Ancient DNA Evidence Upends Story Of Native American Migration

FAIRBANKS, AK — DNA evidence collected from the skull of a baby girl unearthed in Alaska edits the story of the first humans to populate North America, according to a new study. Calling it a major shift in scientists’ theories of the first people to inhabit the continent, researchers at the University of Alaska Fairbanks have named the new group “Ancient Beringians.”

The findings from the full genomic profile on the 6-week-old infant and the partial remains of another infant, a likely first cousin, upend earlier beliefs, providing convincing evidence that all Native Americans can trace their family trees back to a single migration event around the end of the last Ice Age.

The researchers believe single founding ancestral Native American group split from East Asians about 35,000 years ago, and then split into two groups about 20,000 years ago. The Ancient Beringians remained in Alaska for thousands of years, while the other group moved south across the continent.

“We didn’t know this population existed,” Ben Potter, one of the lead authors of the study and a professor of anthropology at the university, said in a statement. “These data also provide the first direct evidence of the initial founding Native American population, which sheds new light on how these early populations were migrating and settling throughout North America.”

The 6-week-old infant’s remains, untouched for about 11,500 years until they were unearthed during a 2013 archaeological dig at the Upward Sun River site, open a window into the history of her people. She has been named “Xach’itee’aanenh T’eede Gaay” (sunrise girl-child) by the local indigenous community. Partial remains of a younger infant, who is called “Yełkaanenh T’eede Gaay” (dawn twilight girl-child), were also uncovered and analyzed.

In a news conference, Potter called the findings an “exciting new puzzle” and said the Ice Age may have influenced migratory patterns.

“It would be difficult to overstate the importance of this newly revealed people to our understanding of how ancient populations came to inhabit the Americas,” Potter said. “This new information will allow us a more accurate picture of Native American prehistory. It is markedly more complex than we thought.”

The researchers also suggest two scenarios for populating the New World. One is that there were two distinct groups of people who crossed over the Beringian land bridge prior to 15,700 years ago. A second is that one group of people crossed over the land bridge and then split in Beringia into two groups: Ancient Beringians and other Native Americans, with the latter moving south of the ice sheets 15,700 years ago.

Potter’s National Science Foundation-funded work at the Upward Sun River site has spanned a decade. He said that when the science team began the analysis of the genetic material, they expected it to match the genetic profile of other northern Native American people. Instead, it matched no other known ancient population.

What this suggests is that the Ancient Beringian people remained in the Far North for thousands of years, while the ancestors of other Native American peoples spread south throughout the rest of North America. The DNA results, along with other archaeological data, suggest that Athabascan ancestors moved north again, possibly around 6,000 years ago, eventually absorbing or replacing the Ancient Beringian population and establishing deep roots in their ancestral lands.

“There is very limited genetic information about modern Alaska Athabascan people,” Potter said. “These findings create opportunities for Alaska Native people to gain new knowledge about their own connections to both the northern Native American and Ancient Beringian people.”

The study was published Wednesday, Jan. 3, in the journal Nature.

Photo: Members of the archaeology field team watch as University of Alaska Fairbanks professors Ben Potter and Josh Reuther excavate at the Upward Sun River site. (Photo courtesy of Ben Potter)