If the population did in fact last until relatively recently, I would look at the fuegians that went extinct shortly after European contact as a group that may have had fairly high australomelanesian admixture. They seem kind of like the koi San of the americas.
I think these developments make the disappearance of certain megafauna a bigger mystry than it was. Megafauna survived the presence of tool using hominids in Africa for about a million years, and in Asia for a like time. In North America homo sapiens was on the continent for about 20,000 years before the arrival of the Clovis people and the crash of Megafauna.
Yes, the Clovis point is a nasty weapon, but how much damage can a few thousand paleolithic people do? I think that before we pin the blame on them, we need more evidence and better models.
Astounding stuff. Thanks for the nice summary. From today's vantage point it seems like archaeologists placed way too much emphasis on trying to fit things to old evidence rather than realize their evidence was vastly incomplete. But the record remains incomplete and I'm wondering if what we're discovering now can help aid in the discovery of further sites and more evidence. I've always wondered at how archaeological sites are discovered . . . .
The article states: "In other words, the first modern humans who were present in the New World did not contribute much ancestry to today’s Native Americans at all." So, 2 questions:
1. In David Reich's book on ancient DNA, he talks about something called "Population Y". Perhaps I missed this in the article, but would do the quotation above refer to Population Y?
2. Now, If the the first modern humans in the New World were of a different ancestry as Native Americans.....Wouldn't this be problematic for the idea of "First Nations" as now understood, if indeed, the notion of "indigineity"?
And doesn't this open up the remote possibility that these 2 populations may have met and not liked each other, but one may have been more agile and triumphant than the other?
Because it seems to me that all this opens up very delicate territory.
I have some questions for you (or anyone else here) with respect to your comments on Haplogroup D, wondering if there's a way to tie the recent paper on the peopling of the Philippines into this.
So my understanding of the Y-haplogroup situation with the various living Australo-Papuan-related groups is:
Actual Australo-Papuan populations: haplogroups C1b, K2b (particularly M and S).
Aeta: C1b, K2b (particularly P and P2).
Andamanese/Onge: D + some (one 18th century sample) P-M1254*
The Yana paper modelled ANE (ie Yana and MA-1) as 78% West Eurasian-related and 22% Onge-related.
Is it plausible then that Haplogroup P's descendants Q and R found their way into ANE via this Onge-related component, perhaps via a coastal route that eventually went up the Amur and infiltrated into the Baikal region?
And would it be reasonable to think that Beringians were always a three-way mix of ANE, Onge-like coastal migrants, and inland Tianyuan-related East Asians (basically the three clades you mention in your Deep Origins of East Eurasians post)? And that early and coastal populations skewed to the Onge side, and later and interior populations skewed to the Tianyuan and Yana/MA-1 side, with the Tianyuan side becoming increasingly dominant in the Holocene?
Where this differs I think from your post is that rather than expecting 20kya remains (if we find and if we sequence them) in the Americas to be drastically different both on the autosome and Y-chromosome from more recent populations, instead we would find a more gradual change as new waves arrive first down the coast and eventually inland in the Americas. Which would mean the population structure in South America could be larger and older than anticipated currently.
One thing I noticed a while back too is that the South/Central American populations with the highest affinity with the Onge also have the lowest affinity with Denisovans. So perhaps the Denisovan ancestry in the Americas came from Tianyuan, and the coastal route had relatively few Denisovans when the Onge-like coastal route was taken.
I find that last point rather strange though given the apparent persistence of Denisovans in the Philippines. Toba?
Thank you Razib. Very interesting. Wonder what happened to the Paleo-Americans in North and Central America. Could they have died out in N America during the LGM and gotten replaced by Beringians?
Fascinating. When I saw the Sept 24 front-page story in The Wall Street Journal, my first reaction was, "I hope Razib writes about this." Thank you!
Really like stuff like this. Pithy and clear but still thorough.
If the population did in fact last until relatively recently, I would look at the fuegians that went extinct shortly after European contact as a group that may have had fairly high australomelanesian admixture. They seem kind of like the koi San of the americas.
I think these developments make the disappearance of certain megafauna a bigger mystry than it was. Megafauna survived the presence of tool using hominids in Africa for about a million years, and in Asia for a like time. In North America homo sapiens was on the continent for about 20,000 years before the arrival of the Clovis people and the crash of Megafauna.
Yes, the Clovis point is a nasty weapon, but how much damage can a few thousand paleolithic people do? I think that before we pin the blame on them, we need more evidence and better models.
Astounding stuff. Thanks for the nice summary. From today's vantage point it seems like archaeologists placed way too much emphasis on trying to fit things to old evidence rather than realize their evidence was vastly incomplete. But the record remains incomplete and I'm wondering if what we're discovering now can help aid in the discovery of further sites and more evidence. I've always wondered at how archaeological sites are discovered . . . .
The article states: "In other words, the first modern humans who were present in the New World did not contribute much ancestry to today’s Native Americans at all." So, 2 questions:
1. In David Reich's book on ancient DNA, he talks about something called "Population Y". Perhaps I missed this in the article, but would do the quotation above refer to Population Y?
2. Now, If the the first modern humans in the New World were of a different ancestry as Native Americans.....Wouldn't this be problematic for the idea of "First Nations" as now understood, if indeed, the notion of "indigineity"?
And doesn't this open up the remote possibility that these 2 populations may have met and not liked each other, but one may have been more agile and triumphant than the other?
Because it seems to me that all this opens up very delicate territory.
Great post Razib. You've gained a subscriber.
I have some questions for you (or anyone else here) with respect to your comments on Haplogroup D, wondering if there's a way to tie the recent paper on the peopling of the Philippines into this.
So my understanding of the Y-haplogroup situation with the various living Australo-Papuan-related groups is:
Actual Australo-Papuan populations: haplogroups C1b, K2b (particularly M and S).
Aeta: C1b, K2b (particularly P and P2).
Andamanese/Onge: D + some (one 18th century sample) P-M1254*
The Yana paper modelled ANE (ie Yana and MA-1) as 78% West Eurasian-related and 22% Onge-related.
Is it plausible then that Haplogroup P's descendants Q and R found their way into ANE via this Onge-related component, perhaps via a coastal route that eventually went up the Amur and infiltrated into the Baikal region?
And would it be reasonable to think that Beringians were always a three-way mix of ANE, Onge-like coastal migrants, and inland Tianyuan-related East Asians (basically the three clades you mention in your Deep Origins of East Eurasians post)? And that early and coastal populations skewed to the Onge side, and later and interior populations skewed to the Tianyuan and Yana/MA-1 side, with the Tianyuan side becoming increasingly dominant in the Holocene?
Where this differs I think from your post is that rather than expecting 20kya remains (if we find and if we sequence them) in the Americas to be drastically different both on the autosome and Y-chromosome from more recent populations, instead we would find a more gradual change as new waves arrive first down the coast and eventually inland in the Americas. Which would mean the population structure in South America could be larger and older than anticipated currently.
One thing I noticed a while back too is that the South/Central American populations with the highest affinity with the Onge also have the lowest affinity with Denisovans. So perhaps the Denisovan ancestry in the Americas came from Tianyuan, and the coastal route had relatively few Denisovans when the Onge-like coastal route was taken.
I find that last point rather strange though given the apparent persistence of Denisovans in the Philippines. Toba?
Thank you Razib. Very interesting. Wonder what happened to the Paleo-Americans in North and Central America. Could they have died out in N America during the LGM and gotten replaced by Beringians?
Thanks so much!
Have Native American objections to archeology on their presumed ancestors held back American paleogenetics relative to European work?
Wow. Really opens for new thinking.