Jomon teeth vs Native American. Credit: G. Richard Scott University of Nevada Reno
New scientific research has challenged the widely held theory that Native Americans are Japanese-American. It shows that genetics and skeletal biology do not "simply match up".
These findings were published in PaleoAmerica today and are expected to have major implications for how we understand the arrival of Indigenous Americans to the Western Hemisphere.
Many archaeologists believe that Native Americans or the 'First Peoples' migrated from Japan to the Americas approximately 15,000 years ago, based on similarities in stone artifacts.
They are believed to have moved along the Pacific Ocean's northern rim, including the Bering Land Bridge until they reached North America's northwest coast.
The First Peoples spread out from there to the interior of the continent, further south, and reached the southern tip in less than two thousand year.
This theory is partly based on the similarities in stone tools made 15,000 years ago by the Jomon people and those that were found at some of the oldest archaeological sites used by First Peoples.
This new study, published in PaleoAmerica, the flagship journal of the Center for the Study of the First Americans (Texas A&M University), suggests otherwise.
The paper was carried out by an international expert in the study and analysis of human teeth, as well as a team made up of Ice-Age experts in human genetics. It examined the biology and genetic code of teeth samples from different continents and focused on the Jomon people.
Professor Richard Scott, a leading expert in the study and analysis of human teeth, stated that "we found that the human biology simply does not match up with the archaeological theories." He led a multidisciplinary team of researchers.
"We don't dispute that the Northwest Pacific Coast is where ancient Native Americans came from. We only believe that they were related to the Jomon people of Japan.
"These people (the Jomon), who lived in Japan 15,000 centuries ago, are an unlikely source of Indigenous Americans. The genetics and skeletal biology do not indicate any connection between Japan, America. Siberia appears to be the most likely source for Native American populations."
Scotta Professor of Anthropology at the University of Nevada Renohas has traveled the world collecting vast amounts of information about human teeth, both modern and ancient, over a nearly 50-year career. He is the author or several scientific papers on the subject.
The most recent paper used multivariate statistical methods to analyze large samples of teeth from Asia, the Americas and the Pacific. It showed that quantitative comparisons of the teeth reveal little relationship between Native Americans and Jomon people. Only 7% of teeth samples were actually linked to non-Arctic Native Americans (recognized by the First Peoples).
The genetics also show the same pattern of teeth as the Jomon people.
"This is especially evident in the distribution of maternal-paternal lineages which do not overlap between early Jomon and American population," says Professor Dennis O'Rourke. He was joined by Jennifer Raff, a fellow human geneticist and expert on the genetics of Indigenous Americans at the University of Kansas.
Professor O'Rourke adds, "Plus, recent Asian DNA studies have shown that these two peoples were separated from a common ancestor much earlier than previously thought."
O'Rourke, Raff and Justin Tackney reported the first analysis for ancient DNA from Ice-Age human remains found in Alaska in 2016.
Others co-authors include experts in ecology and archaeology of the Ice-Age.
Two other studies were published shortly before the publication of this paper.
A new genetics paper on modern Japanese people concluded that there were three distinct migrations to Japan. This is in contrast to the previous belief. The authors' conclusion about no biological relationship between Indigenous Americans and the Jomon people was supported by the results.
Archaeologists also reported in a September paper the shocking discovery of ancient footprints in New Mexico that date back to 23,000 years ago. This was described as "definitive proof" of North American people who lived before the Last Glacial Maximum. The Bering Land Bridge, which connects the Western Hemisphere to North America, is likely to have prevented access to these footprints. Although it is not clear who made these footprints or how they relate to living Native Americans today, the new paper does not provide any evidence that they were derived from Japan.
Professor Scott concluded that the Incipient Jomon Population is one of the most unlikely sources of Native American peoples from any other non-African population.
The study has some limitations. Both the Jomon population's teeth and the ancient DNA from the Jomon population have been dated to less than 10,000 years ago, which means they do not predate the Holocene, when the First Peoples arrived in America.
The authors state that they assume that these proxies are valid for the Incipient Jomon population, or the people who made stemmed point in Japan 16,00015,000 Years ago.
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More information: Peopling the Americas: Not "Out of Japan", PaleoAmerica, www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/1 0555563.2021.1940440 Peopling the Americas: Not "Out of Japan",
