Big news this week saying that early arrivals in the New World from Siberia carried something with them that surprises scientists: a good share of their gene variants are associated with humans far to the west in and near Europe. Not only that, they seem to have gotten at least a far east as Mongolia long before the farther migration to North America occurred.
It sort of makes sense, now bolstered by both ancient and contemporary DNA, that the first people to the New World arrived with genes blended up from a broad range of paleolithic populations across Eurasia's vastness. After all, people (including Neanderthals) had been there for tens of thousands of years, by most reckonings, before anybody reached North America. That's a long time for intermixings to have stirred the gene pools of potential migrants. But there was not much specific evidence before this week just how far the blending had gone. It went public in a letter in Nature from scientists in Denmark, Russia, and lots of other places.
The news arises from DNA analysis of an arm bone from a small boy who was ritually buried 24,000 years ago or so – at the height of the latest ice age – near eastern Siberia's Lake Baikal. It indicates he was of European or at least western Eurasian ancestry. It has no signs of admixture with east Asians. That is not a total surprise, it appears. The site's scattering of so-called Venus figurines had already indicated a tie to cultures far to the west. But the DNA looks like a clincher. It's a small jump from there to conclude European genes had spread elsewhere across much of Asia, and eventually made it into the New World with the first migrations. Suddenly, the mysterious and long known presence of certain genetic patterns among today's American Indians that are also found in traditional Europeans is not such a mystery. No longer is it necessary to imagine prehistoric Europeans crossing the Atlantic.
Best, this is very entertaining news of scant practical use – which to science reporters has never been much of a deterrent. The news has built-in surprise, drama, diligent scholarship, and evocations of ancient times when our ancestors hunted mammoths and cave bears, carved talismans by firelight and, at times, lived in caves. Now we may, through these scientists, hold the tiny bones of this small boy in our hands, inspect their entrapped coils of DNA, and glimpse a specific chapter in the epic journey by which our forebears peopled the world.
The science journalism world congealed itself a fair but not huge crowd of reporters to jump on the story. I find no evidence AP jumped in too. I'll do a roundup with a bit of commentary in a moment. It's not far below. But there is a small and unsurprising problem with headlines. A lot of them do say that European root stock is included but does not dominate Native American indiginous populations' collective genome. But many over-simplify and thus mislead. They just tell readers such things as that Native Americans have European roots, or West Eurasian origins, or that American Indians are now linked to ancient Europeans. Those things are not false. But anybody who writes an unembellished headline such as that should know a lot of readers are going to think this means it was a European parade across the Beringia land bridge 12,000 to 20,000+ years ago. No, it was a mixed lot. That mix reflected a broad portion of a continent's residents.
Worse are the headlines that say the new study concludes, as one of its primary points, that Native Americans arrived from Siberia. Seems to me, that's a duh. It's the closest part of Eurasia. As departure point it cannot be a surprise. The important questions addressed by the letter in Nature pertain to whatever upstream migrations and intermixings got those travelers to the bridge. The news stories themselves tend to get things into proper, broader perspective. Hence it is mostly a small problem of headlines alone, as it has been ever before and will be again as long as reporters and copy editors exist. A few stories do get things mixed up as well.
Sampled Stories:
- NY Times – Nicholas Wade: 24,000-year-old body shows kinship to Europeans and American Indians ; This headline is too murky to mislead anybody. Wade tells the story with considerable narrative flair. It's a stretch, but he includes the researchers' guess that the boy would have had "brown hair, brown eyes and freckled skin." So, an Irish lad, was he!? Wade also has that the Nature letter's essence was presented a month ago at a meeting in Santa Fe. Two outside sources express some measure of caution but no rejection of the team's conclusions. (For an incisive critique on this story's nomenclature and references to Europe now and way back then, read on the Gene Expression Blog (Discover Mag) by Razib Khan: "Our ancestors are part us … or the other way around?" ;
- LiveScience – Tia Ghose: DNA study of Siberian skeleton links Europeans to Native Americans ; Concisely told, with two outside experts making quizzical, intrigued, but not convinced noises.
- Washington Post – Meeri Kim: DNA indicates Eurasian roots for Native Americans, new study says ; Good summary, says this is the oldest full genome for our species gotten yet. No outsider comment.
- BBC (no byline) : Ancient DNA from Siberian boy links Europe and America ; Well enough done to merit a signer.
- Reuters – Jim Forsyth: Research shows closer ties between Native Americans, Europeans ; OK, but no outside sources, is filed from San Antonio TX. and extensively quotes a Texas A&M researcher (see press release in Grist below). She is a leader of the project, but this seems a provincial way to cover a story with its heart half a world away.
- Daily Mail – Ellie Zolfagharifard: DNA testing on 24,000-year-old skeleton reveals that Native Americans could be partly descended from EUROPEANS ; Fine hed, save the overdone all-caps, but leave it to the Mail to turn my thesis around. After the hed perfectly puts the finding in its correct scale, the lede says "DNA extracted from a young boy who died 24,000 years ago could prove that the first Native Americans were European." Uh, no. Story itself is sort of okay, if a muddled rewrite of other material. This sentence to me looks made up: "Previously, researchers had thought that people came from Europe into East Asia, and then entered Siberia from the south." Not sure, but seems to me that most experts have thought migrations from Africa got into the near and Middle East and Caucuses, then spread – many groups heading east to Asia with no European detour. As usual, the Mail has the best and widest selection of illus including maps.
- Ars Technica – John Timmer: Ancient Siberian's skeleton yields links to Europe and Natuve Americans/ Our ancestors intermingled in complicated ways and did not sit still ; Excellent. From that subhed's "complicated ways" to the discursive yet direct structure of the story. More of an essay than standard news story style, with no quotes at all. So it is difficult to tell who or what Timmer consulted in the course of composition.
- Houston Chronicle – Carol Christian: A&M study of 24,000-year-old bones finds Native Americans' European ancestry: Well, the A&M professor was a principle but it was hardly an A&M study.
- Nature (News dept) Ed Yong: Americas' natives have European roots ; Fine piece, as one expects of Yong, and seems to have served as a press release for some other outlets.
- Red Orbit : DNA Study Suggests Native Americans May Have Originated From Siberia; A total aggregationist mashup with little sign it had a final author trying to tell the story plainly. The hed is, as said before, duh!
- Toronto Star – Kate Allen : What a 24,000-year-old boy has to say about the origins of native Americans ; Solid piece, has an outsiders interested comment, and plays the European angle just about right. Allen, as do several reporters, smartly brings in Kennewick Man (the ~10,000 year old skeleton that local Indians in Washington State claimed was their direct ancestor and who nearly gummed up study of the discovery so they could re-bury it quick).
- Times of India – Kounteya Sinha: First Americans came directly from Siberia, researcher says ; Local angle: A woman from Chennai in southeast India, now at the Danish Natural History Museum, is among the letter's authors. Not sure if the lede's assertion that the finding "has turned the archaeological world upside down" will hold up. Neither will its other punchline, that because nearly a third of modern Native American genes are shared with the youngster who died in Siberia 24,000 years ago, that this is why the first people to the Western Hemisphere came directly from Siberia. The two statements do not co-depend. But one quote from researchers is a good choice: "We think these Ice-Age people were quite mobile and capable of maintaining a far-reaching gene pool that extended from central Siberia all the way west to central Europe."
- Bloomberg News – Elizabeth Lopatto: American Indians' Origins May Trace Back to Europe Not East Asia; No no no. The story is merely a muddle, but the facts peek through. The headline is dead wrong. Somehow the fact that the boy and his clan had no genetic signatures of East Asian ancestry got transformed into that is also true of Native Americans today, who descend from many peoples including East Asians as well as other people in gene pool which the study discovered in the old bone.
- Nat'l Geographic: Brian Handwerk: "Great Surprise" – Native American Have West Eurasian Origins . Oldest human genome reveals less of an East Asian ancestry than thought ; Well done, and this passage from Handwerk explains well what the immediately preceding story from Bloomberg missed: "While the land bridge still formed the gateway to America, the study now portrays Native Americans as a group derived form the meeting of two different populations, one ancestral to East Asians and the other related to western Eurasians."
Grist for the Mill: University of Copenhagen Press Release 1 , Press Release 2; Texas A&M Press Release ; Uppsala University Press Release ;
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