Native Americans and Northern Europeans More Closely Related Than Previously Thought

[The Shadow]

Native Americans and Northern Europeans More Closely Related Than Previously Thought

Newswise — BETHESDA, MD – November 30, 2012 -- Using genetic analyses, scientists have discovered that Northern European populations—including British, Scandinavians, French, and some Eastern Europeans—descend from a mixture of two very different ancestral populations, and one of these populations is related to Native Americans. This discovery helps fill gaps in scientific understanding of both Native American and Northern European ancestry, while providing an explanation for some genetic similarities among what would otherwise seem to be very divergent groups. This research was published in the November 2012 issue of the Genetics Society of America’s journal GENETICS (http://www.genetics.org).

According to Nick Patterson, first author of the report, “There is a genetic link between the paleolithic population of Europe and modern Native Americans. The evidence is that the population that crossed the Bering Strait from Siberia into the Americas more than 15,000 years ago was likely related to the ancient population of Europe.”

To make this discovery, Patterson worked with Harvard Medical School Professor of Genetics David Reich and other colleagues to study DNA diversity, and found that one of these ancestral populations was the first farming population of Europe, whose DNA lives on today in relatively unmixed form in Sardinians and the people of the Basque Country, and in at least the Druze population in the Middle East. The other ancestral population is likely to have been the initial hunter-gathering population of Europe. These two populations were very different when they met. Today the hunter-gathering ancestral population of Europe appears to have its closest affinity to people in far Northeastern Siberia and Native Americans.

http://newswise.com/articles/native-...iously-thought

Related:

DNA Directly Photographed for First Time

Fifty-nine years after James Watson and Francis Crick deduced the double-helix structure of DNA, a scientist has captured the first direct photograph of the twisted ladder that props up life.

Enzo Di Fabrizio, a physics professor at the Magna Graecia University in Catanzaro, Italy, snapped the picture using an electron microscope.

Previously, scientists had only seen DNA's structure indirectly. The double-corkscrew form was first discovered using a technique called X-ray crystallography, in which a material's shape is reconstructed based on how X-rays bounce after they collide with it.

http://www.livescience.com/25163-dna...irst-time.html

[SalisburySage]

This is not surprising given that we all came from Eastern Africa and branched out from there. I participated in the National Geographic Genome study's 1st phase. This is a copy of part of my report I received:

I-M253 :The common direct paternal ancestor of all men alive today was born in Africa around 140,000 years ago. He was neither the first human male nor the only male alive in his time. He was the only male whose direct lineage is present in current generations. Most men, including your direct paternal ancestors, trace their ancestry to one of this man’s descendants.

Your branch of this lineage traveled with out-of-Africa migrants to Asia. From there, they journeyed west to Europe. With the end of the last ice age, your ancestors helped resettle Europe.