The DNA of 31,000-year-old milk teeth reveals a new group of ancient Siberians

The milk teeth of two children buried at the bottom of an isolated archaeological site in northeastern Siberia revealed that a group of people until then unknown lived there during the last period glacial.

The discovery was part of a larger study that also revealed that 10,000-year-old human remains at another site in Siberia are genetically linked to Native Americans – the first time such genetic links have been discovered outside. the United States.

The International Team of Scientists, led by Professor Eske Willerslev, holder of positions at St John's College, University of Cambridge and Director of the Lundbeck Foundation's Geo-Genetics Center at the University of Copenhagen, named the new group of people "Ancient Siberians from the North" and described their existence as "a significant part of human history".

The DNA was found in the only discovered human remains of the time – two tiny milk teeth – found on a large archaeological site discovered in Russia near the Yana River. The site, known as the Yana Rhino Horn Site (RHS), was discovered in 2001 and contains more than 2,500 animal and ivory bone artifacts, as well as stone tools and evidence of human habitation.

The discovery is published today (June 5, 2019) as part of a larger study conducted in Nature and shows that Northern Siberian elders endured extreme conditions in the region 31,000 years ago and survived by hunting woolly mammoths, woolly rhinos and bison.

Professor Willerslev said: "These people were an important part of the history of humanity, they have diversified almost at the same time as the ancestors of Asians and modern Europeans and it is likely that They once occupied large areas of the northern hemisphere.

Dr. Martin Sikora of the Lundbeck Foundation Geothermal Center and the first author of the study, added: "They have adapted very quickly to extreme environments and have been very mobile, and these discoveries have significantly changed what we We would like to know about the population of north-eastern Siberia, but also what we know about the history of human migration as a whole. "

The researchers estimate that the population on the site would have been about 40 people with a larger population of about 500 people. The genetic analysis of the deciduous teeth revealed that the two sequenced individuals showed no evidence of consanguinity in declining Neanderthal populations at the time. .

The complex dynamics of the populations during this period and the genetic comparisons with other groups of peoples, old and recent, have been documented as part of a larger study analyzing 34 samples of human genomes discovered on ancient archeological sites in northern Siberia and central Russia.

Professor Laurent Excoffier of the University of Bern, Switzerland, said: "Remarkably, the peoples of northern Siberia are closer to Europeans than Asians and seem to have migrated from western Eurasia shortly after the divergence between Europeans and Asians. "

Scientists have discovered that ancient Siberians in the ancient North were breeding the genetic mosaic of contemporary peoples inhabiting a vast North American and American territory, thus providing the "missing link" for understanding the genetics of Native American ancestry.

It is widely accepted that humans first made their way to the Americas, from Siberia in Alaska, to a land bridge that spanned the Bering Strait and was submerged at the end of the last ice age. . The researchers were able to identify some of these ancestors as groups of Asian peoples mixed with ancient Northern Siberians.

Professor David Meltzer, of Southern Methodist University, Dallas, one of the authors of the paper, explained, "We have gained important knowledge about the isolation of the population and the mixtures that took place deep within the last glacial maximum – the coldest and hardest period of the ice age – and ultimately the ascendancy of the peoples that emerged from that era as the ancestors of the indigenous peoples of the Americas. "

This discovery was based on the DNA analysis of a 10,000-year-old man found on a site near Kolyma, Siberia. The individual originates from a mixture of ancient North Siberian DNA and East Asia, very similar to that of Native Americans. This is the first time that human remains as closely related to Amerindian populations have been discovered outside the United States.

Professor Willerslev added, "The remains are genetically very close to the ancestors of Paleo-Siberian speakers and ancestors of Native Americans.It is an important piece of the puzzle of understanding the lineage of Native Americans like you. can be seen on the Kolyma signature among Amerindians and Paleo-Siberians.This individual is the missing link of Native American ancestry. "