Posted on 02/13/2008 2:20:02 PM PST by Pharmboy
People who migrated from Asia to the New World camped out for 20,000 years on land now submerged under the Bering Strait between Alaska and Siberia, according to a genetic analysis published on Tuesday.
A team at the University of Florida combined studies of DNA, archeological evidence, climate data and geological data to come up with their new theory, which describes a much longer migration than most other researchers have proposed.
"We sort of went out onto a limb, incorporating all this nongenetic data," molecular anthropologist Connie Mulligan said in a telephone interview.
Mulligan's team proposes that the people who left Central Asia to eventually populate the Americas passed quickly through Siberia, and then got stuck in Beringia -- a former land mass that now lies under the frigid Bering Sea.
There they stayed for 20,000 years, until glaciers melted about 15,000 years ago, opening a route to the Americas.
"The reason there is no archeological evidence for that occupation is that the area is under water," Mulligan said.
The researchers used sequences of mitochondrial DNA taken from Asians and Native Americans for their analysis. This type of DNA is passed along virtually unchanged from mother to child.
The small mutations that occur can be used as a genetic clock to track the descent and the sizes of ancient populations.
"After a long period of little change in population size in greater Beringia, Amerinds (American Indians or native Americans) rapidly expanded into the Americas less than 15,000 years ago either through an interior ice-free corridor or along the coast," they wrote in their report.
"This rapid colonization of the New World was achieved by a founder group with an effective population size of 1,000 to 5,400 individuals."
WAITING AND MUTATING
The University of Florida's Michael Miyamoto said the DNA suggests a 20,000-year "waiting period" during which generations passed and genetic changes accumulated.
"By looking at the kinds and frequencies of these mutations in modern populations, we can get an idea of when the mutations arose and how many people were around to carry them," he said.
Other theories have suggested one single expansion of people from the Old World to the New around 15,000 years ago.
"If you think about it, these people didn't know they were going to a new world. They were moving out of Asia and finally reached a landmass that was exposed because of lower sea levels during the last glacial maximum, but two major glaciers blocked their progress into the New World," Mulligan said in a statement.
"So they basically stayed put for about 20,000 years. It wasn't paradise, but they survived. When the North American ice sheets started to melt and a passage into the New World opened, we think they left Beringia to go to a better place."
Anthropologist and genetics expert Henry Harpending of the University of Utah, who did not work on the study, said it made sense.
"The idea that people were stuck in Beringia for a long time is obvious in retrospect, but it has never been promulgated," he said. "It's very plausible that a bunch of them were stuck there for thousands of years."
The study is available at http://www.plosone.org/doi/pone.0001596
(Editing by Will Dunham and Cynthia Osterman)
ping
The Bering Land Bridge sinks to new low...Ping.
When Gore-magnon man roamed...
Global warming and rising seas ... yet everything is hunky-dory for us now. Go figure.
This sounds like a good wait time at the border after deportation!
Maybe they just got lost and couldn’t get their bearings.
Their RV dump spots must have been full so they moved on.
Alaska was not glaciated in the Interior. They would have had a problem walking through Canada and on down the West coast, but since they had boats they didn’t need to walk.
Well that’s one thing we can’t blame on the islamderthals.
Exactly. That’s always been what confused me. You can start out in a boat off the Russian coast and go north, always staying within sight of land. Eventually you’ll head south and pass Seattle, San Fran and San Diego. I bet that’s how it was done...
Coastal settlements from Alaska to Peru might suggest boats. The inland camps were mostly hunting camps.
Yes...good point...I see. But wouldn’t you assume that these theoretical Asian boat people were skilled fishermen that could sustain themselves merely sleeping on the shore at night and cooking their fish as they then continued south in the AM?
Sure. The rate of migration was maybe a mile a year. Nothing to stop some of the kids from going ashore and looking for some of the big game, and they could spend all summer doing it and still be home before dark. :)
“The reason there is no archeological evidence for that occupation is that the area is under water,” Mulligan said.”
Get a job you idiot! Stop wasting time, money, and resources on this silly hobby! There are real problems that you could put your brain to solving! Sheesh!
There's a kelp bed that runs all the way from Japan...good hunting/fishing and the water is calmer.
Does this mean the Chinese-Americans are going to start telling us to get the f*** our of “their” country?
I'm confused.
Why would the glaciers melt? There weren't any SUVs around 15,000 years ago.
/s
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