Ancient Baby Bones Reveal Connection Between Humans in Asia and Alaska

Scientists may have found a connection between ancient humans in Asia and those in Alaska. They've deciphered maternal genetic material from two babies buried together in Alaska 11,500 years ago and have found that the infants were the northernmost known kin to two lineages of Native Americans found further south-and that they may be related to those who migrated across the Bering land bridge from Asia.

"These infants are the earliest human remains in northern North America, and they carry distinctly Native American lineages," said Dennis O'Rourke, one of the researchers, in a news release. "We see diversity that is not present in modern Native American populations of the north and we see it at a fairly early date. This is evidence there was substantial genetic variation in the Beringian population before any of them moved south."

One theory is that the two Native American lineages evolved as the people moved south and dispersed and not just when they were in Beringia. Finding the two lineage in the infants only a few thousand years after the migration south, though, indicates that these lineages were present before the migration started.

"It supports the Beringian standstill theory in that if they represent a population that descended from the earlier Beringian population it helps confirm the extent of genetic diversity in that source population," said O'Rourke. "You don't see any of these lineages that are distinctly Native American in Asia, even Siberia, so there had to be a period of isolation for these distinctive Native American lineages to have evolved away from their Asian ancestors. We believe that was in Beringia."

The findings reveal a bit more about the movement of these ancient human populations. They also help in understanding the genetic diversity among early Beringian populations.

The findings are published in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

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