Clovis Site Human Genome

[shawomet]

http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v5 ... 13025.html

http://news.sciencemag.org/archaeology/ ... qus_thread

"If correct, the findings refute the Solutrean hypothesis, which postulates that ancient migrants from Western Europe founded the Clovis culture. The data also undermine contentions that today’s Native Americans descend from later migrants to the Americas, rather than from the earlier Paleoindians. And that could help tribes that want to claim and rebury ancient American skeletons such as that of the 9400-year-old Kennewick Man from Washington state. “This is proof that Kennewick Man was Native American,” says archaeologist Dennis Jenkins of the University of Oregon, Eugene. Sarah Anzick, whose family is in possession of the infant, says that it is likely to be reburied in May."


http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/ ... s-man.html

"The boy's genome showed his people were direct ancestors of many of today's native peoples in the Americas, researchers said.
The so-called Anzick skeleton was found with about 125 artifacts, including Clovis fluted spear points and tools made from antlers, and covered in red ochre, a type of mineral.
'It is almost like finding the 'missing link' to the common ancestor of the Native Americans,' said Eske Willerslev of the University of Copenhagen in Denmark, who led the study.
The Clovis boy's family is the direct ancestor to roughly estimated 80% of all present day Native Americans.
'Although the Clovis culture disappeared its people are living today."

[Frank Harrist]

http://youtu.be/uRg2Q5lpoR0

This really only proves that this particular kid was from Asia and he was associated with Clovis style artifacts. It doesn't totally disprove the Solutrean hypothesis. Waters is claiming a victory that he can't totally support. IMO, of course.

[uniface]

The second one's a nice group portrait of the Anzick Cache artifacts.

As for the rest, I wonder sometimes if these people read each other's stuff before launching into their Press Release-driven 15 minutes of This-Just-In fame.

Not much more than a couple months back there was another DNA analysis of an older Siberian child that shed a lot of light on the circumpolar "Caucasian" genetic element in both hemispheres.

The idea of a 2 year-old child having been directly ancestral to anybody is certainly a novel idea though.

[Sam Salmon]

This really only proves that this particular kid was from Asia and he was associated with Clovis style artifacts. It doesn't totally disprove the Solutrean hypothesis. Waters is claiming a victory that he can't totally support. IMO, of course.

Mine too!

[shawomet]

The second one's a nice group portrait of the Anzick Cache artifacts.

As for the rest, I wonder sometimes if these people read each other's stuff before launching into their Press Release-driven 15 minutes of This-Just-In fame.

Not much more than a couple months back there was another DNA analysis of an older Siberian child that shed a lot of light on the circumpolar "Caucasian" genetic element in both hemispheres.

The idea of a 2 year-old child having been directly ancestral to anybody is certainly a novel idea though.

From the abstract:

" We sequenced the genome to an average depth of 14.4× and show that the gene flow from the Siberian Upper Palaeolithic Mal’ta population5 into Native American ancestors is also shared by the Anzick-1 individual and thus happened before 12,600 years BP."

The Mal'ta boy is the Siberian child you are referring to, so there is no conflict in these studies. Apparently.
Here is the abstract for that recent discovery. They estimate 14-38% of Native American genetics derives from the Mal'ta population.

http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/va ... 12736.html


Frank Harrist wrote:
"This really only proves that this particular kid was from Asia and he was associated with Clovis style artifacts. It doesn't totally disprove the Solutrean hypothesis. Waters is claiming a victory that he can't totally support. IMO, of course."

I agree with you as well. It will seriously challenge the Solutrean origin of Clovis technology, however. Even though, even there, I don't think it eliminates that possibility completely, assuming technology spread from a hypothetical origin on the Delmarva Peninsula.
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This summary may clarify these findings:

"The conclusions of Willerslev and his co-workers have to be read in conjunction with their other published findings.

They previously reported the genome sequence for the individual known as “MA-1” (also known as “Mal’ta Boy”), which now provides an interesting comparison to the Clovis child. Mal’ta Boy (from South Siberia) dates to around 24,000 years ago but shows no genetic affinity to modern populations in that region. His genome indicates that he was related to modern-day western Eurasians which in turn indicates that prehistoric populations of that area occupied a wider geographical range into northeast Eurasia than they do today. There is a definite gene flow event from that individual’s genome into the Native American population which explains between 14-38% of their ancestry. The remainder of Native American ancestry derives from true East Asian populations (to which Ma’lta Boy did not belong in a genetic sense). That is, there’s a distinction to be made between where people were living and where they originally came from.

The conclusion is that two distinct Old World populations led to the formation of the First American gene pool: one related to modern-day East Asians, and the other a Siberian Upper Palaeolithic population genetically related to modern-day western Eurasians. But the direction of the flow is from the Siberian vicinity.

[Just to clear up any geographical confusion and help folks get their minds round this, Siberia is in Asia. It occupies most of Northern Asia and its eastern-most extremity (the Chukchi Peninsula) has the Bering Strait to its east, separating it from Alaska. Asia and Europe are not separate continents (except in the heads of politicians). They are a single land mass plus islands, covering everything from Ireland at the extreme west, through Russia in the north, Indonesia in the south and across to China and Japan in the east.]

There is further support for Willerslev's conclusions from the genome sequence of 17,000 year old DNA from the south-central Siberian Afontova Gora-2 site. The genome demonstrates a similar signature to Mal’ta Boy and has close affinities to modern western Eurasians and Native Americans, but no affinities to present-day East Asians. There is a demonstrable genetic continuity in south-central Siberia throughout the Late Glacial Maxim and these people would have been well-placed to take advantage of any opportunities to cross the Bering land bridge if they had a mind to.

The genetic continuity in Siberia, dating back to considerably more than 24,000 years ago doesn’t sit well with dates for the Solutrean culture which existed only in Europe between 17,000 – 22,000 years ago as far as we know.

As Willerslev has said, the findings are significant at two levels. Firstly, the “Upper Palaeolithic Siberians came from a cosmopolitan population of early modern humans that spread out of Africa to Europe and Central and South Asia.” Secondly “Palaeoindian skeletons with phenotype traits atypical of modern-day Native Americans can be explained as having a direct historical connection to Upper Palaeolithic Siberia.” The implications are that one portion of the dual ancestry characterising Native Americans is at least 10,000 years older than the timeframe for humans crossing the Bering Strait around 14,000 years ago… but those earlier people still came via that route. There was more than one period during which a crossing was possible and what Willerslev is suggesting (what his evidence shows) is that the first wave of people made that crossing in a much earlier period and that there was more than one migration."

[uniface]

Very thorough job, Shaw. Appreciated.

[Frank Harrist]

Very thorough job, Shaw. Appreciated.

Ditto!

The reporting on this was rather sensationalist. One reporter said it was definitive proof that the solutrean migration didn't happen at all. One calls this the first American, which is just silly. You just have to read them all and filter out the BS. A background knowledge of the facts helps...and a discerning mind.

Also, I will never think of Clovis as a "culture". It was a technology and it was shared. No copyrights back then.

[circumspice]

[Just to clear up any geographical confusion and help folks get their minds round this, Siberia is in Asia. It occupies most of Northern Asia and its eastern-most extremity (the Chukchi Peninsula) has the Bering Strait to its east, separating it from Alaska. Asia and Europe are not separate continents (except in the heads of politicians). They are a single land mass plus islands, covering everything from Ireland at the extreme west, through Russia in the north, Indonesia in the south and across to China and Japan in the east.]

Too simplistic. That vast land mass was divided by more than cultural & political barriers. You will find the physical barriers closely mirror the cultural & political differences right up until the recent past.