Early South Americans

For John, BLUF:  The DNA being extracted from very early residents of South American raise questions about how this hemisphere was populated, questions tht could change our view of history.  Nothing to see here; just move along.

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Ancient DNA analysis sheds light on the early peopling of South America

From Science X, by Florida Atlantic University, 1 November 2022.

Here is the lede plus three:

The Americas were the last continent to be inhabited by humans. An increasing body of archaeological and genomic evidence has hinted to a complex settlement process. This is especially true for South America, where unexpected ancestral signals have raised perplexing scenarios for the early migrations into different regions of the continent.

Many unanswered questions still persist, such as whether the first humans migrated south along the Pacific coast or by some other route. While there is archaeological evidence for a north-to-south migration during the initial peopling of the Americas by ancient Indigenous peoples, where these ancient humans went after they arrived has remained elusive.

Using DNA from two ancient human individuals unearthed in two different archaeological sites in northeast Brazil—Pedra do Tubarão and Alcobaça—and powerful algorithms and genomic analyses, Florida Atlantic University researchers in collaboration with Emory University have unraveled the deep demographic history of South America at the regional level with some unexpected and surprising results.

Not only do researchers provide new genetic evidence supporting existing archaeological data of the north-to-south migration toward South America, they also have discovered migrations in the opposite direction along the Atlantic coast—for the first time. The work provides the most complete genetic evidence to date for complex ancient Central and South American migration routes.

What was surprising to me was the presence of Neanderthal (and Denisovan) ancestory.  I had thought that the Neanderthal were centered on the Eurasian Continents.  Further, ancestory from Australasian (Australia and Papua New Guinea) was found in an ancient genome from Panama.

It appears that the populating of South America is more complex than we previously understood.  There is a lot of history out there still to be learned.

Hat tip to the InstaPundit.

Regards  —  Cliff