one Silvia Gonzales, and a Japanese documentary, though I don't know its name.).

It does seem to me that Schurr and his team are a little too stuck on the Clovis theory. Not good for scientific research if you can't seem to diverge & expand from one theory when it's quite logical to do so, IMHO.

[duhneece]

37. The Mescalero Apache are said to come from Mescar, Mongolia.

Many have the Mongolian birthmark on their lower back. When a Mescalero woman, Molly, traveled with our tour group, she was stopped several times and asked why she, a Chinese minority member, was hanging around a tour group. One book at our library claims the Athabaskan language family can be traced down the Bering Strait. I have no idea, but am interested.

[derby378]

43. Not surprising, but still pretty cool

I remember seeing silver jewelry from Kirghizistan where the patterns looked suspiciously close to patterns I've seen in the artwork of the Navajo, Hopi, and other southwestern tribes and nations.