TY - JOUR

T1 - Peopling of the Americas as inferred from ancient genomics

AU - Willerslev, Eske

AU - Meltzer, David J.

N1 - Funding Information: Acknowledgements We thank M. Adler, R. Kelly, D. Mann, V. Moreno-Mayar, T. Pinotti, M. Raghavan, H. Schroeder, M. Sikora and M. Vander Linden for providing comments and advice on this paper, and V. Moreno-Mayar and K. Kjær for help with the figures; M. Avila-Arcos, T. Dillehay, C. Lalueza-Fox and B. Llamas for their detailed and constructive comments; and St John’s College, Cambridge University, where E.W. is a Fellow and D.J.M. was a Beaufort Visiting Scholar, for providing a stimulating environment in which the idea and much of the work on this manuscript took place. E.W. thanks Illumina for collaboration. E.W. is financially supported by the Wellcome Trust, the Lundbeck Foundation, the Carlsberg Foundation and the Novo Nordic Foundation. D.J.M.’s research is supported by the Quest Archaeological Research Fund and the Potts & Sibley Foundation. Publisher Copyright: © 2021, The Author(s), under exclusive licence to Springer Nature Limited.

PY - 2021

Y1 - 2021

N2 - In less than a decade, analyses of ancient genomes have transformed our understanding of the Indigenous peopling and population history of the Americas. These studies have shown that this history, which began in the late Pleistocene epoch and continued episodically into the Holocene epoch, was far more complex than previously thought. It is now evident that the initial dispersal involved the movement from northeast Asia of distinct and previously unknown populations, including some for whom there are no currently known descendants. The first peoples, once south of the continental ice sheets, spread widely, expanded rapidly and branched into multiple populations. Their descendants—over the next fifteen millennia—experienced varying degrees of isolation, admixture, continuity and replacement, and their genomes help to illuminate the relationships among major subgroups of Native American populations. Notably, all ancient individuals in the Americas, save for later-arriving Arctic peoples, are more closely related to contemporary Indigenous American individuals than to any other population elsewhere, which challenges the claim—which is based on anatomical evidence—that there was an early, non-Native American population in the Americas. Here we review the patterns revealed by ancient genomics that help to shed light on the past peoples who created the archaeological landscape, and together lead to deeper insights into the population and cultural history of the Americas.

AB - In less than a decade, analyses of ancient genomes have transformed our understanding of the Indigenous peopling and population history of the Americas. These studies have shown that this history, which began in the late Pleistocene epoch and continued episodically into the Holocene epoch, was far more complex than previously thought. It is now evident that the initial dispersal involved the movement from northeast Asia of distinct and previously unknown populations, including some for whom there are no currently known descendants. The first peoples, once south of the continental ice sheets, spread widely, expanded rapidly and branched into multiple populations. Their descendants—over the next fifteen millennia—experienced varying degrees of isolation, admixture, continuity and replacement, and their genomes help to illuminate the relationships among major subgroups of Native American populations. Notably, all ancient individuals in the Americas, save for later-arriving Arctic peoples, are more closely related to contemporary Indigenous American individuals than to any other population elsewhere, which challenges the claim—which is based on anatomical evidence—that there was an early, non-Native American population in the Americas. Here we review the patterns revealed by ancient genomics that help to shed light on the past peoples who created the archaeological landscape, and together lead to deeper insights into the population and cultural history of the Americas.

U2 - 10.1038/s41586-021-03499-y

DO - 10.1038/s41586-021-03499-y

M3 - Review

C2 - 34135521

AN - SCOPUS:85108159510

VL - 594

SP - 356

EP - 364

JO - Nature

JF - Nature

SN - 0028-0836

IS - 7863

ER -