Tag: SMU Department of Anthropology

New York Times: Scientists Trace an Ancient DNA Link Between Amazonians and Australasians

Post author By Margaret Allen
Post date July 24, 2015

Karitiana children in their village near Porto Velho, Rondonia, Brazil. Scientists found that some people in the Brazilian Amazon have an ancient genetic tie to indigenous Australians, New Guineans and other Australasians. (Credit: New York Times)

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.

His 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 Times

Some 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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Los Angeles Times: Native American origins: When the DNA points two ways

Post author By Margaret Allen
Post date July 22, 2015

Scientists are analyzing ancient and modern DNA to learn more about how people first colonized the Americas. Pictured here: tools discovered in 1968 at a Clovis-era burial site in western Montana, alongside remains of a boy who died more than 12,000 years ago, known as Anzick-1. The child's DNA was used as a basis for comparison in two new genetics studies released on Tuesday. (Sarah L. Anzick / AP) — Scientists are analyzing ancient and modern DNA to learn more about how people first colonized the Americas. Pictured here: tools discovered in 1968 at a Clovis-era burial site in western Montana, alongside remains of a boy who died more than 12,000 years ago, known as Anzick-1. The child’s DNA was used as a basis for comparison in two new genetics studies released on Tuesday. (Sarah L. Anzick / AP)

Los Angeles Times reporter Eryn Brown 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 is a member of the National Academy of Sciences and is Henderson-Morrison Professor of Prehistory in SMU’s Dedman College.

The Los Angeles Times article published July 21, 2015.

Read the full article, “Native American origins: When the DNA points two ways.”

EXCERPT:

By Eryn Brown
Los Angeles Times

This week, two teams of scientists released reports detailing the origins of Native American peoples. Both groups looked at ancient and modern DNA to attempt to learn more about the movements of populations from Asia into the New World, and about how groups mixed once they got here. Both discovered a hint that some Native Americans in South America share ancestry with native peoples in Australia and Melanesia.

But the two groups came to different conclusions when it came to how that DNA with ties to Oceania made its way into the Native American genome.

In a wide-ranging paper in the journal Science, University of Copenhagen Centre for GeoGenetics Director Eske Willerslev and coauthors studied genomes from ancient and modern people in the Americas and Asia. They concluded that migrations into the New World had to have occurred in a single wave from Siberia, timed no earlier than 23,000 years ago. They also calculated that any genes shared with Australo-Melanesian peoples must have been contributed through relatively recent population mixing.

In the meantime, Harvard Medical School geneticist David Reich and colleagues, focusing more closely on the Australo-Melanesian genes in a study published in Nature, came to a different conclusion: that the DNA had to have arrived in the Americas very long ago and that founding migrations occurred in more than one wave.

“It was crazy and unexpected and very weird and we spent the last year and a half trying to understand it,” Reich said on Monday. But “it’s inconsistent to a single founding population. People in Amazonia have ancestry from two divergent sources…we think this is a real observation.”

David Meltzer, an archaeologist at Southern Methodist University in Dallas and a coauthor of the Science paper, said that researchers in his field had been wrestling with the early history of the Americas for centuries — debating when the first settlers arrived here, whether there were pulses of migrations, and so on.

Read the full article, “Native American origins: When the DNA points two ways.”

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Large genome-scale study finds Native American ancestors arrived in single migration wave

Post author By Margaret Allen
Post date July 21, 2015

No support for ‘Paleoamerican Model,’ which holds that Central and South American groups were relicts of an early and separate migration into the Americas

This area around the confluence of the Silverthrone and Klinaklini Glaciers in southwestern British Columbia provides a glimpse into how the terrain traveled by Native Americans in Pleistocene times may have appeared. (Credit: David J. Meltzer).

A new large genome-scale study reveals 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.

There is archaeological evidence of modern humans in the Americas by about 15,000 years ago.

The new study was conducted by an international team headed by the Centre for GeoGenetics at the University of Copenhagen.

“With this study,” said study co-author David J. Meltzer, in the Department of Anthropology, Southern Methodist University, “we are not only addressing key questions related to the peopling of the Americas, we are beginning to integrate the archaeological, anatomical and genetic evidence bearing on that process.”

The study, “Genomic evidence for the Pleistocene and recent population history of Native Americans,” published online July 21, 2015, ahead of print in the leading scientific journal Science.

Within the Americas, the ancestral Native American pool diversified into two basal branches around 13 thousand years ago. The team also reports a later gene flow into some Native Americans from groups related to present-day East Asians and Australo-Melanesians.

Finally, the results from this study show no support for certain historical Central and South American groups with distinctive cranial morphology being relicts of an early and separate migration into the Americas, as proposed by the ‘Paleoamerican Model’.

Debate centers around demographic processes that led to peopling of Americas
Although there is little disagreement in the scientific literature that the ancestors of present-day Native Americans originated in Siberia, debate over the demographic processes that led to the peopling of the Americas still persists.

Experts know through archaeological sites such as Monte Verde in Chile that humans were present in the Americas by about 15,000 years ago.

The question remains, however, as to when the first Native Americans cross over from Siberia into the New World?

Did they arrive in a single wave or did successive migration waves give rise to the genetic diversity prevalent among present-day Native Americans? Did they split from their Old World ancestors and immediately cross into the Americas? Or was there, as one genetic model suggests, an “incubation” period in Beringia, the now-inundated land bridge that connected northeastern Siberia to Alaska? And if they came in a single wave, when did the ancestral Native American population split into the genetic branches seen today among their descendants?

Tracing the initial migrations into the Americas
To develop details of when and how the Americas were peopled, the team generated genomic data from several present-day Native American and Siberian populations, which are poorly represented in the genetic literature.

The researchers also sequenced ancient samples from across the Americas, spanning about 6,000 to 200 years ago to trace the genetic structure over time.

“Our study presents the most comprehensive picture of the genetic prehistory of the Americas to date,” said one lead author Maanasa Raghavan, a postdoctoral researcher at the Centre for GeoGenetics. “We show that all Native Americans, including the major sub-groups of Amerindians and Athabascans, descend from the same migration wave into the Americas. This was distinct from later waves that gave rise to the Paleo-Eskimo and Inuit populations in the New World Arctic region.”

This initial migration of the ancestors of all present-day Native Americans happened no earlier than 23,000 years ago, the new study found.

That represents the split date of Native Americans from East Asian and Siberian populations and is very similar for both Amerindians and Athabascans, which confirms that both groups arrived into the New World as part of the same migration.

“We applied several statistical methods that differ in modelling or utilize different information in the data,” said Yun Song, a study co-author and a professor at the University of California at Berkeley. “That we obtained consistent results across different methods is significant and reassuring.”

It is likely that after diverging from Old World populations around 23,000 years ago, the ancestral Native Americans remained isolated in Beringia for about 8 thousand years ago, given that the earliest archaeological evidence for humans in the Americas is around 15 thousand years ago.

A timeline of the genomic landscape of the Americas
Since Amerindians and Athabascans were part of the same migration into the Americas, the current genetic differences observed between them would have emerged sometime after 23,000 years ago.

The team found evidence for a split in the ancestral Native American gene pool that lead to the formation of two distinct genetic branches, namely the northern and southern branches, and that this split occurred about 13,000 years ago.

The northern branch was found to be present in northern North America and included both northern Amerindian groups as well as Athabascans. The southern branch, in contrast, included Amerindians from southern North America and Central and South America.

“We can date this split so precisely in part because we previously have analyzed the 12,600 years ago remains of a boy associated with the first unique Native American culture – the Clovis culture,”said study co-author Rasmus Nielsen from the Department of Integrative Biology at the University of California at Berkeley. “The first diversification of the ancestors of modern Native Americans happened in the Americas and likely just before — or at the time of — the appearance of the Clovis culture.”

When comparing the genetic affiliations of sequenced ancient samples from the Americas, the team found that several samples were genetically more closely related to modern-day populations from the same geographical location. This result indicates that there was a genetic and geographic continuity of Native American groups across the millennia in at least some parts of the Americas.

A recent Old World connection
The study reports a signal of gene flow between some Native Americans and groups related to present-day East Asians and Australo-Melanesians, the latter including Papuans, Solomon Islanders and South East Asian hunter-gatherer groups.

While the signal is weak, it presents an intriguing scenario of a distant Old World connection to Native Americans after their split from one another and after the latter had peopled the Americas.

“It’s a surprising finding and it implies that New World population were not completely isolated from the Old World after their initial migration,” said study leader Eske Willerslev, Lundbeck Foundation Professor from the Centre for GeoGenetics at the Natural History Museum, University of Copenhagen. “We cannot say exactly how and when this gene flow happened, but one possibility is that it came through the Aleutian Islanders living off the coast of Alaska.”

A genetic relationship with the Australo-Melanesians, however weak, invokes a highly debated hypothesis in the scientific literature that suggests, based on cranial morphology, that populations related to Australo-Melanesians were part of a separate migration. From them, that gave rise to the earliest Americans (Paleoamericans), who were later replaced by the ancestors of present-day Native Americans.

Genomic analyses indicates Palaeoamericans related to preseng-day Native Americans
The current study undertook genomic analyses on historical Central and South American populations considered to be relicts of Paleoamericans, namely the Pericúes and Fuego-Patagonians. It found no evidence, however, for them being closely related to Australo-Melanesians.

On the contrary, the results show that they were genetically closest to present-day Native Americans, a finding supported by re-analysis of cranial morphological evidence.

“Our findings show that supposed Palaeoamerican relict populations, such as the Pericúes and Fuego-Patagonians, belong to the same population as present-day Native Americans and that the distinct cranial morphology of these groups is not a consequence of a distinct migration history,” said one of the lead authors, Cristina Valdiosera, a postdoctoral researcher at the Centre for GeoGenetics.

The lines of evidence do not, as yet, fully converge, said SMU’s Meltzer, an expert on the prehistoric Native American Clovis culture.

“For example, was there a causal link between the Clovis expansion known archaeologically and the genetic divergence of the northern and southern branches?” he said. “If so, how does the evidence of a pre-Clovis presence at sites such as Monte Verde fit in? As more archaeological sites and remains are dated and ancient and modern genomes are sequenced, we will be able to resolve these issues, and develop a more precise record of the colonization of what was then a truly New World.”

Willerslev said the study also seems to have challenged older hypotheses such as a Beringian incubation for Native American ancestors for tens of thousands of years; entrance to the Americas much earlier than the Last Glacial Maximum; and, independent migrations of Amerindians and Athabascan ancestors into the Americas.

“At the same time, we see surprises including genetic signals of East Asians and Australo-Melanesians, presumably coming in after the first migration wave,” he said. — University of Copenhagen, SMU

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KERA: DNA From Kennewick Man Shows He Was Native American, Says Study With SMU Ties

Post author By Margaret Allen
Post date July 16, 2015

The skull of Kennewick Man and a sculpted bust by StudioEIS based on forensic facial reconstruction by sculptor Amanda Danning. (Credit: Brittany Tatchell)

KERA News reporter Justin Martin interviewed SMU archaeolologist David Meltzer from the SMU Department of Anthropology in Dedman College of Humanities and Sciences about the controversial 8,500-year-old skeleton called Kennewick Man.

Meltzer was part of a new study, “The Ancestry and Affiliations of Kennewick Man” in the journal Nature, that analyzed Kennewick Man’s genome sequence and found that Kennewick Man is more closely related to modern Native Americans than to any other population worldwide.

The study was led by the Centre for GeoGenetics at the University of Copenhagen and was published online June 18, 2015 in Nature.

Meltzer researches 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.

Meltzer’s archaeology and history 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 the Henderson-Morrison Professor of Prehistory in SMU’s Dedman College.

The KERA interview aired July 14, 2015.

Listen to the interview, “DNA From Kennewick Man Shows He Was Native American, Says Study With SMU Ties.”

EXCERPT:

By Justin Martin
KERA News

Nearly two decades after an ancient skeleton was discovered in Kennewick, Washington, scientists finally have a better idea about its hotly-debated origins. SMU anthropologist David Meltzer co-authored a recent study into what’s been dubbed the Kennewick Man.

Interview Highlights: David Meltzer …

… on the age of the ‘Kennewick Man’: “Kennewick man is about 8,500 years old and that’s based on radiocarbon dating of the actual skeleton, and his origins have been quite controversial. The question was: Was he related to modern day Native Americans or does he represent an earlier population that came into the new world, which was in turn subsequently replaced by modern day Native Americans? What the DNA evidence shows is he was one of them, he was a Native American.”

… on why it took so long to figure out his origins: “In the late 90s, DNA efforts were made to recover something, but in those days the techniques and technologies was so very primitive. You needed a decade or more of ancient DNA work to bring it up to speed to make it possible to reconstruct Kennewick’s DNA.”

… on how the research turned into a lawsuit: “The Army Corps of Engineers, at the request of the Native American tribes, sought to reinter Kennewick into the ground immediately. The tribes had made the argument that Kennewick was one of their ancestors and that therefore his remains fell under what is referred to as NAGPRA or the ‘Native Americans Graves Protection and Repatriation Act.’ A number of individuals sued in turn claiming that he wasn’t a Native American and therefore NAGPRA does not apply. The lawsuit started in the fall of 1996, it was finally resolved in 2004. An appeals court said he’s not a Native American [and to go] ahead and do a study. Here’s the ironic part — as a part of that study, a bit of the bone was provided to my colleague … who analyzed the DNA, which demonstrates in fact that he is a Native American. The lawsuit to basically show that he wasn’t turned out to show that in the end, he was.”

Listen to the interview, “DNA From Kennewick Man Shows He Was Native American, Says Study With SMU Ties.”

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Kennewick Man: genome sequence of 8,500-year-old skeleton solves scientific controversy

Post author By Margaret Allen
Post date June 18, 2015

New study based on skeleton’s genome sequence shows Kennewick Man is in fact more closely related to modern Native Americans

The locale in Washington State where Kennewick Man was discovered in 1996.

An 8,500-year-old male skeleton discovered in 1996 in the Columbia River in Washington State has been the focus of a bitter dispute between Native Americans and American scientists, and even within the American scientific community. Craniometric analysis showed that Kennewick Man, as the skeleton was named, resembled populations in Japan, Polynesia or even Europe, suggesting he was not ancestral to Native Americans, a finding that helped block Native Americans’ request for a repatriation of the skeleton.

Now a new study, “The Ancestry and Affiliations of Kennewick Man” in the journal Nature, based on his genome sequence shows that Kennewick Man is in fact more closely related to modern Native Americans, than to any other population worldwide and, further, that the earlier craniometrics analyses cannot be supported.

The study was led by the Centre for GeoGenetics at the University of Copenhagen and is published online June 18, 2015 in Nature.

The human skeletal remains of "Kennewick Man were found below the surface of Lake Wallula, a section of the Columbia River. (Credit: J. Chatters) — The human skeletal remains of “Kennewick Man were found below the surface of Lake Wallula, a section of the Columbia River. (Credit: J. Chatters)

When Kennewick Man was discovered in 1996 initial cranial analysis suggested that he was a historic-period Euro-American. Later radiocarbon dating of the bones revealed an age of about 8,000-9,000 years Before the Present making him pre-Columbian in age. This sparked a legal battle over the disposition of the skeletal remains.

Tribes inhabiting the region where Kennewick Man was found requested the remains to be turned over to them for reburial based on him being Native American and ancestor to them.

The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, which managed the land where the skeleton was found, was prepared to do so. However, this was blocked by a lawsuit by eight scientists questioning his Native American origins and generated a scientific stir as to Kennewick Man’s ancestry and affiliation.

The lawsuit lacerated the anthropological community, badly damaged relations with Native American groups, and triggered a divisive, long-running and expensive legal tug of war that ended in 2004 with a ruling in favor of a more detailed study, a study published in 2014.

Kennewick Man – a Native American ancestor
The 2014 study included isotopic, anatomical and morphometric analysis. That study concluded that Kennewick Man resembles circumpacific populations, particularly the Japanese Ainu and Polynesians and also has certain “European-like morphological” traits, and reinforced the claim that he was anatomically distinct from modern Native Americans.

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However, those recent studies did not include DNA analysis, which prompted a new study of the genome sequence of Kennewick. Leader of this new study is geneticist and Lundbeck Foundation Professor Eske Willerslev from the Centre for GeoGenetics, University of Copenhagen – a center funded by the Danish National Research Foundation. About the new results Willerslev says:

“Comparing the genome sequence of Kennewick Man to genome wide data of contemporary human populations across the world clearly shows that Native Americans of today are his closest living relatives. Our study further shows that members of the Confederated Tribes of the Colville Reservation that belongs to the Claimant Plateau tribes of the Pacific Northwest, who originally claimed him as their ancestor, is one of the groups showing close affinities to Kennewick Man or at least to the population to which he belonged.”

And anthropologist David Meltzer from the Department of Anthropology, Southern Methodist University in Dallas adds:

“The trail from past to present is often poorly marked in the archaeological record, making it difficult to follow a people through time by their changing artifacts or their rarely encountered and often fragmentary skeletal remains. With the recovery and careful analysis of ancient DNA, we can better follow that trail: in Kennewick’s case, it leads unerringly to Native Americans.”

Rejecting a hypothesis
Working in an ultraclean and over-pressurized laboratory first author on the paper Postdoctoral researcher Morten Rasmussen from the Centre for GeoGenetics has been heavily involved with analyzing Kennewick’s bones. Rasmussen says:

“Although the exterior preservation of the skeleton was pristine, the DNA in the sample was highly degraded and dominated by DNA from soil bacteria and other environmental sources. With the little material we had available, we applied the newest methods to squeeze every piece of information out of the bone.”

About the results seen in a global context Associate Professor Martin Sikora from the Centre for GeoGenetics says:

“The wealth of genomic data available for modern humans allowed us to directly test whether the Kennewick Man was more closely related to populations other than Native Americans, such as the Ainu or peoples from Polynesia. What we found instead was that he was only distantly related to those peoples, therefore clearly rejecting that hypothesis.”

However, the researchers have also been able to narrow Kennewick Man’s affiliations to modern Native Americans. Rasmus Nielsen is Professor at the Department of Integrative Biology, University of California, Berkeley. On this issue Nielsen says:

“For an 8,500 year old sample, we will probably never be able to show affiliation with any specific tribe, but we can show that the Kennewick Man is more closely related to some members of the Confederated Tribes of the Colville Reservation in the state of Washington, than to many other contemporary Native Americans.”

Still a loose end
Rather than developing new DNA methods for analyzing the genome data the researchers chose standard and widely accepted methods for analyzing ancient DNA. One thing that always lurks in the background of this kind of work is contamination from modern DNA. Associate Professor Anders Albrechtsen from the Biological Institute, University of Copenhagen, has been involved in the part of bioinformatics. About the danger of contamination in the present study Albrechtsen says:

“Ancient samples have very little endogenous DNA. Therefore, we have to be extremely careful not to contaminate the samples with even the slightest amount of modern DNA. In this study we were successful in obtaining human DNA that almost exclusively was of ancient origin and we were able to show that the source of the DNA was a single individual; the Kennewick Man.”

As the earlier data from Kennewick Man had been based on cranial morphology the research group chose also to make use of this method. Professor Christoph Zollikofer and Dr. Marcia Ponce de León from the Anthropological Institute, University of Zurich are world-leading experts on cranial analyses. They did not make new measurements but re-examined the earlier data and concluded the following:

“We started with the observation that cranial variation within human populations – both past and present – is high, and that it is typically higher than variation among populations. One important consequence of this is that, for single individuals such as Kennewick Man, cranial data do not reliably indicate population affiliations. In fact, drawing reliable inferences requires hundreds of independent features – precisely the kind of information that is now available through the new genomic analyses.”

The new study pinpoints the population origins of this heretofore highly controversial find along the banks of the Columbia River in Washington, but comes short of naming the closest modern day relatives. Professor Eske Willerslev ends:

“It is important to emphasize that currently it is not possible to identify which modern Native Americans are most closely related to Kennewick Man, since our comparative DNA database is limited, particularly for Native American groups in the United States. However, among the groups for which we have sufficient genetic data, we find that the Confederated Tribes of the Colville Reservation to be one of the groups showing close affinities to Kennewick Man or at least to the population to which he belonged. Additional modern descendants could be identified as more Native American groups are sequenced. — University of Copenhagen, SMU

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No support for ‘Paleoamerican Model,’ which holds that Central and South American groups were relicts of an early and separate migration into the Americas

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New study based on skeleton’s genome sequence shows Kennewick Man is in fact more closely related to modern Native Americans

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