© Henry Lavalle, Universidade Federal de Pernambuco and Ana Nascimento, Universidade Federal Rural de PernambucoThe Alcobaça archaeological site, in which the skeletal remains of Brazil-12 (northeast Brazil) were unearthed.
The Americas were the last continent to be inhabited by humans. An increasing body of archaeological and genomic evidence has hinted to a complex settlement process. This is especially true for South America, where unexpected ancestral signals have raised perplexing scenarios for the early migrations into different regions of the continent.
Many unanswered questions still persist, such as whether the first humans migrated south along the Pacific coast or by some other route.
While there is archaeological evidence for a north-to-south migration during the initial peopling of the Americas by ancient Indigenous peoples, where these ancient humans went after they arrived has remained elusive.Using DNA from two ancient human individuals unearthed in two different archaeological sites in northeast Brazil - Pedra do Tubarão and Alcobaça - and powerful algorithms and genomic analyses,
Florida Atlantic University researchers in collaboration with
Emory University have unraveled the deep demographic history of South America at the regional level with some unexpected and surprising results.
Not only do researchers provide new genetic evidence supporting existing archaeological data of the north-to-south migration toward South America, they also have discovered migrations in the opposite direction along the Atlantic coast - for the first time.
The work provides the most complete genetic evidence to date for complex ancient Central and South American migration routes.Among the key findings, researchers also have discovered evidence of Neanderthal ancestry within the genomes of ancient individuals from South America. Neanderthals are an extinct population of archaic humans that ranged across Eurasia during the Lower and Middle Paleolithic.
Results of the study, published in the journal
Proceedings of the Royal Society B. (Biological Sciences), suggest that human movements closer to the Atlantic coast eventually linked ancient Uruguay and Panama in a south-to-north migration route - 5,277 kilometers (3,270 miles) apart. This novel migration pattern is estimated to have occurred approximately 1,000 years ago based on the ages of the ancient individuals.
© Florida Atlantic University
Findings show a distinct relationship among ancient genomes from northeast Brazil, Lagoa Santa (southeast Brazil), Uruguay and Panama.
This new model reveals that the settlement of the Atlantic coast occurred only after the peopling of most of the Pacific coast and Andes."Our study provides key genomic evidence for ancient migration events at the regional scale along South America's Atlantic coast," said
Michael DeGiorgio, Ph.D., co-corresponding author who specializes in human, evolutionary, and computational genomics and is an associate professor in the
Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science within FAU's
College of Engineering and Computer Science. "These regional events likely derived from migratory waves involving the initial Indigenous peoples of South America near the Pacific coast."
Researchers also found strong Australasian (Australia and Papua New Guinea) genetic signals in an ancient genome from Panama.
"There is an entire Pacific Ocean between Australasia and the Americas, and we still don't know how these ancestral genomic signals appeared in Central and South America without leaving traces in North America," said Andre Luiz Campelo dos Santos, Ph.D., first author, an archaeologist and a postdoctoral fellow in FAU's Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science.
To further add to the existing complexity, researchers also detected greater Denisovan than Neanderthal ancestry in ancient Uruguay and Panama individuals. Denisovans are a group of extinct humans first identified from DNA sequences from the tip of finger bone discovered around 2008.
"It's phenomenal that Denisovan ancestry made it all the way to South America," says John Lindo, Ph.D., a co-corresponding author of the article who specializes in ancient DNA analysis and is an assistant professor in the Department of Anthropology at Emory University. "The admixture must have occurred a long time before, perhaps 40,000 years ago.
The fact that the Denisovan lineage persisted and its genetic signal made it into an ancient individual from Uruguay that is only 1,500 years old suggests that it was a large admixture event between a population of humans and Denisovans."Previously at the Federal University of Pernambuco in Recife, Brazil, dos Santos and colleagues uncovered the remains of the two ancient humans from northeast Brazil, which date back to at least 1,000 years before present, and sent them to Lindo for DNA extraction and subsequent genomic sequencing and analyses. Raw data were then sent to FAU for computational analysis of the whole genome sequences from northeast Brazil.
Researchers compared the two newly sequenced ancient whole genomes from northeast Brazil with present-day worldwide genomes and other ancient whole genomes from the Americas. As of the publication date of the article, Lindo says that
only a dozen or so ancient whole genomes from South America have been sequenced and published, in contrast to hundreds from Europe.Apart from the occurrence of mass burials in the sites that yielded the samples from northeast Brazil, Uruguay, southeast Brazil and Panama, there is no other evidence in the archaeological record that indicate shared cultural features among them. Importantly,
the analyzed ancient individuals from southeast Brazil are about 9,000 years older than those from northeast Brazil, Uruguay and Panama, enough time for expected and noticeable cultural divergence. Moreover, northeast Brazil, Uruguay and Panama, though more similar in age, are located thousands of kilometers apart from each other.
"This groundbreaking research involved many different fields from archaeology to biological sciences to genomics and data science," said
Stella Batalama, Ph.D., dean, FAU College of Engineering and Computer Science. "Our scientists at Florida Atlantic University in collaboration with Emory University have helped to shed light on an important piece of the Americas puzzle, which could not have been solved without powerful genomic and computational tools and analysis."
Study co-authors are Amanda Owings, Ph.D., Emory University; Henry Socrates Lavalle Sullasi, Ph.D., Federal University of Pernambuco, Brazil; and Omer Gokcumen, Ph.D., State University New York at Buffalo.
This research was supported by the National Science Foundation, National Institutes of Health, and the Fundação de Amparo à Ciência e Tecnologia de Pernambuco.
Reader Comments
Mysterium Magnum of the Universe, why does the epicanthic fold produce the eye shape characteristic of persons from central and Eastern Asia ?
The aliens have no bad intent, but the humans are a confusing race for even the aliens to contemplate....but maybe together we will be better?
I suppose it is up to the aliens to choose whether they want to be part of it, but if they have courage then I suspect they will sense the potential and that is what I'm hoping for, but it ain't up to me, nor to you, nor the aliens if you think about it....tis up to forces stronger to decide whether the life on earth in the form of homo sapien sapiens is worth saving.
Place your bets.
My bet is on the table already.
Neanderthal combined Annunaki DNA = Homo Sapiens, a weird breed to be sure, and control freaks.....
I mean, I had accepted The Great Flood was real, and that there were really old sites dating to the end of the last ice age, but now it's obvious that at the end of the last ice age, the surviving civilization got its ass kicked hard by global changes due to the flooding caused by Taurids causing massive sudden glacial melts to flood and bury everything.
Our history is hundreds of meters or more under the oceans. It is just so clearly obvious that our ancestors were advanced astronomers already 13KYA, meaning they knew about the Taurids at the beginning of the Younger Dryas. The thing that's nagging me now is that the flood stories of so many different cultures around the world tell of being warned beforehand so they could prepare, so who was visiting different places around the world to warn them of the impending doom? And Hancock didn't come out and say it, but it's heavily implied that in Cappadocia they might have been living underground for almost 1000 years!
The idea that the Americas were the last place to be populated by humans is kind of ridiculous. From what we know of the last glaciation, if much of that was melted in one go from meteor bombardment, the Americas were most adjacent to the glaciers, meaning they would have been wiped clean more than other places. Hell, I have to wonder if the same even that created the Washington scab lands also created The Grand Canyon. To me, when you look at the topography and zoom out, it doesn't seem beyond reason that it could have happened.
I mean, it's just been blowing my mind, that there was advanced civilization, worldwide prior to 13,500 years ago when the last ice age was jump-started by the Taurids. There was massive devastation lasting almost 1000 years, then Earth was nailed again which prematurely ended the last ice-age, and we're still recovering as a species, but haven't accepted how old we are.
Oh, and not just that, but some of these sites that prove their knowledge weren't abandoned, but intentionally buried to be found later. Just the fact that Gunung Padang, The Giza Pyramid, The Pyramid of the Sun, and several others all have multiple smaller pyramids buried inside is just amazing. And it's just the most recent construction layer that date as far back as 6000 years. Aaaaand they're all build on top of springs.
So, at the end of the last Ice Ages, if one concurs with conventional thinking, it was very hard for groupings of humans to survive and at that time it must have become ingrained after a few generations that doubting leadership often led to horrible outcomes for the community......in other words, there is long wisdom in not rocking the boat so to speak.......but, indignancy does not go away....it seeks resolution.
On the other hand, if one conjectures or puts forth, that advanced civilizations of humans were living on Planet Earth around the time of the last Ice Age and accomplishing feats amazing, then begs the question: What the hell happened? Why couldn't they keep it together?
So, that suggests there are nefarious forces out there that need to be buffered, balanced, and dealt with if not outright dismissed swiftly. Either way, times have been tough needlessly you want my humble opinion because there is SO much bounty just waiting to be discovered, re-learned if you think, and appreciated.
So, I tried to save two ghost pepper plants, but one of them is dead I think - died an aphid death when I wasn't on watch - the other seems like it has new growth and both of the plants almost seem like Christmas trees with the red ghost peppers they present - so hot I suspect.
Best to you and Happy Thanksgiving and thanks.
Ken
For aphids, something I will probably be dealing with in the next day or two, get neem oil and mix with water and dish soap, and then spray using a pump sprayer. There are recipes for the mixture online, but both the soap and neem oil work separately to different degrees, but work better together to suffocate the aphids.
Oh well - live and learn.
I'm loving learning about growing ghost peppers and such and I have a
cacophony(I mean a smorgasbord) of seeds saved and wisdom gained in just the first year and so I'm not in a rush.I'm thankful mostly.
Ken
ps - are you saying there is GOLD hidden near the equator just under the ocean water! I don't want anymore gold myself....I got a Buffalo coin or two still - I gave one to each of my daughters when they graduated college - debt free! UNC-Asheville.....and oh my, that city.
Aphid lifecycle - Did you know that when female aphids are born they already contain the eggs they will lay for the next generation?
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Eff aphids.
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Before I give up on the one pepper plant they tried to eat complete, I might just cut it down to its bare necessities and being the soil I've provided is most conducive to growth.....maybe it will come back. Maybe, maybe not. Uncertainty - tis part of life no doubt.
Ken
But I digress. I don't watch sportsball of any kind.
whatever - aphids piss me off.
Damn - you are a Packers fan!
who-da thunk it?
The Bills beat them already, they have had the toughest schedule bar none and had to overcome Viking distractions and who knows what happens next - the season is young.
ps - I like the Green Bay model if I understand it proper, of the local community basically owning the team local. That tends to keep them in town you know....