According to a recent study, Native Americans might well have originated in southern China.
According to researchers, early human fossils discovered in China represent an extinct parental lineage of people, out of which Native Americans could have originated. The revelation was established by analyzing the fossils’ genomes, which are thought to be 14,000 years old.
Native Americans might have originated from East Asia
Experts examined the genomes of other humans worldwide and the fossils. The experts discovered that the remains were of a person whose genealogy seems to have ties to Native Americans’ East Asian roots.
According to the study, this demonstrates how certain Southeast Asians crossed into Japan while traveling north of the Chinese coastline. These adventurous individuals arrived in Siberia and eventually crossed the Bering Strait separating Alaska and Russia. The researchers say that they were the first humans to reach the New World.
The initial steps toward the revelation were taken over 30 years ago when Chinese archaeologists found a sizable collection of remains in the Red Deer Cave in the Yunnan Province of southern China.
The remains were identified by carbon dating as belonging to the Late Pleistocene, which began around 14,000 years back and was when human populations began to spread out throughout the globe. They found a hominin skull cap inside the cave that had traits shared by human populations and ancient hominins. For example, the brain looked smaller compared to contemporary humans, despite the skull’s resemblance to Neanderthals.
Historical DNA shows a connection to the maternal lineage from ancient populations
Chinese researchers were successful in removing historical DNA from the discovered skull in 2018. According to genomic analysis, the hominin came from a maternal ancestry of ancient human populations, whose descendants can currently be traced to East Asia, the Indo-Chinese coast, and Southeast Asia islands.
Additionally, they discovered that the DNA of early humans residing in Southeast Asia at this time was extremely varied. Interestingly the genetic diversity in northern East Asia was greater during the period.
