The genome of a Late Pleistocene human from a Clovis burial site in western Montana

摘要

Clovis, with its distinctive biface, blade and osseous technologies, is the oldest widespread archaeological complex defined in North America, dating from 11,100 to 10,700 ~(14)C years before present (bp) (13,000 to 12,600 calendar years bp), Nearly 50 years of archaeological research point to the Clovis complex as having developed south of the North American ice sheets from an ancestral technology. However, both the origins and the genetic legacy of the people who manufactured Clovis tools remain under debate. It is generally believed that these people ultimately derived from Asia and were directly related to contemporary Native Americans. An alternative, Solutrean, hypothesis posits that the Clovis predecessors emigrated from southwestern Europe during the Last Glacial Maximum4. Here we report the genome sequence of a male infant (Anzick-1) recovered from the Anzick burial site in western Montana. The human bones date to 10,705 土 35 ~(14)C years bp (approximately 12,707-12,556 calendar years bp) and were directly associated with Clovis tools. We sequenced the genome to an average depth of 14.4 × and show that the gene flow from the Siberian Upper Palaeolithic Mal'ta population5 into Native American ancestors is also shared by the Anzick-1 individual and thus happened before 12,600 years bp. We also show that the Anzick-1 individual is more closely related to all indigenous American populations than to any other group. Our data are compatible with the hypothesis that Anzick-1 belonged to a population directly ancestral to many contemporary Native Americans. Finally, we find evidence of a deep divergence in Native American populations that predates the Anzick-1 individual.%Clovis complex是在北美广泛分布的一个考古文化。该文化可以追溯到距今大约13,000年前，以特色石器为特征，其中包括被称为Clovis point的一种"矛刃"。到底是谁制作了这些工具一直是一个存在很多猜测的话题，猜测的依据是极少量可以获得的信息。现在，随着一个古代北美人的第一个基因组序列的发表，还将会有更多的猜测。该基因组是一个男婴(Anzick-1)的基因组，这个男婴来自美国蒙大拿州Anzick考古点的Clovis人埋葬地。所发现的残骸为部分骨架，埋葬于距今大约12,600年前，是与大量喷涂成黄褐色的石器一起发现的。它的基因组来自当代印第安人的一个祖先族群，与所有美洲土著族群的关系比与任何其他族群的关系都要更近。这些发现否认了认为Clovis人来自欧洲的假说，与在Clovis人之前数千年美洲就已有人类定居的事实相符，同时也说明当代印第安人是成功在美洲定居的第一批人的后代。