Clovis Child’s DNA Links Native Americans to Early Ancestors

[Coyotl]

http://www.archaeology.org/news/1828-140212-clovis-anzik-dna
Clovis Child’s DNA Links Native Americans to Early Ancestors
February 12, 2014

WILSALL, MONTANA—In 1968, the only known Clovis burial site was discovered accidentally on the property of the Anzick family in central Montana. The 12,600-year-old grave, the oldest in North America, contained the skeleton of a small child and some 125 artifacts, including Clovis fluted spear points and tools made from rare elk antlers. Now, DNA obtained from the bones indicates that the Clovis people are direct ancestors to some 80 percent of modern Native Americans. The results also suggest that the Clovis people originated in Asia. “I feel like this discovery confirms what tribes never really doubted—that we’ve been here since time immemorial and that all of the artifacts in the ground are remnants of our direct ancestors,” Shane Doyle of Montana State University told Live Science.

http://www.livescience.com/43329-prehistoric-boy-may-be-native-american-missing-link.html
Prehistoric Boy May Be Native American 'Missing Link'
By Charles Q. Choi, LiveScience Contributor | February 12, 2014

A prehistoric boy's DNA now suggests that ancient toolmakers long thought of as the first Americans may serve as a kind of "missing link" between Native Americans and the rest of the world, researchers say.

The findings reveal these prehistoric toolmakers are the direct ancestors of many contemporary Native Americans, and are closely related to all Native Americans. .........

[Ichingcarpenter]

1. Solutrean hypothesis

“The findings do not support a western European origin of the First Americans as suggested by the Solutrean hypothesis,” he added.

The shared similarities — but also the small yet salient differences — among these native groups together suggest that a genetic “split” took place within the Anzick boy’s lineage thousands of years before his time.http://westerndigs.org/genome-of-only-clovis-era-skeleton-reveals-origins-of-native-americans/



Solutrean hypothesis


http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Main_Page



I'm still intrigued by the similar technology found
on the east coast of North America and Europe.

[Coyotl]

2. Hypotheses and Evidence

The Solutrean hypothesis typically is not even given consideration, for reasons this study supports.

PALEOAMERICAN ORIGINS A Review of Hypotheses and Evidence Relating to the Origins of the First Americans

[bluedigger]

3. "Ancient genome stirs ethics debate"

The remains of a young boy, ceremonially buried some 12,600 years ago in Montana, have revealed the ancestry of one of the earliest populations in the Americas, known as the Clovis culture.

Published in this issue of Nature, the boy’s genome sequence shows that today’s indi­genous groups spanning North and South America are all descended from a single population that trekked across the Bering land bridge from Asia (M. Rasmussen et al. Nature 506, 225–229; 2014). The analysis also points to an early split between the ancestors of the Clovis people and a second group, whose DNA lives on in populations in Canada and Greenland (see page 162).

But the research underscores the ethical minefield of studying ancient Native American remains, and rekindles memories of a bruising legal fight over a different human skeleton in the 1990s.

To avoid such a controversy, Eske Willerslev, a palaeobiologist at the University of Copenhagen who led the latest study, attempted to involve Native American communities. And so he embarked on a tour of Montana’s Indian reservations last year, talking to community members to explain his work and seek their support. “I didn’t want a situation where the first time they heard about this study was when it’s published,” he says.

http://www.nature.com/news/ancient-genome-stirs-ethics-debate-1.14698

Interesting background on the ethics of the research and how it came about.