Origins of the first Americans

Across the Beringian land bridge? Along the edge of the Greenland ice sheets? Down the Kelp Highway? SAMA takes a look at the latest academic research on the origins of the First Americans. New developments in archaeogenetics and paleogenomics, along with the latest theories from linguists and archaeologists and geologists, paint a clearer picture than ever before.

Starting 47,000 years ago in Central Asia, the ancestors of nearly all Native Americans first migrated across Siberia to the Bering Strait and its glaciers that would trap them on its land bridge for millennia. Based on the latest DNA assays from sites such as Upward Sun River in Central Alaska and the Mal'ta on the shores of Lake Baikal, this episode attempts to be a somewhat comprehensive overview of the scholarship on the subject as of July, 2022.

Links to the studies referenced in the episode:

New insights into Eastern Beringian mortuary behavior: A terminal Pleistocene double infant burial at Upward Sun River
https://www.pnas.org/doi/full/10.1073...

Terminal Pleistocene Alaskan genome reveals first founding population of Native Americans
https://www.nature.com/articles/natur...

Linguistic Phylogenies Support Back-Migration from Beringia to Asia https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/arti...

A Late Pleistocene human genome from Southwest China https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cub.2022.06...

Special thanks to Linguist Daniel Pitt for trying to teach me to pronounce Athabascan.

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