Beyond bones & stones
We've had some ideas that prehistoric Polynesian expansions made contact with Native Americans before European contact. For example, the sweet potato, a staple of Polynesian diets for hundreds of years, made its way to Andean culture where it was domesticated. And we've identified that some current Rapa Nui people have Native American DNA dating back... Continue Reading →
No one knows exactly the population of Native Americans when contact with Europeans occured. There are some estimates claiming there were 18 million in North America and upwards to 40 million in the combined continents. It’s estimated that the population in the Americas dropped by almost 90% within a few hundred years after the arrival of... Continue Reading →
In 1999, hunters looking for sheep stumbled upon the remains of a man in Tatshenshini-Alsek Park, British Columbia, Canada. The man was found at the foot of a glacier. After reporting the discovery, a team of archaeologists and forensic anthropologists worked with the Champagne and Aishihik First Nations to recover the remains. His affiliation wasn't... Continue Reading →
According to this open access PLoS One paper, 95% of Native Americans share their heritage to six women. I don't have much time to review this paper because I have to take a final exam in 30 minutes, but here's the title and link to the paper, "The Phylogeny of the Four Pan-American MtDNA Haplogroups:... Continue Reading →
To supplement last September's conclusion that the peopling of the Americas was initiated by a pretty diverse group of people who camped out in Beringia for a long time, long enough to differentiate from their Asian sister-clades, comes this study published in this week's PLoS One, "A Three-Stage Colonization Model for the Peopling of the... Continue Reading →
The web is abuzz over a new publication in PLoS Genetics about a single main migration across Bering Strait. From what I can tell, this new paper, "Genetic Variation and Population Structure," coincides with a recent publication in PLoS One that sampled mtDNA and figured out people moved in waves, but first they spent some... Continue Reading →
