A genomic study published in Nature has rewritten the history of human migration into the Americas. By sequencing the DNA of an 8,000-year-old individual found in the Altai Mountains of Siberia, researchers identified a unique "Ghost Lineage" that contributed to the ancestry of Indigenous peoples in both North and South America. This group is genetically distinct from the two previously recognized Paleo-Siberian populations.
The discovery suggests that the crossing of the Bering Land Bridge was a much more complex, multi-wave event involving several genetically diverse groups that interacted and interbred before reaching the Western Hemisphere. This new data helps explain many of the morphological and linguistic variations observed in ancient American skeletal remains and modern Indigenous groups.