DNA study of Native Americans finds 3 waves of migration

The biggest survey of the DNA of Native Americans finds that the New World was settled in three big waves from Siberia and not one big migration as previously believed, the BBC reports, quoting from the journal Nature.

Most of today's indigenous Americans, however, came from a single group that crossed into Alaska from Asia 15,000 years or more ago.

READ:  A pattern of ancient people mixing

The second and third migrations left an impact only in Arctic populations, the study finds.

The team, which published its report in Nature this week, analyzed DNA from 52 Native American and 17 Siberian groups.

The migrants moved over a natural bridge at the Bering Strait that appeared during the last Ice Age when sea levels were lower and hunters could cross.

"For years it has been contentious whether the settlement of the Americas occurred by means of a single or multiple migrations from Siberia," said co-author professor Andres Ruiz-Linares from University College London, the BBC reports.

"But our research settles this debate: Native Americans do not stem from a single migration. Our study also begins to cast light on patterns of human dispersal within the Americas," he said.

The team also found that migrants hugged the coast as they expanded southward, with populations splitting off along the way, the BBC reports.

To screen out the genetic mixing that followed the arrival of European and African immigrants since 1492, the team had to develop methods of focusing only on the section of people's genomes that were of entirely Native American origin, the BBC reports.

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