Geneticists using computer modeling found that the New World was inhabited by a group of people from Siberia and it was extremely small in number.
Columbus, of course, is wrongly called the discoverer of America. Long before him, this part of the world was discovered by people representing the peoples living today on the territory of Russia. Only, unlike Columbus, they, following the precepts of Lenin, took a different path. An international team of scientists with the participation of Michael Crawford, professor of anthropology at the University of Kansas, published a fundamental study in 2015 that proved that the ancestors of modern Indians entered America from the back door. They didn't have to swim across the Atlantic. At the height of the last ice age, about 23 thousand years ago, they crossed on dry land along the Bering Isthmus from Chukotka to Alaska (there they sat in isolation for 8 thousand years and moved inland, only when the climate warmed up and passages opened in the ice sheets). Genetic studies have shownthat all the native Indians of America descend from one population of inhabitants of Siberia.
In a new study, scientists have calculated the size of this group of early settlers.
Chukchi, Buryats or George Washington?
The conjecture that the real founding fathers of America were not George Washington and Benjamin Franklin, but immigrants from modern Russia, so excited the minds of scientists that immediately after the fall of the Iron Curtain, the Americans organized an anthropological expedition to Siberia. Michael Crawford was the leader of the first team of scientists, which in 1989 began to study the genetic code of the peoples of Siberia.
Even then, anthropologists collected DNA samples from representatives of 10 ethnic groups: Altaians, Aleuts, Buryats, Chukchi, Evenks, Ostyaks, Itelmens, Kalmyks, Koryaks and Tuvinians. In the current study, scientists have compared certain sections of the DNA of Siberians with genetic markers of ethnic groups living in South and Central America: Ache (Paraguay), Bribri, Guatuso, Guaimi (all Costa Rica), Langua (Argentina), Quechua (Peru), arara, vaiwai, shavanta and zuruaha (Brazil).
Scientists were interested in the question: how big was the first wave of migrants from Siberia, whose descendants colonized America? Figuratively speaking, the idea was to use the methods of genetic analysis to roll back the "time machine" when the genetic differences between the representatives of these tribes were minimal.
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Get into the "bottleneck"
During the study, it turned out that there was one migration wave, and the genetic diversity in the tribes of the native Indians was very small. This is due to the fact that at some point the population experienced a bottleneck effect. This is the name of the reduction of the gene pool, which occurs as a result of a critical decrease in the number of a biological species. A classic example of this effect is the cheetah population. It is believed that as a result of some kind of disaster, only one female and male survived, which became the progenitors of all living cheetahs. Due to the lack of genetic diversity in predators, there is a high level of accumulation of harmful mutations that reduce the survival of the species as a whole. Through such a "bottleneck" at one time all of humanity managed to get through. Scientists suggestthat at some point the ancestral population of Homo sapiens was reduced to a group of 2-5 thousand people. However, there are other reasons for the low genetic diversity in American Indians.
Our people created pyramids and Nazca drawings
- Based on archaeological data, we know that Central and South America has been inhabited over the past 15 thousand years. - says Michael Crawford. - Using computer simulations of isolation and migration processes based on 100 million generations, we were able to calculate the size of the founder population - according to our estimates, it was only 250 people! Genetic data is helping to reconstruct a fascinating picture of how the settlement of the New World unfolded. Only a couple of hundred people gave life to numerous tribes and peoples, whose number today reaches 40 million people! Naturally, they did not say to each other: "Let's go and discover new lands!" It was about dividing groups of hunters and gatherers. Probably, the ancestral population was divided into groups of about 50 people. When conditions became favorablethe birth rate grew, after a while part of the community, in order not to be crowded, left for new lands. There, in turn, there was again a small population explosion, and then the division of the group. Thus, over 15 thousand years, immigrants from Alaska reached Argentina, while in the course of the development of the mainland, tribes with their own new language, culture, way of life were formed in different regions.
It is striking that the Iroquois and Mohicans are heroes of adventure novels; the Aztecs and Maya - the creators of highly developed civilizations; the Nazca Indians - the authors of amazing gigantic drawings - all of them turned out to be far from strangers to Russia.
YAROSLAV KOROBATOV