Tuesday, March 5, 2019

ARCHAEOLOGY: From Babel To the Andes

So the LORD scattered them abroad from thence upon the face of all the earth:
Genesis 11:8

"New findings from recently DNA recovered of five individuals from high elevation in the Peruvian Andes suggests that South America may have been settled in a single wave of migration not much later than their ancestors migration through Siberia into the Western Hemisphere.

There have been arguments  for  at least two migrations based on skull morphology, suggesting  that those peoples with long, narrow skulls of about 5,000 years ago came before the rounder headed peoples of ancestors of today’s indigenous peoples.

....presented by Fehren-Schmitz at the SAA meeting, paints a complicated picture of Lauricocha. Two of its residents, a woman and a 2-year-old child, .... The third, a man, ...and another man ... The fifth specimen was not dated because of its condition. Only the woman’s skull had a long, narrow shape, which is known as dolichocephaly.
The mitochondria DNA findings show that all five were descendant from the material lineage common among most indiengous people of North and South America.
The Male Y lineage arose in the Bering Strait region. These and other DNA data suggested that all the Lauricocha humans are descended from the first humans to reach the Americas, supporting one migration into South America.
Ancient human DNA from other parts of South America, such as the Amazon, may yet point to a second migration into the continent, agrees Fehren-Schmitz.

Researchers studying ancient DNA have found evidence for a massive migration from present-day Russia and Ukraine into western Europe around 4,500 years ago, and Bolnick says that similar upheavals are bound to have happened in the Americas. In a 2014 paper, for instance, Fehren-Schmitz documented a migration into the Central Andes about 1,400 years ago, possibly driven by drought in lower-lying areas.

Fehren-Schmitz and his colleagues looked at a gene variant that protects against altitude sickness.....the presence of the variant increased markedly among the Andeans....Fehren-Schmitz says that the finding is merely suggestive of local adaptation."
Nature