Related Story<\/p>\n
Genetics tell the story of how the Americas were populated by the ancestors of modern Indigenous people. Their origins lie in Siberian and East Asian groups who are thought to have first mixed 20,000 years ago, during the Late Paleolithic, later crossing a bridge of ice to North America some 16,000 years ago. It was then that this lineage split into northern Native American and southern Native American lines. While the northern Native American ancestry is mostly made up of populations that stayed in North America, three more lineages branched into southern Native American ancestry, which would reach further south. <\/p>\n
\u201cThe Isthmo-Colombian area, stretching from the coast of Honduras to the northern Colombian Andes, is critical to understanding the peopling of the Americas,\u201d the researchers said in a study recently published in Science Advances<\/a>. \u201cBesides being the land bridge between North and South America, it is at the center of the three major cultural regions of Mesoamerica, Amazonia, and the Andes.\u201d<\/p>\n Each southern Native American lineage can be traced back to its earliest ancestors. There is one line descending from the Anzick-1<\/a> individual discovered in 1968, when construction workers unearthed the 12,700-year-old skull of a child belonging to the Clovis people, one of the earliest known peoples in the Americas. This young boy is related to modern Indigenous people from North, Central and South America. Another lineage that is found in the Central Andes comes from ancient people living in California\u2019s Channel Islands<\/a>. Yet another lineage<\/a>, also descended from the Clovis population, is associated with the oldest Central and South Americans from Belize, Brazil and Chile. <\/p>\n Related Story<\/p>\n When exactly these populations appeared in Central and South America is still mostly unknown, but they must have arrived by traveling over the land bridge<\/a> that connects the southernmost part of Central America to the South American subcontinent. There is also a linguistic connection<\/a>. Speakers of Chibchan languages<\/a> share some genetic and cultural aspects with the mysterious people who cannot be traced directly to any population.<\/p>\n When and where the ancestral Proto-Chibchan language originated is unclear, but distinct languages are thought to have started evolving from it several thousand years ago, possibly in southern Central America. Chibchan speakers in this region have kept the largest number of these languages alive. While genetic analysis of local Indigenous people has shown that they are related to more ancient speakers of Chibchan languages, some findings suggest that they are not directly descended from the first people to settle in that part of Colombia.<\/p>\n By studying both mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA)<\/a> and genome-wide data from 21 ancient individuals who lived in this region from 6,000 to 500 years ago, the researchers were able to find out some information about who they were, but not all the answers. More ancient Panamanians were found to be related to modern Chibchan speakers than ancient Colombians<\/a>. However, Indigenous Chibchan speakers from Central America are the modern population genetically closest to ancient Colombians who lived after 2,000 years ago. <\/p>\n Many groups who were around at the same time and spoke similar languages to the unknown people still need further investigation. <\/p>\n
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