Their ancestors once lived on the banks of the Yenisei - proved by genetics
The relationship of the Indians with the nomads from Siberia was established by bioinformatics from the Institute for Information Transmission Problems. A. A. Kharkevich RAS (IITP RAS) together with Czech and American colleagues. Scientists have studied the genomes of four Siberian peoples and identified their relationship with the modern Indians of the Na-Dené.
It all started with the hypothesis about the kinship of the only surviving of the Yenisei family of languages - Ket - and the languages of the Na-Dene family (which, for example, are spoken by the Navajo Indians in the states of Arizona and New Mexico).
The researchers analyzed two complete genomes of the Kets, as well as approximately 130,000 genetic markers in 88 people from four peoples of the Yenisei basin (Kets, Nganasans, Selkups, and Entsy). In the past, their ancestors were nomadic hunters or reindeer herders. As a result, their genetic relationship with the Paleo-Eskimos, the extinct people of the American Arctic, was first established. Then, using new methods of analysis, scientists proved that it was the Paleo-Eskimos who made a significant genetic contribution to the people of the Na-Dene.
“Thus, we were able to trace the flow of genes from Central Siberia to the Na-Dene peoples, dated 5-6 thousand years ago,” said one of the authors of the study, an employee of the IITP RAS educational and scientific center “Bioinformatics” and the University of Ostrava (Czech Republic) Pavel Flegontov. Nevertheless, according to him, genetic studies still cannot reliably prove the linguistic relationship of the Ket language and the Na-Dene language. Therefore, the work that prompted researchers to study the genomes of Siberians and Americans is still only a hypothesis.
Natalia Vedeneeva