New York Times reporter James Gorman interviewed SMU’s David Meltzer, a professor in the SMU Department of Anthropology in the Dedman College of Humanities and Sciences, about a new large genome-scale study that revealed that the ancestors of all present-day Native Americans arrived in the Americas as part of a single migration wave, no earlier than 23,000 years ago.
The finding addresses the ongoing debate over when and how many times the ancestors of present-day Native Americans entered the New World from Siberia.
Meltzer was a co-author on the study, which was conducted by an international team headed by the Centre for GeoGenetics at the University of Copenhagen. It published online July 23, 2015 in Science.
Meltzer’s research focus is on the origins, antiquity, and adaptations of the first Americans – Paleoindians – who colonized the North American continent at the end of the Ice Age. He focuses on how these hunter-gatherers met the challenges of moving across and adapting to the vast, ecologically diverse landscape of Late Glacial North America during a time of significant climate change.
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To book a live or taped interview with David Meltzer in the SMU News Broadcast Studio contact SMU News at 214-768-7650 or news@smu.edu.
Related links
- David J. Meltzer
- Science: “Genomic evidence for the Pleistocene and recent population history of Native Americans“
- Nature: “The Ancestry and Affiliations of Kennewick Man“
- Current Anthropology: “The 12.9-ka ET Impact Hypothesis and North
American Paleoindians“ - “Peopling of the Americas” researcher awarded highest honor
- SMU Department of Anthropology
- Dedman College of Humanities and Sciences
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1st proton collisions at the world’s largest science experiment expected to start the first or second week of JuneHis research has been supported by grants from the National Geographic Society, the National Science Foundation, The Potts and Sibley Foundation and the Smithsonian Institution. In 1996, he received a research endowment from Joseph and Ruth Cramer to establish the Quest Archaeological Research Program at SMU, which will support in perpetuity research on the earliest occupants of North America.
Meltzer is a member of the National Academy of Sciences and is Henderson-Morrison Professor of Prehistory in SMU’s Dedman College.
The New York Times article published July 21, 2015.
Read the full article, “Scientists Trace an Ancient DNA Link Between Amazonians and Australasians.”
EXCERPT:
By James Gorman
New York TimesSome people in the Brazilian Amazon are very distant relations of indigenous Australians, New Guineans and other Australasians, two groups of scientists who conducted detailed genetic analyses reported Tuesday. But the researchers disagree on the source of that ancestry.
The connection is ancient, all agree, and attributable to Eurasian migrants to the Americas who had some Australasian ancestry, the scientists said.
But one group said the evidence is clear that two different populations came from Siberia to settle the Americas 15,000 or more years ago. The other scientific team says there was only one founding population from which all indigenous Americans, except for the Inuit, descended and the Australasian DNA came later, and not through a full-scale migration. For instance, genes could have flowed through a kind of chain of intermarriage and mixing between groups living in the Aleutian Islands and down the Pacific Coast.
Both papers were based on comparisons of patterns in the genomes of many living individuals from different genetic groups and geographic regions, and of ancient skeletons.
David Reich of Harvard, the senior author of a paper published Tuesday in the journal Nature, said the DNA pattern was “surprising and unexpected, and we weren’t really looking for it.” [….]
[….] David Meltzer, an anthropologist and archaeologist at Southern Methodist University and another author of the Science paper, said the difference in interpretation between the two groups was “not an irresolvable problem.” More analysis of ancient DNA or the discovery of a new skeleton could provide an answer.
Read the full article, “Scientists Trace an Ancient DNA Link Between Amazonians and Australasians.”
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