page_title: Genetic history of indigenous peoples of the Americas
section_title: Ancient Beringians
hierarchical_section_title: Genetic history of indigenous peoples of the Americas / Old World genetic admixture / Ancient Beringians
context_page_description: The genetic history of Indigenous peoples of the Americas is divided into two sharply distinct episodes:
  the initial peopling of the Americas during about 20,000 to 14,000 years ago, and European contact, after about 500 years ago. The former is the determinant factor for the number of genetic lineages, zygosity mutations and founding haplotypes present in today's Indigenous Amerindian populations.
  They later dispersed throughout the Americas after about 16,000 years ago.
  In the early 2000s, archaeogenetics was primarily based on Human Y-chromosome DNA haplogroups and Human mitochondrial DNA haplogroups. Autosomal "atDNA" markers are also used, but differ from mtDNA or Y-DNA in that they overlap significantly.
  Analyses of genetics among Amerindian and Siberian populations have been used to argue for early isolation of founding populations on Beringia and for later, more rapid migration from Siberia through Beringia into the New World. The microsatellite diversity and distributions of the Y lineage specific to South America indicates that certain Amerindian populations have been isolated since the initial peopling of the region.
context_section_description: Recent archaeological findings in Alaska have shed light on the existence of a previously unknown Native American population that has been academically named "Ancient Beringians." Although it is popularly agreed among archeologists that early settlers had crossed into Alaska from Russia through the Bering Strait land bridge, the issue of whether or not there was one founding group or several waves of migration is a controversial and prevalent debate among academics in the field today. In 2018, the sequenced DNA of a native girl, whose remains were found at the Sun River archaeological site in Alaska in 2013, proved not to match the two recognized branches of Native Americans and instead belonged to the early population of Ancient Beringians. This breakthrough is said to be the first direct genomic evidence that there was potentially only one wave of migration in the Americas that occurred, with genetic branching and division transpiring after the fact. The migration wave is estimated to have emerged about 20,000 years ago. The Ancient Beringians are said to be a common ancestral group among contemporary Native American populations today, which differs in results collected from previous research that suggests that modern populations are descendants of either Northern and Southern branches. Experts were also able to use wider genetic evidence to establish that the split between the Northern and Southern American branches of civilization from the Ancient Beringians in Alaska only occurred about 17,000 and 14,000 years, further challenging the concept of multiple migration waves occurring during the very first stages of settlement.
caption: 25 kya Beringia during the LGM 16-14 kya peopling of the Americas just after the LGM