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155-746: The genetic history of the Indigenous peoples of the Americas is divided into two distinct periods: the initial peopling of the Americas from about 20,000 to 14,000 years ago (20–14 kya), and European contact , after about 500 years ago. The first period of the genetic history of Indigenous Americans is the determinant factor for the number of genetic lineages, zygosity mutations, and founding haplotypes present in today's Indigenous American populations . Indigenous American populations descend from and share ancestry with an Ancient East Asian lineage which diverged from other East Asian peoples prior to

310-611: A multiracial ancestry . The European conquest of South and Central America, beginning in the late 15th century, was initially executed by male soldiers and sailors from the Iberian Peninsula ( Spain and Portugal ). The new soldier-settlers fathered children with Indigenous American women and later with African slaves . These mixed-race children were generally identified by the Spanish colonist and Portuguese colonist as " Castas " . The North American fur trade during

465-497: A 2016 study, focused on mtDNA lineages, "a small population entered the Americas via a coastal route around 16.0 ka, following previous isolation in eastern Beringia for ~2.4 to 9 thousand years after separation from eastern Siberian populations. Following a rapid movement throughout the Americas, limited gene flow in South America resulted in a marked phylogeographic structure of populations, which persisted through time. All of

620-828: A Native American source population related to the Ainu ancestors, the Jōmon . Paleo-Indian skeletons in the Americas such as Kennewick Man (Washington State), Hoya Negro skeleton (Yucatán), Luzia Woman and other skulls from the Lagoa Santa site (Brazil), Buhl Woman (Idaho), Peñon Woman III , two skulls from the Tlapacoya site (Mexico City), and 33 skulls from Baja California have exhibited certain craniofacial traits distinct from most modern Native Americans, leading physical anthropologists to posit an earlier "Paleoamerican" population wave. The most basic measured distinguishing trait

775-478: A Y lineage specific to South America suggest that certain Indigenous American populations became isolated after the initial colonization of their regions. The Na-Dene , Inuit , and Native Alaskan populations exhibit haplogroup Q (Y-DNA) mutations, but are distinct from other Indigenous Americans with various mtDNA and autosomal DNA (atDNA) mutations. This suggests that the earliest migrants into

930-677: A branch of Ancient East Asians migrated to Northeastern Siberia, and mixed with descendants of the ANE, leading to the emergence of Ancient Paleo-Siberian and Native American populations in Extreme Northeastern Asia. However, the Beringian standstill hypothesis is not supported by paternal DNA evidence, which may reflect different population histories for paternal and maternal lineages in Native Americans, which

1085-717: A closely related group of indigenous American languages traditionally spoken across the North American Arctic and the adjacent subarctic regions as far south as Labrador . The Inuit languages are one of the two branches of the Eskimoan language family , the other being the Yupik languages , which are spoken in Alaska and the Russian Far East . Most Inuit people live in one of three countries: Greenland ,

1240-615: A daughter population of ancient East Asians, who they encountered around 25,000 years ago, which led to the emergence of Native American ancestral populations. However, the exact location where the admixture took place is unknown, and the migratory movements that united the two populations are a matter of debate. One theory supposes that Ancient North Eurasians migrated south to East Asia , or Southern Siberia , where they would have encountered and mixed with ancient East Asians. Genetic evidence from Lake Baikal in Russia supports this area as

1395-582: A deep East Asian population, which can be associated with the Tianyuan man , and which is ancestral to modern East Asians. The deep Tianyuan and East Asian lineages form a sister branch to Andamanese and Australasian populations, with all of them being branches of Ancient East Eurasians . The main migration coming out of Siberia into the Americas would have happened 23,000 years ago. A 2018 study analysed ancient Indigenous samples. The genetic evidence suggests that all Indigenous Americans ultimately descended from

1550-751: A durable and extensive geographic feature connecting Siberia with Alaska. With the rise of sea level after the Last Glacial Maximum (LGM), the Beringian land bridge was again submerged. Estimates of the final re-submergence of the Beringian land bridge based purely on present bathymetry of the Bering Strait and eustatic sea level curve place the event around 11,000 years BP (Figure 1). Ongoing research reconstructing Beringian paleogeography during deglaciation could change that estimate and possible earlier submergence could further constrain models of human migration into North America. The onset of

1705-416: A fairly closely linked set of languages which can be broken up using a number of different criteria. Traditionally, Inuit describe dialect differences by means of place names to describe local idiosyncrasies in language: The dialect of Igloolik versus the dialect of Iqaluit , for example. However, political and sociological divisions are increasingly the principal criteria for describing different variants of

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1860-496: A founding population that diverged from East Asians and subsequently admixed with Ancient North Eurasians . The authors also provided evidence that the basal northern and southern Indigenous American branches, to which all other Indigenous peoples belong, diverged around 16,000 years ago. An Indigenous American sample from 16,000 BCE in Idaho , which is craniometrically similar to modern Indigenous Americans as well as Paleosiberians ,

2015-803: A frequency of about 3% for the total current Indigenous population of the Americas. However, X2a is a major mtDNA subclade in North America; among the Algonquian peoples , it comprises up to 25% of mtDNA types. It is also present in lower percentages to the west and south of this area — among the Sioux (15%), the Nuu-chah-nulth (11%–13%), the Navajo (7%), and the Yakama (5%). The predominant theory for sub-haplogroup X2a's appearance in North America

2170-510: A fully inflected verb: "he studies", but can also be interpreted as a noun: "student". That said, the meaning is probably obvious to a fluent speaker, when put in context. The morphology and syntax of the Inuit languages vary to some degree between dialects, and the article Inuit grammar describes primarily central Nunavut dialects, but the basic principles will generally apply to all of them and to some degree to Yupik languages as well. Both

2325-572: A great deal of confusion over what labels should be applied to it. In Greenland the official form of Inuit language, and the official language of the state, is called Kalaallisut . In other languages, it is often called Greenlandic or some cognate term. The Inuit languages of Alaska are called Inupiatun , but the variants of the Seward Peninsula are distinguished from the other Alaskan variants by calling them Qawiaraq , or for some dialects, Bering Strait Inupiatun . In Canada,

2480-525: A greater level of diversity and lesser level of population structure in western South America compared to eastern South America. There is a relative lack of differentiation between Mesoamerican and Andean populations, a scenario that implies that coastal routes (in this case along the coast of the Pacific Ocean) were easier for migrating peoples (more genetic contributors) to traverse in comparison with inland routes. The overall pattern suggests that

2635-411: A lesser genetic diversity than populations from other continental regions, while their overall strongest affinity for other populations is observed for Paleosiberian peoples . Observed is a decreasing genetic diversity as geographic distance from the Bering Strait occurs, as well as a decreasing genetic similarity to Siberian populations from Alaska (the genetic entry point). Also observed is evidence of

2790-482: A lineage found among Native Americans and Han Chinese, emerged around 20,000 BP, constraining the emergence of D4h3 to post-LGM. Age estimates based on Y-chromosome micro-satellite diversity place origin of the American Haplogroup Q1a3a (Y-DNA) at around 15,000 to 10,000 BP. Greater consistency of DNA molecular evolution rate models with each other and with archaeological data may be gained by

2945-404: A lure for coastal migration. Reconstruction of the southern Beringian coastline also suggests potential for a highly productive coastal marine environment. Pollen data indicate a warm period culminating between 17,000 and 13,000 BP followed by cooling between 13,000 and 11,500 BP. Coastal areas deglaciated rapidly as coastal alpine glaciers, then lobes of Cordilleran ice, retreated. The retreat

3100-505: A much earlier date, possibly 40,000 years ago, followed by a much later second wave of immigrants. The Clovis First theory, which dominated thinking on New World anthropology for much of the 20th century, was challenged in the 2000s by the secure dating of archaeological sites in the Americas to before 13,000 years ago. The archaeological sites in the Americas with the oldest dates that have gained broad acceptance are all compatible with an age of about 15,000 years. This includes

3255-795: A root morpheme to which other morphemes are suffixed. The language has hundreds of distinct suffixes, in some dialects as many as 700. Fortunately for learners, the language has a highly regular morphology. Although the rules are sometimes very complicated, they do not have exceptions in the sense that English and other Indo-European languages do. This system makes words very long, and potentially unique. For example, in central Nunavut Inuktitut : tusaa- to hear -tsiaq- well -junnaq- be able to -nngit- not -tualuu- very much -junga 1SG . PRES . IND . NSP tusaa- -tsiaq- -junnaq- -nngit- -tualuu- -junga {to hear} well {be able to} not {very much} 1SG.PRES.IND. NSP I cannot hear very well. This sort of word construction

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3410-1008: A self-governing territory within the Kingdom of Denmark ; Canada, specifically in Nunavut , the Inuvialuit Settlement Region of the Northwest Territories , the Nunavik region of Quebec , and the Nunatsiavut and NunatuKavut regions of Labrador; and the United States, specifically in northern and western Alaska. The total population of Inuit speaking their traditional languages is difficult to assess with precision, since most counts rely on self-reported census data that may not accurately reflect usage or competence. Greenland census estimates place

3565-475: A separate lineage of an otherwise unknown ancient people. This ancient group appears to be related to modern day " Australasian " peoples (i.e. Aboriginal Australians and Melanesians ). This " Ghost population " was found in speakers of Tupian languages . They provisionally named this ancient group; "Population Y", after Ypykuéra , "which means 'ancestor' in the Tupi language family". A 2021 genetic study dismissed

3720-556: A single ancestral source population which divided from Ancient East Asians, and admixed with Ancient North Eurasians (ANE), and gave rise to the "Ancestral Indigenous Americans", which later diverged into the various Indigenous groups. The authors further dismissed previous claims for the possibility of two distinct population groups among the peopling of the Americas. Both Northern and Southern Indigenous Americans are closest to each other and do not show evidence of admixture with hypothetical previous populations. A review article published in

3875-584: A small Australasian ancestry component of c. 3% was detected, which remains unexplained by the current state of research (as of 2021 ), but may be explained by the presence of the more basal Tianyuan-related ancestry , a deep East Asian lineage which did not directly contribute to modern East Asians but may have contributed to the ancestors of Native Americans in Siberia, as such ancestry is also found among previous Paleolithic Siberians ( Ancient North Eurasians ). Inuit languages The Inuit languages are

4030-535: A smaller contribution from palaeolithic West Eurasian populations", via their Ancient North Eurasian component, which has been described as the "result of a palaeolithic admixture" between ancient West Eurasians and ancient East Eurasians . A "Central Siberian" origin has been postulated for the paternal lineage of the source populations of the original migration into the Americas. Membership in haplogroups Q and C3b implies Indigenous American patrilineal descent. The micro-satellite diversity and distribution of

4185-506: Is a long-standing open question. While advances in archaeology , Pleistocene geology , physical anthropology , and DNA analysis have progressively shed more light on the subject, significant questions remain unresolved. The " Clovis first theory" refers to the hypothesis that the Clovis culture represents the earliest human presence in the Americas about 13,000 years ago. Evidence of pre-Clovis cultures has accumulated and pushed back

4340-680: Is composed of the X2a, D2a, C4c, and D4h3a sub-haplogroups. X is one of the five mtDNA haplogroups found in Indigenous Americans. Native Americans mostly belong to the X2a clade, which has never been found in the Old World . According to Jennifer Raff , X2a probably originated in the same Siberian population as the other four founding maternal lineages. Haplogroup X genetic sequences diverged about 20,000 to 30,000 years ago to give two sub-groups, X1 and X2. X2's subclade X2a occurs only at

4495-468: Is deeply rooted in the Asian portion of the mtDNA phylogeny and is indubitably of Asian origin, the finding that C4c and X2a are characterized by parallel genetic histories definitively dismisses the controversial hypothesis of an Atlantic glacial entry route into North America." Another study, also focused on the mtDNA (which is inherited through only the maternal line), revealed that the Indigenous people of

4650-625: Is found among a variety of the Algonquin speaking tribes in eastern North America. Thus, according to several authors, R1b was most likely introduced through admixture during the post- 1492 European settlement of North America. R1b1a1a2 (M269) is found predominantly in North American groups like the Ojibwe (50-79%), Seminole (50%), Sioux (50%), Cherokee (47%), Dogrib (40%) and Tohono O'odham (Papago) (38%). Its highest frequency

4805-488: Is found in northeastern North America, and declines in frequency from east to west. In southwestern Native American tribes the frequency of this haplogroup is as low as 4%. Haplogroup C-M217 is found mainly in Indigenous Siberians, Mongolians , and Kazakhs . Haplogroup C-M217 is the most widespread and frequently occurring branch of the greater (Y-DNA) haplogroup C-M130 . Haplogroup C-M217 descendant C-P39

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4960-540: Is less than 100%. The HTLV virus genome has been mapped, allowing identification of four major strains and analysis of their antiquity through mutations. The highest geographic concentrations of the strain HLTV-1 are in sub-Saharan Africa and Japan. In Japan, it occurs in its highest concentration on Kyushu . It is also present among African descendants and native populations in the Caribbean region and South America. It

5115-535: Is migration along with A, B, C, and D mtDNA groups, from a source in the Altai Mountains of central Asia. Haplotype X6 was present in the Tarahumara 1.8% (1/53) and Huichol 20% (3/15) Sequencing of the mitochondrial genome from Paleo-Eskimo remains (3,500 years old) are distinct from modern Indigenous Americans, falling within sub-haplogroup D2a1, a group observed among today's Aleutian Islanders ,

5270-626: Is most commonly found in today's Na-Dene speakers , with the greatest frequency found among the Athabaskans at 42%, and at lesser frequencies in some other Indigenous American groups. This distinct and isolated branch C-P39 includes almost all the Haplogroup C-M217 Y-chromosomes found among all Indigenous peoples of the Americas. Some researchers feel that this may indicate that the Na-Dene migration occurred from

5425-590: Is not accurate, and results from a misunderstanding of the nature of polysynthetic languages. In fact, the Inuit have only a few base roots for snow: 'qanniq-' ('qanik-' in some dialects), which is used most often like the verb to snow , and 'aput', which means snow as a substance. Parts of speech work very differently in the Inuit language than in English, so these definitions are somewhat misleading. The Inuit languages can form very long words by adding more and more descriptive affixes to words. Those affixes may modify

5580-627: Is not uncommon and has been observed in other populations. A 2019 study suggested that Native Americans are the closest living relatives to 10,000-year-old fossils found near the Kolyma River in northeastern Siberia. A study published in July 2022 suggested that people in southern China may have contributed to the Native American gene pool, based on the discovery and DNA analysis of 14,000-year-old human fossils. The contrast between

5735-511: Is now Western Canada , would have allowed migration before the beginning of the Holocene . However, a 2016 study has argued against this, suggesting that the peopling of North America via such a corridor is unlikely to significantly pre-date the earliest Clovis sites. The study concludes that the ice-free corridor in what is now Alberta and British Columbia "was gradually taken over by a boreal forest dominated by spruce and pine trees" and that

5890-487: Is one of the five mtDNA haplogroups found in Indigenous Americans. Native Americans mostly belong to the X2a clade, which has never been found in the Old World . According to Jennifer Raff , X2a probably originated in the same Siberian population as the other four founding maternal lineages, and that there is no compelling reason to believe it is related to X lineages found in Europe or West Eurasia. The Kennewick man fossil

6045-574: Is pervasive in the Inuit languages and makes them very unlike English. In one large Canadian corpus – the Nunavut Hansard – 92% of all words appear only once, in contrast to a small percentage in most English corpora of similar size. This makes the application of Zipf's law quite difficult in the Inuit language. Furthermore, the notion of a part of speech can be somewhat complicated in the Inuit languages. Fully inflected verbs can be interpreted as nouns. The word ilisaijuq can be interpreted as

6200-809: Is rare in Central America and North America. Its distribution in the Americas has been regarded as due to importation with the slave trade. The Ainu have developed antibodies to HTLV-1, indicating its endemicity to the Ainu and its antiquity in Japan. A subtype "A" has been defined and identified among the Japanese (including Ainu ), and among Caribbean and South American isolates. A subtype "B" has been identified in Japan and India. In 1995, Native Americans in coastal British Columbia were found to have both subtypes A and B. Bone marrow specimens from an Andean mummy about 1500 years old were reported to have shown

6355-537: Is the dolichocephaly of the skull. Some modern isolated populations such as the Pericúes of Baja California and the Fuegians of Tierra del Fuego exhibit that same morphological trait. Other anthropologists advocate an alternative hypothesis that evolution of an original Beringian phenotype gave rise to a distinct morphology that was similar in all known Paleoamerican skulls, followed by later convergence towards

Genetic history of the Indigenous peoples of the Americas - Misplaced Pages Continue

6510-611: Is traced back to a single ancestral population, called 'First Americans'. However, those who speak Inuit languages from the Arctic inherited almost half of their ancestry from a second East Asian migrant wave, and those who speak Na-Dene inherited a tenth of their ancestry from a third migrant wave. The initial settling of the Americas was followed by a rapid expansion southwards along the west coast, with little gene flow later, especially in South America . One exception to this are

6665-471: The retroflex , which was present in proto-Inuit language. Retroflexes have disappeared in all the Canadian and Greenlandic dialects. In Natsilingmiutut, the voiced palatal stop /ɟ/ derives from a former retroflex. Almost all Inuit language variants have only three basic vowels and make a phonological distinction between short and long forms of all vowels. The only exceptions are at the extreme edges of

6820-558: The Aleut and Siberian Yupik populations. This suggests that the colonizers of the far north, and subsequently Greenland, originated from later coastal populations. Then began a genetic exchange in the northern extremes introduced by the Thule people (proto-Inuit) approximately 800–1,000 years ago. These final Pre-Columbian migrants introduced haplogroups A2a and A2b to the existing Paleo-Eskimo populations of Canada and Greenland, culminating in

6975-499: The Alexander Archipelago . The now-submerged coastal plain has potential for more refugia. Pollen data indicate mostly herb/shrub tundra vegetation in unglaciated areas, with some boreal forest towards the southern end of the range of Cordilleran ice. The coastal marine environment remained productive, as indicated by fossils of pinnipeds . The highly productive kelp forests over rocky marine shallows may have been

7130-606: The Arctic Archipelago , which had been occupied by people of the Dorset culture since the beginning of the 2nd millennium . By 1300, the Inuit and their language had reached western Greenland, and finally east Greenland roughly at the same time the Viking colonies in southern Greenland disappeared. It is generally believed that it was during this centuries-long eastward migration that the Inuit language became distinct from

7285-811: The Buttermilk Creek Complex in Texas, the Meadowcroft Rockshelter site in Pennsylvania and the Monte Verde site in southern Chile. Archaeological evidence of pre- Clovis people points to the South Carolina Topper Site being 16,000 years old, at a time when the glacial maximum would have theoretically allowed for lower coastlines. It has often been suggested that an ice-free corridor, in what

7440-877: The Chibcha speakers of Colombia, whose ancestry comes from both North and South America. In 2014, the autosomal DNA of a 12,500+ year old infant from Montana was sequenced. The DNA was taken from a skeleton referred to as Anzick-1, found in close association with several Clovis artifacts. Comparisons showed strong affinities with DNA from Siberian sites, and virtually ruled out that particular individual had any close affinity with European sources (the " Solutrean hypothesis "). The DNA also showed strong affinities with all existing Indigenous American populations, which indicated that all of them derive from an ancient population that lived in or near Siberia. Linguistic studies have reinforced genetic studies, with relationships between languages found among those spoken in Siberia and those spoken in

7595-684: The Dayak people . In particular, two groups exhibit large concentrations of the Q-M242 mutation, the Ket (93.8%) and the Selkup (66.4%) peoples. The Ket are thought to be the only survivors of ancient wanderers living in Siberia. Their population size is very small; there are fewer than 1,500 Ket in Russia . The Selkup have a slightly larger population size than the Ket, with approximately 4,250 individuals. Starting

7750-758: The English and Scottish colonists. Peopling of the Americas While there is general agreement that the Americas were first settled from Asia, the pattern of migration and the place(s) of origin in Eurasia of the peoples who migrated to the Americas remain unclear. The traditional theory is that Ancient Beringians moved when sea levels were significantly lowered due to the Quaternary glaciation , following herds of now-extinct Pleistocene megafauna along ice-free corridors that stretched between

7905-786: The European colonization of the Americas . In Latin America in particular, significant racial admixture took place between the Indigenous American population, the European-descended colonial population, and the Sub-Saharan African populations imported as slaves . From about 1700, a Latin American terminology developed to refer to the various combinations of mixed racial descent produced by this. Many individuals who self-identify as one race exhibit genetic evidence of

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8060-477: The Last Glacial Maximum (26–18 kya). They also received geneflow from Ancient North Eurasians , a distinct Paleolithic Siberian population with deep affinities to both "European hunter-gatherers" (e.g. Kostenki-14 ) and "Basal East Asians" (e.g. Tianyuan man ). They later dispersed throughout the Americas after about 16,000 years ago (exceptions being the Na-Dene and Eskimo–Aleut speaking groups, which are derived partially from Siberian populations which entered

8215-403: The Laurentide and Cordilleran ice sheets. Another route proposed is that, either on foot or using boats , they migrated down the Pacific coast to South America as far as Chile . Any archaeological evidence of coastal occupation during the last Ice Age would now have been covered by the sea level rise , up to a hundred metres since then. The precise date for the peopling of the Americas

8370-455: The Nature journal in 2021, which summarized the results of previous genomic studies, similarly concluded that all Indigenous Americans descended from the movement of people from Northeast Asia into the Americas. These Ancestral Americans, once south of the continental ice sheets, spread and expanded rapidly, and branched into multiple groups, which later gave rise to the major subgroups of Indigenous American populations. The study also dismissed

8525-421: The North American extinction event that occurred at the end of the Pleistocene. Their genome , however, contains evidence of a bottleneck – something that can be used to test hypothesis on migrations between the two continents. Early human groups were largely nomadic , relying on following food sources for survival. Mobility was part of what made humans successful. As nomadic groups, early humans likely followed

8680-405: The Paleo-Indigenous American period , a migration to the Americas across the Bering Strait ( Beringia ) by a small population carrying the Q-M242 mutation occurred. A member of this initial population underwent a mutation, which defines its descendant population, known by the Q-M3 (SNP) mutation. These descendants migrated all over the Americas. Haplogroup Q-M3 is defined by the presence of

8835-445: The Puget lowlands up to 16,800 BP. Even during the maximum extent of coastal ice, unglaciated refugia persisted on present-day islands, that supported terrestrial and marine mammals. As deglaciation occurred, refugia expanded until the coast became ice-free by 15,000 BP. The retreat of glaciers on the Alaskan Peninsula provided access from Beringia to the Pacific coast by around 17,000 BP. The ice barrier between interior Alaska and

8990-431: The Russian Far East after the initial Paleo-Indigenous American colonization, but prior to modern Inuit , Inupiat and Yupik expansions. In addition to in Na-Dene peoples, haplogroup C-P39 (C2b1a1a) is also found among other Indigenous Americans such as Algonquian - and Siouan -speaking populations. C-M217 is found among the Wayuu people of Colombia and Venezuela . Listed here are notable Indigenous peoples of

9145-403: The Sea of Okhotsk , shows a marked shift from tree and shrub pollen to herb pollen prior to 30,000 BP, as herb tundra replaced boreal forest and shrub steppe going into the LGM. A similar record of tree/shrub pollen being replaced with herb pollen as the LGM approached was recovered near the Kolyma River in Arctic Siberia. The abandonment of the northern regions of Siberia due to rapid cooling or

9300-426: The Ulchis of the lower Amur River region (4 among 87 sampled, or 4.6%), along with Subhaplogroup C1a (1 among 87, or 1.1%). Subhaplogroup C1a is regarded as a close sister clade of the Native American Subhaplogroup C1b. Subhaplogroup D1a has also been found among ancient Jōmon skeletons from Hokkaido The modern Ainu are regarded as descendants of the Jōmon. The occurrence of the Subhaplogroups D1a and C1a in

9455-450: The Uralic languages of western Siberia and northern Europe, in a proposed Uralo-Siberian grouping, or even to the Indo-European languages as part of a Nostratic superphylum. Some had previously lumped them in with the Paleosiberian languages , though that is a geographic rather than a linguistic grouping. Early forms of the Inuit language are believed to have been spoken by the Thule people , who migrated east from Beringia towards

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9610-653: The Wisconsin glaciation , the Earth's ocean water was, to varying degrees over time, stored in glacier ice. As water accumulated in glaciers, the volume of water in the oceans correspondingly decreased, resulting in lowering of global sea level . The variation of sea level over time has been reconstructed using oxygen isotope analysis of deep sea cores, the dating of marine terraces, and high-resolution oxygen isotope sampling from ocean basins and modern ice caps. A drop of eustatic sea level by about 60 to 120 metres (200 to 390 ft) from present-day levels, commencing around 30,000 years Before Present (BP), created Beringia ,

9765-440: The "Clovis people likely came from the south, not the north, perhaps following wild animals such as bison ". An alternative hypothesis for the peopling of America is coastal migration , which may have been feasible along the deglaciated (but now submerged) coastline of the Pacific Northwest from about 16,000 years ago. Pre-LGM migration across Beringia has been proposed to explain purported pre-LGM ages of archaeological sites in

9920-430: The 16th century brought many European men, from France , Ireland , and Great Britain , who married Indigenous North American women. In the areas where these peoples formed communities, and developed a unique, syncretic culture, their children became known as " Métis " or " Bois-Brûlés " by the French colonists . In some contexts these peoples have also been referred to as " mixed-bloods " , or " country-born " by

10075-530: The 1920s, changes in lifestyle and serious epidemics like tuberculosis made the government of Canada interested in tracking the Inuit of Canada's Arctic. Traditionally Inuit names reflect what is important in Inuit culture: environment, landscape, seascape, family, animals, birds, spirits. However these traditional names were difficult for non-Inuit to parse. Also, the agglutinative nature of Inuit language meant that names seemed long and were difficult for southern bureaucrats and missionaries to pronounce. Thus, in

10230-417: The 1940s, the Inuit were given disc numbers , recorded on a special leather ID tag, like a dog tag . They were required to keep the tag with them always. (Some tags are now so old and worn that the number is polished out.) The numbers were assigned with a letter prefix that indicated location (E = east), community, and then the order in which the census-taker saw the individual. In some ways this state renaming

10385-448: The Americas at a later time). Analyses of genetics among Indigenous American and Siberian populations have been used to argue for early isolation of founding populations on Beringia and for later, more rapid migration from Siberia through Beringia into the New World . The microsatellite diversity and distributions of the Y lineage specific to South America indicates that certain Indigenous American populations have been isolated since

10540-502: The Americas by human Y-chromosome DNA haplogroups based on relevant studies. The samples are taken from individuals identified with the ethnic and linguistic designations in the first two columns, the fourth column ( n ) is the sample size studied, and the other columns give the percentage of the particular haplogroup . Gê Maya The common occurrence of the mtDNA Haplogroups A, B, C, and D among eastern Asian and Indigenous American populations has long been recognized, along with

10695-450: The Americas can trace their maternal ancestry back to a few founding lineages from East Asia, which would have arrived by way of the Bering Strait . According to this study, it is probable that the ancestors of the Indigenous Americans would have remained for a time in the region of the Bering Strait , after which there would have been a rapid movement of settling of the Americas, taking the founding lineages to South America . According to

10850-409: The Americas followed by isolation of the northern population following closure of the ice-free corridor. Evidence of Australo-Melanesians admixture in Amazonian populations was found by Skoglund and Reich (2016). A study of the diversification of mtDNA Haplogroups C and D from southern Siberia and eastern Asia, respectively, suggests that the parent lineage (Subhaplogroup D4h) of Subhaplogroup D4h3,

11005-408: The Americas occurring around 10,000 to 15,000 years after isolation of the small founding population . Another model (Kitchen et al. 2008) proposes that migration into Beringia occurred approximately 36,000 BP, followed by 20,000 years of isolation in Beringia. A third model (Nomatto et al. 2009) proposes that migration into Beringia occurred between 40,000 and 30,000 BP, with a pre-LGM migration into

11160-526: The Americas or Beringia at ~22,000 years BP. Northern and Southern American Indigenous sub-populations split from each other at roughly ~17,500 to 14,600 years BP. There is also some evidence for a back-migration from the Americas into Siberia after ~11,500 years BP. A study published in the Cell journal in 2019, analysed 49 ancient Indigenous American samples from all over North and South America, and concluded that all Indigenous American populations descended from

11315-887: The Americas such as Bluefish Caves and Old Crow Flats in the Yukon Territory , and Meadowcroft Rock Shelter in Pennsylvania. The oldest archaeological sites on the Alaskan side of Beringia date to around 14,000 BP. It is possible that a small founder population had entered Beringia before that time. However, archaeological sites that date closer to the LGM on either the Siberian or the Alaskan side of Beringia are lacking. Biomarker and microfossil analyses of sediments from Lake E5 and Burial Lake in northern Alaska suggest human presence in eastern Beringia as early as 34,000 years ago. These sedimentary analyses have been suggested to be

11470-509: The Americas that occurred, with genetic branching and division transpiring after the fact. The migration wave is estimated to have emerged about 20,000 years ago. The Ancient Beringians are said to be a common ancestral group among contemporary Indigenous American populations today, which differs in results collected from previous research that suggests that modern populations are descendants of either Northern and Southern branches. Experts were also able to use wider genetic evidence to establish that

11625-500: The Americas were colonized by a small number of individuals (effective size of about 70), which grew by many orders of magnitude over 800 – 1000 years. The data also shows that there have been genetic exchanges between Asia, the Arctic, and Greenland since the initial peopling of the Americas. According to an autosomal genetic study from 2012, Indigenous Americans descend from at least three main migrant waves from Northern Asia. Most of it

11780-522: The Americas. Two 2015 autosomal DNA genetic studies confirmed the Siberian origins of the Indigenous peoples of the Americas. However, an ancient signal of shared ancestry with Australasians (Indigenous peoples of Australia, Melanesia, and the Andaman Islands ) was detected among the Indigenous peoples of the Amazon region . This signal, also doubt as 'population Y' has been more recently linked to

11935-504: The Americas. Linguists and biologists have reached a similar conclusion based on analysis of Indigenous American language groups and ABO blood group system distributions. Genetic diversity and population structure in the American landmass is also measured using autosomal (atDNA) micro-satellite markers genotyped ; sampled from North, Central, and South America and analyzed against similar data available from other Indigenous populations worldwide. The Indigenous American populations show

12090-534: The Danish state church) in Greenland. Several major dictionaries were created, beginning with Poul Egedes's Dictionarium Grönlandico-danico-latinum (1750) and culminating with Samuel Kleinschmidt's (1871) "Den grønlandske ordbog" (Transl. "The Greenlandic Dictionary"), which contained a Greenlandic grammatical system that has formed the basis of modern Greenlandic grammar. Together with the fact that until 1925 Danish

12245-431: The Inuit language into specific member languages since it forms a dialect continuum . Each band of Inuit understands its neighbours, and most likely its neighbours' neighbours; but at some remove, comprehensibility drops to a very low level. As a result, Inuit in different places use different words for its own variants and for the entire group of languages, and this ambiguity has been carried into other languages, creating

12400-478: The Inuit languages because of their links to different writing systems, literary traditions, schools, media sources and borrowed vocabulary. This makes any partition of the Inuit language somewhat problematic. This article will use labels that try to synthesise linguistic, sociolinguistic and political considerations in splitting up the Inuit dialect spectrum. This scheme is not the only one used or necessarily one used by Inuit themselves, but its labels do try to reflect

12555-508: The Inuit world: parts of Greenland, and in western Alaska. The Inuit languages, like other Eskimo–Aleut languages, have very rich morphological systems in which a succession of different morphemes are added to root words (like verb endings in European languages) to indicate things that, in languages like English, would require several words to express. (See also: Agglutinative language and Polysynthetic language ) All Inuit words begin with

12710-594: The Iñupiaq, with most of them over the age of 40. Alaskan Inupiat speak three distinct dialects, which have difficult mutual intelligibility: The Inuit languages are official in the Northwest Territories and Nunavut (the dominant language in the latter); have a high level of official support in Nunavik , a semi-autonomous portion of Quebec ; and are still spoken in some parts of Labrador . Generally, Canadians refer to all dialects spoken in Canada as Inuktitut , but

12865-634: The LGM, due to cold and dry conditions. Coastal environments during the Last Glacial Maximum were complex. The lowered sea level, and an isostatic bulge equilibrated with the depression beneath the Cordilleran Ice Sheet, exposed the continental shelf to form a coastal plain. While much of the coastal plain was covered with piedmont glaciers, unglaciated refugia supporting terrestrial mammals have been identified on Haida Gwaii , Prince of Wales Island , and outer islands of

13020-524: The Last Glacial Maximum after 30,000 years BP saw the expansion of alpine glaciers and continental ice sheets that blocked migration routes out of Beringia. By 21,000 years BP, and possibly thousands of years earlier, the Cordilleran and Laurentide ice sheets coalesced east of the Rocky Mountains , closing off a potential migration route into the center of North America. Alpine glaciers in

13175-629: The Last Glacial Maximum, climates in eastern Siberia fluctuated between conditions approximating present day conditions and colder periods. The pre-LGM warm cycles in Arctic Siberia saw flourishes of megafaunas. The oxygen isotope record from the Greenland Ice Cap suggests that these cycles after about 45,000 BP lasted anywhere from hundreds to between one and two thousand years, with greater duration of cold periods starting around 32,000 BP. The pollen record from Elikchan Lake, north of

13330-620: The Pacific coast broke up starting around 16,200 BP. The ice-free corridor to the interior of North America opened between 13,000 and 12,000 BP. Glaciation in eastern Siberia during the LGM was limited to alpine and valley glaciers in mountain ranges and did not block access between Siberia and Beringia. The paleoclimates and vegetation of eastern Siberia and Alaska during the Wisconsin glaciation have been deduced from high resolution oxygen isotope data and pollen stratigraphy . Prior to

13485-591: The South American rain forest, and in the genetics of Patagonians-Fuegians . Nomatto et al. (2009) proposed migration into Beringia occurred between 40,000 and 30,000 BP, with a pre-LGM (Last Glacial Maximum) migration into the Americas followed by isolation of the northern population following closure of the ice-free corridor. A 2016 genetic study of Indigenous peoples of the Amazonian region of Brazil (by Skoglund and Reich) showed evidence of admixture from

13640-636: The Yupik languages spoken in Western Alaska and Chukotka. Until 1902, a possible enclave of the Dorset, the Sadlermiut (in modern Inuktitut spelling Sallirmiut ), existed on Southampton Island . Almost nothing is known about their language, but the few eyewitness accounts tell of them speaking a "strange dialect". This suggests that they also spoke an Inuit language, but one quite distinct from

13795-404: The admixture of an Ancient East Asian lineage contributing about 65% ancestry, and a Paleolithic Siberian population known as Ancient North Eurasians , contributing about 35% ancestry. Ancestral Native Americans are most closely related to ' Ancient Paleo-Siberians ' and ' Ancient Beringians '. Native Americans (Amerindians) have also been described as being of "primarily East Asian ancestry, with

13950-511: The ancient mitochondrial lineages detected in this study were absent from modern data sets, suggesting a high extinction rate. To investigate this further, we applied a novel principal components multiple logistic regression test to Bayesian serial coalescent simulations. The analysis supported a scenario in which European colonization caused a substantial loss of pre-Columbian lineages". Recent archaeological findings in Alaska have shed light on

14105-571: The article on Eskimo for more information on this word. The Inuit languages constitute a branch of the Eskimo–Aleut language family . They are closely related to the Yupik languages and more remotely to Aleut . These other languages are all spoken in western Alaska , United States, and eastern Chukotka , Russia. They are not discernibly related to other indigenous languages of the Americas or northeast Asia, although there have been some unsubstantiated proposals that they are distantly related to

14260-562: The beginning of the cooling period that led into the LGM. A compilation of archaeological site dates throughout eastern Siberia suggest that the cooling period caused a retreat of humans southwards. Pre-LGM lithic evidence in Siberia indicate a settled lifestyle that was based on local resources, while post-LGM lithic evidence indicate a more migratory lifestyle. A 2021 discovery of human footprints in relict lake sediments near White Sands National Park in New Mexico demonstrated there

14415-621: The characteristics of that animal: "Nanuq" or "Nanoq" in Kalaallisut (polar-bear), "Uqalik" or "Ukaleq" in Kalaallisut (Arctic hare), and "Tiriaq" or "Teriaq" in Kalaallisut (mouse) are favourites. In other cases, Inuit are named after dead people or people in traditional tales, by naming them after anatomical traits those people are believed to have had. Examples include "Itigaituk" (has no feet), "Anana" or "Anaana" (mother), "Piujuq" (beautiful) and "Tulimak" (rib). Inuit may have any number of names, given by parents and other community members. In

14570-525: The chronology of the controversial Pedra Furada rock shelter in Piauí , Brazil . More recently, studies at the archaeological sites Santa Elina (27000-10000 years BP) in the midwest, and Rincão I (20000-12000 years BP) in southeastern Brazil also show associations of evidence of human presence with sediments dating from before the LGM. A 2003 study dated evidence for the controlled use of fire to before 40,000 years ago. Additional evidence has been adduced from

14725-578: The coastal ranges and the Alaskan Peninsula isolated the interior of Beringia from the Pacific coast. Coastal alpine glaciers and lobes of Cordilleran ice coalesced into piedmont glaciers that covered large stretches of the coastline as far south as Vancouver Island and formed an ice lobe across the Straits of Juan de Fuca by 18,000 BP. Coastal alpine glaciers started to retreat around 19,000 BP while Cordilleran ice continued advancing in

14880-632: The deglaciated landscape increased slowly. The earliest possible viability of the ice-free corridor as a human migration route has been estimated at 11,500 BP. Birch forests were advancing across former herb tundra in Beringia by 17,000 BP in response to climatic amelioration, indicating increased productivity of the landscape. Analyses of biomarkers and microfossils preserved in sediments from Lake E5 and Burial Lake in northern Alaska suggest early humans burned Beringian landscapes as early as 34,000 years ago. The authors of these studies suggest that fire

15035-614: The development of human Y-chromosome DNA haplogroups (yDNA haplogroups ) and human mitochondrial DNA haplogroups (mtDNA haplogroups) characteristic of Native American populations. Models of molecular evolution rates were used to estimate the ages at which Native American DNA lineages branched off from their parent lineages in Asia and to deduce the ages of demographic events. One model (Tammetal 2007) based on Native American mtDNA Haplotypes (Figure 2) proposes that migration into Beringia occurred between 30,000 and 25,000 BP, with migration into

15190-472: The early 21st century, the models of the chronology of migration are divided into two general approaches. The first is the short chronology theory , that the first migration occurred after the LGM, which went into decline after about 19,000 years ago, and was then followed by successive waves of immigrants. The second theory is the long chronology theory, which proposes that the first group of people entered Beringia, including ice-free parts of Alaska, at

15345-454: The early human groups who hunted them. Bison , a type of megafauna, have been identified as an ideal candidate for the tracing of human migrations out of Europe because of both their abundance in North America as well as being one of the first megafauna for which ancient DNA was used to trace patterns of population movement. Unlike other types of fauna that moved between the Americas and Eurasia ( mammoths , horses , and lions ), Bison survived

15500-579: The establishment of tribal groups, began soon after migration into the South American areas. Other American subclades include Q-L54 , Q-Z780 , Q-MEH2 , Q-SA01 , and Q-M346 lineages. In Canada, two other lineages have been found. These are Q-P89.1 and Q-NWT01 . R1b1a1a2 (M269) is the second most common Y-DNA haplogroup found among Indigenous Americans after Y-DNA haplogroup Q . The R1b1a1a2 (M269) lineages commonly found in Native Americans are in most cases belonged to R1b1a1a2 (M269) subclade most common in western Europeans, and its highest concentration

15655-482: The existence of a previously unknown Indigenous American population that has been academically named " Ancient Beringians ". Although it is popularly agreed among archeologists that early settlers had crossed into Alaska from Russia through the Bering Strait land bridge , the issue of whether or not there was one founding group or several waves of migration is a controversial and prevalent debate among academics in

15810-480: The existence of an hypothetical Australasian component among Indigenous Americans. The signal of the hypothetical Australasian component, can also be reproduced using the Basal-East Asian Tianyuan man sample, and thus does not represent "real Australasian affinity". The authors explained that the previous claims of possibly Australasian ancestry were based on a misinterpreted genetic echo, which

15965-428: The existence, inferred from craniometric data, of a hypothetical distinct non-Indigenous American population (suggested to have been related to Indigenous Australians and Papuans), sometimes called "Paleoamerican". Genetic studies also determined Amerindian-like geneflow from the Americas back into Siberia, contributing some ancestry to local Siberian populations. Overall, the 'Ancestral Native Americans' descended from

16120-484: The field today. In 2018, the sequenced DNA of an Indigenous girl, whose remains were found at the Upward Sun River archaeological site in Alaska in 2013, proved not to match the two recognized branches of Indigenous Americans and instead belonged to the early population of Ancient Beringians. This breakthrough is said to be the first direct genomic evidence that there was potentially only one wave of migration in

16275-401: The food from Eurasia to the Americas – part of the reason why tracing megafaunal DNA is so helpful for garnering insight to these migratory patterns. The grey wolf originated in the Americas and migrated into Eurasia prior to the Last Glacial Maximum – during which it was believed that remaining populations of the grey wolf residing in North America faced extinction and were isolated from

16430-480: The forms spoken in Canada today. The Yupik and Inuit languages are very similar syntactically and morphologically. Their common origin can be seen in a number of cognates: The western Alaskan variants retain a large number of features present in proto-Inuit language and in Yup'ik, enough so that they might be classed as Yup'ik languages if they were viewed in isolation from the larger Inuit world. The Inuit languages are

16585-405: The gene pool of Native Americans" as well as that of Japanese people. When studying human mitochondrial DNA haplogroup , the results indicated that Indigenous American haplogroups, including haplogroup X , are part of a single founding East Asian population. It also indicates that the distribution of mtDNA haplogroups and the levels of sequence divergence among linguistically similar groups were

16740-571: The genetic profiles of the Hokkaido Jōmon skeletons and the modern Ainu illustrates another uncertainty in source models derived from modern DNA samples. The development of high-resolution genomic analysis has provided opportunities to further define Native American subclades and narrow the range of Asian subclades that may be parent or sister subclades. The common occurrence of the mtDNA Haplogroups A, B, C, and D among eastern Asian and Native American populations has long been recognized, along with

16895-635: The geologic association of bones at the Bluefish Cave and Old Crow Flats sites, and the related Bonnet Plume site, have been called into question. No evidence of human remains have been discovered at these sites. In addition to disputed archaeological sites, support for pre-LGM human presence has been found in lake sediment records of northern Alaska. Biomarker and microfossil analyses of sediments from Lake E5 and Burial Lake in suggest human presence in eastern Beringia as early as 34,000 years ago. These analyses are indeed compelling in that they corroborate

17050-609: The ice sheets, the oldest such sites occur in association with the Clovis complex. If humans managed to breach the continental ice sheets significantly before 13,000 BP, there should be clear evidence for it in the form of at least some stratigraphically discrete archaeological components with a relatively high artifact count. So far, no such evidence exists." Genetic studies have used high resolution analytical techniques applied to DNA samples from modern Native Americans and Asian populations regarded as their source populations to reconstruct

17205-698: The inferences made from the Bluefish Cave and Old Crow Flats sites. In 2020, evidence emerged for a new pre-LGM site in North-Central Mexico . Chiquihuite cave , an archaeological site in Zacatecas State, has been dated to 26,000 years BP based on numerous lithic artefacts discovered there. However, there is scholarly debate over whether the artifacts should be considered evidence of human activity or if they were formed naturally. No evidence of human DNA or hearth have been unearthed. Pre-LGM human presence in South America rests partly on

17360-410: The initial peopling of the region. The Na-Dene , Inuit and Native Alaskan populations exhibit Haplogroup Q-M242 ; however, they are distinct from other Indigenous Americans with various mtDNA and atDNA mutations. This suggests that the peoples who first settled in the northern extremes of North America and Greenland derived from later migrant populations than those who penetrated farther south in

17515-438: The language is called Inuttut or, often in official documents, by the more descriptive name Labradorimiutut . Furthermore, Canadians – both Inuit and non-Inuit – sometimes use the word Inuktitut to refer to all Inuit language variants, including those of Alaska and Greenland. The phrase "Inuit language" is largely limited to professional discourse, since in each area, there is one or more conventional terms that cover all

17670-415: The largest group outside of North America. Thus, the total population of Inuit speakers is about 100,000 people. The traditional language of the Inuit is a system of closely interrelated dialects that are not readily comprehensible from one end of the Inuit world to the other; some people do not think of it as a single language but rather a group of languages. However, there are no clear criteria for breaking

17825-477: The local variants; or it is used as a descriptive term in publications where readers can't necessarily be expected to know the locally used words. In Nunavut the government groups all dialects of Inuktitut and Inuinnaqtun under the term Inuktut . Although many people refer to the Inuit language as Eskimo language , this is a broad term that also includes the Yupik languages , and is in addition strongly discouraged in Canada and diminishing in usage elsewhere. See

17980-401: The location where the admixture took place. However, a third theory, the "Beringian standstill hypothesis", suggests that East Asians instead migrated north to Northeastern Siberia, where they mixed with ANE, and later diverged in Beringia, where distinct Native American lineages formed. This theory is supported by maternal and nuclear DNA evidence. According to Grebenyuk, after 20,000 BP,

18135-531: The lower Amur region suggests a source population from that region distinct from the Altai-Baikal source populations, where sampling did not reveal those two particular subclades. The conclusions regarding Subhaplogroup D1 indicating potential source populations in the lower Amur and Hokkaido areas stand in contrast to the single-source migration model. Subhaplogroup D4h3 has been identified among Han Chinese . Subhaplogroup D4h3 from China does not have

18290-464: The modern Inuit . A route through Beringia is seen as more likely than the Solutrean hypothesis . An abstract in a 2012 issue of the "American Journal of Physical Anthropology" states that "The similarities in ages and geographical distributions for C4c and the previously analyzed X2a lineage provide support to the scenario of a dual origin for Paleo-Indigenous Americans. Taking into account that C4c

18445-525: The modern Native American phenotype. Archaeogenetic studies do not support a two-wave model or the Paleoamerican hypothesis of an Australo-Melanesian origin, and firmly assign all Paleo-Indians and modern Native Americans to one ancient population that entered the Americas in a single migration from Beringia. Only in one ancient specimen (Lagoa Santa) and a few modern populations in the Amazon region,

18600-470: The morphology of Luzia Woman fossil, which was described as Australo-Melanesian . This interpretation was challenged in a 2003 review which concluded the features in question could also have arisen by genetic drift. In November 2018, scientists of the University of São Paulo and Harvard University released a study that contradicts the alleged Australo-Melanesian origin of Luzia. Using DNA sequencing,

18755-482: The most closely related subclades grow more specific. Subhaplogroups D1 and D4h3 have been regarded as Native American specific based on their absence among a large sampling of populations regarded as potential descendants of source populations, over a wide area of Asia. Among the 3,764 samples, the Sakhalin –lower Amur region was represented by 61 Oroks . In another study, Subhaplogroup D1a has been identified among

18910-664: The mutation likely evolved in east-Beringia, or more specifically the Seward Peninsula or western Alaskan interior . The Beringia land mass began submerging, cutting off land routes. Since the discovery of Q-M3, several subclades of M3-bearing populations have been discovered. An example is in South America , where some populations have a high prevalence of (SNP) M19, which defines subclade Q-M19 . M19 has been detected in (59%) of Amazonian Ticuna men and in (10%) of Wayuu men. Subclade M19 appears to be unique to South American Indigenous peoples , arising 5,000 to 10,000 years ago. This suggests that population isolation, and perhaps even

19065-593: The name of a dead person or a class of things, they could take some of their characteristics or powers, and enjoy a part of their identity. (This is why they were always very willing to accept European names: they believed that this made them equal to the Europeans.) Common native names in Canada include "Ujarak" (rock), "Nuvuk" (headland), "Nasak" (hat, or hood), "Tupiq" or "Tupeq" in Kalaallisut (tent), and "Qajaq" ( kayak ). Inuit also use animal names, traditionally believing that by using those names, they took on some of

19220-808: The names of places and people tend to be highly prosaic when translated. Iqaluit , for example, is simply the plural of the noun iqaluk "fish" ("Arctic char", "salmon" or "trout" depending on dialect ). Igloolik ( Iglulik ) means place with houses , a word that could be interpreted as simply town ; Inuvik is place of people ; Baffin Island , Qikiqtaaluk in Inuktitut, translates approximately to "big island". Although practically all Inuit have legal names based on southern naming traditions, at home and among themselves they still use native naming traditions. There too, names tend to consist of highly prosaic words. The Inuit traditionally believed that by adopting

19375-405: The northern extremes of North America and Greenland derived from later migrant populations. Q-M242 (mutational name) is the defining (SNP) of Haplogroup Q (Y-DNA) (phylogenetic name). In Eurasia , haplogroup Q is found among the ancient Afontova Gora specimens, and Indigenous Siberian populations , such as the modern Chukchi and Koryak peoples, as well as some Southeast Asians, such as

19530-492: The number of Inuit language speakers there at roughly 50,000. According to the 2021 Canadian census , the Inuit population of Canada is 70,540, of which 33,790 report Inuit as their first language. Greenland and Canada account for the bulk of Inuit speakers, although about 7,500 Alaskans speak some variety of an Inuit language out of a total population of over 13,000 Inuit. An estimated 7,000 Greenlandic Inuit live in Denmark ,

19685-409: The only possibly recoverable remnants of humans living in Alaska during the last Glacial period. At Old Crow Flats, mammoth bones have been found that are broken in distinctive ways indicating human butchery. The radiocarbon dates on these vary between 25,000 and 40,000 BP. Also, stone microflakes have been found in the area indicating tool production. However, the interpretations of butcher marks and

19840-513: The period of the Last Glacial Maximum along with genetic evidence found from early human remains in the Americas provides evidence to support pre-Clovis migrations into the Americas. The Native American source population was formed in Siberia by the mixing of two distinct populations: Ancient North Eurasians and an ancient East Asian (ESEA) population. According to Jennifer Raff, the Ancient North Eurasian population mixed with

19995-490: The possible date of the first peopling of the Americas. Academics generally believe that humans reached North America south of the Laurentide Ice Sheet at some point between 15,000 and 20,000 years ago. Some new controversial archaeological evidence suggests the possibility that human arrival in the Americas may have occurred prior to the Last Glacial Maximum more than 20,000 years ago. During

20150-503: The presence of haplogroup X . As a whole, the greatest frequency of the four Native American associated haplogroups occurs in the Altai - Baikal region of southern Siberia. Some subclades of C and D closer to the Native American subclades occur among Mongolian, Amur, Japanese, Korean, and Ainu populations. With further definition of subclades related to Native American populations, the requirements for sampling Asian populations to find

20305-503: The presence of Haplogroup X. As a whole, the greatest frequency of the four Indigenous American associated haplogroups occurs in the Altai - Baikal region of southern Siberia. Some subclades of C and D closer to the Indigenous American subclades occur among Mongolian, Amur, Japanese, Korean, and Ainu populations. A 2023 DNA study found that "[i]n addition to previously described ancestral sources in Siberia, Australo-Melanesia, and Southeast Asia, ... northern coastal China also contributed to

20460-457: The presence of the A subtype. The finding ignited controversy, with contention that the sample DNA was insufficiently complete for the conclusion and that the result reflected modern contamination. However, a re-analysis indicated that the DNA sequences were consistent with, but not definitely from, the "cosmopolitan clade" (subtype A). The presence of subtypes A and B in the Americas is suggestive of

20615-421: The rate grew more rapid. The inland Cordilleran and Laurentide ice sheets retreated more slowly than did the coastal glaciers. Opening of an ice-free corridor did not occur until after 13,000 to 12,000 BP. The early environment of the ice-free corridor was dominated by glacial outwash and meltwater, with ice-dammed lakes and periodic flooding from the release of ice-dammed meltwater. Biological productivity of

20770-429: The region codes (like knowing a telephone area code). Until Inuit began studying in the south, many did not know that numbers were not normal parts of Christian and English naming systems. Then in 1969, the government started Project Surname, headed by Abe Okpik , to replace number-names with patrilineal "family surnames". A popular belief exists that the Inuit have an unusually large number of words for snow . This

20925-438: The rest of the population. This, however, may not be the case. Radiocarbon dating of ancient grey wolf remains found in permafrost deposits in Alaska show a continuous exchange of population from 12,500 radiocarbon years BP to beyond radiocarbon dating capabilities. This indicates that there was viable passage for grey wolf populations to exchange between the two continents. These faunas' ability to exchange populations during

21080-515: The result of multiple preceding migrations from Bering Straits populations. All Indigenous American mtDNA can be traced back to five haplogroups: A , B , C , D and X . More specifically, Indigenous American mtDNA belongs to sub-haplogroups A2, B2, C1b, C1c, C1d, D1, and X2a (with minor groups C4c, D2a, and D4h3a). This suggests that 95% of Indigenous American mtDNA is descended from a minimal genetic founding female population, comprising sub-haplogroups A2, B2, C1b, C1c, C1d, and D1. The remaining 5%

21235-581: The results showed that Luzia's ancestry was entirely Native American. Stones described as probable tools, hammerstones and anvils , have been found in southern California , at the Cerutti Mastodon site , that are associated with a mastodon skeleton which appeared to have been processed by humans. The mastodon skeleton was dated by thorium-230/uranium radiometric analysis, using diffusion–adsorption–decay dating models, to around 130 thousand years ago. No human bones were found and expert reaction

21390-486: The retreat of game species with the onset of the LGM has been proposed to explain the lack of archaeological sites in that region dating to the LGM. The pollen record from the Alaskan side shows shifts between herb/shrub and shrub tundra prior to the LGM, suggesting less dramatic warming episodes than those that allowed forest colonization on the Siberian side. Diverse, though not necessarily plentiful, megafauna were present in those environments. Herb tundra dominated during

21545-485: The rs3894 (M3) (SNP). The Q-M3 mutation is roughly 15,000 years old as that is when the initial migration of Paleo-Indigenous Americans into the Americas occurred. Q-M3 is the predominant haplotype in the Americas, at a rate of 83% in South American populations, 50% in the Na-Dene populations, and in North American Eskimo-Aleut populations at about 46%. With minimal back-migration of Q-M3 in Eurasia,

21700-457: The same geographic implication as Subhaplotype D1a from Amur-Hokkaido, so its implications for source models are more speculative. Its parent lineage, Subhaplotype D4h, is believed to have emerged in East Asia, rather than Siberia, around 20,000 BP. Subhaplogroup D4h2, a sister clade of D4h3, has also been found among Jōmon skeletons from Hokkaido. D4h3 has a coastal trace in the Americas. X

21855-543: The split between the Northern and Southern American branches from the Ancient Beringians in Alaska only occurred about 17,000 and 14,000 years, further challenging the concept of multiple migration waves occurring during the very first stages of settlement. Genetic evidence for Paleo-Indigenous Americans consists of the presence of apparent admixture of archaic Sundadont lineages to the remote populations in

22010-478: The terms Inuvialuktun , Inuinnaqtun , and Inuttut (also called Nunatsiavummiutut , Labradorimiutut or Inuttitut ) have some currency in referring to the variants of specific areas. Greenland counts approximately 50,000 speakers of the Inuit languages, over 90% of whom speak west Greenlandic dialects at home. Greenlandic was strongly supported by the Danish Christian mission (conducted by

22165-430: The usages most seen in popular and technical literature. In addition to the territories listed below, some 7,000 Greenlandic speakers are reported to live in mainland Denmark , and according to the 2001 census roughly 200 self-reported Inuktitut native speakers regularly live in parts of Canada which are outside traditional Inuit lands. Of the roughly 13,000 Alaskan Iñupiat , as few as 3000 may still be able to speak

22320-404: The use of dated fossil DNA to calibrate molecular evolution rates. Although there is no archaeological evidence that can be used to direct support a coastal migration route during the Last Glacial Maximum , genetic analysis has been used to support this thesis. In addition to human genetic lineage, megafaunal DNA lineage can be used to trace movements of megafauna – large mammalian – as well as

22475-486: The variants of the Northwest Territories are sometimes called Inuvialuktun and have in the past sometimes been called Inuktun . In those dialects, the name is sometimes rendered as Inuktitun to reflect dialectal differences in pronunciation. The Inuit language of Quebec is called Inuttitut by its speakers, and often by other people, but this is a minor variation in pronunciation. In Labrador ,

22630-415: The word Inuktitut is routinely used to refer to all Canadian variants of the Inuit traditional language, and it is under that name that it is recognised as one of the official languages of Nunavut and the Northwest Territories . However, one of the variants of western Nunavut, and the eastern Northwest Territories, is called Inuinnaqtun to distinguish itself from the dialects of eastern Canada, while

22785-669: Was a verifiable human presence in the region dating back to the LGM between 18,000 and 26,000 years ago. Later studies, reported in October 2023, confirmed that the age of the human footprints to be "up to 23,000 years old". The Clovis-first advocates have not accepted the veracity of these findings. In 2022, they said, "The oldest evidence for archaeological sites in the New World with large numbers of artifacts occurring in discrete and minimally disturbed stratigraphic contexts occur in eastern Beringia between 13,000 and 14,200 BP. South of

22940-451: Was abetted by the churches and missionaries, who viewed the traditional names and their calls to power as related to shamanism and paganism . They encouraged people to take Christian names. So a young woman who was known to her relatives as "Lutaaq, Pilitaq, Palluq, or Inusiq" and had been baptised as "Annie" was under this system to become Annie E7-121 . People adopted the number-names, their family members' numbers, etc., and learned all

23095-415: Was accelerated as sea levels rose and floated glacial termini. It has been estimated that the coast range was fully ice-free between 16,000 and 15,000 BP. Littoral marine organisms colonized shorelines as ocean water replaced glacial meltwater. Replacement of herb/shrub tundra by coniferous forests was underway by 15,000 BP north of Haida Gwaii. Eustatic sea level rise caused flooding, which accelerated as

23250-429: Was found to carry the deepest branch of the X2a haplogroup, and he did not have any European ancestry that would be expected for a European origin of the lineage. The Human T cell Lymphotrophic Virus 1 ( HTLV-1 ) is a virus transmitted through exchange of bodily fluids and from mother to child through breast milk. The mother-to-child transmission mimics a hereditary trait, although such transmission from maternal carriers

23405-701: Was found to have been "Amerindian" genetically, and showed high affinity with various East Asian groups, confirming that Ancestral Indigenous Americans diverged from a source population somewhere in northeastern Siberia. A study published in the Nature journal in 2018 concluded that Indigenous Americans descended from a single founding population which initially divided from East Asians about ~36,000 (±1,500) years BP, with gene flow between this divided group of Ancestral Indigenous Americans and Siberians persisting until about ~25,000 (±1,100) years BP, before merging with Ancient North Eurasians and subsequently becoming isolated in

23560-458: Was mixed; claims of tools and bone processing were called "not plausible" by Prof. Tom Dillehay . The Yana River Rhino Horn site (RHS) has dated human occupation of eastern Arctic Siberia to 31,300 BP. That date has been interpreted by some as evidence that migration into Beringia was imminent, lending credence to occupation of Beringia during the LGM. However, the Yana RHS date is from

23715-656: Was not taught in the public schools, these policies had the consequence that Greenlandic has always and continues to enjoy a very strong position in Greenland, both as a spoken as well as written language. Eastern Canadian Inuit language variants have fifteen consonants and three vowels (which can be long or short). Consonants are arranged with five places of articulation : bilabial , alveolar , palatal , velar and uvular ; and three manners of articulation : voiceless stops , voiced continuants , and nasals , as well as two additional sounds—voiceless fricatives . The Alaskan dialects have an additional manner of articulation,

23870-458: Was revealed to represent early East-Eurasian gene flow (represented by the 40,000 BC old Tianyuan sample) into Aboriginal Australians and Papuans, which was lost in modern East Asians. Archaeological evidence for pre-LGM human presence in the Americas was first presented in the 1970s. notably the " Luzia Woman " skull found in Brazil. Substantial racial admixture has taken place during and since

24025-505: Was used as means of hunting megafauna. The Indigenous peoples of the Americas have an ascertained archaeological presence in the Americas dating back to about 15,000 years ago. More recent research, however, suggests a human presence dating to between 18,000 and 26,000 years ago, during the Last Glacial Maximum. There remain uncertainties regarding the precise dating of individual sites and regarding conclusions drawn from population genetics studies of contemporary Native Americans. In

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