An international group of archaeologists and paleogenetics, comparing the DNA of the prehistoric inhabitants of Lake Baikal and the Native Americans, found that they are relatives. Apparently, several tens of thousands of years ago, a large community of people was formed in Siberia, which could pass on its genome to many modern peoples, including Indians and Russians.
Originally from Siberia
Genetic evidence for a long-standing hypothesis about the Siberian origin of the inhabitants of the Americas appeared in 2015. A group of scientists analyzed the genomes of 31 representatives of the indigenous peoples of America, Siberia and Oceania and compared them among themselves. In addition, the researchers compared the data obtained with the results of decoding ancient DNA recovered from fossil remains - skeletons and mummies.
In total, the authors of the work studied more than three thousand human genomes from 169 populations - both ancient and modern. And they not only confirmed the kinship of prehistoric Siberians and Indians, but also determined an approximate route along which they migrated from the north of Eurasia to the American continent.
The ancestors of the Indians inhabiting both America today, most likely, left their historical homeland about 23 thousand years ago. It is believed that they moved through the Bering Strait along the land isthmus, which periodically formed during the last glacial maximum. For about eight millennia, some of the settlers stayed in Kamchatka, and the population split into different branches in North America. In addition, the researchers found a weak infusion of genes from the peoples of Oceania: most likely, this happened after the main wave of migration - however, how exactly is still unclear.
The vicissitudes of migration
Promotional video:
The 2015 genetic research data are consistent with archaeological finds, judging by which, 13 millennia ago, the Clovis culture was developed in North America. In 2019, a team of scientists led by Eske Villerslev from the University of Copenhagen analyzed the DNA of 34 ancient Siberians, including two boys, whose remains 31.6 thousand years old were found in Yakutia near the Yana River.
Other genomes studied belonged to people who lived from 9800 to six hundred years ago in the territory of modern Chukotka, in the Primorsky Territory, near Lake Baikal and in southwestern Finland.
Analysis of the data showed that over the past 30 millennia, Siberia has experienced three major migrations from south to north. The boys from the Yana River are representatives of a previously unknown group of ancient inhabitants of these places. They are 71 percent similar to the inhabitants of Western Eurasia, from which they probably separated about 38 thousand years ago. The Yang children received the remaining 29 percent of the genetic inheritance from the peoples of East Asia.
The authors of the work believe that this is how the genetic lines of the North American Indians and Paleosiberians were formed. Approximately 18-20 thousand years ago, the descendants of the inhabitants of Northern Siberia and immigrants from East Asia mixed with each other. And a few millennia later, through the Bering Strait, they moved towards the American continent.
Those who remained in their homeland were ousted by the so-called non-Siberians. Their closest relatives are modern Evens. And already about five thousand years ago, nomads from the steppes of Central Asia came to North-Eastern Siberia and assimilated with the local population.
Similar data was obtained by researchers led by David Reich of Harvard Medical School. They studied the genomes of 48 people who lived from seven thousand to 280 years ago in Eastern Siberia, Chukotka and the Aleutian Islands, the Canadian Arctic and Alaska, after which they conducted a comparative DNA analysis with the Inuit and Inupiat - modern indigenous people of the northernmost state of the United States - and representatives of small peoples of Western Siberia.
As it turned out, the ancient inhabitants of the Siberian northeast are the result of a mixture of the Paleosiberians and the population of East Asia. Later from them came the speakers of the Chukchi-Kamchatka languages and the Paleo-Eskimos, whose genetic traces the authors of the work found in the DNA of modern Inuit and Indians.
On the shores of Baikal
At the end of May, an article by another international group of scientists was published in the scientific journal Cell. In their opinion, the population of the direct ancestors of the North American Indians was formed not in North-Eastern Siberia, but in the vicinity of Lake Baikal about 14 thousand years ago, after the mixing of the Far Eastern and ancient Siberian peoples.
Experts have analyzed the genomes of 19 ancient Siberians from 14 to four millennia. In the oldest material extracted from a tooth, found in the Ust-Kyakhta-3 cave south of Lake Baikal, components indicating a relationship with Native Americans were found - similar were identified in the DNA of northeastern Siberians who lived several thousand years later.
The authors of the work believe that carriers of at least two genomes - the ancient North Eurasian and the North East Asian - were mixed in the vicinity of Lake Baikal. The first is associated with the cultures of the Early Bronze Age, the second - with the Neolithic.
In addition, specialists found traces of the plague bacillus Yersinia pestis in the remains of about four thousand years old. Genetically, it is close to the bacteria found earlier in a resident of the opposite part of Eurasia - the Baltic region. This means that already in prehistoric times, people kept in touch over long distances.