A recent study performed by geneticists at the University of Copenhagen has confirmed that Native Americans are originally from Europe, at least in part. Up to 38% of Native American ancestry can be traced to Europe and western Asia, collectively known as Eurasia.
Palaeogeneticist Eske Willerslev at the University of Copenhagen, along with his team, confirmed this by sequencing the genome of DNA found in the 24,000-year-old remains of a young boy from the Siberian village of Mal’ta. This is coincidentally the oldest known modern human DNA ever found.
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The study shows us that modern humans living in Europe spread much further East than anthropologists had initially realized and lived in Siberia during the last ice age.
While scientists have known for years that Native Americans are directly related to east Asians, the European genes are a breakthrough discovery. The whole story behind the origins of Native Americans is in fact still a mystery. According to the research team,
The origins of the First Americans remain contentious. Although Native Americans seem to be genetically most closely related to east Asians, there is no consensus with regard to which specific Old World populations they are closest to.
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So, the idea that Native Americans are just slightly different east Asians is just an assumption. What we do know is that 24,000 year old Europeans had a hardcore Asian fetish. According to Eske Willerslev,
At some point in the past, a branch of east Asians and a branch of western Eurasians met each other and had sex a lot.
Native Americans are a true meeting of East and West: the evolutionary offspring of the mingling of Europeans and Asians. This type of widespread, inter-racial sex is a repeat of humanity’s ancient past, one filled with inter-sub-species sex between neanderthals, denisovans, homo sapiens, and other early humans.
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European features had previously been recognized in modern day humans living in the Americas. For example, some ancient Native American skulls look very different from modern day Native Americans. Mitochondrial DNA that shares a lineage with Europeans was also found in Native Americans. This type of evidence however, was always attributed to post-Columbian encounters with Europeans. We now know that is simply not the case.
If we view history in terms of the last few thousand years, the post-columbian invasion of the America’s can be viewed as totally alien invaders advancing on a land filled with an utterly strange group of people. If we broaden that view to include the last few hundred thousand years though, we see a different picture: A group of people invading its own ancestral family; warring family trees sharing the same ancient roots.
Sources:
http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/vaop/ncurrent/full/nature12736.html#ref10
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eurasia
http://www.cell.com/current-biology/retrieve/pii/S0960982209020661
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