Sunken body found by divers offers clues to American origins
The ancient remains of a teenage girl discovered deep underground in Mexico are providing additional insights on how the Americas came to be populated.
Divers found the juvenile’s bones by chance in a vast, flooded limestone chamber on the Yucatan Peninsula.
Aged 15 or 16 at death, the girl lived at least 12,000 years ago.
Researchers have told Science Magazine her DNA backs the idea that the first Americans and modern Native American Indians share a common ancestry.
This theory argues that people from Siberia settled on the land bridge dubbed Beringia that linked Asia and the Americas some 20,000 years ago before sea levels rose.
These people then moved south to populate the American continents.
The genetics of modern Native Americans would certainly appear to link them into this story. But their facial features set them apart from the oldest skeletons now being unearthed.
These ancient people had narrower, longer skulls. The differences have hinted that perhaps there were multiple immigrations from Siberia (or even Europe).
However, the remains of the Yucatan girl, dubbed Naia – which means “water nymph” in Greek – does not follow that line of thinking, because although she had the slender features associated with the earliest Americans, her DNA shares commonalities with modern Native Americans.
Lab analysis of teeth and bone samples link her to a particular genetic lineage known as Haplogroup D1.
This same marker is found in substantial numbers of modern Native Americans.
“This lineage is thought to have developed in Beringia, the land that now lies beneath the Bering Sea after its ice age occupants became genetically isolated from the rest of Asia,” explained lead author Dr Jim Chatters.
“Thus, Naia, one of the earliest occupants of the Americas yet found, suggests that Paleoamericans do not represent an early migration from a part of the world different than that of the Native Americans.
“Rather, Paleoamericans and Native Americans descended from the same homeland in Beringia.
“The differences between them likely arose from evolution that occurred after the Beringian gene pool became separated from the rest of the world.”
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Source: www.bbc.co.uk/news
Photo: Roberto Chavez Arce
