A genomic view of the peopling of the Americas.pdfVIP

Available online at ScienceDirect A genomic view of the peopling of the Americas Pontus Skoglund1,2,3 and David Reich1,2,4 Whole-genome studies have documented that most Native American ancestry stems from a single population that diversi?ed within the continent more than twelve thousand years ago. However, this shared ancestry hides a more complex history whereby at least four distinct streams of Eurasian migration have contributed to present-day and prehistoric Native American populations. Whole genome studies enhanced by technological breakthroughs in ancient DNA now provide evidence of a sequence of events involving initial migrations from a structured Northeast Asian source population with differential relatedness to present-day Australasian populations, followed by a divergence into northern and southern Native American lineages. During the Holocene, new migrations from Asia introduced the Saqqaq/ Dorset Paleoeskimo population to the North American Arctic 4500 years ago, ancestry that is potentially connected with ancestry found in Athabaskan-speakers today. This was then followed by a major new population turnover in the high Arctic involving Thule-related peoples who are the ancestors of present-day Inuit. We highlight several open questions that could be addressed through future genomic research. Addresses 1 Harvard Medical School, Boston, MA, USA 2 Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard, Cambridge, MA, USA 3 Department of Archaeology and Classical History, Stockholm, Sweden 4 Howard Hughes Medical Institute, Boston, MA, USA Corresponding author: Skoglund, Pontus (pontus.skoglund@) Current Opinion in Genetics Development 2016, 41:27–35 This review comes from a themed issue on Genetics of human origin Edited by Joshua M Akey and Anna Di Rienzo For a complete overview see the Issue and the Editorial Available online 6th August 2016 /10.1016/j.gde.2016.06.016 0959-437/# 2016 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved. Introduction The peopling of the Americas represente