Experts from the University of Alaska studied the DNA of an Indian girl who died at the end of the last ice age, which helped establish that her ancestors were people who arrived from Russia about 25,000 years ago.
A six-week-old girl died about 11,500 years ago. The baby's genes could show that the first people arrived in this territory much earlier than previously thought, and in the future they were divided into three main Indian groups.
The remains of the child were found in Alaska back in 2013, but only now experts have been able to decipher its genome. After analyzing the DNA of the remains, the authors of the work came to the conclusion that among the ancestors of the child were visitors from Siberia. During the last ice age, Siberia and Alaska were connected by a land bridge, so the ancient people were able to get to Alaska.
For more than ten thousand years, there was contact between the Eurasian and American populations, it was interrupted about 25,000 years ago, most likely, this was due to the climate. The descendants of the settlers were called “ancient Beringins”.
The authors of the work conclude: "Our work pointed to the circumstances of the emergence of the native population of America and shows how these early populations migrated and spread throughout North America."
Apostolova-Polishchuk Nadezhda