Blackfeet man's DNA oldest found in Americas, testing company says

https://www.greatfallstribune.com/story/news/2019/05/06/blackfeet-man-dna-deemed-oldest-americas-cri-genetics/3145410002/

Kristen Inbody
Great Falls Tribune
Darrell "Dusty" Crawford of Heart Butte was surprised to learn how far back his DNA placed his ancestors in the Americas, about 17,000 years.

HEART BUTTE —


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Crawford understood from school that his Blackfeet ancestors must have come to the new world on the Bering Land Bridge during the Ice Age. Perhaps that's true for some Blackfeet.

But Crawford's DNA story suggests his ancestors came from the Pacific, traveled to the coast of South America and traveled north, according to CRI. That's a theory anyway.

He's part of MtDNA Haplogroup B2, which has a low frequency in Alaska and Canada and originated in Arizona about 17,000 years ago.

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The DNA group’s closest relatives outside the Americas are in Southeast Asia.

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“We’ve always been here, since time immemorial,” a Piikani culture instructor at the Blackfeet Community College said. She also reported there’s no tradition saying "we" crossed a bridge, according to the article.