Grinning and Bering It, Part Two

And there was a 2002 study.

Questions about the timing and geographic origins of the migrations that led to the peopling of the Americas have been examined through use of a wide array of approaches....

The search for the ancestors of the Native American Y chromosomes in Siberia and Asia has revealed that the M3 lineage is found only on the Chukotka peninsula of far northeastern Siberia, among the Chukchi and the Siberian Eskimos (Karafet et al. 1997; Lell et al. 1997). The most recent ancestors of the M3 lineage have been traced to central southern Siberia (Karafet et al. 1999; Santos et al. 1999).

The Siberian RPS4Y-T haplogroup has been located in the Lake Baikal region, east of M3 and its progenitors. This has been interpreted as indicating that these Y-chromosome lineages came to the Americas in distinct migrations (Karafet et al. 1999). Finally, Y chromosomes harboring the Tat polymorphism (haplogroup Tat-C) were found dispersed between native populations of central Asia and northern Europe (Santos et al. 1999), supporting a relatively recent link between these populations (Zerjal et al. 1997).

To further clarify the Siberian origins of Native American migrations into the New World, we have surveyed the Y-chromosome SNP and microsatellite variation in a large sample of geographically dispersed native populations of Siberia and the Americas. This analysis has revealed that two major male migrations peopled the Americas: one starting from southern Middle Siberia, giving rise to haplogroups M3 and M45a in North, Central, and South America, and a second migration from eastern Siberia, which brought Y-chromosome lineages RPS4Y-T and M45b to the Na-Dene and Amerinds of North and Central America.

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