Crossing From Asia, the First Americans Rushed Into the Unknown

Crossing From Asia, the First Americans Rushed Into the Unknown

Three new genetic analyses lend detail, and mystery, to the migration of prehistoric humans throughout the Western Hemisphere.


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Excavation of a skeleton approximately 9,600 years old in a rock shelter in Brazil. New DNA analyses show the earliest known Americans split into distinct groups after they crossed a land bridge from Asia.CreditCreditAndré Strauss
Carl Zimmer

Nearly 11,000 years ago, a man died in what is now Nevada. Wrapped in a rabbit-skin blanket and reed mats, he was buried in a place called Spirit Cave. Now scientists have recovered and analyzed his DNA, along with that of 70 other ancient people whose remains were discovered throughout the Americas. The findings lend astonishing detail to a story once lost to prehistory: how and when humans spread across the Western Hemisphere. The earliest known arrivals from Asia were already splitting into recognizably distinct groups, the research suggests. Some of these populations thrived, becoming the ancestors of indigenous peoples throughout the hemisphere. But other groups died out entirely, leaving no trace save for what can be discerned in ancient DNA. Indeed, the new genetic research hints at many dramatic chapters in the peopling of the Americas that archaeology has yet to uncover.


“Now, this is the grist for archaeologists,” said Ben Potter of the University of Alaska, who was not involved in the new papers. “Holy cow, this is awesome.” Earlier studies had indicated that people moved into the Americas at the end of the last ice age, traveling from Siberia to Alaska across a land bridge now under the Bering Sea. They spread southward, eventually reaching the tip of South America.

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The first, described in January by Eske Willerslev, a geneticist at the University of Copenhagen, was an 11,500-year-old girl whose remains were found in eastern Alaska.

The second was discovered hundreds of miles away, in western Alaska, and lived 9,000 years ago, Dr. Willerslev and his colleagues reported on Thursday in the journal Science.

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https://www.nytimes.com/2018/11/08/science/prehistoric-migration-americas.html