Science
Related: About this forumAmericas 'settled in three waves'
But the majority of today's indigenous Americans descend from a single group of migrants that crossed from Asia to Alaska 15,000 years ago or more.
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The second and third migrations have left an impact only in Arctic populations whose languages belong to the Eskimo-Aleut family and in the Canadian Chipewyan who speak a language that belongs to the Na-Dene family.
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Eskimo-Aleut speakers derive more than 50% of their DNA from what the researchers call "First Americans", and the Chipewyan around 90%. This reflects the fact that the two later streams of migration from Asia mixed with the populations descended from the first wave.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-18770963
Whether this is thought to apply to all groups that speak Na-Dene languages (eg Navaho and Apache), or just the Canadian branch, I'm not sure. Note this is nothing to do with the European hypothesis, which seems to have bubbled up again on DU today.
MissMarple
(9,656 posts)The European hypothesis would include the Cherokee, I assume. And then there is the theory that the Pacific Islanders made their way to the west coasts of the Americas via boat. Interesting stuff. At Fort Lewis College in Durango, Colorado they have had an exhibit directly comparing the culture and language of the Navajo with the Tibetans. Very cool.
Odin2005
(53,521 posts)...and if you did not know that they were Siberians you would have thought they were Native Americans based on their physical appearance and traditional costumes.
Odin2005
(53,521 posts)Uralic languages. All 3 language families share features that could not have been the result of borrowing
dipsydoodle
(42,239 posts)Scientists studying how North America was first settled have found stone spearheads and darts in Oregon, US, that date back more than 13,000 years.
The hunting implements, which are of the "Western Stemmed" tradition, are at least as old as the famous Clovis tools thought for a long time to belong to the continent's earliest inhabitants.
Precise carbon dating of dried human faeces discovered alongside the stone specimens tied down their antiquity.
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It has published the scholarly findings of an international team investigating the Paisley Cave complex in south-central Oregon.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-18814522