European link to American Indians, according to an article in Science vol. 342, pp. 409-410 DOI: 10.1126/science.342.6157.409, 25 October 2013, Eske Willerslev of the University of Copenhagen and Kelly Graf of Texas A&M University have analysed DNA extracted from the skeleton of a boy found buried in Siberia. The skeleton, along with some buried artefacts, was found in the 1920’s and is stored in the State Hermitage Museum in St. Petersburg, Russia. It is dated as 24,000 years old. Researchers were able to obtain DNA from the upper arm bone, which they compared with DNA of living human populations. They found part of the genome matched that of the natives of North and South America. That was no surprise, since anthropologists believe the Americas were initially populated by people who migrated from Asia across the Bering Strait at a time when the sea level was lower and there was a land bridge (now named Beringa) connecting what are now Siberia and Alaska. However, the researchers were surprised to find the Y chromosome belonged to a genetic group called ‘Y haplogroup R’, and the mitochondrial DNA to ‘haplogroup U’. Today, those haplogroups are found almost exclusively in Europeans and people living in west Asia. (A haplogroup is a group of people who share a set of the same gene variations.)
It has been assumed that Native Americans were descended from people in eastern Asia, such as China and Japan, because DNA studies of living people show links between these groups. The researchers are sure the European genes are not from post-colonial racial mixing because nearly all Native Americans from North and South America were equally related to the Siberian boy, indicating “he represented very deep Native American roots”. Connie Mulligan, a geneticist of the University of Florida commented: “I’m still processing that Native Americans are one-third European. It’s jaw-dropping.” Another geneticist, Dennis O’Rourke of University of Utah said “this is going to stimulate a lot of discussion.” According to Science: “The new findings are consistent with a report published in Genetics last year (and almost entirely ignored at the time) that used modern DNA to conclude that Native Americans have significant—and ancient—ties to Europeans.” (Comment in parenthesis in original) That study found some Northern European populations, including British, Scandinavians, French, along with some Eastern Europeans, shared genes with Native Americans. The Science article goes on to conclude: “Thus, both studies suggest a source population in Asia whose genes made their way east all the way to the Americas, and west, all the way to Europe.”
Editorial Comment: These finds are not really “jaw dropping” if you choose to remember the Biblical history of the human race. Genesis tells us that after Noah’s flood the descendants of Noah’s sons gathered together at Babel in the region of Mesopotamia, which is in modern day Iraq, i.e. in west Asia. However, because of their rebellion against God the human population was split into subgroups, who then migrated away from this region, and were eventually scattered all over the world and became the ancestors of the present day racial and ethnic groups. Therefore, it is no surprise there are genetic links between the people of western Asia, Europe, Siberia and the Americas, because their ancestors all started out from western Asia, and, as the Science article suggests, some went east to Siberia and the Americas, and west to Europe. It is good to see Science catching up with God’s Word.
There is an additional data piece which is relevant. When this editor interviewed the Dakota Sioux in Saskatchewan many years ago, they were adamant they had come from across the sea towards the sunrise i.e. east, and therefore Europe and/or Mediterranean, and not from the west i.e. Asia, as the anthropologists kept telling them. (Ref. genetics, races, migration)
Evidence News, 30 October 2013