The First Americans and the southern Altai

[Mike R]

Listeros,

University of Pennsylvania and Russian anthropologists have located
the Altai region of southern Siberia as the genetic source of the
earliest Americans. That region is at the intersection of Russia,
Mongolia, China and Kazakhstan. People of this region began to move to
northern Siberia and into the New World 20,000-25,000 years ago. The
researchers studied the genetics of the people living in this region,
looking at mitochrondial DNA which is maternally inherited, and the Y
chromosome DNA linked to paternal inheritance. They also compared
those genetics to samples from southern Siberia, Central Asia,
Mongolia, East Asia and American indigenous groups. Their study has a
high degree of precision. There is a unique mutation shared by Native
Americans and souther Altaians known as lineage Q. The southern
Altaian lineage diverged from Native Americans 13-14,000 years ago.

EurekAlert has the story here;
http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2012-01/uop-pac011912.php

And the whole report is in the American Journal of Human Genetics
here;
http://www.cell.com/AJHG/

Mike Ruggeri's Pre-Clovis and Clovis World
http://tinyurl.com/2m8725

[Trond Engen]

Mike R:

> University of Pennsylvania and Russian anthropologists have located
> the Altai region of southern Siberia as the genetic source of the
> earliest Americans. That region is at the intersection of Russia,
> Mongolia, China and Kazakhstan. People of this region began to move
> to northern Siberia and into the New World 20,000-25,000 years ago.
> The researchers studied the genetics of the people living in this
> region, looking at mitochrondial DNA which is maternally inherited,
> and the Y chromosome DNA linked to paternal inheritance. They also
> compared those genetics to samples from southern Siberia, Central
> Asia, Mongolia, East Asia and American indigenous groups. Theirstudy
> has a high degree of precision. There is a unique mutation shared by
> Native Americans and souther Altaians known as lineage Q. The
> southern Altaian lineage diverged from Native Americans 13-14,000
> years ago.

Surely that's too late to be the first Americans, but it would seem to
be not far from the estimate for the Dene-Yeniseian split. Are there
Yeniseian genetic data available?

> EurekAlert has the story here;
> http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2012-01/uop-pac011912.php

This says «[...] Schurr's team estimated that the southern Altaian
lineage diverged genetically from the Native American lineage 13,000 to
14,000 years ago, a timing scenario that aligns with the idea of people
moving into the Americas from Siberia between 15,000 and 20,000 years ago.»

Also, American Indians are more related to Southern Altaians than to
Northern, and Southern and Northern Altaians are not particularly close
on the Y chromosome while there's more evidence of contact in the
mitochondrial DNA. This suggests to me that Southern Altaians carry the
markers of the older population while original Northern Altaians,
especially male lines, at some time were replaced by newcomers. This, I
think, might have been a pre-Dene-Yeniseian split, leaving the
Dene-Yeniseian ancestors on the northern side.

OTOH, if these genetic markers are all over the New World, my hypothesis
does nothing to explain how Na-dene languages came to be such a distinct
entity in America. At the beginning of historical time, Yeniseian
languages are known to have been spoken from the Northern slopes of the
Sayan range and all the way along the middle Yenisei. Hydronomy suggests
an earlier range further west. It's possible that Yeniseians (or
formerly Yeniseian populations) are the Northern Altaians, which would
also be interesting.

Too bad there aren't any maps.

> And the whole report is in the American Journal of Human Genetics
> here;
> http://www.cell.com/AJHG/

Which I hope somebody here can read.

Thanks!

--
Trond Engen

[JTEM]

, Mike R <michaelrugger...@gmail.com> wrote:

> University of Pennsylvania and Russian anthropologists have located
> the Altai region of southern Siberia as the genetic source of the
> earliest Americans.

This is just plain not true. Doing the same kind
of testing on today's European population and
maintaining the exact same assumptions would
yield inaccurate results. We know this for a fact.

The problem is that they are testing modern
populations. This is impossibly inaccurate. Here, I'll
explain why....

Let's say you have a stable population of 1 million
people. Let's say this remains the case for 10
billion years. Then, suddenly, a new genetic line
is introduced, one with a powerful advantage. But,
it's introduced in frightfully small numbers....

Because that new line has such a big advantage
it is eventually going to become dominant. Most
people (perhaps even EVERYBODY) is going to
eventually carry it. And once that happens it's
going to mask everything that came before it, and
any DNA testing is going to give wildly inaccurate
results.

See, everyone will carry this gene, so the entire
population will be traced back to the emergence of
this gene.... yet the population existed for billions
of years prior!

Genetically, the population would look billions of
years younger than it really is.

And let's say that this gene, the one that only
got introduced after billions of years, came from
a small island to the west. What the DNA would
"Show" is that the continent was populated
billions of years later than it was, by people who
actually represented the tiniest of a minority
amongst the inhabitants.

Now change "billions" to thousands. There is no
difference. Everything I've said remains fact.

[G Horvat]

I have read the article and like other similar studies, the Altai region
was selected based upon the paternally-inherited Y chromosome sequences
rather than the maternally-inherited mtDNAs. The findings from both
genetic systems are not in unison. I, personally, will trust the Y
chromosome findings more in a couple of years! :-)

Since you mentioned the Yeniseians, I would highlight one little problem
using a quote from the article:

"...comparisons among other Altaian ethnic groups revealed some
consistent patterns. mtDNA haplogroups B, C, D, and U4 were found in all
Altaian populations, but at varying frequencies..."

mtDNA haplogroup 'A' happens to be the predominant Native American
haplogroup and almost the only haplogroup of the northern Nadenes. It
was not totally absent in the sample but detected at very low frequency
- 3.2% (16/490). The frequency of haplogroup B was slightly lower 2.2%
and the sequences displayed no diversity. The majority of Native
Americans from North and Central America carry mtDNAs belonging to one
or the other of these two haplogroups.

Gisele
http://tech.groups.yahoo.com/group/HumanMigrations/