In Siberia, the first find of this kind was made outside the United States, so genetically close to American, scientists are convinced.
The roots of the inhabitants of North America are found in Siberia. This conclusion was reached by scientists from an international team of researchers, which included Russian specialists.
In particular, the experts first studied the DNA of the ancient population of the East Siberian Arctic, as a result of which they were able to establish how people settled in this area 30 thousand years ago. The material is published by the journal Nature.
It is specified that ancient finds over 26.5 thousand years old are rarely found in Siberia. However, researchers are interested in the region not without reason: in the lower reaches of the Yana River, Russian scientists discovered the Yanskaya site, which is considered the oldest trace of human presence in the Arctic and a unique object of world cultural heritage.
Three milk teeth were found there, two of which contained ancient human DNA. However, no other human remains were found. Most likely, the teeth were lost as a result of the natural process of replacing them with permanent ones.
RAS Elena Pavlova.
The finds have been preserved well enough for scientists to be able to "read" the human nuclear genome: this is the DNA of all chromosomes that contain basic genetic information about a person. Thus, for the first time it was possible to establish who the people of the Yanskaya site were.
The second most important element of the study was DNA samples from a large fragment of a human skull aged 9.8 thousand years, which was found in the lower reaches of the Kolyma River. Also, scientists were able to "read" another 31 genomes from the finds discovered in different regions of Eastern Siberia, from the turn of the Holocene to the Middle Ages.
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As a result of the work, scientists have found out that at least three major migration events have taken place in Eastern Siberia over the past 30 thousand years. Moreover, in all cases, the influx of the new population took place in the direction from the south to the north.
Researchers believe that the genetic makeup of the ancient inhabitants of Northern Siberia was mosaic: they were groups of related populations that mastered the vast expanses of Northern Eurasia and America. In this case, the population plays the role of the “missing link” for understanding the genetics of the origin of the indigenous population of America.
At the same time, the researchers note, in the genome of both populations there is a significant contribution of the ancient population of the north of Siberia - Yang people.
Natalia Mayorova