PULLMAN, Wash. – Two Washington State University researchers are part of a new study finding that present-day Native Americans migrated in a single wave from Siberia at least 23,000 years ago.
The study, published in the journal Science, freshens the debate over the first Americans, particularly as a second study in the journal Nature offers a more complicated account.
For the Science study, Omar Cornejo, an assistant professor in the School of Biological Sciences, sequenced some of the Central and South American genomes involved and assigned ancestry to different segments of the genome. Brian Kemp, an associate professor of anthropology, collected genetic samples from southeast Alaska.
“We are getting a more comprehensive view of the process of colonization and spread of human populations in the Americas,” said Cornejo.
The Washington Post has a report on both studies here.
