# Population Genetics > Paleogenetics > Paleolithic & Mesolithic >  Genome of 12,600 year-old boy from Clovis culture confirms origin of Amerindians

## Maciamo

Rasmussen et al. tested the entire genome of a boy from the Clovis culture who died 12,600 years ago in Anzick, Montana. The results shows that all indigenous people in both North an South America seem to be descended from the same group of ancestors as those of the Clovis culture, which started c. 13,250 years ago. Clovis people are thought to have arrived to the Americas by crossing the land bridge from Siberia some 15,000 years ago.

The researchers compared the Anzick boy's genome with DNA samples from various Eurasian populations and 52 South American, Central American and Canadian tribes and found it to be most closely related to Central and South American populations, followed by Canadian tribes. The boy belonged to mtDNA haplogroup *D4h3a*, common among modern Amerindians. His Y-DNA is *Q1a2a1 (L54, xM3)*, which is ancestral for *Q1a2a1a1 (M3),* the paternal lineage of modern Native Americans.

The Anzick genome was compared to that of the 24,000 year-old Mal'ta boy from Lake Baikal, to the 4,000 year-old Saqqaq Paleo-Eskimo from Greenland, as well as to the contemporary genomes of Karitiana and Mayan individuals. The Anzick-1 boy showed once again closer similarities with modern Native American (NA) populations than with the Mal'ta boy. Interestingly the Saqqaq Greenlander was intermediary between other NA and East Asians, and in fact closer to the Han Chinese to to the Anzick boy. 

Unfortunately this genome won't give us an answer to the question of whether Europeans settled the Americas first during or immediately before or after the Last Glacial Maximum (26,000-19,000 years ago).

The earliest possible colonisation of the American continent might have taken place 30,000 years ago. The oldest skeletons in the Americas look distinctly more Europoid in their traits. Mongoloid features, present in modern Native Americans, suddenly replaced them from the time of the Clovis culture. This study confirms that Clovis was mongoloid and therefore also related to the modern Y-haplogroup Q1a and mt-haplogroups A, B, C and D of Native Americans. 

It has been assumed that mtDNA haplogroup X2a, found exclusively in North America, was the last trace of the earlier European or Middle Eastern colonisation of the Americas. Y-DNA R1* has also been proposed, although there are only unconfirmed rumours of its existence among Native North Americans.

Notwithstanding the laudable accomplishment of sequencing a full ancient genome, it would have been far more interesting to choose a pre-Clovis sample to confirm the European, Middle Eastern or Siberian/East Asian identity of the first colonisers. I suppose that they started by the Clovis culture to avoid offending Native Americans by telling them that they are not descended from the Palaeolithic Americans.

The only solace I find is a hint of Irano-Gedrosian admixture in the Anzick-1 sample's K=11 admixture. The Anzick boy has nearly 100% of Native American admixture, 0% of Siberian, 0% East Asian (Chinese, Japanese), BUT 1 or 2% of the admixture that peaks in the *Kalash*, and is also found at high frequency in the Hazara, Sindhi, Balochi, Burusho, Persians, etc., and at a lower (10-15%) frequency in all Caucasian and European populations, except the Sardinians. This part of the original admixture of Y-DNA R, and could confirm that R1* was indeed present alongside X2a in the Upper Palaeolithic North American population that was replaced by the Clovis people.

----------


## sparkey

> His Y-DNA is *Q1a2a1 (L54, xM3)*, which is ancestral for *Q1a2a1a1 (M3),* the paternal lineage of modern Native Americans.


M3 isn't the _only_ paternal lineage of modern Native Americans, however, and indeed L54+ M3-, namely Q L54>Z780, is present among a lot of modern Native Americans. Unfortunately, the supplementals don't indicate whether or not Z780 was tested on Anzick-1.




> Unfortunately this genome won't give us an answer to the question of whether Europeans settled the Americas first during or immediately before or after the Last Glacial Maximum (26,000-19,000 years ago) - the so-called Solutrean hypothesis.
> 
> The earliest possible colonisation of the American continent might have taken place 30,000 years ago. The oldest skeletons in the Americas look distinctly more Europoid in their traits. Mongoloid features, present in modern Native Americans, suddenly replaced them from the time of the Clovis culture. This study confirms that Clovis was mongoloid and therefore also related to the modern Y-haplogroup Q1a and mt-haplogroups A, B, C and D of Native Americans.


But it directly contradicts the Solutrean hypothesis, which states that there is a connection between the Solutrean culture and _Clovis in particular_. What's of interest is the similarities between Solutrean and Clovis industries, and now there's some genetic evidence (admittedly only 1 sample and we still don't have a true Solutrean sample) that there's no Solutrean-Clovis genetic connection. It doesn't _disprove_ Solutrean entirely, but it's _very strong evidence against it_.




> Notwithstanding the laudable accomplishment of sequencing a full ancient genome, it would have been far more interesting to choose a pre-Clovis sample to confirm the European, Middle Eastern or Siberian/East Asian identity of the first colonisers. I suppose that they started by the Clovis culture to avoid offending Native Americans by telling them that they are not descended from the Palaeolithic Americans.


I would've thought that they chose Clovis because it's the most well-studied and is very interesting, and perhaps easier than older ones to get a good sample from. I really doubt they knew the results ahead of time and wanted to protect people's sensibilities. But I'd also like to see it compared to pre-Clovis samples as well.

----------


## Aberdeen

Thank you for that interesting and helpful summary, Maciamo. But what do you think about the theory that the Solutreans and the Clovis folk could both be descended from a Siberian population, with part of the Siberian population striking out for Europe and another part staying in Siberia for a while before migrating across the Bering Strait. That idea seems more workable to me than the Solutrean Hypothesis, partly because the Bering Strait would be easier to cross than a lengthy stretch of Atlantic arctic ice and partly because of the time difference between the Solutreans and Clovis.

----------


## Engel

Interesting to note.
So is he not that far from being eskimo like

----------


## martiko

R1 YDNA and X2 MtDNA is not European but Siberian when it is 15000 years old behind.
R1 and blood puts together B is indeed found not negligible among amrindians flood and blackfeet.
Clovis would therefore be closer to Navajos or commanches (langage atabascan) and also cheyennes (langage algonquin); but different from Sioux or blacfeet.

Indeed they could not keep the possible Europe because any puts together that siberian, Mongolian and austranesian is found at amrindiens; and that the only real passages are the volcanic barrier of the Japan / islands Aleutes and the passage of the dtroit of Bering, because neither planes, nor liners or caravels were available at this time there.

----------


## Alan

@martiko unlikely. To me it looks more and more like R* is the original component of the Irano-Gedrosia-Kalash component. the whole landscape from Central Asia to Northeast Asia must have been different than nowadays. I remember back than when I used to say on Dienekes blog that North European appears to me like northern shifted Gedrosia. In the past people thought the Kalash are basically an extremely "inbreed" version of Punjabi or Pashtuns. But it gets more and more clear that Kalash are rather a source population, remnants of an ancient people.

By the way I myself have 2.3% Amerindian compared to the average of ~0.9% in my people. Also noteworthy is that I have 0% (average 0.7%) Siberian and close to 0% East Asian but 0.7% Arctic(average 0.1%) in Globe 13. 

This must be the common origin of R* and Q* and the ancient connection of Irano_Kalash/North Euro on one side and Amerindian on the other.

----------


## Maciamo

> M3 isn't the _only_ paternal lineage of modern Native Americans, however, and indeed L54+ M3-, namely Q L54>Z780, is present among a lot of modern Native Americans. Unfortunately, the supplementals don't indicate whether or not Z780 was tested on Anzick-1.


That's right. Some Native Americans do possess L54+ M3-. These seem to be found mainly in Mexico.




> But it directly contradicts the Solutrean hypothesis, which states that there is a connection between the Solutrean culture and _Clovis in particular_. What's of interest is the similarities between Solutrean and Clovis industries, and now there's some genetic evidence (admittedly only 1 sample and we still don't have a true Solutrean sample) that there's no Solutrean-Clovis genetic connection. It doesn't _disprove_ Solutrean entirely, but it's _very strong evidence against it_.


I suppose that different people have different Solutrean hypotheses. The one you mention seem to be solely based on similarities in spear points and stone tools. I have read about pre-Clovis North Americans having Caucasoid traits, which were replaced by Mongoloid traits from the Clovis culture onward. I wrote about it three and a half years ago. My hypothesis is therefore based on skeletons, not stones. I have never thought once that Europoid Americans were related to the Clovis culture.

----------


## Maciamo

> Thank you for that interesting and helpful summary, Maciamo. But what do you think about the theory that the Solutreans and the Clovis folk could both be descended from a Siberian population, with part of the Siberian population striking out for Europe and another part staying in Siberia for a while before migrating across the Bering Strait. That idea seems more workable to me than the Solutrean Hypothesis, partly because the Bering Strait would be easier to cross than a lengthy stretch of Atlantic arctic ice and partly because of the time difference between the Solutreans and Clovis.


It's a strange question since any people in the Americas would inevitably be descended from people who came from Siberia. There is no other route. Well some people suggested a colonisation from Polynesia, and there has been evidence recently that Polynesians did indeed reach Chile. But that was fairly recently, since Polynesia was not settled by humans until the last 1000 years.

If you are referring to the suggestion by Raghavan et al. that the Mal'ta boy was a hybrid of European, South Asian and Siberian populations, I completely disagree and have explained why it is in fact the opposite : the Palaeolithic Siberian tribes related to Mal'ta were in all likelihood the source population from which modern Central-South Asians (R1, R1a, R1b, R2) and Europeans (R1a, R1b) are descended. This is also evident when one looks at this paper's admixtures. If one were to read the K11 admixtures without using critical thinking, Anzick-1 could look like a blend of 70% Native Andean, 14% Native Arizonan, 5% Native Alaskan, 5% Native Brazilian, 4% Native Costa Rican and 2% Kalash. But that is obviously not the case. Clovis people are ancestral to modern Amerindians, not a blend of many of them. I was utterly shocked that Raghavan et al., who consist of population geneticists from assorted European and American universities, could think that the Mal'ta boy was such a blend. I was even more dismayed when the scientific press meekly repeated those absurdities without thinking.

----------


## martiko

> It's a strange question since any people in the Americas would inevitably be descended from people who came from Siberia. There is no other route. Well some people suggested a colonisation from Polynesia, and there has been evidence recently that Polynesians did indeed reach Chile. But that was fairly recently, since Polynesia was not settled by humans until the last 1000 years.
> 
> If you are referring to the suggestion by Raghavan et al. that the Mal'ta boy was a hybrid of European, South Asian and Siberian populations, I completely disagree and have explained why it is in fact the opposite : the Palaeolithic Siberian tribes related to Mal'ta were in all likelihood the source population from which modern Central-South Asians (R1, R1a, R1b, R2) and Europeans (R1a, R1b) are descended. This is also evident when one looks at this paper's admixtures. If one were to read the K11 admixtures without using critical thinking, Anzick-1 could look like a blend of 70% Native Andean, 14% Native Arizonan, 5% Native Alaskan, 5% Native Brazilian, 4% Native Costa Rican and 2% Kalash. But that is obviously not the case. Clovis people are ancestral to modern Amerindians, not a blend of many of them. I was utterly shocked that Raghavan et al., who consist of population geneticists from assorted European and American universities, could think that the Mal'ta boy was such a blend. I was even more dismayed when the scientific press meekly repeated those absurdities without thinking.


the colonization come from Australia and New Zealand arrived by Japan then Aloutes islands: Anus, Esquimaud, Aloutes, amrindians Lakota, Ornoques, Patagons. This theory of the road by the south Pacific is also unreliable as that by Atlantic-north.
And they cannot consider an accident to be the occupation of the island of Pques as a generality, unless considering that the survivors are organized colonizers.

----------


## Aberdeen

> It's a strange question since any people in the Americas would inevitably be descended from people who came from Siberia. There is no other route. Well some people suggested a colonisation from Polynesia, and there has been evidence recently that Polynesians did indeed reach Chile. But that was fairly recently, since Polynesia was not settled by humans until the last 1000 years.
> 
> If you are referring to the suggestion by Raghavan et al. that the Mal'ta boy was a hybrid of European, South Asian and Siberian populations, I completely disagree and have explained why it is in fact the opposite : the Palaeolithic Siberian tribes related to Mal'ta were in all likelihood the source population from which modern Central-South Asians (R1, R1a, R1b, R2) and Europeans (R1a, R1b) are descended. This is also evident when one looks at this paper's admixtures. If one were to read the K11 admixtures without using critical thinking, Anzick-1 could look like a blend of 70% Native Andean, 14% Native Arizonan, 5% Native Alaskan, 5% Native Brazilian, 4% Native Costa Rican and 2% Kalash. But that is obviously not the case. Clovis people are ancestral to modern Amerindians, not a blend of many of them. I was utterly shocked that Raghavan et al., who consist of population geneticists from assorted European and American universities, could think that the Mal'ta boy was such a blend. I was even more dismayed when the scientific press meekly repeated those absurdities without thinking.


I'm not sure why it's a strange question. Perhaps I wasn't clear. I certainly wasn't suggesting that Mal'ta Boy was a hybrid - he was obviously a member of the source population. But the Solutrean hypothesis would require him to be a hybrid since, according to the Solutrean hypothesis, people associated with the Solutrean culture migrated from ice age Europe to North America across the arctic ice of the Atlantic, bringing their methods of making stone tools with them and providing the basis for the later Clovis technology that spread throughout North America. The hypothesis is based on proposed similarities between European Solutrean and Early American Clovis lithic technology. The presence of mtDNA X2 in Native American populations has also been mentioned in support of the hypothesis. My own suggestion was that Mal'ta Boy could have been part of a source population for both the Solutreans and Clovis, but it doesn't require Clovis to be actually descended from the Solutreans, just distant cousins who moved from Siberia across the Bering Strait.

----------


## Aberdeen

To clarify, I was suggesting that, even if Clovis tools and Solutrean tools were made by related people, that doesn't require the Solutreans to be ancestral to the Clovis people, IMO. I think they were more likely cousins from the same Siberian source who moved in opposite directions geographically, which is a somewhat different argument than the Solutrean hypothesis.

----------


## Aberdeen

> ...............
> I have never thought once that Europoid Americans were related to the Clovis culture.


But that's exactly what the Solutrean hypothesis is all about. And that's why I don't agree with it, even if there is a connection between the Solutreans and the Clovis culture.

----------


## martiko

*Alan* 
why do you want to be Kalash R? while Kalash present as many G Iranian and Indian as many L, I do not have the idea come to me to choose what people referring to R but I'd take tchuvash or even missing in the worst Siberian Tatars for R and Q

----------


## Tabaccus Maximus

I'm neutral on Solutrean or variations, but I wouldn't consider it a crank theory, especially with two European Mesolithic individuals belonging to similar haplogroups as common in Native America. 
(Admittedly a much different clade of C and undetermined Q). 
Also, Clovis may have only been a much more mature phase of the much older Buttermilk Creek Culture (15kbp) in Texas. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Buttermilk_Creek_Complex
An Alaskan migration is much more likely, but excluding other possibilities seems premature also. Who would have guessed La Brana was Haplogroup C?


What's puzzling though is the apparent lack of haplotype diversity in the Indian genome given what must have been multiple migrations into the Americas, and I doubt Anzick-1 represents the "complete indian"/

Culturally and technologically, there must have been at least one other introgression of peoples from Siberia approximately 5500 b.c. Ceramic pottery, farming practices, metallurgy, burial practices and a host of 
cultural aspects speak to this, and sorry they weren't independent innovations. The only other possibility is that all of these cultural attributes, such as ceramic pottery, are *much much* older than currently believed.

----------


## Aberdeen

Here's a link to the article preview that appeared in Nature Magazine. The authors are taking the view that the Clovis remains are definitely linked to a Siberian source and disprove the idea of a direct Solutrean connection to Clovis.

www.nature.com/nature/journal/v506/n7487/full/nature13025.html

----------


## ebAmerican

I have a question about the last sentence of the abstract - what are they referring to with this statement? "Finally, we find evidence of a deep divergence in Native American populations that predates the Anzick-1 individual." Is it that they found a divergence in modern or ancient samples compared to Anzick-1? Does it mean that Anzick-1 population is one of many that entered the Americas 12,000 years ago and contributed autosomally to modern Native Americans, or if they meant ancient Native American (Paleo-Indian) samples were different than Anzick-1, and were replaced by Anzick-1 and it's decedents (modern Native Americans)? I want to read it as modern Native Americans are closely related to Anzick-1, but also contain deep divergence that is older than Anzick-1 a possible relec from earlier migrations in the genome.

----------


## Alan

> *Alan* 
> why do you want to be Kalash R? while Kalash present as many G Iranian and Indian as many L, I do not have the idea come to me to choose what people referring to R but I'd take tchuvash or even missing in the worst Siberian Tatars for R and Q


And this is exactly why, Kalash are a good source population. L is not Indian nor is G exclusively Iranian. Ultimately L, R, H and J have ultimately one ANE origin. People are so excited about the R* found in the Mal'ta individual while they completely forget that Kalash have 7% of R* and 2.5% R1* themselves.

----------


## JS Bach

That 8,000-year-old Motala12 sample from Southern Sweden that was sequenced late last year was 19 percent ANE. What I'd like to see is a comparison of the ANE component of this new Anzick-1 boy with the ANE component of Motala12. And if it turns out they are more closely related to each other than they are to the ANE components of other samples, such as Afontova Gora-2 or the Mal'ta boy, then maybe a new component could be isolated from those two genomes.

----------


## Maciamo

> But that's exactly what the Solutrean hypothesis is all about. And that's why I don't agree with it, even if there is a connection between the Solutreans and the Clovis culture.


The things I wanted to confirm are:

1) Were there really Caucasoid or Europoid people living in North America before the Clovis culture, notably between 15,000 and 30,000 years ago ? Were these people replaced by another migration bringing Y-haplogroup Q and mtDNA haplogroup A, B, C and D ?

2) How did X2a get to North America and where did it come from ? Was it European, Middle Eastern, Central Asian ? 

3) What paternal lineage was linked to X2a ? (really crucial question for understanding the origins of haplogroup X2) Was it R1* as has been suggested ?


Call it Solutrean hypothesis or whatever you like, I still strongly believe that Caucasoid people came to North America during the Solutrean (22-17 kya) or Gravettian (32-22 kya) periods. I only use those terms to define periods in time. I do not mean that these people came from Western Europe. Actually, my hunch is that the first inhabitants of North America were related to the Mal'ta boy and belonged to Y-haplogroup R* or R1* and mt-haplogroups U (including perhaps U2 and U4), X2 and perhaps even C (presumably C4 or C5). In terms of admixture, these people would have carried ANE and Kalash-like autosomal DNA.

I don't care much about similarities in stone tools. It could have happened by pure coincidence or have been learned from other people, maybe even by the remnants of Caucasoid Palaeolithic North Americans.

----------


## Maciamo

> I'm neutral on Solutrean or variations, but I wouldn't consider it a crank theory, especially with two European Mesolithic individuals belonging to similar haplogroups as common in Native America. 
> (Admittedly a much different clade of C and undetermined Q). 
> Also, Clovis may have only been a much more mature phase of the much older Buttermilk Creek Culture (15kbp) in Texas. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Buttermilk_Creek_Complex
> An Alaskan migration is much more likely, but excluding other possibilities seems premature also. Who would have guessed La Brana was Haplogroup C?


While you are mentioning haplogroup C, two remarks:

1) La Brana's C1f cannot be related to the C3 found mostly in western Canada and Alaska. C1 and C3 diverged too long ago (over 50,000 years) to be thought of as cousins. In fact haplogroups I1 and J1 are more closely related than C1 and C3. Don't be fooled by appellations. 

2) That brings us to the unresolved issue of the origin of C3 in north-western America. Its distribution suggests that it came after Q1a, probably as an expansion from Mongolia throughout Northeast Asia. What is odd is that no particular mtDNA haplogroup has been associated so far with this late migration of C3. They surely possessed different subclades of A, B, C and D than other Native Americans. But I would also expect to find at least some other Northeast Asian haplogroups like F, G, M7, M9, N9, Y or Z. If the migration happened from the Bronze Age onwards, it is even possible that European maternal lineages be found among C3 populations in North America. These would be assumed to have resulted from admixture with European colonists in recent centuries, but it is not necessarily the case. Likewise, if a Bronze Age expansion from Mongolia to Canada did happen, then even Y-DNA R1a and R1b could be present in trace frequencies among Native American lineages. Any R1b found in western North American tribes that is negative for L11, U106 or P312 should be considered as potentially Native American. All this said, I doubt that C3 was brought during or after the Bronze Age, for the simple reason that bronze technologies and horses were not found among Native North Americans. They could have been lost on the way, but it is still more reasonable to assume that C3 migrated to America some time between 10,000 and 5,000 years ago.

----------


## Aberdeen

> The things I wanted to confirm are:
> 
> 1) Were there really Caucasoid or Europoid people living in North America before the Clovis culture, notably between 15,000 and 30,000 years ago ? Were these people replaced by another migration bringing Y-haplogroup Q and mtDNA haplogroup A, B, C and D ?
> 
> 2) How did X2a get to North America and where did it come from ? Was it European, Middle Eastern, Central Asian ? 
> 
> 3) What paternal lineage was linked to X2a ? (really crucial question for understanding the origins of haplogroup X2) Was it R1* as has been suggested ?
> 
> 
> ...


Perhaps I'm mistaken, but I thought the the term "Solutrean hypothesis" referred to the idea that the Solutrean toolkit and the Clovis toolkit seem similar, so some people think that the Clovis people are descended from European Solutreans, despite the time gap. I was suggesting that if there is any connection, it would have to have been via Siberia and not directly from Europe to the Americas. Some American archeologists are claiming that they're finding ancient European-like remains in the eastern U.S. during the same time as the Solutreans were in Europe but there are disputes about the dating of the remains and I'm personally sceptical. I think Mal'ta Boy shows that the connection between Europeans and Native Americans is via a common origin point in Asia.

Some archeologists have suggested that there were three waves of settlement of the Americas, one about 15-18 thousand years ago, one about 8 thousand years ago and the proto-Eskimos about 4 thousand years ago. Some archeologists and linguists concluded that the second wave of settlement was associated with the Dene people, who are the ones who have the most mtDNA C3, but some people have speculated that the second wave of immigration could have included Algonquin speaking people, who have most of the mtDNA X2. Both of those lineages could have been in Siberia for a long time before they came to the Americas before disappearing from Siberia, so their age of separation from other lineages don't tell us when they arrived in the Americas, IMO. And the Dene and Algonquins are also the Native Americans who seem to have a lot of R1, which made me wonder whether R1 could have come to the Americas at the same time as mtDNA C3 and X2. However, although none of the researchers seem to have tested the Y DNA any deeper than R1, sparky has been quick to point out more than once that those Native Americans who have been personally tested all seem to have European subclades, which he thinks destroys that idea. I think the issue requires further research, but, regardless of the R1 issue, it does seem as if mtDNA C3 and X2 would have come with the second wave of the populating of the Americas, if that theory holds up. I notice that some geneticists, including the folks who researched the Clovis genes, are now stating that there were two waves of settlement but they took place fairly close together, even though only one of them was involved in populating South America. I'm not sure that agrees with the conclusions of the archeologists, and the idea needs further research, I think. I suppose people could have come to the Americas much earlier than is now thought, but a longer stay in Siberia is also an explanation, I think.

----------


## Maciamo

> Perhaps I'm mistaken, but I thought the the term "Solutrean hypothesis" referred to the idea that the Solutrean toolkit and the Clovis toolkit seem similar, so some people think that the Clovis people are descended from European Solutreans, despite the time gap. I was suggesting that if there is any connection, it would have to have been via Siberia and not directly from Europe to the Americas. Some American archeologists are claiming that they're finding ancient European-like remains in the eastern U.S. during the same time as the Solutreans were in Europe but there are disputes about the dating of the remains and I'm personally sceptical. I think Mal'ta Boy shows that the connection between Europeans and Native Americans is via a common origin point in Asia.


I do not believe that the pre-Clovis Caucasoid skeletons came directly from Europe. That sounds really far-fetched. As I said above, I would rather think that a Central or North Asian population related to the Mal'ta boy settled North America before Y-haplogroup Q1a. The only resemblance with Europeans would be owed to the fact that this R* or R1* population was also ancestral to modern Europeans (and South Asians). I admit that I have not studied the question in detail. I have a limited interest in Native American archaeology. 




> Some archeologists have suggested that there were three waves of settlement of the Americas, one about 15-18 thousand years ago, one about 8 thousand years ago and the proto-Eskimos about 4 thousand years ago. Some archeologists and linguists concluded that the second wave of settlement was associated with the Dene people, who are the ones who have the most mtDNA C3, but some people have speculated that the second wave of immigration could have included Algonquin speaking people, who have most of the mtDNA X2. Both of those lineages could have been in Siberia for a long time before they came to the Americas before disappearing from Siberia, so their age of separation from other lineages don't tell us when they arrived in the Americas, IMO. And the Dene and Algonquins are also the Native Americans who seem to have a lot of R1, which made me wonder whether R1 could have come to the Americas at the same time as mtDNA C3 and X2. However, although none of the researchers seem to have tested the Y DNA any deeper than R1, sparky has been quick to point out more than once that those Native Americans who have been personally tested all seem to have European subclades, which he thinks destroys that idea. I think the issue requires further research, but, regardless of the R1 issue, it does seem as if mtDNA C3 and X2 would have come with the second wave of the populating of the Americas, if that theory holds up. I notice that some geneticists, including the folks who researched the Clovis genes, are now stating that there were two waves of settlement but they took place fairly close together, even though only one of them was involved in populating South America. I'm not sure that agrees with the conclusions of the archeologists, and the idea needs further research, I think. I suppose people could have come to the Americas much earlier than is now thought, but a longer stay in Siberia is also an explanation, I think.


8,000 years seems like a reasonable time frame for the arrival of C3 in America. However, based on the current data, I doubt that the migration of C3 men also brought mtDNA X2a, simply because C3 is found in the western half of North America, while X2a is found in the eastern half. Besides I do not know of any C3 population in Northeast Asia who possess X2a or X2*. X2 is very rare in North Asia and limited to subclades like X2e2a and X2n, which are also found in the Near East and Europe. These lineages were probably brought by the Indo-Europeans during the Bronze Age or later.

----------


## Tabaccus Maximus

> ... it is even possible that European maternal lineages be found among C3 populations in North America. These would be assumed to have resulted from admixture with European colonists in recent centuries, but it is not necessarily the case. Likewise, if a Bronze Age expansion from Mongolia to Canada did happen, then even Y-DNA R1a and R1b could be present in trace frequencies among Native American lineages.


I think only from the testing of ancient remains would we know if this seemingly unlikely event happened. As you've said, dna outside of the standard Q/C +A-X paradigm would look indistinguishable from European colonial mixing, especially if there was an introgression about the time of the European Chalcolithic.

What I do know is that the distance between pre-Clovis habitations, which keep getting older, and they array of technologies found in the immediate pre-Colombian times don't seem to jive with the current Q-X paradigm, especially given the results of the Clovis boy. The only other scenario I can imagine is a relatively stable and isolated American population for many, many thousands of years, and a very late intrance of C3 people from Asia bringing the standard set of modern technologies.

The position of "simplicity" in the Indian genome and the archealogical record don't Jive IMHO.

----------


## Aberdeen

> I think only from the testing of ancient remains would we know if this seemingly unlikely event happened. As you've said, dna outside of the standard Q/C +A-X paradigm would look indistinguishable from European colonial mixing, especially if there was an introgression about the time of the European Chalcolithic.
> 
> What I do know is that the distance between pre-Clovis habitations, which keep getting older, and they array of technologies found in the immediate pre-Colombian times don't seem to jive with the current Q-X paradigm, especially given the results of the Clovis boy. The only other scenario I can imagine is a relatively stable and isolated American population for many, many thousands of years, and a very late intrance of C3 people from Asia bringing the standard set of modern technologies.
> 
> The position of "simplicity" in the Indian genome and the archealogical record don't Jive IMHO.


I'm not sure the Amerindian technologies are proof of late but pre-Columbian contact. Different people have different opinions on the subject but I think the Native American cultivation of crops that originated in the Americas, such as maize, potatoes, squash and tobacco, could easily have been a separate development from farming in the rest of the world. Likewise with the development of pottery. I don't think we really know when bow hunting started - it could be a very old technique. And although Amerindians apparently used cold hammered copper for thousands of years, metallurgy only seems to have developed in South America about 2200 years BP, among groups that were famous for their pottery, such as the Moche. It took close to 1000 years for metallurgy to appear in Mexico, and it doesn't seem to have gone any further north than that during the pre-Columbian period. So I would say that metallurgy was definitely a separate development in the Americas, and pottery and farming could have been.

----------


## martiko

> I'm not sure the Amerindian technologies are proof of late but pre-Columbian contact. Different people have different opinions on the subject but I think the Native American cultivation of crops that originated in the Americas, such as maize, potatoes, squash and tobacco, could easily have been a separate development from farming in the rest of the world. Likewise with the development of pottery. I don't think we really know when bow hunting started - it could be a very old technique. And although Amerindians apparently used cold hammered copper for thousands of years, metallurgy only seems to have developed in South America about 2200 years BP, among groups that were famous for their pottery, such as the Moche. It took close to 1000 years for metallurgy to appear in Mexico, and it doesn't seem to have gone any further north than that during the pre-Columbian period. So I would say that metallurgy was definitely a separate development in the Americas, and pottery and farming could have been.


I agree; the old beards have put us in the head that agriculture, metallurgy and the livestock are born in one place and this against all the evidence, that they are African, European, Siberian or American and Australian partially.
The problem is that nobody wants to frankly upsetting their enormous errors; the statues remain well bolted.

----------


## JS Bach

I don’t want to sound like a broken record, but as I said in the Solutrean hypothesis thread, what I find odd is the geographical distance separating the main Y-dna clade of Native Americans, Q-M3, and its closest branch on the tree, Q-L804. Q-L804 has only been found in northwest Europe, namely England, Scotland, Ireland, Norway, Sweden and German, while Q-M3 has only been found in the Americas. If we assume that their MRCA lived in Siberia around 15,000 years ago and one branch went east to America becoming Q-M3 and the other went west to northwest Europe becoming Q-L804, how come there’s no trace of any ancestors in between? I wonder how common that is. Is there any other known haplogroup clade where the geographical distance separating its closest branch like that is so large?

----------


## Tabaccus Maximus

> I'm not sure the Amerindian technologies are proof of late but pre-Columbian contact. Different people have different opinions on the subject but I think the Native American cultivation of crops that originated in the Americas, such as maize, potatoes, squash and tobacco, could easily have been a separate development from farming in the rest of the world. Likewise with the development of pottery. I don't think we really know when bow hunting started - it could be a very old technique. And although Amerindians apparently used cold hammered copper for thousands of years, metallurgy only seems to have developed in South America about 2200 years BP, among groups that were famous for their pottery, such as the Moche. It took close to 1000 years for metallurgy to appear in Mexico, and it doesn't seem to have gone any further north than that during the pre-Columbian period. So I would say that metallurgy was definitely a separate development in the Americas, and pottery and farming could have been.



I'm not suggesting that these technologies came from Europe necessarily or at all, as in my view they most likely came from Asia, but I don't buy the multi-invention scenario.
Take ceramic pottery, for example. Identifying high silica content base material, its refinement, tempering, coiling and then maintaining the right temperature/oxygen flow in a kiln to a product that in the end looks Eurasian seems more than coincidental. If cold-hammering native copper or coiling pottery is so naturally intuitive, then why didn't Gravettian or Magdallean people do this?

So in my mind immigrants must have been coming to America as late as 5-7 kypb regardless if the Americas were originally populated in the LGM.

----------


## epoch

> I'm not suggesting that these technologies came from Europe necessarily or at all, as in my view they most likely came from Asia, but I don't buy the multi-invention scenario.
> Take ceramic pottery, for example. Identifying high silica content base material, its refinement, tempering, coiling and then maintaining the right temperature/oxygen flow in a kiln to a product that in the end looks Eurasian seems more than coincidental. If cold-hammering native copper or coiling pottery is so naturally intuitive, then why didn't Gravettian or Magdallean people do this?
> 
> So in my mind immigrants must have been coming to America as late as 5-7 kypb regardless if the Americas were originally populated in the LGM.


Recent finds date the earliest known pottery at 20.000 ago.

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/07/03/sc...hina.html?_r=0

----------


## Aberdeen

If the Americas were populated by hunter/gatherers from Siberia, I don't think farming or pottery making would have been part of the skill set of such people. The archeological information available to date suggests that farming, pottery making and metallurgy in the Americas were local developments. And, once again, we have metallurgy first emerging in the form of copper smelting among people who made high quality pottery than was fired in kilns. That's significant to me because the melting temperature for copper is lower than the firing temperature for glazed pottery (which was only made in certain parts of the Americas).

----------


## martiko

> If the Americas were populated by hunter/gatherers from Siberia, I don't think farming or pottery making would have been part of the skill set of such people. The archeological information available to date suggests that farming, pottery making and metallurgy in the Americas were local developments. And, once again, we have metallurgy first emerging in the form of copper smelting among people who made high quality pottery than was fired in kilns. That's significant to me because the melting temperature for copper is lower than the firing temperature for glazed pottery (which was only made in certain parts of the Americas).



I think as you; but the copper is a metal complicated has purified for the get but it is also the case for the gold, and then the mixture to obtain the bronze cannot be improvised., because it does not include only to mix with tin and therefore the aim is to obtain a hard tool and flexible enough; therefore it took a technology to arrive at the result and the bagpiper more sophisticated in the oven of the pottery or the meal would be a good track. But he did not seem appropriate to the Amerindians of industrially use this technology and we have the example in the pieces of steel (between 15th* or 16th century:Study by spectrography) that exchanged the Basques with the Algonquin tribes, and that they used so business has been dominated more as a sign of wealth or a precious stone by burying them with their leader or owner and as for gold it was.
The Indians seem to have an approach to the metallurgy very different from that of Europeans whose relationship is essentially utility; but it is also so that the deposits of obsidian, flint and basalt rock are very consistent on the America, which makes non-essential the forged metals; and the same for the wheel which seems it also without usefulness in the mountainous regions and should be used only for children's toys. But concerning what is utility to the Amerindian peoples the process is comparable.
According to my opinion or the belief that me are personal
* The Americas including the America-north are officially discovered in 1492, and everything that is is official text of gospel (taboo); but I am not a believer.

----------


## bicicleur

> But it directly contradicts the Solutrean hypothesis, which states that there is a connection between the Solutrean culture and _Clovis in particular_. What's of interest is the similarities between Solutrean and Clovis industries, and now there's some genetic evidence (admittedly only 1 sample and we still don't have a true Solutrean sample) that there's no Solutrean-Clovis genetic connection. It doesn't _disprove_ Solutrean entirely, but it's _very strong evidence against it_.


There is Clovis, Solutrean and Dyuktai, all 3 cultures have similar spearpoints.
Before this study, I believed there was a connection between Dyuktai and Clovis, now I doubt that.
It seems to me these spearpoints were develloped seperately by people who had advanced skills in working the stones and who had megafauna on their tundra hunting grounds.
Once the megafauna got extinct, the spearpoints dissapeared or diminished in size to hunt smaller game (bisons in North-America with Folsom points, reindeer in Europe with atlatl and bow and arrow).

----------


## bicicleur

> I was utterly shocked that Raghavan et al., who consist of population geneticists from assorted European and American universities, could think that the Mal'ta boy was such a blend. I was even more dismayed when the scientific press meekly repeated those absurdities without thinking.



I told many times, some Native Indians are R1, and descending from Mal'ta.

http://www.sciencedirect.com/science...02929707612932

The same thing happened here : the researchers mentioned *the possiblity* that R1 was the result of admixture by European colonisers.
But everyone started aceepting this as a *fact without proof*.

I agree, there probably was some admixture, but it does not explain the 25 % R1 in Native Americans, and upto 80 % in some Northamerican tribes.

This study proves Clovis were not R1, but there must have been multiple migrations from Siberia.

----------


## Maciamo

> I told many times, some Native Indians are R1, and descending from Mal'ta.
> 
> http://www.sciencedirect.com/science...02929707612932
> 
> The same thing happened here : the researchers mentioned *the possiblity* that R1 was the result of admixture by European colonisers.
> But everyone started aceepting this as a *fact without proof*.
> 
> I agree, there probably was some admixture, but it does not explain the 25 % R1 in Native Americans, and upto 80 % in some Northamerican tribes.
> 
> This study proves Clovis were not R1, but there must have been multiple migrations from Siberia.


That's the study I was looking for. Thanks.

Interesting that there is even 5% of R1a1a among the Guaymi (aka Ngäbe) of Panama.

----------


## martiko

> There is Clovis, Solutrean and Dyuktai, all 3 cultures have similar spearpoints.
> Before this study, I believed there was a connection between Dyuktai and Clovis, now I doubt that.
> It seems to me these spearpoints were develloped seperately by people who had advanced skills in working the stones and who had megafauna on their tundra hunting grounds.
> Once the megafauna got extinct, the spearpoints dissapeared or diminished in size to hunt smaller game (bisons in North-America with Folsom points, reindeer in Europe with atlatl and bow and arrow).


this is the effect of a disaster of a giant asteroid that explodes by hitting the resistive layer of the lower atmosphere and the huge fire forests that covered the plains and were similar to the Siberian forest. And to destroy it needed only a few weeks.
R* can be originally in the region of the Lake Baikal, they find R1 in regions Siberian and even R2 who would have been born there and would have follow migrated southward.
Can to be the forefather of Q and R had made the road of Pakistan to northward and would have then become divided.
But it makes go back up much more in time far but can be it is necessary

----------


## epoch

> And this is exactly why, Kalash are a good source population. L is not Indian nor is G exclusively Iranian. Ultimately L, R, H and J have ultimately one ANE origin. People are so excited about the R* found in the Mal'ta individual while they completely forget that Kalash have 7% of R* and 2.5% R1* themselves.





> The only solace I find is a hint of Irano-Gedrosian admixture in the Anzick-1 sample's K=11 admixture. The Anzick boy has nearly 100% of Native American admixture, 0% of Siberian, 0% East Asian (Chinese, Japanese), BUT 1 or 2% of the admixture that peaks in the *Kalash*, and is also found at high frequency in the Hazara, Sindhi, Balochi, Burusho, Persians, etc., and at a lower (10-15%) frequency in all Caucasian and European populations, except the Sardinians. This part of the original admixture of Y-DNA R, and could confirm that R1* was indeed present alongside X2a in the Upper Palaeolithic North American population that was replaced by the Clovis people.



Mal'ta has a large (37%) Kalash component so the small Kalash component may actually be proof of gene flow from Malta people to proto-amerindians:

http://img43.imageshack.us/img43/2810/hhx4.png





> I don’t want to sound like a broken record, but as I said in the Solutrean hypothesis thread, what I find odd is the geographical distance separating the main Y-dna clade of Native Americans, Q-M3, and its closest branch on the tree, Q-L804. Q-L804 has only been found in northwest Europe, namely England, Scotland, Ireland, Norway, Sweden and German, while Q-M3 has only been found in the Americas. If we assume that their MRCA lived in Siberia around 15,000 years ago and one branch went east to America becoming Q-M3 and the other went west to northwest Europe becoming Q-L804, how come there’s no trace of any ancestors in between?


Afontova Gora is a find that was rather contaminated. They found markers for R1a and Q. R1a is considered to be due to the contaminations. 

http://www.anthrogenica.com/showthre...tova-R1a/page7

Also, with globe 13 you see a tiny American Indian admixture in Swedish hunter-gatherers. So it may very well be possible that ANE brought Q to the west as well as eastward.

http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-Aif8O5EXGN...00/globe13.png

----------


## JS Bach

Thanks, epoch. It's kind of a crap shoot but maybe it's an ancient admixture within those ancient Swedish hunter gatherer samples. We seem to be having relatively good success with those high latitude ancient dna samples, so I suspect a Q will eventually turn up sometime.

----------


## JS Bach

@epoch: I just noticed something. In the Swedish hunter-gatherer Ajv70 globe13 breakdown you gave:
http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-Aif8O5EXGN...00/globe13.png in addition to the 3.1% Amerindian, it also shows 3.5% Australasian. And in the link you gave of the 9-component breakdown of MA-1, it looks like MA-1 came out as 16% Amerindian and 4% Papuan/Melanesian: http://img43.imageshack.us/img43/2810/hhx4.png I wonder if it has to do with the MP internal node that joins haplogroups M,P,Q and R together on one branch of the tree: http://dienekes.blogspot.ca/2013/11/...geny-from.html
And y-dna M is certainly centred around Melanesia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Haplogroup_M-P256

----------


## epoch

> Thanks, epoch. It's kind of a crap shoot but maybe it's an ancient admixture within those ancient Swedish hunter gatherer samples. We seem to be having relatively good success with those high latitude ancient dna samples, so I suspect a Q will eventually turn up sometime.





> @epoch: I just noticed something. In the Swedish hunter-gatherer Ajv70 globe13 break
> down you gave:
> http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-Aif8O5EXGN...00/globe13.png in addition to the 3.1% Amerindian, it also shows 3.5% Australasian. And in the link you gave of the 9-component breakdown of MA-1, it looks like MA-1 came out as 16% Amerindian and 4% Papuan/Melanesian: http://img43.imageshack.us/img43/2810/hhx4.png I wonder if it has to do with the MP internal node that joins haplogroups M,P,Q and R together on one branch of the tree: http://dienekes.blogspot.ca/2013/11/...geny-from.html
> And y-dna M is certainly centred around Melanesia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Haplogroup_M-P256


It will be extremely interesting to see what the oldest Siberian genome of the Ust-Ishim femur will be like, when it will published. Already information is provided that it contains larger chunks of Neanderthal DNA than current day populations. It appears to be a very good example so admixture results could be a surprise.

http://dienekes.blogspot.nl/2014/03/...m-siberia.html 

On account of the Australasian, Papuan and Melanesian admixture of MA-1 and Ajvide an idea came up: Could that be actually Denisovan admixture? Mind you, this is a wild assumption.

----------


## bicicleur

> It will be extremely interesting to see what the oldest Siberian genome of the Ust-Ishim femur will be like, when it will published. Already information is provided that it contains larger chunks of Neanderthal DNA than current day populations. It appears to be a very good example so admixture results could be a surprise.
> 
> http://dienekes.blogspot.nl/2014/03/...m-siberia.html 
> 
> On account of the Australasian, Papuan and Melanesian admixture of MA-1 and Ajvide an idea came up: Could that be actually Denisovan admixture? Mind you, this is a wild assumption.


I don't expect any connection with the Clovis boy, Ust-Ishim is western Siberia and the time difference is almost 30.000 years.

----------


## JS Bach

Yes, the Ust-Ishim genome should be interesting. I'm glad that this time they seem to have gotten good Neanderthal dna quantifications. And yes, maybe Denisovan dna was carried by y-dna M. It will be interesting to see how all this sorts out in the end - if we ever get enough samples.

----------


## epoch

> I don't expect any connection with the Clovis boy, Ust-Ishim is western Siberia and the time difference is almost 30.000 years.


Mal'ta has partly Amerindian admixture. He was also 24.000 years old, that is before the generally assumed 15.000 years ago that America was populated. So, an Amerindian ancestry was part of middle Siberians before America was settled. If the oldest, the most original of all Siberians does not carry it, then where did Mal'ta's Amerindian part came from?

----------


## Aberdeen

> Mal'ta has partly Amerindian admixture. He was also 24.000 years old, that is before the generally assumed 15.000 years ago that America was populated. So, an Amerindian ancestry was part of middle Siberians before America was settled. If the oldest, the most original of all Siberians does not carry it, then where did Mal'ta's Amerindian part came from?


No. No. No. Mal'ta Boy was not partly Amerindian admixture. He was related to people who became the ancestors of other people, including Amerindians. Some of his relatives may have had descendants who hung around Siberia until they moved to the Americas, or they may have migrated south then moved up the coast to the Americas - we don't really know. People probably moved around a lot as hunter/gatherer types living in a lightly populated world. But look at the time frame - Mal'ta Boy and his relatives clearly came before there were any Amerindians, so they couldn't have been partly Amerindian. Mal"ta Boy died too young to leave descendants but some of his relatives would have formed part of the ancestry of several other groups, including Amerindians.

----------


## Twilight

I gotta admit, was there a conflict when Haplogroup N entered Central Asia 12,000 years ago? I find it quite a coincidence that Paleo Native Americans were crossing the Bering landbridge around that time.

----------


## epoch

> No. No. No. Mal'ta Boy was not partly Amerindian admixture. He was related to people who became the ancestors of other people, including Amerindians. Some of his relatives may have had descendants who hung around Siberia until they moved to the Americas, or they may have migrated south then moved up the coast to the Americas - we don't really know. People probably moved around a lot as hunter/gatherer types living in a lightly populated world. But look at the time frame - Mal'ta Boy and his relatives clearly came before there were any Amerindians, so they couldn't have been partly Amerindian. Mal"ta Boy died too young to leave descendants but some of his relatives would have formed part of the ancestry of several other groups, including Amerindians.


O, perhaps I should have phrased that differently. However, Mal'ta carried DNA that shows relations to Amerindians. He is older than settlement in America. I think that means that bicicleurs idea that the ancient West-Siberians DNA shows no Mal'ta affinity may not be true.

----------


## 64logh

> I gotta admit, was there a conflict when Haplogroup N entered Central Asia 12,000 years ago? I find it quite a coincidence that Paleo Native Americans were crossing the Bering landbridge around that time.


I thought they reached the americas earlier.

----------

