Ancient DNA evidence in China suggests Native Americans originated from east Asia

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DNA from ancient fossils in southern China has revealed that Native Americans may have roots in East Asia.

Scientists compared the genetic information of the Late Pleistocene era fossils to those from humans worldwide.

They found that the bones belonged to an individual that was linked deeply to the East Asian ancestry of Native Americans.

DNA from fossils unearthed in southern China dating back 14,000 years suggests Native Americans have East Asian roots

Fossils found in China demonstrate that Native Americans may have had genetic roots in East Asia

The data will help us understand 'how humans change their physical appearance by adapting to local environments over time,' study co-author Bing Su says

DNA from ancient fossils in southern China has revealed that Native Americans may have roots in East Asia.

Scientists compared the genetic information of the Late Pleistocene era fossils to those from humans worldwide.

They found that the bones belonged to an individual that was linked deeply to the East Asian ancestry of Native Americans.

Archaeologists had been able to successfully sequence the genome of the fossils.

'Ancient DNA technique is a really powerful tool,' Bing Su, a study co-author who works at the Chinese Academy of Sciences, says.

'It tells us quite definitively that the Red Deer Cave people were modern humans instead of an archaic species, such as Neanderthals or Denisovans, despite their unusual morphological features.'

They proposed that some of the southern East Asian people traveled north along the coast of present-day China through Japan and eventually reached Siberia.

It's believed that they then crossed the Bering Strait between Asia and North America to become the first people to arrive in the New World.

The work that led to these insights began more than thirty years ago.

At that time, a group of archaeologists in China discovered a large set of bones in the Maludong, or Red Deer Cave, in southern China’s Yunnan Province.

Archaeologists used carbon dating - which uses the relative proportions of the carbon isotopes carbon-12 and carbon-14 to determine the age of organic matter - to show that the fossils were from the Late Pleistocene about 14,000 years ago.

This was a period of time when modern humans had migrated to many parts of the world.

Researchers recovered a hominin skull cap from the cave that had characteristics of both modern humans and archaic humans.

For instance, the shape of the skull resembled that of Neanderthals, and its brain appeared to be smaller than that of modern humans.

As a result, some anthropologists had thought the skull probably belonged to an unknown archaic human species that lived until fairly recently or to a hybrid population of archaic and modern humans.

The finding contributes to our understanding of the rich genetic diversity of hominins living at that time in southern East Asia.

Su says that it suggests that early humans who first arrived in eastern Asia had initially settled in the south before some of them moved to the north.

'It’s an important piece of evidence for understanding early human migration,' he explains.

'Such data will not only help us paint a more complete picture of how our ancestors migrate but also contain important information about how humans change their physical appearance by adapting to local environments over time, such as the variations in skin color in response to changes in sunlight exposure,' Su says.

The team's findings were published July 14 in the journal Current Biology.

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