At least 15 thousand years ago fearless Siberians have moved on newly discovered the Bering land bridge and reached the deserted America.

For many years, archaeologists, geneticists and linguists try to understand what happened during the colonization of America, and one of the most important questions is: what is the number of waves kept migration from East Asia?

New large-scale genetic research has shown that large waves were three, and all with a different territorial scope.

David Reich of Harvard medical school (USA) and his colleagues analyzed the genome 493 persons belonging 52 Indian groups from Canada to the southern part of South America. The results were compared with the genetic pattern 245 people who belong to 17 ethnic groups of Siberia. The main task was to identify gene variants that are unique to the native Americans, who at the end of XV century gradually "obscured" by the infusion of European and African material. Just had studied more than 300 thousand of single nucleotide polymorphisms.

Earlier studies on mitochondrial DNA and Y-chromosome showed that migration was within one wave; it was contrary to the findings of anthropologists and linguists. But these methods can identify only ancestors on the maternal and paternal lines, while the analysis of single nucleotide polymorphisms gives a broader picture.

It turned out that the descendants of the first wave has occupied almost the whole of America: the most ancient ways found and Yaganov, living in the South of Chile, and the majority of canadian Indians who consider themselves to the so-called first Nations. Subsequent waves - eskimo-Aleutian and chipeska (not to be confused with the Chippewa) is limited to the Arctic. The descendants of the latter is most closely connected with the modern population of East Asia.

Later the group, apparently, soon blended with the former population of the North of North America, so the DNA of modern Eskimos and Aleuts only 43% remind genome ancestors, and of Kipelov - only 10%. The rest of the space was occupied by the genes of the first wave.

These figures are reasonably consistent with some classifications languages of indigenous population of America.

By the way, the coastal population has demonstrated more genetic diversity than the inhabitants of the depths of the continent. This suggests that the main migration routes ran along the shore. Probably, the ancient Indians were good sailors.

Interestingly, since, as the population has left to their places in the interior of the continent, they practically did not mix, that is very little migrated again. The one exception is the group of Latin America, namely media kircanski languages that live in Costa Rica, Panama and Colombia. Their DNA is both North and South traits, that is, their ancestors, presumably, once migrated to South America, and then returned to the isthmus of Panama.

The researchers also found traces of the eskimo-Aleutian genetic variants among residents of coastal areas of the Eastern Siberia - Chukchi and Nukenov. Apparently, America is not all relished...

Unfortunately, the study was not able to answer the question, when all this happened. In addition, the specialists decided to abandon the genetic material of native Americans, because they do not always have the confidence that he obtained the consent of the donor. In 2010, the University of Arizona (USA) had to pay $700 thousand of compensation to those whose DNA samples were taken for the study of diabetes, and then without the knowledge of the Indians were used to determine the history of the tribe. The natives were not particularly liked the fact that the results are not consistent with the myths.

Incidentally, a similar legal fight and paleontologie skeletons. Indians have long pleaded for the remains of ancient man, discovered in Southeast Washington state in 1996. Scientists got their at their disposal only in 2005, when the other party has failed to prove that her ancestor. Now similar proceedings is between three anthropologists, and a California tribe Kumeyaay. At stake are two of the skeleton.

The study is published in the journal Nature.

Based on the materials of Scientific American, Phys.Org and NewScientist.