"The evidence points to the arrival of humans ancestral to contemporary Indigenous peoples likely near the end of the Last Glacial Maximum, but earlier migrations may also have occurred," study co-authors Bethany Potter, an archaeologist at the Kansas Geological Survey, and Savannah Hay, a biological anthropologist at the University of Kansas, told Live Science in an email.
"The reason this topic is so contentious among anthropologists is because not all archaeologists agree about which of the earliest sites are legitimate, and that influences which model they think is most accurate," Potter and Hay said. "We know that humans were definitely in the Americas by about 13,500 years ago. We still don't know if they arrived earlier than that and, if so, how much earlier."
These DNA studies have revealed key information about the first people in the Americas. During the LGM, around 25,000 years ago, a group of people living somewhere near Siberia or Beringia, which included the land bridge connecting Asia to Alaska, split into different groups — ancient Native Americans, ancient Beringians and one or more "ghost" lineages — and moved quickly along the Pacific coast, possibly splitting again around 16,000 years ago into Northern Native Americans and Southern Native Americans.
"Huge gaps in our genetic dataset"
"There are huge gaps in our genetic dataset," Potter and Hay said. "For example, there are still no published ancient genomes from the Great Plains, despite that being where our lab group is situated." And these gaps could be hiding evidence of earlier migrations.
But genetic data from contemporary and ancient Indigenous peoples in the Americas currently shows that the White Sands population did not make a significant genetic contribution to the ancestors of today's Indigenous people, the researchers said. "However, it is possible we have not sampled their descendants' lineage, or that they contributed a low proportion of genetic ancestry to ancient North American populations," they said. "Perhaps we've just not found DNA from the White Sands population yet."
RELATED STORIESThere are several scenarios compatible with a pre-LGM entry of people into the Americas, the researchers wrote, but assessing those models also requires more genetic data. To date, the earliest sampled genome is from a 12,800-year-old individual known as the Anzick-1 child, whose bones were found in Montana. Extrapolation from the DNA of the Anzick child and other early ancestors points to an initial migration that occurred no earlier than 21,000 years ago, Potter and Hay said.
It is unclear when or if the longstanding question of when people first entered the Americas will be resolved, as current archaeological and genetic evidence do not unequivocally point to a single answer, Potter and Hay said, but "the publication of new ancient genomic data from the Americas is powerful, as it has the potential to fill in these gaps and reframe how we see these early peopling events."
How much do you know about the first people to reach the Americas? Find out with our First Americans quiz!
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