ABC Science Updated: Save Send news by mail electrónicoTu name *

Your email *

email *

The first colonization of America, according to the most accepted theory, was a tremendous journey on foot from Asia across an ancient land bridge spanning the Bering strait, submerged at the end of the last ice age, and Canada. But, how and where they came from exactly those true pioneers? A new study published in the journal “Cell” has managed to find his kin old, a man who had lived 14,000 years ago in the surroundings of lake Baikal, in Siberia.

Researchers at the Max Planck Institute for the Science of Human History in Jena (Germany) has sequenced the genome of 19 individuals of the upper Paleolithic in that region siberian. The results reveal that the link between the ancient people of siberian and the native american is much deeper and stronger than was believed.

previous Studies had already indicated a connection between the populations of Siberia and America, but this individual 14,000 years is the oldest in having mixed ancestry present in the native americans. The researchers used cutting-edge techniques in molecular biology to sequence your genome from a tooth extremely fragmented excavated in 1962 on the site Ust-Kyahta-3.

The tooth fragmented of an individual from 14,000 years ago – G. Pavlenok

This is an individual of the south of Siberia, along with a mesolithic younger northeastern Siberia, they share the same genetic mix of ancestors from the ancient Eurasia North and northeast Asia, that is found in native americans, and suggests that descent-that then gave rise to the native americans in North America and the South was distributed much more than previously supposed. The evidence suggests that this population experienced contacts genetic common with the populations of northeast Asia, resulting in mixing ratios varying over time and space.

“the genome of The upper paleolithic will provide a legacy to study the history of human genetics in the future,” says Cosimo Posth, lead author of the article. More evidence is needed of genetic groups siberian upper Palaeolithic to determine when and where he joined the gene pool ancestral to the native americans.

View recent on the river Selenga near the archaeological site Ust-Kyakhta-3 – G. PavlenokConexiones prehistoric

in Addition to this transcontinental connection, the study also shows a connectivity within Eurasia that can be seen both in the genomes of humans and in the pathogens they carry. In this way, the researchers were able to make a detailed description of the history of the population in the region of lake Baikal.

The presence of ancestry related to the steppe of Eastern Europe as evidence of the contact between populations of the steppe of southern Siberia and western Eurasia in the preamble of the Bronze Age Early on, an era characterized by a growing social complexity, and technological. The surprising presence of Yersinia pestis, the pathogen that causes the plague, pointing even to contacts wider.

Although it was postulated that the spread of Y. pestis would be facilitated by the migrations from the steppe, the two individuals here identified with the pathogen were genetically of northeast Asia. The analysis of isotopes of one of the infected individuals revealed a signal non-local, suggesting sources beyond the region of discovery. In addition, the strains of the plague that carried the couple are more closely related to a strain of contemporary identified in an individual of the baltic region of northeastern Europe, which further supports the high mobility of these pathogens in the Bronze age and probably also of the people.

“This looks more eastern strains of ancient Y. pestis probably suggests mobility of long-range during the Bronze Age,” says Maria Spyrou, one of the coautoras of the study. “In the future, with the generation of additional data, we hope to delineate the patterns of spread of the plague with more detail”. concludes Johannes Krause, lead author of the study.