Scientists from the University of Tübingen, along with colleagues from several countries, discovered that people not only migrated from Siberia to the Americas, but also returned. Research published in the journal current biology.
The scientists analyzed the DNA of ten people under the age of 7,500. They identified a previously unidentified Altai hunter-gatherer group living in the Neolithic Altai-Sayan region, not far from the confluence of Russia, China, Mongolia and Kazakhstan. Genetic evidence suggests that they were a mixture of two distinct groups that lived in Siberia during the last ice age: the peoples of Siberia and northern Eurasia.
The genetic data also reflect various waves of migration from North America to northeast Asia over the past 5,000 years. The first Americans reached Kamchatka and Central Siberia. In addition, the inhabitants of the Far East were related to hunter-gatherers from the Japanese archipelago.
Scientists also discovered an unusual burial of a man who was buried in a religious costume and with items pointing to shamanism. The burial items look different from other local burials, which means that different people, both culturally and genetically, were reintroduced to the Altai Territory. The authors noted that Altai is known as the place where a new group of archaic hominids, the Denisovans, was discovered. But the region is also important in human history as a crossroads for human movement between North Siberia, Central Asia and East Asia for thousands of years.
The movement of humans across the Bering Sea from northern Asia to North America is a well-known and proven phenomenon in early human history. However, the genetic makeup of people living in northern Asia at that time remained a mystery due to the limited number of ancient genomes analyzed from that region.
Source: Gazeta
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