Caveman DNA hints at map of migration

摘要

The oldest sample of human DNA ever isolated in the Americas is providing a glimpse of how people spread across the land masses. The DNA was extracted from teeth, more than 10,000 years old, found in a cave on the northern tip of Prince of Wales Island, off southern Alaska. Researchers compared the pattern of mutations in the DNA against those in thousands of samples. They found matches with 47 Native Americans from tribes living in areas ranging from North America to Tierra del Fuego, showing how the caveman's descendants must have spread.