New DNA findings, if confirmed, have stunning implications for our understanding of both pre-historic Siberians - and native Americans. They would suggest that, contrary to previous understanding, some indigenous populations are - in fact - European or West Asiatic in origin.



The Danish-US research was carried out on the bones of a Siberian boy whose remains were found near the village of Mal'ta close to Lake Baikal in the 1920s in a grave adorned with flint tools, pendants, a bead necklace and a sprinkling of ochre. The remains are held in the world famous Hermitage Museum in St Petersburg and analysis of a bone in one of his arms represents 'the oldest complete genome of a modern human sequenced to date', according to Science magazine.

'His DNA shows close ties to those of today's Native Americans. Yet he apparently descended not from East Asians, but from people who had lived in Europe or western Asia,' said ancient DNA expert Eske Willerslev of the University of Copenhagen. 'The finding suggests that about a third of the ancestry of today's Native Americans can be traced to 'western Eurasia'.'

The research may help explain why 'European ancestry previously detected in modern Native Americans do not come solely from mixing with European colonists, as most scientists had assumed, but have much deeper roots', said the report.

It may also raise a similar question about the 'European look' of some ancient Siberians - for example in the tattooed permafrost princess Ukok found in a burial chamber in the Altai Mountains, whose remains date from around 2,500 years ago.

The four year old boy was found near the Belaya River close to the village of Mal'ta which is famed for the discovery of ancient art, some of it showing close links to European discoveries of the same period. Willerslev and co-author Kelly Graf of Texas A&M University 'used a variety of statistical methods to compare the genome with that of living populations.

'They found that a portion of the boy's genome is shared only by today's Native Americans and no other groups, showing a close relationship.

'Yet the child's Y chromosome belongs to a genetic group called Y haplogroup R, and its mitochondrial DNA to a haplogroup U. Today, those haplogroups are found almost exclusively in people living in Europe and regions of Asia west of the Altai Mountains, which are near the borders of Russia, China, and Mongolia.'

http://siberiantimes.com/science/cas...fic-sensation/