DNA from ancient population in Southern China suggests Native Americans' East Asian roots

The genome of ancient human fossils from southern China is the first of its kind. The data shows that the hominin belonged to an extinct maternal branch of modern humans that may have contributed to the origin of Native Americans.

The ancient DNA technique is very powerful. The Red Deer Cave people were modern humans, not an archaic species like Neanderthals or Denisovans, according to him.

The researchers looked at the genomes of people from all over the world. The person's bones were found to be related to the Native Americans' East Asian ancestry. Some of the southern East Asia people traveled north along the coastline of present-day eastern China through Japan and into Siberia tens of thousands of years ago. They were the first to arrive in the New World after crossing the Bering Strait.

Thirty years ago, a group of archaeologists in China discovered a large set of bones in the Red Deer Cave. Modern humans had migrated to many parts of the world during the Late Pleistocene, which is when the fossils were found.

The skull cap was recovered from the cave and has similarities to modern humans and archaic humans. The brain of modern humans is larger than that of Neanderthals, and the shape of the skull resembles that of Neanderthals. Some anthropologists thought the skull belonged to an archaic human species that lived until recently or to a hybrid group of archaic and modern humans.

Bing Su and his colleagues from the Chinese Academy of Sciences and the Kunming Institute of Zoology were able to extract ancient DNA from the skull. The hominin belonged to an extinct maternal line of modern humans who are now found in East Asia, the Indo-China peninsula, and Southeast Asia islands.

The degree of hominins' genetic and morphologic diversity was greater in southern East Asia than it was in northern East Asia. Some early humans who first arrived in eastern Asia settled in the south before moving to the north.

He says that it is an important piece of evidence for understanding human migration.

Fossils from southern East Asia will be used to sequence more ancient human genes.

Su says that the data will help us paint a more complete picture of how our ancestors migrate but also contain important information about how humans change their physical appearance by adapting to local environments over time.

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